Major Space Weather Risks Identified via Coupled Physics‐Engineering‐Economic Modeling
6 affiliations
- 1Geography and Geoinformation Sciences George Mason University Fairfax VA USA
- 2Space Weather Lab, Physics and Astronomy George Mason University Fairfax VA USA
- 3University of Cape Town Cape Town South Africa
- 4Electrical and Computer Engineering George Mason University Fairfax VA USA
- 5U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Hazards Science Center Denver CO USA
- 6U.S. National Science Foundation, National Center for Atmospheric Research Boulder CO USA
Abstract
Space weather poses an important but under‐quantified threat to society. While severe geomagnetic storms are recognized as potential global catastrophes, their socio‐economic impacts remain poorly quantified. We present a novel physics‐engineering‐economic framework that links geophysical drivers to power grid geoelectric fields, transformer vulnerability, and macroeconomic consequences. Using the United States as an example, we estimate daily economic losses for a 250‐year geomagnetic storm from transformer thermal heating of 1.81 billion USD (95 percent confidence interval: 1.65 to 1.96 billion USD), disrupting power for approximately 5.1 million people and 135,000 businesses. These estimates are conservative lower bounds, reflecting only transformer thermal heating effects and excluding voltage collapse, cascading failures, and restoration costs. The true societal risk could be substantially higher. Nonetheless, this contribution provides the first nationwide end‐to‐end coupling from space physics to potential macroeconomic loss, with quantified uncertainties. Our results demonstrate that coupled socio‐economic modeling of space weather is feasible and essential, and the framework is scalable and transferable, offering a template for assessing space weather risk to critical infrastructure in other countries.
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BibTeX
@article{oughton2026major,
title = {{Major Space Weather Risks Identified via Coupled Physics‐Engineering‐Economic Modeling}},
author = {Edward J. Oughton and Dennies Bor and Robert S. Weigel and Charles Trevor Gaunt and Ridvan Dogan and Liling Huang and Jeffrey J. Love and Michael J. Wiltberger},
journal = {AGU Advances},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.1029/2026av002367},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1029/2026av002367},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Major Space Weather Risks Identified via Coupled Physics‐Engineering‐Economic Modeling
AU - Edward J. Oughton
AU - Dennies Bor
AU - Robert S. Weigel
AU - Charles Trevor Gaunt
AU - Ridvan Dogan
AU - Liling Huang
AU - Jeffrey J. Love
AU - Michael J. Wiltberger
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/01
JO - AGU Advances
DO - 10.1029/2026av002367
UR - https://doi.org/10.1029/2026av002367
AB - Space weather poses an important but under‐quantified threat to society. While severe geomagnetic storms are recognized as potential global catastrophes, their socio‐economic impacts remain poorly quantified. We present a novel physics‐engineering‐economic framework that links geophysical drivers to power grid geoelectric fields, transformer vulnerability, and macroeconomic consequences. Using the United States as an example, we estimate daily economic losses for a 250‐year geomagnetic storm from transformer thermal heating of 1.81 billion USD (95 percent confidence interval: 1.65 to 1.96 billion USD), disrupting power for approximately 5.1 million people and 135,000 businesses. These estimates are conservative lower bounds, reflecting only transformer thermal heating effects and excluding voltage collapse, cascading failures, and restoration costs. The true societal risk could be substantially higher. Nonetheless, this contribution provides the first nationwide end‐to‐end coupling from space physics to potential macroeconomic loss, with quantified uncertainties. Our results demonstrate that coupled socio‐economic modeling of space weather is feasible and essential, and the framework is scalable and transferable, offering a template for assessing space weather risk to critical infrastructure in other countries.
SN - 2576-604X
ER -