Space weather: Challenges and Opportunities (Invited)

The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) has the following legal mandates to: a) Continuously monitor, measure, and specify the space environment, b) Provide timely and accurate space weather data, operational forecasts, alerts, and warnings of hazardous space weather phenomena, c) Provide scientific stewardship of, and public access to, space weather data and products, d) Understand the processes that influence space weather and develop applications for the user community and e) Develop new and improved products and transition them into operations to meet evolving space weather user needs. This presentation will discuss the challenges and opportunities that NOAA and the SWPC face in addressing these mandates. This includes coordination of space environment activities across federal agencies and the strategic planning for NOAA's space weather services, integration of space weather activities as well as critical dependencies of space weather services on current and future operational environmental satellites.