However, the effort that goes into monitoring the Sun for CMEs and engineering safeguards against the potential effects of space weather isn’t without reward.Įarlier this year, NASA observed a CME lift off the Sun on April 17 that was predicted to hit Mars when the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter would be conducting its second flight. Risks to satellites, spacecraft, and astronautsĬMEs can also pose a risk to satellites and spacecraft in space as charges can build up on the surface and inside electronics. The fastest CMEs arrive within a day of lifting off the Sun and can take up to four days to reach Earth. One of the main tools for predicting if a CME is headed towards Earth is the coronagraph- an instrument that blocks out the light from the Sun’s photosphere so that the corona and CME can be observed. “Extreme events are rare, but when they do happen, we better be ready,” says Singer. The interconnectedness of technological systems makes society especially vulnerable to large geomagnetic storms, as power outages can disrupt the delivery of essential goods and services.
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Space weather can even affect farmers who use technology such as GPS to help make decisions regarding how to best manage crops. Singer is referring to the 60,000 space weather product subscription registrants, some of whom rely on space weather forecasts and alerts to make informed decisions for example, deciding when not to schedule power grid maintenance or when flights over polar regions need to be redirected. “The number of technological systems that can be affected by space weather just keeps growing.” The potential impact on society is far greater today due to the vast extent to which we depend on technology, says Howard Singer, Chief Scientist at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center. The most serious event happened on March 13, 1989, and left six million people without power in Québec, Canada for nine hours. The effects on terrestrial technologyĭuring a geomagnetic storm, changes in magnetic fields induce currents along power lines that can damage transformers and cause power outages. The Carrington Event occurred about six months prior to peak solar activity during cycle 10, which is in line with what we found, and since then there have been approximately six geomagnetic storms that would be considered the most extreme, says Owens.
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Dating back to 1749, we have experienced 24 full solar cycles, with the current solar cycle expected to be in the active phase between 20. The researchers looked at 150 years of disturbances to the Earth’s magnetic field and picked out the most extreme CMEs to have occurred and compared them to the solar cycles.
“These are the ones that we worry about the most, but they appear to be more predictable than once thought,” says Owens. In a new study, a team of researchers led by Mathew Owens, a space physics professor at the University of Reading in the U.K., have found that the most extreme CMEs are also more likely to occur during peak solar activity. But there has been some doubt as to whether the most extreme events, like the Carrington Event, also follow the solar cycle. Auroras were seen as far south as the Caribbean and telegraph lines caught fire as communications were disrupted at various locations across the world.įor almost a hundred years, scientists have known that the small to moderate CMEs are more likely to happen when the Sun is more active and producing more sunspots, roughly every 11-years. One of the most intense CMEs is believed to have taken place on Septem(the Carrington Event), reaching Earth 17.5 hours later and setting off a large geomagnetic storm. “The impact of a CME on a magnetized body like the Earth can be very catastrophic depending on its size and speed.” The most extreme geomagnetic storms are driven by CMEs.ĬMEs really energize the Earth’s magnetic field, says James Spann, Space Weather Lead at NASA. Geomagnetic storms happen when the Earth’s magnetic field is disturbed. These explosions, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), lift off from the Sun’s outer atmosphere - the corona, and can cause intense geomagnetic storms, and negatively affect astronauts, satellites, and spacecraft. The most extreme space weather, however, happens when the Sun blasts billions of tons of energized particles directly towards the Earth at speeds up to 3,000 kilometers per second. Occasionally, the auroras fill the sky with light dancing along these field lines. But the Sun’s charged particles and magnetic field are constantly sweeping through space and colliding with the Earth’s own magnetic field. Space weather is not something that most of us typically think about on a daily basis.
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