Space weather is a collective term used to describe the time varying conditions within the Sun-Earth environment notably within the heliosphere, magnetosphere, ionosphere, and thermosphere. Space weather can affect performance and cause a serious damage to the space and ground technological systems, especially as we relay more and more on modern applications that utilise sensitive equipment, and potentially harm human health. Space assets and critical infrastructure in the EU, such as communication and navigation systems, power grids, and aviation, are all extremely sensitive to space weather. Also, during extreme space weather events probable failure of one of the critical infrastructures can trigger the cascading effects, which will affect other critical infrastructures. Therefore, forecasting of the space weather and mitigation of its effects became a major challenge in the last decade. In Europe, this activity is based on the collaboration between the space science academic groups and space weather centres via support from the European Commission (EC) and European Space Agency (ESA). The EC and ESA have funded many projects and scientific groups to develop space weather products and bring them to the application level through, e.g. Horizon 2020 (H2020) and ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programmes.

This session will address both the current state of the art of the space weather products, from SSA, H2020, and other European and non European funding programmes, and new ideas and developments that can enhance the understanding of space weather and its impact on critical infrastructure on the Earth and in the near-earth environment. The session aims to provide scientists from different research fields the possibility to present and discuss their contributions to space weather relevant products from satellite and ground observations, theory and numerical modelling. We invite presentations on various space weather activities in the Sun-Earth environment: forecast and nowcast products and services; geosynchronous and low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite observations; prediction and assessment of space radiation; energetic particle dynamics; model development, validation, and verification; data assimilation; development and production of geomagnetic and ionospheric indices. The talks on the space weather applied effects (e.g. on airlines, pipelines and power grids, space flights, auroral tourism) in the Sun-Earth environment are also welcomed.