Natural hazards for the Earth's civilization from space, 1. Cosmic ray influence on atmospheric processes

Abstract. In this paper we give a short description of global natural disasters for the Earth's civilization from space: 1) Galactic and solar cosmic ray (CR) influence on the atmospheric processes; 2) Impacts of great space magnetic storms during big Forbush-effects in CR, 3) Impacts of great radiation hazards from solar CR during flare energetic particle events, 4) Great impacts on planetary climate during periods of the Solar system capturing by molecular-dust clouds, 5) Catastrophic disasters from nearby Supernova explosions, and 6) Catastrophic disasters from asteroid impacts on the Earth. Some of these problems have been already studied (see e.g. Dorman, 1957, 1963a, b; Dorman and Miroshnichenko, 1968; Dorman, 1972, 1974, 1975a, b, 1978; Velinov et al., 1974; Miroshnichenko, 2001, 2003; Dorman, 2004, 2006, 2008). We present here a detailed treatment of the first disaster only, leaving to future papers the analysis of the other aspects.