A solar storm that jammed radar¹ and radio communications at the height of the Cold War could have led to a disastrous² military conflict if not for the U.S. Air Force's budding efforts to monitor the sun's activity, a new study finds. On May 23, 1967, the Air Force prepared aircraft for war, thinking the nation's surveillance radars³ in polar regions were being jammed by the Soviet⁴ Union. Just in time, military space weather forecasters conveyed information about the solar storm's potential to disrupt radar and radio communications. The planes remained on the ground and the U.S. avoided a potential nuclear weapon exchange with the Soviet Union, according to the new research. 

 

Retired⁵ U.S. Air Force officers involved in forecasting and analyzing⁶ the storm collectively describe the event publicly for the first time in a new paper accepted for publication in Space Weather, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

 

The storm's potential impact on society was largely unknown until these individuals came together to share their stories, said Delores Knipp, a space physicist⁷ at the University of Colorado in Boulder⁸ and lead author of the new study. Knipp will give a presentation about the event on August 10, 2016 at the High Altitude Observatory⁹ at the National Center for Atmospheric¹⁰ Research in Boulder, Colorado. 

 

The storm is a classic example of how geoscience and space research are essential to U.S. national security, she said. 

 

"Had it not been for the fact that we had invested very early on in solar and geomagnetic storm observations and forecasting, the impact [of the storm] likely would have been much greater," Knipp said. "This was a lesson learned in how important it is to be prepared."

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