Leeds Project Helps Predict Severe Space Weather Events

Space Weather Instrumentation, Measurement, Modelling and Risk programme to deliver improved monitoring capability to the UK's Met Office.

08:07 07 July 2020

A major research project that aims to improve the UK's ability to predict solar superstorms and other server space weather events is set to obtain a significant boost and benefit from Leeds's expertise. 

 

The project, which is funded by The UK Research and Innovation, is part of the £20million Space Weather Instrumentation, Measurement, Modelling and Risk (SWIMMR) programme designed to help UK's Met Office's improve its monitoring capabilities. 

 

The project involves a panel of experts from the University of Birmingham, Lancaster University, the Universities of Bath, Leicester and Southampton and the British Antarctic Survey. The consortium will work together to better understand the Earth's upper atmosphere. Extreme space weather has been included in the Government's National Risk Register - an overview of the key emergencies which could cause significant disruption in the UK. 

 

Professor Dan Marsh, Priestly Chair in Comparative Planetary Atmospheres at Leeds' Priestley International Centre for Climate Change and the top contributor to the project, said: "Space weather is influenced not only by the Sun but also by weather in the Earth's troposphere that causes variability throughout the atmosphere. Our state-of-the-art global models, which reach from the surface to the edge of the space, will be used to improve space weather monitoring capability." 

 

He added: "We hope to improve the prediction of satellite drag and disruption to communications by including previously-omitted lower atmosphere effects such as this in the forecast system."