We provide a brief overview of the roles of USAF commands and agencies involved in the May 1967 near incident. We shed light on how the largest recorded solar radio burst of the twentieth century, on, was a near tripwire in the tense political and military landscape of the time. Cold War tensions were playing out in May 1967 with high-stakes developments in the Vietnamese demilitarized zone and the escalation to the June 1967 war in the Middle East. These geophysical conditions were intertwined with other factors that required vigilance on the part of the U.S. One of the largest geomagnetic storms on record began on 25 May. This quote, which originates in unclassified AWS documents from the early 1980s, delicately sidesteps the circumstances of the situation that clearly involved an uneven response to a solar-geophysical storm.Ĭompared to the relative quiet of the first part of the month, major solar storms and attendant radio emissions developed on 21 May and continued through. West is to the right (Courtesy of National Solar Observatory). As a result of this near incident, the need to incorporate real-time space weather information into the Air Force decision-making process was made obvious to many, and several major efforts were undertaken to greatly improve the operational capability of the AWS Space Environmental Support System.” However, outside agencies were not aware of the space environmental factors and made uninformed decisions without considering the drastic impacts the event imparted to NORAD's early warning systems, which have a direct bearing on decisions being made at the highest levels of the US government. AWS notified NORAD in real time of the event and the associated mission impacts. “Probably the first significant operational impact came from a major solar flare and the resultant geomagnetic storm in May, 1967. The quote (below) from a presentation by Citrone addresses the roles of two USAF agencies-Air Weather Service (AWS) and North American Air Defense (NORAD) Command in responding to the event-and provides insight into the gravity of the situation faced by Department of Defense (DOD) during these disturbances: Radio technologies of the day were severely tested. Solar radio bursts (SRBs) and plasma eruptions from the region filled the interplanetary regime. Figures 1a– 1c provide Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA) details of the event, along with hydrogen alpha (H α) images of the flares from Sacramento Peak Observatory operated by the United States Air Force (USAF). In late May 1967 during the rapid rise of solar cycle 20, one of the most active regions of the decade, McMath Region 8818, rotated onto the Earth-facing solar disk during Carrington Rotation 1521. Radio disruptions like those discussed here warrant the attention of today's radio-reliant, cellular-phone and satellite-navigation enabled world. This was one of the “Great Storms” of the twentieth century, despite the apparent lack of large geomagnetically induced currents. We detail the events of late May 1967 in the intersecting categories of solar-terrestrial interactions and the political-military backdrop of the Cold War.
This story develops during the rapid rise of solar cycle 20 and the intense Cold War in the latter half of the twentieth century. An important and long-lasting outcome of this storm was more formal Department of Defense-support for current-day space weather forecasting. We explain how the May 1967 storm was nearly one with ultimate societal impact, were it not for the nascent efforts of the United States Air Force in expanding its terrestrial weather monitoring-analysis-warning-prediction efforts into the realm of space weather forecasting. Subsequently, record-setting geomagnetic and ionospheric storms compounded the disruptions. Within hours a solar energetic particle event disrupted high-frequency communication in the polar cap.
Aspects of military control and communication were immediately challenged. The storm made its initial mark with a colossal solar radio burst causing radio interference at frequencies between 0.01 and 9.0 GHz and near-simultaneous disruptions of dayside radio communication by intense fluxes of ionizing solar X-rays.
Although listed as one of the most significant events of the last 80 years, the space weather storm of late May 1967 has been of mostly fading academic interest.
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