Space weather and climate concern the solar activities, physical processes in the interplanetary space, magnetosphere and upper atmosphere and ionosphere, and to investigate and to predict possible influences of these phenomena on the human activities on the earth and near earth space. The earth´s upper atmosphere and ionosphere, today, are where a variety of human activities are going on. This region is where disturbed by both from top (magnetosphere and interplanetary space) and below (tropospheric activities). Space related human activities, such as satellite operation, telecommunications, aviations, GPS navigation systems, ground-based energy transportations, are fully related to the space environment. The knowledge on the space weather and climate is, therefore, an issue of great importance for our human activities, not only technological view but also industrial and academic point of view.

The Brazilian Space weather program started at INPE in 2007 under support of Ministry of Science and Technology. Main purpose of the program is to monitor the space weather and climate, from sun, interplanetary space, magnetosphere and ionosphere-atmosphere by satellite and ground based observations, and to provide useful information to space related communities, technological, industrial and academic areas. It is aimed to observe physical parameters of the sun-earth environment, such as, solar radiation by using radio telescope, CME information by satellite and ground-based cosmic ray monitoring, ionospheric disturbance by ionospheric sounders and GPS receiver network, and Geomagnetic activity (GIC) by the magnetometer network.

In the South American continent, there are three particular phenomena from the point of view of Space Climate. One is the equatorial ionospheric anomaly along the longitudinally extended zone from 35° to 80 °W, almost 5000 km of extension. The second is strong equatorial ionosphere scintillation phenomenon caused by ionospheric plasma bubble activities. The ionospheric scintillation affects radio wave propagation, such as satellite to ground communication and GPS signal applications. The third point is South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly zone where the magnetic field strength is almost half compared to the other region. Consequently a large amount of high energy particles penetrate into the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. The information of geomagnetic activity and high energy particle flux for satellite operation is quite important and crucial.

The present document, therefore, describe the purpose of the mission, objectives and structures to establish a center for space weather and climate center in Brazil.

Proceed with data collection and maintenance of the Space Weather observation, modeling processes of the Sun-Earth on a global and regional investigation of the phenomena, provide information in real time and make the Space Weather forecast, and provide diagnostics of their effects on different technology systems through the collection of satellite data, surface and computational modeling.

Monitoring and investigating space weather related phenomena, from sun, interplanetary space, earth’s magnetosphere, ionosphere and upper atmosphere. Creating simulation models for magnetosphere and ionosphere and providing useful information to technological, industrial and academic communities. Special emphasis is paid on the space weather concerns in the earth’s equatorial ionosphere.