Space Weather

Abstract

In this chapter, we briefly describe the structure and dynamics of the plasma of the solar wind, which supplies solar energy to the plasmas of the earth’s geospheres, namely the magnetosphere and ionosphere. Then, geomagnetic storms, which develop there and disturb the physical fields of the underlying earth atmosphere, are discussed. We use the qualitative approach of the US Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Spacepedia, Wikipedia, and the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) to discuss these subjects, i.e., systems of partial differential equations (PDEs; e.g., ones describing magneto-hydrodynamics) are not applied in this chapter, though the processes described by them include most of the related physics. (We note that systems of PDEs are applied and/or investigated by us numerically and mathematically in Chaps. 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, and 11 of this book.)

The influences of geomagnetic storms (estimated by the planetary geomagnetic index K_p, which is described in this chapter) on the human brain and heart are considered in Chaps. 5, 6, 7, and 8 of this book.