Programme
Space Weather and Radio Heliophysics
The impacts of Space Weather vary widely from local to global and can severely disrupt or vital technological systems – including power grids, positioning and communication systems and spacecrafts/satellites. Space Weather is listed on the UK’s National Risk Register due to the significant impact it would have on the economy, infrastructure, and our day-to-day lives.
RAL Space leads UK efforts to understand, monitor, and prepare for the effects of space weather – bringing together scientific expertise, national engagement, and international partnerships to strengthen the UK’s capability in predicting and responding to space-weather hazards and their resulting impacts. RAL Space works closely with the Met Office and government across all aspects of space weather.
Programme Aims
This Space Weather and Radio Heliophysics programme aims to establish RAL Space as a Centre of Excellence for Space Weather in the UK, as a National Centre and go-to partner for Government and the Met Office. It also aims to retain a world-leading position in Radio Heliophysics, developing space-weather applications of radio-astronomy techniques and demonstrating research excellence across the entire space weather/heliophysics domain.
Our work
We work closely with government, research organisations, agencies, and industry to strengthen space weather capabilities by helping shape strategy, designing and supporting new infrastructures and missions, and advancing the heliophysics research that underpins space‑weather resilience.
Radio astronomy applications
We play a leading role in developing the next generation of space‑weather monitoring infrastructures and missions (and their novel applications), pioneering innovative uses of ground‑based radio telescope systems to study how solar activity interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere and near‑Earth space.
Provision of critical space weather data
RAL Space is a key UK contributor to global data‑exchange networks, providing long‑term datasets which are vital for improving models, developing forecasting tools, and understanding how space‑weather impacts evolve over time.
Blue-Skies research
We explore fundamental heliophysics research and support the community to develop new techniques and modelling approaches; providing the scientific foundations for future missions and forecasting and future heliophysics applications for space-weather research, monitoring, and forecasting.
Radio Investigations for Space Environment Research (RISER)
The UK’s UKRI NERC-funded Radio Investigations for Space Environment Research (RISER) project comprehensively addresses the chain of events through which the Sun creates adverse space-weather conditions at Earth and within the Earth’s space environment. RISER aims to investigate how the LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) can be utilised for continuous and accurate tracking of inner-heliospheric and ionospheric plasma structures, combined with magnetospheric modelling, leading to more-precise and advanced forecasts of space-weather conditions and their impacts at Earth. RISER will provide a comprehensive understanding of the Earth’s space-environment through the use of novel radio observations and modelling techniques to investigate coupling between solar-driven inner-heliospheric structures and the Earth. RISER brings together both these unique radio-observing techniques and modelling, along with complementary data sets, into one, large, multi-faceted project. RISER aims to advance the capability of space-weather predictions, and thus reliably increasing space-weather forecasting to up to four days ahead of time. This work will provide insights that can strengthen future Met Office operational space-weather forecasting capabilities.
