Progress made and path forward to forecasting the aviation radiation hazard

Abstract:

Aviation radiation hazards are a result of galactic cosmic ray, solar energetic proton, and possibly relativistic radiation belt electron precipitation and their absorption in the terrestrial atmosphere. We describe model development and data collection to-date that has helped our community better understand the nature of aviation radiation hazards. As with other discipline areas in space weather, a general consensus is emerging that data assimilative as well as ensemble modeling are the pathways of preference for obtaining reliable forecasting of the exposure to crew, passengers, and vehicles engaged in commercial aviation, business jet, and commercial space travel enterprises. While considerable progress has been made in modeling and data collection areas, and exciting new topics for study have opened up, it remains a fact that the measurements needed to drive data assimilative modeling remain woefully sparse. We are still several orders of magnitude below what is needed in data collection. With the rise of space commercialization and a more expansive view of how space weather measurements can be made using new platforms, opportunities have emerged to provide unique strategies for substantially increasing measurements. Recent initiatives from these new strategies will be reviewed and pathways forward to collecting more data for improved forecasting models will be presented.