The U.S. National Space Weather Program: Overview and the Role of the International SuperDARN Radar Consortium
K. B. BAKER, R. BEHNKE, R. M. ROBINSON, S. BASU, P. EVENSON
National Science Foundation, USA.
As we begin the new millennium, our civilization's reliance on technology affected in some way by space weather continues to grow at a rapid pace." This is the opening sentence from the National Space Weather Program Implementation Plan, and it makes the point that we are becoming more vulnerable to space weather effects. The Committee for Space Weather includes representatives from the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, the Department of Defense, (DoD), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Department of Energy (DoE), the Department of the Interior (DoI), and the Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meteorology (OFCM). The broad participation in the NSWP is a clear demonstration of the broad range of effects that space weather can have on government and commercial systems. A number of U.S. initiatives are currently underway to help government agencies, as well as commercial businesses cope with the hazards of space weather. Among these are the annual NSF solicitation for scientific research proposals related to space weather, the multi-agency agreement to develop a Community Coordinated Modeling Center for space weather modeling, and the new NASA initiative, Living with a Star. This presentation will give an overview of these space weather initiatives. The SuperDARN radars are one of the few observational systems that can provide a continuous global view of the critically important high latitude region. Post event data analysis of SuperDARN data is a critical aid in understanding high-latitude electrodynamics. The ability of the SuperDARN radars to provide real-time data makes SuperDARN the only observing system currently available for providing global "nowcasting" data of the high-latitude ionosphere. In addition, the use of real-time SuperDARN data may become of use in forecast models that have the capability of assimilating data to improve the forecast model. It is well known that data assimilation techniques are critical to the success of terrestrial weather forecast models and this will no doubt become true of future space weather forecast models as well.
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