Attempting to couple solar "events" (flares, coronal mass ejections, particles) to perturbations in the earth's atmosphere is a challenging topic which requires the coordination of many data obtained through many different techniques from many instruments together with the development of models to track e.g. the propagation of mass ejections, shocks or particles in the interplanetary medium. I will present here the results of a few studies which analyzed the complete chain of events from the Sun to the Earth's atmosphere and discuss the difficulties encountered in e.g. linking the observations at the Sun to the observations at 1 AU. I will show how the STEREO observations bring new tools to better connect coronal mass ejections at the Sun with in situ measurements. I will finally discuss the input of radio observations for Space Weather studies.

Large solar energetic particle (SEP) events are one of the greatest threats to humans on long space flights outside the shielding provided by the geomagnetic field. Thus, understanding their origin and properties is one of the key issues on building capabilities for manned missions, e.g., to Moon and Mars. The most energetic SEP events produce a detectable ground level enhancement (GLE) in the cosmic-ray flux indicating, that relativistic protons are produced at or near the Sun during the event. To date, 70 GLEs are observed, and the most extreme events in this class produce proton enhancements above the cosmic-ray background at energies extending up to 10 GeV and beyond. I will briefly introduce observations of some of the largest SEP events observed to date and then discuss them in terms of recent efforts to model them. Most of the emphasis will be put on models based on shock acceleration in CME-driven coronal shocks. In addition to particle observations, I will also discuss recent electromagnetic observations on shock formation to address the issue of timing of the acceleration relative to the X-ray flare.

Scaling of CMOS technology has led to devices with feature size of a few tens of nanometers. Despite the formidable roadblocks faced during the last few years, Moore’s law is still driving the industry towards unprecedented levels of performance and capability. New materials and new device concepts, such as high-k dielectrics and FinFETs, have been introduced to overcome scaling barriers and follow the course predicted by G. Moore more than 40 years ago. Further solutions with great potential, such as 3D chips, are being studied for the next years. This rapid evolution has had an enormous impact on the radiation effects community, with some issues being mitigated by scaling, and some others being exacerbated. Overall hardness assurance is becoming an increasingly difficult task for space designers.
There is a trend in low-voltage CMOS-based circuits towards an improved total dose tolerance. Today, it is not unusual to find commercial components able to withstand 500 krads(SiO2), compared to failure levels of just a few tens of krads some years ago. The introduction of high-k oxides has not significantly altered this trend: while the gate oxide is hard to radiation, the main problem with recent technologies is in parasitic leakage originating in lateral and device-to-device isolation or in the buried oxide for SOI technologies. Alternative devices, such as gate-all-around transistors, remove leakage paths and further improve total dose tolerance.
Unfortunately, this encouraging trend is partially offset by uncertainties related to manufacturer-to-manufacturer variability and the lack of control by space designers on the parameters affecting the radiation hardness. Large total-dose failure-level variations can occur from lot to lot or even within the same lot. Single event upsets and multiple bit upsets are instead on the rise in SRAMs and latches, due to the reduction in the stored charge and the close proximity of memory elements. SRAMs of the latest generations are sensitive to direct proton ionization, with a dramatic impact on chip error rates in proton-rich environments. Many assumptions and concepts used to predict error rates in space, such as linear energy transfer, are breaking down. Fine-scale interactions between radiation and nanometric devices need to be considered, in order to obtain accurate rate estimations. This has spurred a lot of developments in the area of Monte Carlo tools applied to error predictions. Nuclear interactions and effects related to the impinging particle energy must be kept into account.
The memory elements of DRAMs and Floating Gate Flash appear to be harder. Yet, especially in the second case, sensitivity is rapidly increasing with scaling. Functional interrupts due to upsets in the complex control logic of these chips may be an issue in space.
Operating frequencies in excess of 1 GHz have raised concerns about the impact of single event transients on combinational logic. Several studies have been made to measure the length and the rate of transients in a variety of structures, but more research is needed to provide a clear assessment of these transients.
At the system level, even though the single-event-effects sensitivity of the individual elements were unchanged, the increasing amount of memory and functions leads to an overall increase in error rates.
In addition to technological issues, testing is becoming increasingly complex due to the integration of a larger and larger number of functions and difficulties related to package and sample preparation for radiation tests. It is practically unfeasible, due to time and cost constraints, to test a modern electronic chip, such as a DRAM chip, in all the possible operating modes under radiation.

