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NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center – A New Focus on Products and Services
Jack Hayes, NOAA/NWS, Silver Spring, MD
The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), one of the nine National Weather Service National Centers for Environmental Prediction, is the nation's official source for space weather alerts and warnings. The SWPC monitors, measures, and specifies the space environment and provides timely and accurate operational space weather services to end users in the USA and around the world.
The rapid advances in the technology sector and our fast growing dependency on space-based systems have resulted in an ever-increasing vulnerability to hazardous space weather. The National Weather Service is addressing these rapid changes in our space weather customer base by understanding and responding to the evolving needs and requirements of a global high-tech economy. The health of our Nation's technological infrastructure will depend heavily on our understanding of the space environment and our ability to predict space weather storms.
The rapidly growing customer base requires that new products and services be developed to support the diverse user areas, including national security, aviation, communications, global positioning system (GPS) applications, spacecraft operations, space exploration, and electric power grids.
The SWPC's emphasis over the next decade will be to provide new services by leveraging the extensive applications-oriented research currently being supported by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and NASA. SWPC's recent restructuring will help facilitate the efficient and timely transition-to-operations of these community-developed numerical space weather models and increase the value of space weather information to society.
Recorded presentationSession 1, Space Weather Agency Updates
Monday, 21 January 2008, 9:00 AM-10:15 AM, 221
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