Societal and Economic Impacts of Severe Space Weather Events

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The Economic And Societal Impacts of Space
Weather NOAAs Strategy Tom Bogdan, SWPC
Director and Tim Fuller-Rowell, CIRES
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Evolving SWx Customer Base

• Since the last solar maximum (2000) there has
  been rapid growth in societys dependence on
  advanced technologies to safeguard our national
  security and power our global economy
• These advanced technologies---satellite services,
  GNSS positioning and navigation, wireless
  communications, space situational awareness,
  efficient power distribution networks---are all
  vulnerable to severe space weather events
• NOAA has witnessed an unprecedented increase in
  the numbers and types of customers
• This has created new customer needs and urgent
  forecast requirements and capabilities

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The Societal and Economic Impacts of Severe Space
Weather Events A Workshop

• Workshop details
• May 22-23, 2008 in DC
• Approximately 80 attendees from academia,
  industry, government, and industry associations
• Association reps aggregated data and helped avoid
  concerns about proprietary or competition-sensitiv
  e data
• Analyses in specific areas e.g., GNSS, power
  industry, aviation, military systems, human and
  robotic exploration beyond low-Earth orbit
• Econometric analysis of value of improved Space
  Weather forecasts

http//www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id12507
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Customer Growth

• Assoc. of Flight Attendants
• MEASAT Satellite Systems
• Hewlett Packard Irl. Ltd

• FEMA, MA
• FAA, Anchorage
• Intelsat

• Kewaunee Power Station
• Oregon Emergency Management
• Alitalia and American Airlines

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Product Growth
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GNSS Use Pervades Modern Society
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The Wide Area Augmentation System
Ionosphere disturbances impact vertical error
limits (lt 50 m), defined by the FAAs Lateral
Navigation/Vertical Navigation (LNAV/VNAV)
specification WAAS not usable for 30 hours
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NextGen

• The Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast
  (ADS-B) is the future of air traffic control and
  will be the backbone of NextGen
• It uses GNSS signals to provide air traffic
  controllers and pilots with accurate information
  for the safe movement of aircraft
• Space weather causes GNSS position errors, or
  even total loss of lock

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Evolving DoC Requirements

• NOAAs Space Weather Prediction Center is the
  Nations official source for space weather
  alerts, watches and warnings
• Civilian space weather requires global
  ionospheric electron density profile forecasts
  with lead times ranging from 1-2 hours out to 1-2
  days to meet customer needs
• With NextGen coming on line, and the enhanced use
  of GNSS in all aspects of our daily lives,
  ionospheric specification and prediction has
  become a top DoC priority

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Customer Requirements

• Three-dimensional electron density distribution
• determine most effective HF communication
  frequency
• establish ray tracing propagation paths
• electron content (group delay or phase advance)
  along arbitrary lines-of-sight
• Maps of ionospheric irregularities
• Rapid updates ( 5-15 minutes), short latency (
  15 mins)
• Situational Awareness
• Depressed maximum useable frequencies
• Steep horizontal gradients
• Unusual propagation paths
• Larger positioning errors
• High probability of loss of radio signals
• Therefore, short data latency, quick data
  processing and model runs, and rapid
  dissemination of model outputs are required

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Current NOAA Capability US-TEC Product

• Since 2004, an operational product characterizes
  the ionospheric total electron content over the
  continental US every 15 min for GPS application
• Ionospheric data assimilation model (Kalman
  filter) ingesting ground-based GPS data to
  produce 2-D maps of total electron content over
  the Continental US
• Evolved from a collaboration between NOAAs NGS
  (National Geodetic Survey) and SWPC

Real-time ionospheric maps of total electron
content every 15 minutes Accuracy Slant 2.4
TEC units Vertical 1.7 TEC units
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Slant-Path TEC Maps
2-D maps of of slant path TEC over the CONUS for
each GPS satellite in view updated every 15
minutes
A
B
Sat. 1
Sat. 14
A
B
C
A
B
C
A
B
Sat. 29
C
Sat. 5
.etc
C
Applications Ionospheric correction for single
frequency GPS NDGPS positioning dual-frequency
integer ambiguity resolution for rapid centimeter
accuracy positioning (OPUS). (OPUS)OPUS)
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Ionosphere phase delay/advance for NGS in new
RINEX format
US-TEC slant TEC provides ionospheric correctors
for RINEX files
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Potential of Radio Occultations

• Provides orthogonal look direction complementing
  ground-based GPS for ideal tomography imaging
• Full vertical profile
• All weather
• Day and night
• No instrument drift
• Global coverage

Courtesy Chris Rocken UCAR
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New Data Sources Ground-based and Occultation
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How will RO be used at SWPC? Future Capability

• Ingest radio occultation data into current and
  future assimilative models including
  Gauss-Markov, physics-based, and Ensemble Kalman
  filters (EnKF) for specification and forecasting
  the space environment
• COSMIC-I data ideal to test and validate utility
  of RO constellation data in operations - impact
  analysis including value of supporting data (e.g.
  photometer)
• US-Total Electron Content (US-TEC)
• Regional Gauss-Markov, Kalman filter data
  assimilation model
• Driven by ground-based dual-frequency GPS
• Already implemented at SWPC
• Include RO data to improve vertical structure
• Global Ionospheric Data Assimilation Models
• Include RO data in multi-regional Gauss-Markov
  Kalman Filter (equivalent of US-TEC in other
  areas where dense networks of ground-Based,
  dual-frequency GNSS receivers are available)
• Full Global Ionospheric Data Assimilation Models
  (will rely heavily on RO in regions of limited
  ground-based GNSS data)
• Extend to physics-based data assimilation models
  e.g GAIM II (have capability to ingest RO data
  essential for longer term forecasting)
• Unification of space and terrestrial weather
  models (IDEA)

