Space Environment Center

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Space Environment Center (SEC) is a laboratory in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) located in Boulder, Colorado. SEC continually monitors and forecasts Earth's space environment, providing solar-terrestrial information. SEC is the official source of space weather alerts and warnings for the United States.

The SEC is one of the nine National Centers for Environmental Prediction and provides real-time monitoring and forecasting of solar and geophysical events, conducts research in solar-terrestrial physics, and develops techniques for forecasting solar and geophysical disturbances. The SEC Forecast Center is jointly operated by NOAA and the U.S. Air Force and is the national and world warning center for disturbances that can affect people and equipment working in the space environment. SEC works with many national and international partners who contribute data and observations.

A few of the agencies and industry that rely on SEC services:

U.S. power grid infrastructure
Commercial airline industry
Department of Transportation (use of GPS)
NASA human space flight activities (NASA relies on SEC data to protect the $1 billion arm on the International Space Station.)
Satellite launch and operations
U.S. Air Force operational support
Commercial and public users (more than half a million hits per day on SEC web sites)
Some Economic Impacts of Space Weather:

Federal Aviation Administration requires dispatchers to take into consideration HF communication degradation for each dispatched polar flight. Flights can be diverted based on SEC solar radiation alerts if air traffic control communication is compromised, with estimated costs as high as $100K per flight. A 23-day period in 2001 saw 25 flights diverted