The Sun and its activities are also subject to ‘weather’ forecasts. “As with meteorological bulletins that deal with rainfall, temperature and wind direction and intensity, similarly the forecasts of space meteorology and climatology try to predict solar activity and the fluxes of particles and electromagnetic radiation that affect the Earth “noted Francesco Berrilli, member of the Commission for the environment and major natural disasters, academic of the lincei and full professor at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, speaking today at the XXXVIII Environment Day dedicated by the Lincei Academy to scientific studies on “Solar activity and its impact on the circumterrestrial and terrestrial environment”.
“For this reason, space missions, such as NASA’s Solar Probe or ESA’s Solar Orbiter, and future generation solar telescopes, such as the European Solar Telescope (East), will observe and study the violent physical processes that take place in our star,” added Berrilli. speaking at the conference, hosted at the Auditorium building in via della Lungara. The day was supported by the Accademia dei Lincei, by the Pls-Physics Scientific Degree Plan of the University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’ and by Telespazio. The organizing committee was made up of Francesco Berrilli, Vincenzo Carbone, Bruno Carli, Paola De Michelis, Barbara Negri and Giovanni Seminara.
Two sections marked the day of work at the Accademia dei Lincei: the first, also open to secondary school students, was dedicated to the activity of our star, to the role that this activity has in determining the space weather (space weather) and the past climate of the Earth. The second afternoon session instead saw more technical interventions linked to the state of Italian scientific and technological research and to the processes that determine the interaction between our star and the circumterrestrial and terrestrial environment.
The star closest to us, the Sun, in fact envelops our planet with its tenuous atmosphere and with a continuous flow of energy. Only a tiny fraction of this energy reaches Earth yet it is enough to make our planet habitable and support the complex life of plants and animals. However, the scholars who spoke at the Accademia dei Lincei recalled that the Sun is also a magnetically active star and from the tangle of magnetic fields and very high temperature gas jets that emerge on its surface, the largest explosive events that can strike can occur. our solar system and our planet.
“We know that strong explosions, flares (or flares) and coronal mass ejections – explained Berrilli – are produced with a certain frequency on our star. We also know, from historical sources or from the study of particular signals in tree rings, that Extremely more powerful and potentially catastrophic events for our high-tech society have occurred in the past with intervals of centuries or millennia. ”
And both the terrestrial and the circumterrestrial environment – now permanently inhabited for many years by man and by fleets of satellites necessary for the survival of our digital civilization – are affected by the conditions imposed by solar activity. For this reason, the most advanced scientific research develops solar activity monitoring systems, focusing above all on the continuous monitoring of the Sun and on models for forecasting flares or coronal mass ejections.