Scientists one step closer to improved space weather forecast
They hope that eventually, space weather forecasting will become as reliable as today’s winter storm warnings. Washington: A team of US researchers has discovered new evidence about how the Earth’s magnetic field interacts with solar wind — a finding that can improve forecasts about space weather. “It’s a bit of a surprise because when you have a current, you usually expect a voltage relationship, where resistance and current are inversely related — high resistance equals small current; low resistance equals large current,” explained Robert Clauer, professor in Virginia Tech’s Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The space weather observations allow researchers to watch how the behaviour of the Sun and the solar wind — an unbroken supersonic flow of charged particles from the sun — changes over time and how the Earth’s magnetic field responds to solar wind variations.
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