Building NOAA's Operational Space Weather Observations

NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) works to provide timely access to global environmental data, products, and services. These data support the space weather forecasting enterprise by providing reliable, high quality data for modeling, for improving our understanding of the Earth-Sun environment, and for publicly disseminated warnings. This presentation will cover agency plans and updates for the Space Weather Next and Space Weather Follow On programs, showing how NOAA’s observations are integrated with partner research observations. It will also cover the comprehensive NOAA Space Weather Strategy effort to strengthen cross-NOAA engagement to advance end-to-end space weather capability.

Reliably monitoring coronal mass ejections from multiple observing points can protect the nation’s valuable, vulnerable infrastructure. New capabilities at L1, L5 and geostationary earth orbit will provide additional insight and understanding, and improve forecasts. Growing user needs are driving next generation satellite architecture investment decisions to enable longer-lead times and more accurate solar storm warnings, provide better forecasts of the location of the auroral oval and probability and deliver access to thermosphere imagery and in situ observations. NOAA must especially work with the aviation, space commerce, energy, and defense sectors to better understand their sensitivities to the space weather environment. NOAA is soliciting feedback from industry and interagency partners on which space weather products are most impactful.