Over the weekend, millions of people around the world were treated to the mesmerizing display of the aurora borealis and aurora australis, also known as the northern and southern lights. The lights, usually seen in crown-like regions surrounding the Earth’s poles, have been pushed towards mid-latitudes due to increased activity from the Sun.
The same geomagnetic storms that cause auroras can wreak havoc on our planet’s human-made infrastructure. These storms, created when high-energy particles from the Sun hit our atmosphere, have the potential to disable power grids and satellites. So what were the effects of this last burst of stormy space weather?
Around May 8, an active region of the Sun exploded and launched a billion-ton cloud of magnetized and electrically charged material toward Earth, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME). This turned out to be the first of several consecutive CMEs that later merged to form a single, massive structure.
It hit our planet’s magnetosphere, the region of space near Earth where the terrestrial magnetic field dominates. As subatomic particles from the CME are directed downward, the channels of electric current flowing through the part of the atmosphere known as the ionosphere intensify.
In addition to triggering aurora borealis, this can also cause strong magnetic fluctuations on the Earth’s surface. As a result, electrical currents can pass through power grids, pipelines, and railway lines, potentially interfering with normal operations.
Subatomic particles from CME can damage solar panels and satellites’ electronics. Saturday, What Elon Musk said The company said SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites were “under huge pressure” from the storm but were “holding up so far.”
Disturbances in the ionosphere were exacerbated by a series of bright explosions on the Sun called “flares” that released high-energy radiation onto the sunny side of the Earth. Flare activity is associated with radio disruptions that can interfere with high-frequency radio communications needed by aircraft on transoceanic flights. There are indications that the storm caused some disruption to transatlantic flights, but these reports are still being evaluated.
Shawn Dahl, service coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado, told US National Public Radio that power grid operators are busy “working to maintain the smooth, regulated flow of current without interruptions.”
He also added that some GPS systems have difficulty locking locations and provide inaccurate locations. These GPS problems appear to have caused degradation of navigation systems on farm equipment in the United States. Many tractors use GPS to plant precise rows in the field, avoiding gaps and overlaps. The problems occurred during the peak planting season in the midwest and Canada.
Some of this may sound a bit like a Hollywood disaster movie. However, although GPS problems cause significant disruptions in agriculture, their effects do not appear to be widespread worldwide. For many, life seems to go on no matter what. How come?
Awareness and preparedness definitely helped. There was no doubt that what we had just experienced was an unusually strong space weather event. It’s early days and scientists will analyze the May 2024 storm for years to come. But early indications are that last weekend’s geomagnetic storm was the strongest since the “Halloween storm” of October 2003. Beyond the beautiful lights in the sky, the negative effects of the 2024 storm are not yet fully clear.
At this stage, it does not appear that any catastrophic failures have occurred, but infrastructure operators will assess the situation to understand if and how their systems have been affected. Behind the scenes, national agencies such as NOAA and the United Kingdom’s Met Office were monitoring the activity, issuing forecasts and warnings to interested parties, and liaising with experts and governments. In response, infrastructure operators have taken steps to ensure continuity of services and protect their equipment.
Even bigger storms
But what we just experienced wasn’t the biggest event ever seen. That honor belongs to the “Carrington Affair” of September 1859; here a massive CME (or more likely a double CME) triggered a massive geomagnetic storm that pushed the northern lights as far south as the Caribbean and triggered such strong currents in the copper. that at least one operator of the telegraph lines suffered severe electric shock, although he survived.
By some measurements, the Carrington event was two to three times stronger than the storm we just witnessed. Unlike the once-every-few-decades scale of the May 2024 storm, such massive events are rare, likely occurring every few hundred years.
Human technology can handle relatively strong space weather events, but modern technologies and infrastructure have never experienced anything like the Carrington event. That’s why researchers are trying to better understand space weather and work with institutions and governments to predict, mitigate, and develop better forecasting tools for its impact on our society.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Jim Wild is Professor of Space Physics at Lancaster University. He receives research funding from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Natural Environment Research Council. He is a member of the UK Space Environmental Impacts Expert Group (SEIEG), an independent expert committee comprising Academia, Research Institutes, Companies and Agencies. He also provides space weather expertise to Frazer Nash Consulting.