Town Hall: Report of an International Roadmap on Space Weather: Science of space weather and its impact on life and society
- Indicates paper has been withdrawn from meeting
- Indicates an Award WinnerWith the rapid development of the technological infrastructure upon which modern society depends comes a growing appreciation of the hazards presented by the phenomena around our home planet that we call space weather. The complexity of the coupled Sun-Earth system, the sparseness by which it can be covered by remote-sensing and in-situ instrumentation, and the costs of the required observational and computational infrastructure warrant an international approach with feasible, affordable solutions. COSPAR and the steering committee of the International Living With a Star program tasked a multi-disciplinary, international team with the development of a roadmap with the goal of demonstrably improving our observational capabilities for, scientific understanding of, and ability to forecast the various aspects of space weather. This presentation reviews the significance of space weather, and summarizes the roadmap, its top-priority recommendations, and their underlying rationale.