Kyle Copeland Civil Aerospace Medical Institute Federal Aviation Administration Oklahoma City, OK 73125 July 2016 Final Report

DOT/FAA/AM-16/5 Office of Aerospace Medicine Washington, DC 20591

ESRAS: An Enhanced Solar Radiation Alert System

NOTICE

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assumes no liability for the contents thereof. ___________

This publication and all Office of Aerospace Medicine

technical reports are available in full-text from the Civil Aerospace Medical Institutes publications website:

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Technical Report Documentation Page 1. Report No. 2. Government Accession No. 3. Recipient' s Catalog No.

DOT/FAA/AM-16/5 4. Title and Subtitle 5. Report Date

ESRAS: An Enhanced Solar Radiation Alert System July 2016 6. Performing Organization Code

7. Author(s) 8. Performing Organization Report No.

Copeland, K

9. Performing Organization Name and Address 10. Work Unit No. (TRAIS)

FAA Civil Aerospace Medical Institute 11. Contract or Grant No. P.O. Box 25082

Oklahoma City, OK 73125 12. Sponsoring Agency name and Address 13. Type of Report and Period Covered

Office of Aerospace Medicine Federal Aviation Administration

800 Independence Ave., S.W. 14. Sponsoring Agency Code Washington, DC 20591

15. Supplemental Notes

16. Abstract

Since 2003, The Federal Aviation Administration has operated a Solar Radiation Alert System to aid the aerospace community and interested members of the flying public in their decision making with regards to

solar ionizing radiation. The first alerts were issued during the solar storms of late October 2003. In the years since its initial operation, several improvements have been made to the calculations behind the dose rates

and the means of communicating the results to the aerospace community and the flying public. The basic method of satellite data evaluation described in earlier reports remains unchanged, but it has been updated

and expanded. This report describes the most recent improvements, as well as those planned for inclusion in the next few years. The recent improvements include: new atmospheric response functions for protons,

expansion of calculations to middle and low latitudes, and continuous updating of a global map of the most recent calculations. Other improvements planned include: the addition of solar alpha particle flux to the

calculations, corrections for geomagnetic disturbance effects on global dose rates, and corrections for anisotropy based on available neutron monitor data.

17. Key Words 18. Distribution Statement

Radiation, Solar Radiation, Protons, Ionizing Radiation, Radiation Protection, Dosimetry, Solar Proton Event,

Document is available to the public through the Internet:

http://www.faa.gov/go/oamtechreports/ Solar Radiation Storm, GOES, ESRAS, SRAS, ArcGIS

19. Security Classif. (of this report) 20. Security Classif. (of this page) 21. No. of Pages 22. Price

Unclassified Unclassified 12

Form DOT F 1700.7 (8-72) Reproduction of completed page authorized

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For editorial assistance with this report, I thank Michael E. Wayda of the Civil Aerospace Medical Institute, FAA. For help with ArcGIS mapping I thank Hobi Haque and Lawrence Paskoff, also of the FAA. Thanks to Marcus Da-vidson, FAA, for help with Python scripting and SFTP issues. My thanks to the many attendees of Space Weather Week for their feedback year after year, leading to improvements. Finally, thank you to all those who have contributed and supported this ongoing effort over the years, some of whom have passed on, most notably: Wallace Friedberg, Ph. D. (FAA, ret.) and Herbert Sauer, Ph. D. (University Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, ret.).

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Contents

ESRAS: AN ENHANCED SOLAR RADIATION ALERT SYSTEM

1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................................................... 1

2. ENHANCMENTS....................................................................................................................................................................... 1

2.1 Summary of the Previous System ........................................................................................................................................ 1

2.2 Recent Changes....................................................................................................................................................................... 1

3. FUTURE FEATURES ................................................................................................................................................................ 4

4. REFERENCES............................................................................................................................................................................. 4

APPENDIX A................................................................................................................................................................................... 1

APPENDIX B ................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

ESRAS: AN ENHANCED SOLAR RADIATION ALERT SYSTEM

1. INTRODUCTIONDuring air and space travel, passengers and crew

may be exposed to ionizing radiation at higher dose rates than members of the general population. For air travelers and for future space tourists that do not go into orbit, the principal source of ionizing radiation is galactic cosmic radiation (See Appendix A for a glossary of radiation related terms). This radiation consists of ions of nearly every element in the periodic table. These ions travel at speeds approaching that of light. This radiation is so highly penetrating that shielding of vehicle occu-pants and components is impractical with current pro-pulsion technologies. This radiation is also essentially isotropic (having the same intensity from all directions) and slowly varies in intensity (typically by about a factor of two) over the course of a solar cycle (about 11 years). Because shielding is impractical and dose rates are rela-tively low (a few to a few tens of microSieverts per hour [Sv/h], depending on altitude, geomagnetic effects, and solar activity), radiation protection strategies for occupants of these vehicles rely on limiting individual cumulative exposures to below recommended limits.

While galactic cosmic radiation is the natural back-ground radiation for flights, occasionally a disturbance in the Sun leads to a large flux of solar protons and al-pha particles with sufficient energy to penetrate Earths magnetic field, enter the atmosphere, and increase ioniz-ing radiation levels at aircraft flight altitudes (geopotential altitudes are reported) to levels significantly above galac-tic cosmic radiation levels. Since 2003, the Aerospace Medical Research Division at the Civil Aerospace Medi-cal Institute (CAMI) of the Federal Aviation Admin-istration (FAA) has maintained and continues develop-ment of a solar radiation alert system [Copeland et al., 2005; 2009] to provide information on these events, referred to as Solar Proton Events (SPEs), as they occur. This report describes the most recent enhancements, as well improvements planned for inclusion in the next few years.

2. ENHANCMENTS

2.1 Summary of the Previous System Previous versions of the FAA Solar Radiation Alert

(SRA) system continuously evaluated measurements of high-energy protons made by instruments on Geosta-tionary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) satellites, operated by the National Oceanic and Atmos-pheric Administration (NOAA). If measurements indi-cated the likelihood of a substantial elevation of ioniz-ing-radiation levels at aircraft flight altitudes at polar latitudes (locations with a vertical cutoff rigidity of ~0 MV),

alert messages were issued to the public through NO-AA's Weather Wire Service (NWWS). The specific crite-ria for issuance of an SRA was that the estimated effec-tive dose rate induced by solar protons at 70,000 ft equaled or exceeded 20 microsieverts per hour (Sv/h) for each of three consecutive 5-minute periods, equiva-lent to a level 3 event on the D scale [Meier and Mathi, 2014]. Because of the potential for a delay of 3-20 minutes in communication processes and the three 5-minute periods, notification of the start of alert condi-tions may have been 18-35 minutes after the start of the first 5-minute period. While alert conditions persisted, updates were sent through the NWWS. The alert was canceled when the average effective dose rate at 70,000 ft remained less than 20 Sv/h for six consecutive 5-minute periods.

2.2 Recent Changes As the previous alert system did, the Enhanced So-

lar Radiation Alert System (ESRAS) operates continu-ously to monitor the potential hazard of increased par-ticulate ionizing radiation from the Sun using GOES data as the basis for the hazard analysis.