The weather in space has a huge impact on our telecommunications systems,
as well as navigation, electric power networks, geophysical exploration
and controlling spacecraft. Interest in space weather is growing, and
there are a large number of satellite missions in progress to investigate
how it affects us, such as SOHO and CLUSTER 2. Moreover, since space weather
is driven by the activity of the sun, the impact it has on us here on
Earth will become particularly important in the next few months and years,
as the sun approaches its maximum activity.
Can we forecast the weather space well enough to be able to navigate
accurately? Can we set up early warning procedures that give us enough
time to protect valuable communications satellites from the sun? These
are questions that this project team will attempt to answer, building
on its existing Web-based short-term forecasting of conditions in the
ionosphere, the very outer layer of the Earth's atmosphere.
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