Modeling and pricing of space weather derivatives

This article proposes a pricing model for space weather derivatives with payout depending on solar activity. By measuring the disturbance of the Earth’s magnetosphere, it is possible to price space weather derivatives which trigger a payoff if a certain level of energization is reached. Since energetic particles emitted by the Sun are a non-tradeable quantity, unique prices of contracts in an incomplete market are obtained using inverse transformation sampling as well as the market price of risk. We find a step-wise decline of option prices with increasing barriers of Kp-index values, a dependence of the option prices on the sunspot cycle, as well as reduced sensitivity of longer-dated maturities for higher Kp-index values.