Anthropogenic Space Weather

TL;DR

This paper reviews human-made impacts on the space environment, including nuclear explosions and electromagnetic effects, highlighting their physical processes and observed damages to satellites and Earth's atmosphere.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of anthropogenic effects on space weather, emphasizing physical mechanisms and observational evidence of human-induced space environment alterations.

Findings

Artificial radiation belts caused satellite damage

High-altitude nuclear tests generated damaging EMPs

Human activities significantly alter space environment dynamics

Abstract

Anthropogenic effects on the space environment started in the late 19th century and reached their peak in the 1960s when high-altitude nuclear explosions were carried out by the USA and the Soviet Union. These explosions created artificial radiation belts near Earth that resulted in major damages to several satellites. Another, unexpected impact of the high-altitude nuclear tests was the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that can have devastating effects over a large geographic area (as large as the continental United States). Other anthropogenic impacts on the space environment include chemical release ex- periments, high-frequency wave heating of the ionosphere and the interaction of VLF waves with the radiation belts. This paper reviews the fundamental physical process behind these phenomena and discusses the observations of their impacts.