Readout of the White House Space Weather Summit
Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy hosted leaders from federal and state governments, the Space Weather Advisory Group, and community stakeholders to improve the U.S. government’s ability to understand, forecast, and prepare for space weather events.
The Biden-Harris Administration has made it a priority to strengthen the security and resilience of space systems. Space weather is a naturally occurring phenomenon that has the potential to cause adverse effects on the nation’s critical functions and operational systems in space and on Earth. Extreme space weather events, including solar flares and coronal mass ejections—when the sun expels plasma and magnetic fields—can disrupt or disable electric power, communications, water supply, health care services, satellite operations, and transportation.
Last year, the Biden-Harris Administration released an Implementation Plan of the National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan to safeguard our nation against space weather. Today’s summit recognized the successes and challenges of our implementation efforts in building capabilities in space and ground based observations, basic and applied research, and modeling to produce advanced space weather forecast products and services. The May 2024 Gannon space weather storm, the most intense space weather event measured on Earth in the last 20 years, tested many of these capabilities. Power grid and satellite operators, the aviation industry, and GPS users were able to successfully mitigate many of the storm’s impacts, but critical infrastructure owners and operators would still benefit from improved prediction capabilities.
At the summit, the Space Weather Advisory Group announced the completion of the first-ever comprehensive survey of the needs of users of space weather products that will help these critical sectors to better prepare for the effects of space weather, including more precise forecasting, additional education and training to advance preparedness for space weather events, and more accessible space weather data to reduce latency, increase interoperability, and machine readability to ensure prompt operational decisions and long-term planning activities.
This summit builds on the progress that the Biden-Harris Administration has made to deliver promising space weather research to an operational environment. The Biden-Harris Administration remains committed to keeping our nation safe from space weather, while fostering growth in U.S. commercial space and ground-based activities.
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