From next Thursday 7 November, the European PECASUS consortium is fully operational with global space weather monitoring to protect air traffic on northern polar routes
The goal of PECASUS is to monitor space meteorological conditions to reduce the risk of flight personnel and travelers traveling the northern polar routes, exposed to strong emissions of matter and very high energy radiation from the Sun. These emissions, albeit occasional, can have a major impact on the ability to navigate and communicate correctly.
Il PECASUS European Center (), under the coordination of the Finnish Meteorological Institute, sees the participation of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland. It will operate, in conjunction with the other two international centres, the ACFJ (Australia, Canada, France and Japan) and the US-managed centre, alternately for periods of two weeks, during which the other two will act as back-up.
The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), in collaboration with the other participating institutions, will provide PECASUS with the appropriately processed ionospheric and geomagnetic data to issue warnings on the changed space meteorological conditions (space weather).
As part of the synergistic activity between the various bodies, the Belgian Center for Sun-Earth Relations (CETS) will consolidate the content of the observations, the products from the observed data and the models provided by all the consortium partners, while the Meteorological Center British (MetOffice) will manage the security systems so that all PECASUS operations are guaranteed even in cases of infrastructural anomalies. Finally, the validation of the performance of the service and the connection with the end users will be entrusted to the Dutch Meteorological Institute (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute – KNMI).
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