For those who may not have been paying attention, the sun has become quite active of late. In fact, the sun is more restive in terms of solar flares and coronal mass ejections than it has been in at least two decades. This space weather, as it’s called — blasts of hot gases and energetic particles emanating from our parent star — has the potential to damage the thousands of active satellites in space and can also do severe (and costly) damage to our bulk electrical power grid. And in order to properly prepare, the federal response must be fixed.
The implications of highly threatening space weather have raised this natural hazard to similar ranks as hurricanes, massive floods, earthquakes and catastrophic winter storms. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has noted with several policy pronouncements that space weather events (of the most significant size and duration) can do damage to our modern technological society on a continental scale.
In order to plan for the fallout from space weather, the United States federal government has taken significant key actions. Several relevant federal agencies (NASA, NOAA, DoD, NSF) have formed internal organizations geared toward observing the sun in order to gain greater awareness of when damaging solar storms are — or will be — in progress. Many of these same agencies have put in place programs to support improved modeling of space weather disturbances in order to provide accurate and actionable forecasts of when and where solar storms will likely affect Earth and its environs. Still other agencies have developed plans and guidelines to deal with the societal consequences of severe space weather events. Airlines, electric power companies, spacecraft operators and multiple other industry entities have come to recognize the space weather threat and have developed mitigation strategies (to the best of their present understanding and abilities).
These concerns about space weather led policy makers to take political action. In 2020, Congress passed the Promoting Research and Observations of Space Weather to Improve the Forecasting of Tomorrow (PROSWIFT) Act. This legislation gave clear and compelling direction to federal agencies and to the U.S. industrial base to take aggressive and intentional action to better prepare for the potentially devastating consequences of severe space weather. The PROSWIFT legislation effectively stated that harsh (and very probably) crippling space weather was a certainty: It is not a question of “if” but rather a question of “when” such a severe space storm will strike the Earth. PROSWIFT urged — or, more accurately, instructed —– relevant agencies and industries to prepare for the inevitable black sky day when the sun unleashed its most harmful outbursts.
Part of the federal legislation also required that the agencies and relevant departments of government set up suitable advisory bodies in order to get the best advice from experts in the field of space weather. This legislation gave rise to several panels such as the Space Weather Roundtable (U.S. National Academies), the Space Weather Council (NASA), and the Space Weather Advisory Group (NOAA). There also is a panel of the several federal agencies that operates as SWORM (Space Weather Operations, Research and Mitigation) under the aegis of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. All these panels and committees have charters from their parent organizations but, as might be imagined, there is considerable policy overlap and even bureaucratic confusion as to which group has a particular set of duties and authorities.
From a national policy perspective, I would argue that space weather is too important and too encompassing to be handled the way things are being done at present. What is argued to be a significant advantage with the present advisory structure is, in fact, a serious weakness. Having multiple advisory bodies, each chartered by different parts of the government and each reporting through different channels, is cumbersome and ineffective. Space weather affects all aspects of society. It affects the civilian sector and the national security realm. It is important for human and robotic exploration for NASA, of course, but it also affects parts of society that are in the domain of numerous other agencies and federal departments. As has been amply illustrated in various committee discussions, the balkanized chartering and reporting chains that have been imposed upon space weather policy matters are hampering — not advancing — a topic that needs effective, efficient and nimble advising and policy action.
The efforts that presently are gone through to assure that every advisory body stays in its own lanes have resulted in inefficiency and potentially detrimental paralysis. When the most severe and challenging space weather events really confront our society, everyone will rue the constraints that have been forced upon the communities involved and that have limited the procedures that will be needed to deal with a major societal hazard. I believe firmly that we need to quit skirting around these topics and must start to have a much more integrated and highly functional approach to space weather advice and consent. There should be an overall space weather policy body that resides above the several agency and department boundaries that can assess risk, make policy directives and enforce societal actions that will prepare for the day when the solar “big one” actually happens. A better approach, in my view, would be something akin to SWORM but made up of more technical experts, higher-ranking agency personnel and relevant industry leaders. This group should have budgetary and enforcement powers. Each of the agencies could still have dedicated space weather subcommittees as is now the case, but they should report directly and seamlessly to this top-level entity in the highest echelons of the Executive Office of the President.
Daniel N. Baker is a Distinguished Professor of Planetary & Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
