Timelines as a tool for learning about space weather storms

Abstract

Space weather storms typically have solar, interplanetary, geophysical and societal-effect components that overlap in time, making it hard for students and novices to determine cause-and-effect relationships and relative timing. To address this issue, we use timelines to provide context for space weather storms of different intensities. First, we present a timeline and tabular description for the great auroral storms of the last 500 years as an example for space climate. The graphical summary for these 14 events suggests that they occur about every 40–60 years, although the distribution of such events is far from even. One outstanding event in 1770 may qualify as a one-in-500-year auroral event, based on duration. Additionally, we present two examples that describe space weather storms using solar, geospace and effects categories. The first of these is for the prolonged storm sequence of late January 1938 that produced low-latitude auroras and space weather impacts on mature technology (telegraphs) and on high frequency radio communication for aviation, which was a developing technology. To illustrate storm effects in the space-age, we produce a detailed timeline for the strong December 2006 geomagnetic storm that impacted numerous space-based technologies for monitoring space weather and for communication and navigation. During this event there were numerous navigations system disturbances and hardware disruptions. We adopt terminology developed in many previous space weather studies and blend it with historical accounts to create graphical timelines to help organize and disentangle the events presented herein.