The U.S. Just Ran a Solar Storm Emergency Drill. The Real Deal Would Be a Catastrophe

[justaprogressive]

A group of participants from several U.S. agencies took part in a first-of-its-kind exercise that tested their preparedness for a severe solar storm, revealing major cracks in scientists’ ability to forecast space weather—which could put crucial systems at risk.

The Space Weather Operations, Research, and Mitigation (SWORM) task force, an inter-agency group that includes the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), organized a space weather exercise aimed at better understanding the U.S. government’s preparedness for an impending solar storm. The results were recently published in a report, which highlighted significant limitations in space weather forecasting.

The exercise was held from May 8 to 9, 2024, at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and at a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) site in Denver, Colorado. The space weather scenario was organized into four modules involving a series of solar events that resulted in adverse effects on our systems on Earth and in space. The effects included radio communication blackout, loss of GPS functionality, power outages, intense radiation exposure for astronauts and satellites, and an inability to track and communicate with orbiting satellites.

One of the modules took place in the future, asking participants to imagine a hypothetical scenario taking place over eight days in January and February 2028. In the scenario, NOAA tracks an active region on the solar surface that rotates to a position where it is pointed toward Earth. To make matters more complicated, a crew of two astronauts is en route to the Moon aboard the Orion spacecraft while another two-person crew is already on the lunar surface as part of the Artemis missions. The exercise asked participants to consider whether their agency or organization has policies or protocols in place in case of a major space weather event.

https://gizmodo.com/the-u-s-just-ran-a-solar-storm-emergency-drill-the-real-deal-would-be-a-catastrophe-2000603378

[hatrack]

1. I was surprised, and then saw the actual date of the simulation . . . about a year ago.

God knows this would never happen under Shitstain - all that "science" stuff.

[dalton99a]

2. COMING SOON: Trump signs order to ban solar storms and solar storm research

[nitpicked]

3. I wonder if they modeled something like the 1859 Carrington Event

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event

[Ocelot II]

4. This didn't "just" happen; it was a year ago.

"The exercise was held from May 8 to 9, 2024, at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and at a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) site in Denver, Colorado." This program is likely to end up on DOGE's scrap heap if it hasn't already.

[nitpicked]

6. Link (I think) to the report

https://www.jhuapl.edu/sites/default/files/2025-04/Space-Weather-TTX-Report-Summary-v3-FINAL.pdf

[boonecreek]

5. We came close in 2012.

NASA article from 2014:

https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/planetary-science/23jul_superstorm/