Solar storm

Solar storm strikes Earth following monster flare

A large coronal mass ejection has reached Earth – days after the Sun sent a massive burst of solar wind and electromagnetic radiation towards our planet. While causing no major geomagnetic storm, it has produced spectacular auroras in northern Europe.

RT.

10 January, 2014

The coronal mass ejection (CME) arrived near Earth at 2:32pm EST (7:32pm GMT) on Thursday, with its effects expected to continue throughout Friday, according to US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a warning of a geomagnetic storm with “minor disruptions to communications and GPS.”

While the world’s economies braced for possible blackouts in high-frequency airline and military communications, disruptions to GPS signals and power grids, enthusiasts in the northern hemisphere rushed outdoors in the hope of viewing the stunning aurora borealis as far south as Colorado.

However, American aurora spotters have been disappointed, as, according to spaceweather.com, the CME’s impact was “weaker than expected” and failed to produce widespread storms. Some frustrated Twitter users also blamed cloudy skies for not being able to see the northern lights.

Maninder Dhaliwal @dhaliwalmk

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Wow RT @EdPiotrowski: Harald Albrigsten captures the #aurora in all its glory tonight in Kvaløya, Norway.

7:22 PM - 10 Jan 2014

22 RETWEETS 12 FAVORIT

Observers were luckier around the Arctic Circle in Norway, where a dark and clear night at the time of impact, as well as more favorable latitude, put an aurora on display.

NOAA forecasters still estimated an 85 percent chance of polar geomagnetic storms before the end of Friday, and media cheered the sky watchers by saying there remains a chance of some clear aurora sightings Friday night.

The CME that stroke the Earth has been associated with the large X1.2-class solar flare that was unleashed from a giant sunspot AR1944 on January 7. The flare has been described as the most powerful this year so far, with X-class denoting the most severe intensity.

The solar phenomenon, which can send billions of tons of particles from the Sun’s atmosphere into space, is luckily not directly harmful for humans, as the Earth’s atmosphere prevents the particles from coming through. However, solar storms can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground, causing varying levels of disruption, and can potentially pose some danger to the astronauts orbiting the planet on board the International Space Station (ISS).

While NASA downplayed the possible impact of the current CME, saying it did not represent a threat to the ISS, the space weather concerns sparked a day-long delay of the Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket launch. The rocket successfully blasted in to space on Thursday, carrying the commercial cargo ship Cygnus with supplies for the ISS crew.

Scientists are expecting more solar flares to erupt, as the Sun is currently in an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle. The current one, known as Solar Cycle 24, started in 2008.

Earth due for solar superstorm

A solar 'superstorm' is coming and we'll only get 30-minute warning

They cause devastation, occur every 150 years – and the last one was in 1859

the Independent,

7 February, 2013

A solar "superstorm" could knock out Earth's communications satellites, cause dangerous power surges in the national grid and disrupt crucial navigation aids and aircraft avionics, a major report has found.

It is inevitable that an extreme solar storm – caused by the Sun ejecting billions of tonnes of highly-energetic matter travelling at a million miles an hour – will hit the Earth at some time in the near future, but it is impossible to predict more than about 30 minutes before it actually happens, a team of engineers has warned.

Solar superstorms are estimated to occur once every 100 or 200 years, with the last one hitting the Earth in 1859.

Although none has occurred in the space age, we are far more vulnerable now than a century ago because of the ubiquity of modern electronics, they said.

"The general consensus is that a solar superstorm is inevitable, a matter not of 'if' but 'when?'," says a report into extreme space weather by a group of experts at the Royal Academy of Engineering in London.

In the past half century, there have been a number of "near misses" when an explosive "coronal mass ejection" of energetic matter from the Sun has been flung into space, narrowly bypassing the Earth.

In 1989 a relatively minor solar storm knocked out several key electrical transformers in the Canadian national grid, causing major power blackouts.

Similar solar storms significantly increased atmospheric radiation levels in 1956, 1972, 1989 and 2003, the experts found.

Professor Paul Cannon, who chaired the academy's working group on solar storms, said that the Government should set up a space weather board to oversee measures aimed at minimising the impact of solar storms.

"A solar superstorm will be a challenge but not cataclysmic. The two challenges for government are the wide spectrum of technologies affected today and the emergence of unexpected vulnerabilities as technology evolves," he said.

"Our message is, 'Don't panic, but do prepare'. A solar superstorm will happen one day and we need to be ready for it.

"Many steps have already been taken to minimise the impact of solar storms on current technology… We anticipate that the UK can further minimise the impact," he added.

Minor solar storms hit the Earth on a regular basis, but these are far less powerful than the 1859 event named after the British astronomer Richard Carrington, which was the last true solar superstorm.

A similar event today would put severe strain the electricity grid, where transformers are particular vulnerable to power surges, as well as degrading the performance of satellites, GPS navigation, aviation and possibly the mobile phone network, particularly the new 4G network, which relies on GPS satellites for timing information.

"Satellites are certainly in the front line of a superstorm. They are part of our infrastructure and we have concerns about their survival in a solar superstorm," said Keith Ryden, a space engineer at Surrey University.