Extreme Space Weather Impact: An Emergency Management Perspective

In 2010, the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) partnered with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) to investigate the potential for extreme space weather conditions to impact National Security/Emergency Preparedness communications—those communications vital to a functioning government and to emergency and disaster response—in the United States. Given the interdependencies of modern critical infrastructure, the initial systematic review of academic research on space weather effects on communications expanded to other critical infrastructure sectors, federal agencies, and private sector organizations. While the effort is ongoing, and despite uncertainties inherent with this hazard, FEMA and the SWPC did draw some conclusions. If electric power remains available, an extreme space weather event will result in the intermittent loss of HF and similar sky wave radio systems, minimal direct impact to public safety line-of-sight radio and commercial cellular services, a relatively small loss of satellite services as a percentage of the total satellite fleet, interference or intermittent loss of satellite communications and GPS navigation and timing signals, and no first-order impact to consumer electronic devices. Vulnerability of electric power to an extreme geomagnetic storm remains the primary concern from an emergency management perspective, but actual impact is not well understood at present. A discussion of potential impacts to infrastructure from the loss of electric power from any hazard is provided using the 2011 record tornado outbreak in Alabama as an example.