E nergy from two significant solar flares is hurtling toward the Earth, and is predicted to hit the planet's magnetic field begin...
Energy from two significant solar flares is hurtling toward the Earth, and is predicted to hit the planet's magnetic field beginning on Thursday night and lasting through Saturday, scientists said Thursday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which monitors space weather, has issued a G3 or "strong" geomagnetic storm watch for Friday, due to the combined influence of two coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, that were associated with the solar flares.
Coronal mass ejections, which are essentially magnetic clouds ejected at high velocity from the sun, can affect the electricity grid, radio transmissions and GPS signals, among other things, when they interact with the planet's magnetic field. One benefit of this event, though, could be a significant display of the Northern Lights, also known as the Aurora Borealis. According to NOAA scientists, the Northern Lights may be visible on Friday night as far south as New York City, Chicago, Illinois and Seattle, Washington.
The geomagnetic storm is expected to cause some fluctuations in the electrical grid, particularly across far northern areas of the globe, but overall its effects should be "manageable," said Thomas Berger, director of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. “We don’t expect any unmanageable impacts” to the U.S., Berger said.
There is a possibility, though, that because the solar flares and their associated CMEs occurred in such rapid succession — the first on Monday evening and the second, an X-Class solar flare, which is the strongest possible class, at 1:48 p.m. ET on Tuesday, he said, they may interact in a way that produces a larger solar storm than currently anticipated.
According to Berger, it is unusual to see two CMEs so close together, and it's unclear how they may be interacting.
Still, this event is nowhere near the strength that would be required to create a nightmare scenario that space weather specialists have been warning about for years, in which a powerful geomagnetic storm, a G5 on the five-point scale, shuts down the electrical grid, wreaks havoc on radio communications, GPS devices, and aerial navigation systems, costing billions in damage. Such a storm last occurred in 1859, and is known as The Carrington Event. In that event, a CME was so powerful that it raced from the Sun to the Earth — a 90 million mile journey — in just 18 hours. The incoming CMEs are expected to be slower, taking about 60 hours to make the same journey.
Recent research showed that the Earth narrowly missed a similar event in 2012, but the burst of solar energy was directed far enough away from Earth's magnetic field that disaster was averted.
“Neither one of these [CMEs] is anywhere near the Carrington level,” Berger said.
