June 2025 | Product 3005502
Revisions to NOAA’s Space
Weather Scales
For more than 26 years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) has applied scales for communicating space weather conditions and their
effects on people and infrastructure. Yet over time, forecasting capabilities and user
needs have changed. This summary reports on how IDA is helping the agency revise
its space weather scales.
Solar storms and geomagnetic disturbances can
disrupt the power grid, communications,
navigation, and satellite operations posing
significant risks to government and commercial
sectors. Since 1999, NOAA has applied the Space
Weather Scales (SWS) to convey current and
future space weather conditions and their
impact on systems and people. Stakeholders
worldwide use SWS to initiate hazard
preparedness, mitigate operations, inform
irregularities attribution and research activities.
However, many changes have occurred over the
past 26 years warranting revisions for SWS. The
space weather user base has expanded to include
government leadership, such as policymakers at
the Department of Homeland Security and
NASA, and growing end-user communities,
including power grid, aviation and satellite
sectors. Finally, operational end-users have
called for greater geographic specificity with
scales, forecasts and products to inform the
various sectors in different regions about
predicted impacts of severe space weather
events.
Due to these shifts, NOAA’s Space Weather
Prediction Center (SWPC) contacted IDA’s
Science and Technology Policy Institute to assist
in revising SWS. The results of these potential
revisions are presented in a report by IDA
researchers: Project Leader Asha Balakrishnan,
Daniel Pechkis, Katherine Ross and Erin Saybolt.
