A Roadmap to Ensure a Space Weather-Ready Nation (Invited Presentation)

Executive Order 13865 – Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Pulses, of March 26, 2019, indicated that space weather can affect large geographic areas, disrupting elements critical to the Nation’s security and economic prosperity, and could adversely affect global commerce and stability. Also in March 2019, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a new national strategy to guide the federal government in protecting the country’s critical infrastructures and security for future space weather events. Both documents provide a collaborative and coordinated roadmap for increasing resilience of homeland and national security critical assets and systems.

The Space Weather Operations, Research, and Mitigation (SWORM) Working Group is a Federal interagency coordinating body with over 20 government agencies, organized under the National Science and Technology Council. The SWORM coordinates Federal Government departments and agencies to meet the objectives specified in EO 13865 and the 2019 National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan. Key to successful implementation of these objectives is improved understanding, observations, forecasts, and models for space weather events. In the last decade, we have seen significant progress toward improving the prediction of this hazard, but much more needs to be done.

In this presentation, we will report on NOAA’s effort to collaborate across the Federal Government, the commercial sector, academia, and the global community and the related initiatives to advance forecasting capabilities through improved observations, modeling capabilities, and the related process of transitioning research and technology innovations into operations. These efforts are vital to our goals to enhance national preparedness to space weather events ensuring that the Nation is ready, responsive, and resilient to space weather storms.