Space Weather, Aviation, and Space Flight

Last week on Thursday and Friday I helped to run the "Space Weather, Aviation, and Space Flight" workshop at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. It was a really great experience, and I learned a lot. I have been doing work on space weather in preparation for the conference all semester, and it was rewarding to be able to understand the subject matter in the various presentations. Thoughout I was thinking about how the work they did fit into the overall idea of how space weather affects aviation and space flight and about what research is needed in the future.

There was a lot of interesting discussion about the interaction among the people who use space weather information - like airline pilots and operators, space weather operators who use models to get predictions - like NOAA SWPC and the airforce space weather prediction center, and the researchers who study the physics of space weather and develop models. They all have different interests and needs, and those do not always align to help each other.

Anyway, I'm now working on a final report that will cover a lot of what was learned from the workshop, and I'm sure I'll put in a link to that when it's finally ready.