19-Oct-2021 | Market Research Store
A collaborative effort between the University of Texas at Austin and Texas Advanced Computing Center has recently published an understudy that predicts the effects of an upcoming major space weather event that could have the ability to create a catastrophic impact on Earth that could further disable communications and electrical systems in case the event was allowed to go out of control. The research team used the Front era supercomputer in order to develop a new generation of forecasting models and further improve the existing Geospace Model used by NOAA for operational purposes. The team intends to increase the lead time for space weather events from 30 minutes to 13 days by localizing the necessary space weather forecasts and provide future necessary estimations. The team quotes that there are only two natural disasters that could impact the globe on a tabular scale a pandemic and a space event.
The last major space event took place in 1859; however, it was much smaller in scale. It was still deemed to be significant as space events occur rarely due to their capability to disable electronics and power grids, disrupt positioning systems and cause shifts in the range of the Aurora Borealis. These events could even potentially cause a risk of radiation to astronauts or passengers on planes, especially the bunch of crossing the poles. The team noted that the current technological scale could be disrupted if an extreme event like the one in 1859 could occur in today’s day and age. The newer model developed by the team replaces version 1.5 which has been in operation since November 2017 and the main change in version 2 is the refinement of the numerical grid in the magnetosphere and several other improvements in the algorithms.
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