A Retrospective of The Weather Company's Communication of the May G5 Solar Event (The Gannon Storm)

Roughly 25,000 flights per day rely on The Weather Company to provide them with timely and accurate weather forecasts for safe passage. While terrestrial weather is a common factor, space weather can also impact airline travel by degrading GPS and HF radio communications during high level events. At The Weather Company, the duty falls to the Meteorological Operations Team (Metops) to be the translators for alerts issued by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) to our aviation forecasters and dispatchers. For the first time since 2003, NOAA Active Region 13664 produced several solar flares and Earth-directed CMEs that led to extreme G5 geomagnetic storm conditions. This event allowed Metops’ space weather alerting and procedures to be tested real-time for the modern aviation industry, providing an opportunity to identify gaps and areas of improvement for future mitigation efforts. In this session, The Weather Company will review the actions taken before, during, and after the Gannon Storm, as well as discuss future plans for the integration of new space weather alerting tools for aviation clientele.