Solar-Terrestrial Environmental Prediction (PDF)

Powerful solar explosions, such as flares and coronal mass ejections, greatly disturb the electromagnetic environment around the Earth and the atmosphere. They may even impact various social systems-communications, positioning, electric power supply, aviation and activities in space. Such variations in the space environment, which can influence human activities, are called "space weather." The space weather disaster caused by a solar explosion is a potential risk in modern society. To reduce and mitigate space weather impacts, it is essential to understand the structure and dynamics of the solar-terrestrial environment and to predict the variations.

This book comprehensively describes space weather, from the basics of related sciences to the possible social impacts. It was compiled based on a national research project on solar-terrestrial environment prediction conducted in Japan recently. It consists of four parts: the linkage between space weather and society; the magnetosphere of the Earth and space weather prediction; solar storms and space weather prediction; and long-term prediction of solar cycle activity and climate impacts.

The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). The present version has been revised technically and linguistically by the authors in collaboration with a professional translator.