Space weather Operational Airline Risks Service (SOARS)
Home  |  Links  ||  D-Reg. Abs.  |  TEC & Scint.  |  Radiation  ||  SWx I  |  SWx II  |  Solar Images

Welcome to SOARS

The Space weather Operational Airline Risks Service (SOARS) is one of Service Development Activities (SDA) that form part of ESA's Space Weather Applications Pilot Project - for more details see SWENET. The objective of the project is to review the effects of space weather on the aviation industry and demonstrate a service that could be used by the industry to mitigate the effects of space weather.

The effects are in two principal areas:

  • Effects on radio frequency (RF) communications
    • Disruption of HF and satellite communications (voice and data)
    • Disruption of satellite navigation systems, e.g. GPS
  • Enhanced radiation levels
    • Effects on humans and avionics
Our study has shown that access to Space Weather information that could be used during the planning stages of a flight is important to the aviation industry. In these pages we have gathered relevant information already available from a number of sources, generated some additional plots to fill gaps, and tried to present everything in a way that is informative and designed to help users identify Space Weather effects that are important to them.

Use the links on the top bar to access pages that show Space Weather effects in the areas listed above. The information on the pages is as current as we can make it and the pages update automatically. There are also links that allows users to understand current Space Weather conditons. If you have time, please provide us with some Feedback.

Consortium

  • Mullard Space Science Laboratory of University College London (UCL-MSSL)
  • Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. (VAA)
  • QinetiQ
  • ESYS Ltd
  • National Physical Laboratory (NPL)
  • UK Met Office
Contact/Manager:   R. D. Bentley (UCL-MSSL)    email:  rdb@mssl.ucl.ac.uk

[ Terms of Use (ToU) of SOARS and Acknowledgements]

These pages are still under development...

Current Space Weather Forecast, provided by SIDC(ROB/BIRA)