What is Space Weather and Space Climate?
WMO definition
Space weather:
1. The physical and phenomenological state of the natural space environment, including the Sun and the interplanetary and planetary environments.
2. The discipline dealing with the physical and phenomenological state of the natural space environment, including the Sun and the interplanetary and planetary environments. It aims, through observation, monitoring, analysis and modelling, at understanding the driving processes, predicting the state of the Sun, the solar wind, the magnetosphere, the ionosphere, the thermosphere and the Earth’s magnetic field, monitoring and predicting their disturbances, and forecasting and nowcasting the potential impacts of these disturbances on ground-based or space-based infrastructure and human life or health.
Note: “Space weather” should not be confused with “satellite meteorology”, which deals with the use of satellites for meteorological observations.
Space climate:
The mean physical state of the space environment and its statistical variations in both space and time over a period of several solar cycles.
Space climatology:
The study of the mean physical state of the space environment and its statistical variations in both space and time over a period of several solar cycles.
Note: Not to be confused with “geospatial” matters which relate to the use of satellite techniques in Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
(from: WMO report, WMO Space Programme, 18 November 2015)
A definition adopted by 24 European countries and the ESA
Space weather is the physical and phenomenological state of natural space environments. The associated discipline aims, through observation, monitoring, analysis and modelling, at understanding and predicting the state of the sun, the interplanetary and planetary environments, and the solar and non-solar driven perturbations that affect them; and also at forecasting and nowcasting the possible impacts on biological and technological systems.
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