The significance of space weather lies in its potential impact on man-made technologies on Earth and in space, for example, on satellites and spacecraft, especially radio and telephone communications, electricity power grids, pipelines and on geophysical exploration.
Space weather storms can result in lost or degraded communications, unreliable navigational equipment, flight-critical electronic system problems, and radiation hazards to crew and passengers.
Space weather arises as a result of various dynamic, but relatively short-lived, phenomena produced by the Sun, which are carried in the solar wind and which may interact with the Earth"s magnetosphere. Long-term changes, that is, changes over decades to centuries, also occur in the near-Earth space environment. These changes are due to long period variations in solar magnetic activity and in variations in the strength of the Earth"s magnetic field.
Last year has shown a recent increase in sun activities in an 11 year cycle. These activities have a strong impact on avionics and navigation equipment:
- Disruption of GPS;
- Disruption of long-distance radio signals;
- Ground Induced Current: electrical transmission and ground-based Nav-Aids (VOR, NDB, ...)