›Extreme Space Weather Events

Extreme space weather events, while rare, can have significant effects all the way from the Sun to Earth's polar ice caps. They have been implicated in the depletion of ozone and cloud formation, and their signatures may even be seen in ice core records spanning more than 400 years into the past. Extreme solar activity at other planets, and elsewhere in the solar system, can be important, and violent flare activity can even be observed at other stars.  Economically, these events may have severe consequences ranging from human exposure to increased radiation to disruption of communications and electrical power.

With recent advances in theory and the availability of new datasets, together with society's continually increasing reliance on technology, a coordinated study of extreme events and their impacts at Earth is both timely and necessary. In this first of two workshops on this interdisciplinary topic we will address several key scientific questions. We will introduce the main outstanding issues in each field, define the boundaries between them, and identify how cross-disciplinary studies can lead to new insight. During the second workshop (approximately one year later), progress made during the previous year will be reported and new questions and issues resulting from these studies will be addressed.