Agora – Strategic or programmatic article

Assessment and recommendations for a consolidated European approach to space weather – as part of a global space weather effort

¹ Department of Physics, Umeå University, 901 87 Umeå, Sweden
² Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, Kiel University, 24118 Kiel, Germany
³ Royal Observatory of Belgium Brussels, 1180 Uccle, Belgium
⁴ National Observatory of Athens, 118 51 Athens, Greece
⁵ Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, OX11 0DE Didcot, UK
⁶ Department of Physics and Technology, University of Bergen, 5007 Bergen, Norway
⁷ Finnish Meteorological Institute, 00101 Helsinki, Finland
⁸ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, LE1 7RH Leicester, UK
⁹ University Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, 38000 Grenoble, France
¹⁰ INAF Astronomical Observatory of Trieste, 34131 Trieste, Italy
¹¹ Department of Physics, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy
¹² Institute of Physics, University of Graz, 8010 Graz, Austria

^* Corresponding author: hermann.opgenoorth@umu.se

Received: 25 July 2019
Accepted: 30 August 2019

Abstract

Over the last 10–20 years there has been an ever-increasing international awareness of risks to modern society from adverse and potentially harmful – and in extreme cases even disastrous – space weather events. Many individual countries and even international organisations like the United Nations (UN) have begun to increase their activities in preparing for and mitigating effects of adverse space weather. As in the rest of the world there is also in Europe an urgent need for coordination of Space Weather efforts in individual countries as well as in and among European organisations such as the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Union (EU). This coordination should not only improve our ability to meet space weather risks, but also enable Europe to contribute to on-going global space weather efforts. While space weather is a global threat, which needs a global response, it also requires tailored regional and trans-regional responses that require coordination at all levels. Commissioned by the European Space Science Committee (ESSC) of the European Science Foundation, the authors – together with ex-officio advice from ESA and the EU – have over two years assessed European activities in the realm of space weather and formulated a set of recommendations to ESA, the EU and their respective member states, about how to prepare Europe for the increasing impact of adverse space weather effects on man-made infrastructure and our society as a whole. We have also analysed parallel international activities worldwide, and we give advice how Europe could incorporate its future activities into a global scheme.