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Surv Geophys (2010) 31:581638 DOI 10.1007/s10712-010-9103-1
A. K. Singh Devendraa Siingh R. P. Singh
Received: 30 November 2009 / Accepted: 22 September 2010 / Published online: 17 October 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
Abstract The time varying conditions in the near-Earth space environment that may affect space-borne or ground-based technological systems and may endanger human health or life are referred to as space weather. Space weather effects arise from the dynamic and highly variable conditions in the geospace environment starting from explosive events on the Sun (solar ares), Coronal Mass Ejections near the Sun in the interplanetary medium, and various energetic effects in the magnetosphereionosphereatmosphere system. As the utilization of space has become part of our everyday lives, and as our lives have become increasingly dependent on technological systems vulnerable to the space weather inuences, the understanding and prediction of hazards posed by these active solar events have grown in importance. In this paper, we review the processes of the SunEarth interactions, the dynamic conditions within the magnetosphere, and the predictability of space weather effects on radio waves, satellites and ground-based technological systems today.
Keywords Solar wind Magnetosphere SunEarth interactions Space weather
Radio communications Predictability of space weather
1 Introduction
The dynamic and highly variable conditions in the geospace environment including those on the Sun, in the interplanetary medium and in the ionosphere-magnetosphere system to the ground are referred as space weather (Baker 1998; Singh and Singh 2003). Solar activity, especially Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), solar ares and energetic particles are the major
A. K. Singh (&)
Physics Department, University of Lucknow, Lucknow 226007, India e-mail: [email protected]
D. Siingh
Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune 411-008, India
R. P. Singh
Space Physics Laboratory, Physics Department, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi 221005, India
Space Weather: Physics, Effects and Predictability
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factors controlling space weather. Space weather is greatly inuenced by the speed and density of the solar wind and the interplanetary magnetic eld (IMF) carried by the solar wind plasma. A variety of physical phenomena are associated with space weather, including geomagnetic storms, energization of the Van Allen radiation belts, geomagnetic activity, ionospheric disturbances and scintillations, aurorae, and geomagnetically induced currents at the Earths surface. Recently, Lilensten and Belehaki (2009) have...