Heliophysics: Science, Applications, and Societal Impacts

Since the invention of the telegraph system in the 19th century have manmade systems been exposed to the fury of active solar phenomena known as space weather. With technological advancements we are exposing ourselves more and more to space weather - heliophysics has acquired a significant societal dimension. Among the most pressing concerns are the potentially major or even catastrophic impacts on critical infrastructure such as GPS and high-voltage power transmission systems.

Quite timely, the science of heliophysics is in the process of making transition to a field capable of not only monitoring but also forecasting solar and heliospheric phenomena. This progress is demonstrated, for example, by transition of the first large-scale numerical heliospheric model capable of predicting the evolution of coronal mass ejection to operations at NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). The transition was a joint NASA-NOAA effort and is being followed up by similar transition of numerical geospace model to SWPC operations.

Despite great advances in heliophysics also great challenges lay ahead. There are great gaps in our understanding of some of the key solar and heliospheric phenomena such as triggering of solar eruptions and evolution of heliospheric transient magnetic field important for powering near-Earth space weather storms. Also, there are some concerns in terms of lacking guaranteed continuity of our current capability to, for example, remotely monitor in near real-time transient solar atmospheric phenomena. I will discuss in this paper some of the latest heliophysics advancements in the context of key societal space weather concerns. I will also show how many of the concepts such as ensemble simulations familiar from lower atmospheric weather context can be directly implemented to address modeling and forecasting of space weather. Finally, I will discuss some of the key future challenges and opportunities heliophysics and space weather face in the coming years.