Space Weather & Telecommunications

"Goodman writes chronologically, and often describes his professional experiences as if recording a scientific jounral or diary. Thus, it is easy to follow the complex threads of physical science inquiry, as he travels from meeting to meeting where other scientists also present their findings.One need not be a mathematician to interpret the meanings of a few dozen equations. A bachelor's degree in physics, a related science, or engineering will suffice to comprehend fully the concepts. In the first part, attention is given to the sun, the magnetosphere and geomagnetic storms, and the ionosphere. There is an excellent summary of recent work in modeling and prediction, and the author makes the point that 'we are now unfortunately faced with the job of predicting outcomes from models driven by parameters that also need to be predicted,' and continues on to address the unvertainty in this process. Readers engaged in the space weather field will find an excellent overview of the topic, which includes storm and ionospheric modeling. Attention is given to ionospheric layers, sporadic-E, solar flares, European Union (EU) COST action models, and scintillation models. A significant feature of the first part is that the names and organizations of researchers are cited. This allows the reader to reach into the literature for additional technical details about this research, most of which is recent or current. The second part is devoted to studying propagation in the bands from extremely low frequency through extremely high frequency, which is essentially the entire real-world telecommunications spectrum. The growth in technology, including the extensive use of global positioning systems, suggests that this part has many innovations, particularly in the high frequency spectrum, in which the author makes the connection to space weather... Goodman has produced a book that is readable, and presents a comprehensive up-to-date overview of the relationshipbetween space weather and the telecommunications field. Written primarily for physical science specialists and engineers, it also will be useful to licensed amateur radio operators engaged in voice, CW, and data communications, who must deal with the practical impact of propagation every time they are on the air." Reviewed by L.C. Silvern  "To recount in parallel the development of space weather services and telecommunications makes for a story that is both complex and simple, as seen in John M. Goodman's new book, Space Weather & Telecommunications. It is complex because there are so many facets to the relationship; it is simple because it is a straightforward story of cause and effect. Space weather can be addressed scientifically-- the standard university-level text approach-- but to do so leaves the topic unfounded and disjointed from a societal perspective. In this book the author takes great pains to describe (1) numerous aspects of why space weather matters for the user community; (2) the programmatic aspects (both nationally and internationally) that define the practice of space weather; and (3) new, emerging activities that are devoted to the proper integration of space weather products and services in the 21st century... The book covers a wide expanse in quick fashion but gives numerous references if the reader wants more details. The prime strength of the work is that it brings together, in a manner palatable to a general audience, the story of how space weather affects the developing technologies that make up modern telecommunications systems. This book is a good work to supplement the standard technical library of a graduate student and will bring a sense of the breadth and the evolving nature of the space weather and telecommunications issues that exist today." Reviewed by Joseph Kunches, NOAA Space Environment Center