Climate and space weather

Space weather is a chain of processes originating at the sun, propagated through interplanetary space, interacting with the Earth’s magnetic field and eventually generating a number of phenomena in the Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists in Copenhagen are exploring the link between Earth’s climate and space weather.The sun’s magnetic field shields us from most of the highly energetic particles coming from space but, depending on solar activity, some of these particles can break through this shield. The European Space Agency has two missions in orbit aimed at understanding the Sun-Earth interaction: the Cluster mission, consisting of four spacecraft measuring variations in the space environment around our planet in 3D, and the solar mission SOHO, monitoring the solar surface round the clock and detecting any changes, notably sun storms heading its way into space.ESApod video programme