---
title: "Space Weather Forecaster"
description: "Monitors the Sun and near-Earth space to forecast solar flares, radiation storms and geomagnetic storms that affect satellites, power grids, GPS and…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/space-weather-forecaster"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Space Weather Forecaster

**Category:** Life, Physical, and Social Science · **SOC code:** 19-2021 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 19-2021.00

Monitors the Sun and near-Earth space to forecast solar flares, radiation storms and geomagnetic storms that affect satellites, power grids, GPS and flights.

Also advertised as: Space Weather Analyst; Space Weather Scientist; Solar Forecaster; Physical Scientist (Space Weather).

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $99,070 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $47.63/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $53,060 to $161,890, with the middle half between $73,350 and $129,960
- **Total US employment:** 10,000
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +2.6% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 800 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 20/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 10,000 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $53,060 |
| 25th | $73,350 |
| 50th (median) | $99,070 |
| 75th | $129,960 |
| 90th | $161,890 |
| Mean (average) | $106,110 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| MD | $128,800 | $122,715 | 750 |
| CA | $124,920 | $112,825 | 510 |
| HI | $121,010 | $110,058 | 70 |
| NJ | $120,180 | $110,454 | 60 |
| ID | $119,430 | $125,065 | 50 |
| NY | $117,540 | $108,913 | 370 |
| FL | $115,960 | $112,132 | 270 |
| AZ | $115,020 | $114,247 | 80 |
| MO | $114,230 | $125,780 | 160 |
| IL | $112,280 | $112,327 | 110 |
| OR | $112,260 | $108,610 | 100 |
| NM | $110,070 | $119,366 | 60 |
| KS | $109,300 | $121,353 | 80 |
| NV | $109,300 | $109,323 | 120 |
| MT | $108,890 | $115,051 | 70 |

33 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 48 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/space-weather-forecaster/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/space-weather-forecaster.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 10,700 in the 2025–2035 base year to 10,900 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 300 jobs, or +2.6%. About as fast as average: 2.6% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 800 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 60.0% |
| Master's Degree | 20.0% |
| Doctoral Degree | 15.0% |
| Post-Doctoral Training | 5.0% |

## What the work involves

- Monitor solar imagery and solar wind data for flares and eruptions
- Forecast the arrival and strength of geomagnetic storms
- Issue space weather watches, warnings and alerts
- Brief power grid, satellite, aviation and defense customers
- Interpret model output for solar wind and radiation conditions
- Verify forecasts and help develop new forecasting tools
- Coordinate with international space weather centers

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Science — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Mathematics — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Physics — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Geography — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Communications and Media — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Investigative (I), Realistic (R), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| I — Investigative | 6.26 |
| R — Realistic | 4.86 |
| C — Conventional | 4.81 |
| A — Artistic | 2.72 |
| E — Enterprising | 2.68 |
| S — Social | 2.49 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTJ | 86.2 |
| INTJ | 86.0 |
| ISTP | 82.5 |
| INTP | 69.4 |
| ESTJ | 60.6 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ, INTJ, ISTP.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Atmospheric and Space Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/atmospheric-and-space-scientist) — median $99,070
- [Hydrologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/hydrologist) — median $96,600
- [Geoscientist, Except Hydrologists and Geographers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/geoscientist) — median $101,920
- [Remote Sensing Scientist and Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/remote-sensing-scientist-and-technologist) — median $122,570
- [Data Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/data-scientist) — median $120,230
- [Geographic Information Systems Technologist and Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/geographic-information-systems-technologist-and-technician) — median $116,580
- [Geological Technician, Except Hydrologic Technicians](https://nuecareer.com/careers/geological-technician) — median $53,350
- [Climate Change Policy Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/climate-change-policy-analyst) — median $82,220
- [Geodetic Surveyor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/geodetic-surveyor) — median $75,440
- [Geographer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/geographer) — median $102,040

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/space-weather-forecaster