Solar Radio Bursts and Space Weather

Space Weather is the study of the conditions in the solar wind that can affect life on the surface of the Earth, particularly the increasingly technologically sophisticated devices that are part of modern life. Solar radio observations are relevant to such phenomena because they generally originate as events in the solar atmosphere, including flares, coronal mass ejections and shocks, that produce electromagnetic and particle radiations that impact the Earth. Low–frequency solar radio emission arises in the solar atmosphere at the levels where these events occur: we can use frequency as a direct measure of density, and an indirect measure of height, in the atmosphere. The main radio burst types are described and illustrated using data from the Green Bank Solar Radio Burst Spectrometer, and their potential use as diagnostics of Space Weather is discussed.