92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Monday, 23 January 2012: 11:45 AM
Space Weather Research At the National Science Foundation
Room 252/253 (New Orleans Convention Center )
Richard A. Behnke, NSF, Arlington, VA

The goal of space weather research at NSF is to provide the fundamental understanding of the Sun-Earth system that is most relevant to protecting both people and the technological systems that are vulnerable to storms in space. Progress requires advances in both in-depth understanding of basic space plasma physics questions and in the integration of the physical processes involved over a vast variety of temporal and physical scales. This knowledge has to be effectively incorporated into coherent, internally-consistent models. Targeted space weather funding from NSF has now have produced new results that have been effectively implemented to improve modeling capabilities. NSF has also made tremendous progress in expanding its capabilities for space weather observations through support of an expansion of the SuperDARN network, funding of the AMPERE project, developing modern incoherent scatter radars, funding cubesats, and developing advanced ground-based solar facilities -- including a flagship project, the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST). Finally NSF's commitment to training the next generation of space scientists is also well recognized. This talk will focus on some of NSF's most exciting modeling efforts, observational capabilities and educational programs.

Supplementary URL: