{"id":67870,"date":"2017-06-28T21:25:33","date_gmt":"2017-06-28T13:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/how-will-the-us-government-respond-to-a-space-weather-emergency\/"},"modified":"2017-06-28T21:25:33","modified_gmt":"2017-06-28T13:25:33","slug":"how-will-the-us-government-respond-to-a-space-weather-emergency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/how-will-the-us-government-respond-to-a-space-weather-emergency\/","title":{"rendered":"How Will the US Government Respond to a Space Weather Emergency?"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

In one of his final initiatives as President of the United States, Barack Obama introduced an executive order coordinating efforts to prepare the country for space weather events. Since its signing, government organizations such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency<\/strong> (FEMA) and the Department of Defense<\/strong> (DOD) have collaborated to reconstruct their strategies and put forth a more comprehensive response plan in the event of a significant solar anomaly.<\/p>\n

At the Space Weather Enterprise Forum in downtown Washington, D.C. this week, Mark MacAlester, national response coordinator for FEMA\u2019s disaster emergency communications division, identified geomagnetic storms as one of the most potentially damaging threats. A geomagnetic storm is a disturbance in the Earth\u2019s magnetosphere following a solar wind shockwave, usually generated by coronal mass ejections or solar flares.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest thing we worry about here is the L-band will be severely impacted in this kind of event,\u201d MacAlester said. He explained that while higher frequencies are less affected by geomagnetic storms, L-band, which notably is where GPS receivers operate, is particularly susceptible. \u201cL-band is critical. Anyone who has used a satellite phone has probably used an L-band device,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Due to such threats, Kenyetta Blunt, chief of FEMA\u2019s recovery planning branch, stated one of FEMA\u2019s first objectives was to develop what is known as the Power Outage Incident Annex (POIA). Formulated in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, POIA dictates how the federal government will react to wide-scale power outages. \u201cThe current plan and process we had in place to manage long-term power outages was not sufficient,\u201d Blunt said during the forum.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest challenges for the federal government, she said, is that it does not manage its own power lines or companies. Thus, in the event of a disaster, the federal government cannot restore power itself and can only provide ancillary support to utility companies during the aftermath \u2014 and only if they request it. \u201cWe have to wait to be asked to provide this assistance,\u201d Blunt said.<\/p>\n

U.S. utility companies are certainly no stranger to major outages, particularly in the Southeast region of the country where hurricanes are most prevalent. However, even major storms such as Katrina have only knocked out power for a couple of weeks at most. Moreover, the impact range of a hurricane is relatively small compared to a potential outage caused by a major solar event.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf, for instance, the whole East Coast was impacted by a large power outage, it would more difficult for people to up and relocate,\u201d Blunt said. \u201cWe never thought beyond what would happen if it was a population of 2,000 [affected]. 200 million is significantly different.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while most communities can be fairly resilient during a power outage for about a week, situations can quickly turn south without the ability to refuel generators after an extended period of time, Blunt pointed out. \u201cGetting people to think beyond the normal week or two weeks you see with a bad storm was the challenge,\u201d she said. \u201cThere were a lot of agencies that were not capable of doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, though, Blunt said FEMA has begun partnering with entities in the energy sector to streamline the emergency response process, which includes enforcing road closures and coordinating debris removal to give companies access to the areas most impacted. FEMA is also in the process of developing a Concept of Operations Plan (CONPLAN) that will address how each government agency should react in response to a space weather event, as well as select a singular entity that all other agencies would report to. Blunt said further details on the plan should emerge in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

Ralph Stoffler, director of weather and deputy chief of staff for operations at the U.S. Air Force<\/strong> headquarters, noted that DOD also has a vested interest in bolstering resilience against space weather. \u201cWhen you\u2019re flying a bomber at a high level, you need to have long-range comms. You have to be able to find your target, hit your target and only your target,\u201d he said. If GPS communications are inaccurate or offline, a military operation could inadvertently cause loss of life. \u201cAnytime civilian casualties take place it\u2019s a big deal. We try to minimize that by providing very accurate strikes. GPS and satcom is critical to making that happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

To ensure its operational datasets are robust, DOD and other agencies are reaching out to both academic researchers and the commercial sector to provide their data, as well as government agencies from foreign allies such as Canada. \u201cWe can\u2019t do it alone. Integration and cooperation with everybody out there is where we need to be,\u201d Stoffler said.<\/p>\n

Generally speaking, we\u2019ve become very good at predicting when hurricanes, thunderstorms and other severe terrestrial weather will strike and what their impacts will be, Stoffler said. \u201cWe need to reach the same level with space weather because the impacts are out there and they\u2019re a lot more subtle,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In one of his final initiatives as President of the United States, Barack Obama introduced an executive order coordinating efforts to prepare the country for space weather events. Since its signing, government organizations such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Defense (DOD) have collaborated to reconstruct their strategies and put […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67870"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}