Monitoring space weather
Space weather describes conditions in space that can have an effect on Earth. This can include interruptions to radio communications and GPS, power grid disruption, and more.
Auroras (Northern and Southern Lights)
Although space weather can cause spectacular natural phenomena such as auroras, it also represents a real threat and can have an impact upon national infrastructure, technology, and communications systems.
What causes space weather impacts?
Impacts are caused by magnetic fields, radiation, particles and matter which have left the surface of the sun and interacted with the Earth's upper atmosphere and magnetic field.
Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre provides critical information to help UK resilience.
Coronal Mass Ejections and Solar Flares
Coronal mass ejections are an eruption of charged bubbles of magnetic gas from the sun and are often linked to solar flares that are sudden releases of large amounts of energy from the sun.
The dynamic sun
What exactly is happening on and around the surface of the sun, that is creating the Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and solar flares that we call space weather?
Geomagnetic storms
A geomagnetic storm is a temporary disturbance in the Earth’s magnetosphere caused by a large burst of solar wind which interferes with the Earth’s magnetic field.
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