Unlike the other terrestrial planets Venus and Mars, Earth's atmosphere is protected to some extent by our geomagnetic field. Nevertheless, solar wind energy is deposited in our atmosphere and causes an appreciable amount of that atmosphere to be launched into space, where it can be lost downstream in the solar wind or become involved in the creation of space plasma storms. Atmospheric loss to space is a basic factor in our planet's environmental stability over long times, while space plasma storms affect man-made systems and our lower atmosphere on shorter time scales.

The figure shows the effect space plasma storms have on electric transmission hardware on the surface of the Earth. A large storm in 1989 induced currents that caused a failure in the Hydro-Quebec power system that deprived 6,000,000 people of power for over 9 hours in Canada and the US. The same storm triggered the rapid orbital decay of the LDEF satellite by inflating the atmosphere, resulting in increased drag. Similar storms also damage or destroy valuable commercial, military, and research spacecraft resources, or hamper operations of them.

Knowledge of the circulation of plasma within the magnetosphere/ionosphere system, such as that provided by POLAR/TIDE-PSI, is fundamental to the development of a robust predictive capability for space storm damage aversion.