Why space weather matters on Earth, and the team trying to protect us

At the Met Office headquarters in Exeter, UK, a dedicated team operates around the clock, 365 days a year, with their gaze fixed not on terrestrial clouds but on the fiery surface of the Sun. In a specialized corner of the control centre, screens display intricate, close-up imagery of our star, revealing the dynamic processes that drive space weather. This is the domain of the Met Office’s space weather prediction team, a critical unit, one of only a small number worldwide, tasked with monitoring and forecasting celestial events that hold the potential to profoundly impact life on Earth.

Space weather, often unseen and underestimated, poses a significant threat to our increasingly technology-dependent world. Phenomena originating from the Sun, such as solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and high-speed solar wind streams, can interact with Earth’s magnetic field and upper atmosphere, triggering geomagnetic storms, radiation storms, and radio blackouts. The consequences for vital technologies—including global positioning systems (GPS), national power grids, and the vast constellation of satellites orbiting our planet—are severe. These systems are not merely inconvenienced by space weather; they are fundamentally vulnerable to its energetic forces, which can disrupt communications, overload electrical infrastructure, and even cause permanent damage to sensitive electronics. Recognizing this escalating risk, the UK government has formally included severe space weather in its National Risk Register, underscoring its potential for widespread societal and economic disruption.

The economic implications alone are staggering. A 2025 estimate by the insurance market Lloyds highlighted the potential for an extreme space weather event to cost the global economy an estimated $2.4 trillion over a five-year period. This figure reflects the interconnectedness of modern infrastructure and the cascade of failures that could ensue from a major solar storm. Since 2014, the Met Office has been at the forefront of efforts to mitigate these impacts, working closely with key infrastructure operators to provide timely forecasts and warnings. Their sophisticated forecasting relies on a combination of ground-based observatories and advanced satellites positioned far out in space, offering a crucial window into the Sun’s activity.

Richard Stone, a lead member of the Met Office’s space forecasting team, emphasizes the dual nature of their work: "It allows us to diagnose anything that’s happening on the Sun’s surface, provide a forecast and alert the relevant users to be able to take mitigating actions." However, despite the impressive strides made in space weather science, the current technology still faces significant limitations. Scientists can typically spot an event erupting on the Sun’s surface roughly three days before its effects reach Earth. Yet, during this vast transit across 93 million miles of interplanetary space, there is a critical observational gap. No further direct sightings occur until the solar material reaches a network of sentinel satellites positioned approximately one million miles from Earth, at the L1 Lagrangian point. This leaves scientists with a mere hour to precisely predict the event’s real impact on Earth and issue urgent warnings to partners, enabling them to implement crucial mitigation strategies. Stone likens this forecasting challenge to "seeing a storm on the east coast of America and then not having any observations until it gets to Ireland," highlighting the immense uncertainty in the intervening period.

To bridge this critical gap and enhance forecasting accuracy, the Met Office has partnered with a consortium of researchers led by Aberystwyth University. Professor Huw Morgan, Head of Space Physics at Aberystwyth, leads this collaborative project, which includes experts from Northumbria, Durham, and Reading universities. Their collective goal is to develop more sophisticated models and observational techniques to improve the precision and lead time of space weather forecasts. "This pre-warning is a huge mitigation of the danger posed by space weather," Professor Morgan explains. "For example, it gives the National Grid an opportunity to prepare and avoid power cuts, or airlines can divert their flights from high latitude to safer lower latitudes." He acknowledges that "compared to forecasting normal weather on Earth, space weather forecasting is really quite a developing field. I mean, it’s yet to mature where we can give exact forecasts," underscoring the complexity and ongoing nature of their research.

Scientists benefit from the Sun’s approximately 11-year activity cycle, which allows them to predict general periods of increased or decreased space weather. "We’ll have some very quiet years, very little space weather, and then it peaks then, at the peak of the cycle then we can have a lot of space weather events, maybe several a day," Morgan notes. The current period aligns with the Sun reaching its Solar Maximum in 2024, a peak in activity that explains the increased frequency and visibility of auroral displays—the spectacular Northern and Southern Lights—across many parts of the world. While these auroras are perhaps the best-known and most beautiful manifestation of space weather, the real triumph of current forecasting lies in the fact that, despite this heightened solar activity, individuals on Earth have experienced minimal disruption, thanks to the proactive warnings provided to technology companies and infrastructure operators.

The benchmark for understanding severe space weather remains the 1859 Carrington Event, a geomagnetic storm widely considered the most powerful on record. Named after English astronomer Richard Carrington, who observed the solar flare that initiated it, the event unleashed a torrent of charged particles that slammed into Earth’s magnetosphere. The effects were dramatic and global: auroras, typically confined to polar regions, were seen as far south as the Caribbean, illuminating night skies with unprecedented intensity. The nascent telegraph network, which had only begun commercial operation in the 1840s, experienced widespread disruption. Stone vividly recounts the historical accounts, noting how "even telegraph wires were heard to hum and crackle, and they were able to run the telegraph poles without any electricity because the input was so high." Operators reported receiving electric shocks, and in some cases, telegraph paper spontaneously combusted. The profound concern today is that a modern-day Carrington Event, without adequate mitigation, would unleash significantly greater consequences, given our profound and pervasive reliance on interconnected digital and electrical technologies.

Protecting against such an event involves a range of mitigation strategies. Power grid operators, upon receiving warnings, can re-route electricity, temporarily shut down vulnerable transformers, or disconnect segments of the grid to prevent widespread damage from Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GICs). Satellite operators can place sensitive components into "safe mode," reorient their spacecraft to minimize exposure, or adjust orbital parameters to counteract increased atmospheric drag. Airlines, alerted to radiation risks or communication blackouts, can divert flights from high-latitude polar routes to safer lower latitudes, relying on alternative communication systems if high-frequency (HF) radio is disrupted. Even GPS users can employ backup navigation methods, acknowledging the potential for signal degradation or loss.

The impacts of space weather extend beyond Earth’s surface, posing significant challenges for human exploration. In 1991, Dr. Helen Sharman, the first British person to journey into space, spent eight days aboard the Mir Space Station. Her training included protocols for where to shelter if space weather were to strike the station. Dr. Sharman recalls being affected by galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) during her mission—high-energy particles originating from outside our solar system. "They come through the materials that spacecraft are made of," she explains. "They come through astronauts’ skin, and they’re what we notice as astronauts because quite often we see little bright flashes of light on our retinas, as those particles come through the spacecraft, through our skin, through our eyes, and affect our vision in that way." She further notes that "the higher up you are as well, of course, the further away from the Earth’s magnetic field, the more likely you are to not be protected by the Earth’s magnetic field." While low Earth orbit offers some protection, future missions to the Moon and Mars, which will venture far beyond Earth’s magnetosphere, necessitate much more robust shielding and advanced warning systems to safeguard astronauts from potentially lethal radiation exposure.

In an era defined by technological advancement and increasing reliance on space-based infrastructure, understanding and predicting space weather is no longer a niche scientific pursuit but a critical imperative for global security and economic stability. The collaborative efforts of institutions like the Met Office and Aberystwyth University, combined with continuous international research and investment in new observational capabilities, are essential. By refining our ability to forecast the Sun’s temperamental nature, we can better protect the intricate web of technologies that underpin modern society and pave the way for safer, more ambitious endeavors in space. The team tirelessly monitoring the Sun is, quite literally, working to protect us all, ensuring our connected world remains resilient in the face of cosmic forces.