Conveners
CD4 - Space Weather Impacts on Transportation Systems: Orals - Part 1
- David Boteler (Natural Resources Canada)
- Juliane Huebert (British Geological Survey)
- Cameron Patterson (Lancaster University)
- Magnus Wik (IRF)
Description
The increasing reliance on technology-driven transportation systems makes the sector highly vulnerable to space weather impacts. Intense solar storms can disrupt GNSS-based navigation, degrade HF and satellite communications, interfere with avionics, and even induce currents in railway infrastructure potentially leading to disruption or harm. Historical impacts, such as railway signalling anomalies in Sweden during a storm in July 1982 and the degradation in positional accuracy of GPS farming equipment for precision agriculture during the May 2024 Gannon storm, highlight the real-world impacts of geomagnetic disturbances on transportation systems. With the approaching solar maximum, understanding these vulnerabilities and developing mitigation strategies is more critical than ever.
This session aims to bring together academics and industry stakeholders to showcase the latest research in space weather impacts on transportation. We invite contributions that assess operational risks, historical case studies, forecasting advancements, and resilience strategies. The session will serve as a platform for interdisciplinary discussion and understanding. Many of these systems are interdependent, and disruptions are likely to occur simultaneously across the board, emphasising the need to foster collaborations between sectors.
This is a timely opportunity to highlight regional case studies and global challenges alike. Due to its high latitude, transportation systems in the Arctic, where reliable transport is essential for both local communities and expanding industries, may be more prone to geomagnetic disturbances even during less intense periods of solar activity. Therefore, this session is especially relevant to the theme for this year’s ESWW.
Understanding the radiation risks associated with space weather phenomena is becoming increasingly critical as aviation and space travel push beyond traditional boundaries. With the rise of commercial aviation at high altitudes, the emergence of suborbital tourism, and long-duration missions in low Earth orbit (LEO), assessing radiation exposure under varying space weather conditions is...
Geomagnetic storms, as a part of space weather phenomena, are known to degrade the performance of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), which are increasingly relied upon in aviation operations. This study investigates whether such disturbances correlate with deviations in GNSS-derived aircraft positions, as broadcast in ADS-B surface messages and passively collected via a ground...
Track circuits were introduced in 1872 by Robinson in the United States and were quickly adopted around the world. The basic concept is to divide the railway line into blocks and only allow one train at a time into a specific block. Track circuits are used to detect the presence of a train and control the signals to prevent a following train from entering an occupied block of track. In the...
Railways rely on interdependent systems for power, navigation, communications, and signalling, many of which are at risk of disruption by space weather. Understanding how and to what extent space weather can impact these systems is crucial to maintaining the safe and punctual operation of railway networks.
Among the many examples of potential impacts, power supply failures would leave...
Among the various space weather phenomena, Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs) events pose several significant risks: they can damage satellite electronics, increase radiation exposure for astronauts, and impact high-altitude flights, especially over polar regions. Traditionally, these events are monitored using space-based particle detectors or indirectly through ground-based instruments that...
Although the Carrington Event of 1859 is typically cited as the first extreme space weather event of the scientific era, it is not the earliest example of modern human technology being impacted by geomagnetic activity. The literature includes reliable accounts of disturbances to telegraph equipment during geomagnetic storms dating to the late 1840s, but the rediscovery by Cade III (*Space...
In the equatorial sector, ionospheric irregularities are known to impact radio-based technologies, such as the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), by delaying, scattering and diffracting, signals travelling through them. Satellite Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS), broadcasting corrections to single-frequency GNSS users including ionospheric corrections, present challenges at such...
In the last decades, the impacts of solar activity on grounded infrastructure through the interaction of the Earth’s magnetic field with the solar wind have been classified as a major natural hazard in many mid-high latitude countries. Induced geoelectric currents are well known to affect grounded infrastructure like the high voltage power grid, causing damage to transformers. Less studied...
The 10 May 2024 geomagnetic storm, called the Gannon Storm, is known to be the biggest geomagnetic storm in 20 years, reaching G5 (extreme) on NOAA space weather scales and causing auroras visible from Southern Europe. The ionospheric irregularities created by such a storm can impact radio-based technologies, such as the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), by delaying, scattering and...
The effects of space weather events and galactic cosmic-rays (GCRs) are involved in many atmospheric processes, and as such, there is a desire to understand and characterise the airspace radiation environment. Typically, instrumentation onboard satellites, and ground-based instrumentation, are used for primary and secondary particle detection, respectively. Such instrumentation are...
