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Space Weather Monitoring on the Antarctic Plateau

So, what's it like to see the AGO team again? I bet it's fun! So, just wondering why "space weather" is so important?

:) Janet

Sun, 12/11/2011 - 17:57

Anonymous

Hi Janet,For some reason I didn't see this on my PolarTREC email--I'll look again though!
I've safely arrived at the South Pole and met Bob and Andy (Bob met me as I came off the plane!). It is incredible to be here! I'll post about it of course.
Space weather is important for many reasons, but the one that stood out to me is that we are monitoring the magnetic field to see how it reacts to solar events. In the 1970s a large solar event knocked out many of the satellites around the Earth. This may happen again in the future so one benefit of learning more about space weather is to learn how these solar events affect the magnetic field so we can protect our satellites!
Sincerely,
Michelle

Thu, 12/15/2011 - 12:21

Michelle Brown

Hi Janet!
Seeing the AGO guys again has been great! They are very accommodating and always looking out for me. Space weather is important for many reasons, but the one I've become interested in is how it affects us. The sun is constantly spitting out radiation which gets to our Earth's atmosphere through solar wind. Our magnetic field buffers most of this (as can be seen by beautiful auroras when ionized gas from the solar wind interacts with the magnetic field), but a strong solar event could knock out our satellites. In the 70s this happened, but it has not happened since and we have put up a lot more satellites. The amount of information we get from satellites has grown and if a solar event were to happen again that was strong enough to knock out a lot of satellites, it would cause a lot of problems!
My team updates, restores and resets instruments, including magnetometers, which help monitor space weather. The more we understand how space weather occurs the better we can prepare for a large solar event.
Great question!
Sincerely,
Michelle