A NOAA and CIRES team, breakthrough space weather model

Technology Transfer Award — For research that resulted in a technological solution with widespread and/or significantly measurable societal utilization, with related impact on a global challenge or issue.

Breakthrough space weather model

Incoming space weather from the Sun can briefly blot out radio communications here on Earth, shift satellite trajectories, create ground currents that degrade power operations, and force the hands of airline and human space flight managers. It can be costly and sudden: Enhanced atmospheric drag from a minor geomagnetic storm, for example, an event that started on the Sun, led to the loss of 38 of 49 SpaceX Starlink satellites during a 2022 launch.

Scientists led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s National Weather Service discovered in their space weather research they could create a first-of-a-kind Whole Atmosphere Model and Ionosphere Plasmasphere Electrodynamics Model (WAM-IPE) which allows forecasters to provide better information to the public about potential impacts from solar storms. Collaboration with CIRES, CU Boulder, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, and NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center has brought this new model forward to provide crucial insight to various economic sectors—including communications, satellite and airline operations, human space flight, and navigation and surveying to mitigate damages.