Ionosphere as one of the most sensitive media from all geospace shells of our planet is usually considered as an object of action from above: direct action of solar electromagnetic radiation, solar proton events and effects from the magnetosphere (magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling). Nevertheless, this approach failed to explain day-to-day ionospheric variability. Thermosphere-ionosphere coupling problems, which become a hot subject of recent years ionospheric studies improved the situation at least by more careful look at the neutral and ionized species exchange of energy, but still there is lack of knowledge in direct physical modeling of atmosphere-ionosphere coupling within the frame of the Global Electric Circuit (GEC) conception. The problem exists frozen for many years: there are some model calculations but mainly for the polar ionosphere where magnetospheric convection is considered taking into account the electric fields. But for low latitude and equatorial ionosphere the problem remains at the level of understanding from the middle of last century age. The strong localized ionospheric anomalies reaching the 50-100% of electron concentration in the maximum of F-layer around the time of strong earthquakes (mainly within the interval of 5 days before the main shock) intensified the studies of the problem what led to creation of the Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling (LAIC) model. The GEC plays the crucial role in understanding the observed ionospheric anomalies. The three geophysical shells mentioned above could be considered as an open complex nonlinear system with dissipation where intensive ionization of boundary layer of atmosphere gives start to the synergetic sequence of coupling processes where the ionosphere and even magnetosphere are the last links in the chain of interactions. It should be noted that such anomalies could be generated not only before earthquakes where radon emanation from the Earth's crust is considered as a main source of ionization, but in a presence of any source of intensive ionization (nuclear power plant emergencies as an example). So the model should be named probably as Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling induced by ionization. The following questions will be considered: the model itself, main morphological features of seismo-ionospheric anomalies, the special techniques of anomalies identification, including geomagnetically disturbed periods, most interesting examples including the recent catastrophic Tohoku earthquake in Japan, examples of physical modeling of seismo-ionospheric effects, model verification by other sources of ionization (cases of Nuclear power reactors explosions). Effects of seismo-ionospheric anomalies on the radio waves propagation in different frequency bands will be considered as well.

Access to near real-time and real-time space weather data is essential to accurately specifying and forecasting the space environment. The Space Weather Desk at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Space Weather Laboratory provides vital space weather forecasting services primarily to NASA robotic mission operators, as well as external space weather stakeholders including the Air Force Weather Agency. A key component in this activity is the iNtegrated Space Weather Analysis System which is a joint development project at NASA GSFC between the Space Weather Laboratory, Community Coordinated Modeling Center, Applied Engineering & Technology Directorate, and NASA HQ Office Of Chief Engineer.

The iSWA system was developed to address technical challenges in acquiring and disseminating space weather environment information. A key design driver for the iSWA system was to generate and present vast amounts of space weather resources in an intuitive, user-configurable, and adaptable format - thus enabling users to respond to current and future space weather impacts as well as enabling post-impact analysis. Having access to near real-time and real-time data is essential to not only ensuring that relevant observational data is available for analysis - but also in ensuring that models can be driven with the requisite input parameters at proper and efficient temporal and spacial resolutions.

The iSWA system currently manages over 300 unique near-real and real-time data feeds from various sources consisting of both observational and simulation data. A comprehensive suite of actionable space weather analysis tools and products are generated and provided utilizing a mixture of the ingested data - enabling new capabilities in quickly assessing past, present, and expected space weather effects.

This paper will highlight current and future iSWA system capabilities and also discuss some of the challenges and lessons-learned in dealing with diverse real-time and near-real time space weather resources.

http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Solar and space radiation have been monitored successfully using the radiation risks radiometer-dosimeter (R3D) installed at the ESA EXPOSE-R (R) facility outside of the Russian Zvezda module of the International Space Station (ISS) between March 2009 and January 2011. The space radiation has been measured by a Liulin type spectrometer-dosimeter with a single 2 cm² area and 0.3 mm thick Si PIN detector. The total external and internal shielding before the space radiation detector of R3DR device is 0.41 g cm^-2. The calculated stopping energy of normally incident particles to the detector is 0.78 MeV for electrons and 15.8 MeV for protons. After the Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) on third of April (09:54 UTC) on fifth of April a shock was observed at the ACE spacecraft at 07:56 UTC, which led to a sudden impulse at Earth at 08:26 UTC. Never the less that the created magnetic substorms on fifth and sixth of April were moderate, one of the largest in history of GOES measurements outer radiation belt enhancement was created. The R3DR data shows a relatively small amount of relativistic electrons on 5th of April. The maximum was reached at 7th of April with 2323 µGy day^-1. Till 9th of April 6,600 µGy was accumulated. Till the end of the period on 7th of May totally 11,587 µGy dose was absorbed. We measured the R3DR relativistic electron dose for the NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Clayton Anderson collected during the 3 EVA on 9-13 April 2010 to be 1067 µGy or enhancement of 38.6% in comparison with other STS-131 crew members, which stayed inside the ISS. The equivalent additional dose according to R3DR data is 1170 µSv or 17.6% enhancement. Our data were compared with AE-8 MIN, CRESS and ESA-SEE1 models using SPENVIS and with similar observations on American, Japanese and Russian satellites.

Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs) are electrons, protons and heavier ions resulting from acceleration by phenomena originated at the Sun. The sources of these particles are solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). The contribution of either source to an individual SEP event is still under intensive study. In general, solar flares may be responsible for small increases in SEPs and major increases in solar protons result primarily from travelling shocks associated with CMEs that are often accompanied by flaring processes. There are several models for modelling the SEP environment at 1 AU based on measurements made by Earth-orbiting spacecraft over the space age. Estimations of the environment away from 1 AU have been coarse and often conservative due to a lack of available data which can be verified.
To enable spacecraft designers to mitigate for the effects of solar protons statistical, probabilistic models providing predictions of the cumulative fluences and the highest fluences or peak fluxes resulting from a single event to be seen over a user-specified mission duration as a function of confidence level are constructed. In this work, conducted as part of the ESA Solar Energetic Particle Environment Modelling (SEPEM) Project, we focus on solar protons in the energy range 5-200 MeV which are known to cause displacement damage, Single Event Upsets (SEUs) and total dose effects. Heavy ions can cause similar effects, and modelling heavy ions can be done on the SEPEM system using an extrapolation of the method based on the results for solar protons. Analytical extensions in energy can be made if required.
In order to address this challenge we have combined the SEPEM 1 AU SEP statistical model with the SEPEM SOLPENCO2 model which combines an MHD model for propagation of the CME-driven shocks and a particle transport model for particle propagation from the shock front to a given location in space, along the connecting IMF line. In this way both longitudinal and the radial variations as a function of position and time are considered on the event timescale. This allows the modelling of each event in the SEPEM event list deduced at 1 AU extrapolated along the Earth's IMF line For the stochastic model covering the full mission length only the helioradial distance is needed as it can be assumed that the longitudinal variations will average over the mission.
For the present time, in order to facilitate the modelling of each event it was necessary to group enhancements which displayed similar characteristics and to apply the same helioradial scaling factors to each based on those events which have been fully modelled using SOLPENCO-2. In the future it is our intention to model all the events in the event list individually, however, it is not clear if there are sufficient solar observation, solar wind plasma and solar wind magnetic field data to achieve this in all cases.
The scaling is calculated for each enhancement individually (an event may consist of one or more enhancements) which allows a new event list to be calculated on a pre-defined grid at 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.3 and 1.6 AU. The model is run by using virtual timelines with an input of the variation of helioradial distance with time. The code steps through a mission length, using the time distributions for events at 1 AU before determining the spacecraft position when the events occur and using this to sample the flux distributions of the two nearest event lists on the grid and interpolating between them to find each event peak flux or fluence. A large number (100,000) of timelines are simulated to create the worst-case peak flux, worst-case event fluence and cumulative event fluence probability distributions for the mission in the same way as for the 1 AU model.

The recently published data by Reeves et al. [GRL 2011], of the electron fluxes at the geostationary orbit are subjected to an Error Reduction Ratio (ERR) analysis, in order to identify the parameters that control variance of these fluxes. It was shown that it was the solar wind density not the velocity that controls most of the variance of the 1.8-3.5MeV electrons fluxes. Under the condition of fixed density, the dependence of the fluxes upon the velocity was the following: fluxes increase with the velocity reaching some saturation level [Balikhin et al. GRL 2011]. In the present work, it was shown that for much lower energies, the solar wind velocity had the major influence, not the density, with an increasing time lag of the velocity as the energy of the fluxes increased. This increase of the time lag can be used to estimate parameters of the electron acceleration process.

A database of local and global Dst index proxies (called Dxt indices) have been made available for 1932 onwards within the Soteria project. We investigate here the average properties of geomagnetic storms using the local Dxt indices at the four Dst stations in 1932-2009. Imposing the condition of complete data availability during storms, our study includes 1268/362/134/59 storms with Dxt minimum less than -50/-100/-150/-200 nT, respectively. The global Dxt minima were, on an average, -94/-156/-216/-275 nT, while the deepest storm-time local Dxt minima were -137/-214/-285/-350 nT. This implies that the local Dxt minima are typically some 25-30% stronger than the global Dxt minima. The distribution of largest storm-time disturbances is strongly peaked at 18 local time, challenging local midnight as the dominant ion source. Relative timing of local minima verifies that stations at earlier LT hour observe their minimum a couple of hours after the deepest minimum, in agreement with westward drift of ions. Storm-time maximum asymmetries were found to increase with storm intensity level from about 70 nT to 150 nT for -50 to -200 nT storms. However, strong storms are relatively more symmetric than weak storms when compared to the typical level of local disturbance. During individual storms the asymmetry can be more than 200 nT. The rate of evolution of storm-time asymmetry is found to be roughly twice faster for large storms. We emphasize that the unique database of local Dxt indices proves to be very useful in studying the average spatial distribution and temporal evolution of storms. Instead, using the global Dxt/Dst index as the only measure for storm intensity and other properties may lead to severe underestimation of significant local and global effects.