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Threshold Requirements

• Latency Threshold15 minutes, Objective 5
  minutes,
• A slightly more delayed product (30-60 mins)
  would be valuable for situational awareness.
• Number of satellites To achieve ideal global
  ionospheric specification tens of satellites
  would be required. With a 10x10 degree
  latitude/longitude grid, 12 satellites would
  provide a re-visit time of about an hour, which
  would provide a reasonable global ionospheric
  specification during quiet geomagnetic
  conditions, when spatial gradients are weaker and
  temporal variations are slow.
• Viewing It is important to include look
  directions to any GNSS satellite in view,
  sampling the ionosphere off the orbit plane,
  including rising and setting occultations, and
  viewing upward through the plasmasphere. The
  plasmaspheric electron content is important for
  space weather as well as the ionospheric region
  below the satellites.
• Observations To provide line of sight electron
  content will require L1 and L2 phase and code
  information at 30-second resolution cadence. To
  measure irregularities in the ionosphere will
  require higher frequency observations (e.g 50 Hz)

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Conclusion Value to NOAA

• Ionosphere Services are a fast growing, demanding
  area in Space Weather
• SWPC is committed to offer improved products and
  tools
• Radio occulation provides a unique dataset for
  space weather monitoring - full impact analysis
  is required
• Significant improvement in characterizing
  vertical structure of ionosphere has been
  demonstrated
• Economic alternative to RO on NPOESS
• Significant impact on NOAAs mission
• Leverage DoD interest, and other discipline
  applications

Solar Maximum is on the way (2012?)
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(No Transcript)
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Customers for Ionospheric Information

• High Frequency (HF) Communication
• ground-to-ground or air-to-ground communication
• establish accurate maximum useable frequencies
• support automatic link establishment systems
• e.g., civilian aviation, maritime, frequency
  managers
• Single Frequency Positioning and Navigation
• single frequency potential sub-meter accuracy
  positioning
• e.g., civil aviation, advanced vehicle tracking,
  potential for E911 improvements
• Dual Frequency Positioning and Navigation
• decimeter accuracy 10-50 cm
• e.g., real-time kinematic (RTK), autonomous
  transportation, off-shore drilling and
  exploration
• rapid centimeter accuracy positioning 1-2 cm
• e.g., surveyors, possible InSAR (land radar)
  applications
• Satellite Communication
• specification and forecast of scintillation
  activity
• e.g., satellite operators, drilling companies

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EDP Requirements
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Ionosphere Challenges
October 29th, 2003walls of TEC challenge
provision of integrity with differential GPS
Courtesy Tom Dehel, FAA
TEC walls 130 TEC units over 50 km 20 m of
GPS delay walls move 100 to 500 m/s
wall
SED?
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Irregularity Requirements
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Estimated volume and time-line for new data
setsSpace- and Ground-based GPS data
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Ionosphere Effects on GPS
The ionosphere is defined as the region of the
upper atmosphere where radio signal propagation
is affected by charged particles.
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Anomaly crests
1 TECU 1016 electrons m-2
Mannucci et al., 2005
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US-TEC Product
http//www.sec.noaa.gov/ustec

• Current NOAA capability for characterizing the
  total number of free electrons (TEC) in the
  ionosphere, with parallel input data streams for
  reliability
• Since 2004, a product characterizing the
  ionospheric TEC over the continental US (CONUS)
  has been running in real-time at NOAAs Space
  Environment Center (SEC)
• The ionospheric data assimilation model uses a
  Kalman filter and ingests ground-based GPS data
  to produce 2-D maps of total electron content
  over the CONUS
• Product evolved from a collaboration between SEC
  and NOAAs National Geodetic Survey (NGS),
  National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC), and
  Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL)

Primary Product Real-time ionospheric maps of
total electron content every 15 minutes.
Currently uses about 100 real-time GPS stations
from the CORS network
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US-TEC Validation Summary
Differential TEC Slant 2.4 TEC units Vertical
1.7 TEC units Absolute FORTE ray
tracing Slant 2.7 TEC units Vertical 1.9 TEC
units

• Estimated US-TEC slant path total electron
  content uncertainty lt 3 TEC units (equivalent to
  about 45 cm of signal delay at L1 frequencies)
• Estimate US-TEC vertical total electron content
  uncertainty lt 2 TEC units (equivalent to about 30
  cm of signal delay at L1 frequencies)

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SWPC Ionosphere Goals

• Produce global real-time specification and
  forecast
• Web display of GAIM output from AFWA
• Assimilation schemes using numerical models
  CTIPe, IDEA
• Improve US-TEC
• CONUS Specification with 10 minute latency
• US-TEC slant path total electron content
  uncertainty lt 2 TECU
• US-TEC vertical electron content uncertainty
  lt 1 TECU
• CONUS Provide Forecast
• 1 hour forecast as good as specification
• 3 hour forecast uncertainty lt 3 TEC units
• 6-12 hour forecasts