Space Weather

Space weather is the research field that deals with phenomenological aspects and the physical state of space environments. A variety of objectives are addressed by means of observation, monitoring, data analysis and modelling : to examine and predict the physical state of the Sun, interplanetary space, planetary environments (especially the terrestrial one) as well as the impact of perturbations, be they of solar origin or not ; to analyze in real time and predict possible effects on biological and technological systems.

All research activities dealing with solar-terrestrial relations in France are part of space weather, viz. : physics of the Sun and of the solar wind, physics of the terrestrial magnetosphere and its interaction with the atmosphere. The fundamental research involved in this field aims at investigating plasma processes that can be observed in situ in the heliosphere, but these processes are of general importance in astrophysics. An increasing number of data, methods and results obtained here are of interest for space weather and some of them are actually explicitly developed on this purpose.

More information on these issues can be found on laboratory web pages and at :