Solar Storms – Do They Matter?
Effective emergency management begins with an assessment of risk. The problem is in identifying hazards and their potential impact on the people and organizations we serve. It seems there's a never ending stream of hazards.
Some of them are not very noticeable. According to NASA, on August 1 there was considerable activity on the earth-facing side of the sun: a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, multiple filaments of magnetism lifting off the stellar surface, large-scale shaking of the solar corona, radio bursts.
The activity also included two coronal mass ejections (CME), one of which sparked a G-2 (on a scale of G-1 to G-5) magnetic storm on earth on August 3 that lasted 12 hours. Sounds ominous but it did little more than spark Northern Lights over Europe and North America. The second is still on the way and, according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, may produce a major magnetic storm tomorrow.
Here's NASA's definition of a CME:
CMEs are large clouds of charged particles that are ejected from the sun over the course of several hours and can carry up to ten billion tons of plasma. They expand away from the sun at speeds as high as a million miles an hour. A CME can make the 93-million-mile journey to Earth in just two to four days. Stronger solar storms could cause adverse impacts to space-based assets and technological infrastructure on Earth.
So what's my point? As I've said many times, risk is relative. For most of us, solar storms have no discernible effect, beyond putting on a natural light show. However, large scale storms have the capacity to damage power systems, disrupt communications, and degrade high-tech navigation systems. If you work with or rely on these systems, you should at least be aware of the potential impacts of solar storms. Monitoring solar activity might be cheap insurance.
My thanks to my friend and colleague, Regina Phelps, whose blog H1N1 (Swine Flu): If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another…Solar Tsunami to Strike Earth, inspired this article!
I just finished writing a paper about satellite telephone/broadband systems. Solar storms were one hazard I forgot about. We’re just coming out of solar minimum, so we should have these increasing. There are a number of space weather forecast sites, such as http://www.spaceweather.com, that one can watch check on a daily basis if one has a concern (or, if one wants to know when/where to see an aurora).
John –
You’re right about the expected increase in solar activity over the coming years.
As you noted, there are a number of sites devoted to space weather. Spaceweather.com has a lot of good stuff, as does the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center referenced above. I’ve used both in the past and found them very helpful.
Lu