Space Storm: Aurora over Oregon?

It is (or was?) apparently a possibility:

Strong Geomagnetic Storm May Be Approaching: What You Need To Know

People in Illinois, Oregon and other northern states may catch a glimpse of colorful aurora Wednesday as a geomagnetic storm brews in Earth's magnetosphere. The Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a strong geomagnetic storming watch, expecting a G3 storm to arrive in conjunction with a coronal mass ejection impact.

The prediction center said the G3 geomagnetic storming could effect power systems, spacecraft operations and high-frequency radio transmissions. The storm means that the northern lights may be visible as far south as 50 degrees geomagnetic latitude.

Geomagnetic storms happen when solar wind produces "major changes in the currents, plasmas and fields in Earth's magnetosphere," according to the Space Weather Prediction center. The center has been tracking a coronal mass ejection that's likely to impact earth and has been associated with a small radio blackout on December 28.

These storms may bring beautiful colors into the night sky, but their impacts are widespread, from GPS interference to the creation of harmful currents in power grids.

See the whole article for embedded links and photos. It was supposed to have started yesterday, lasting into the 31st. I didn't see anything last night, but then we are in the southern part of the state. According to the Space Weather Website, the storm is only rated G2 now.

     

Auroras tonight, and Wednesday?

Looks like it. This was Iowa from the early morning hours today:



Look up! Another solar storm may supercharge auroras Wednesday

While a "severe" solar storm that sparked dazzling auroras around the world on Monday through Tuesday morning is dying down now, skywatchers shouldn't stop looking up quite yet.

Another potentially powerful solar tempest is expected to impact Earth on Wednesday into Thursday, and it could create more amazing auroras for people in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

In particular, the next solar storm is especially well aimed to enhancing aurora activity over North America, according to experts at the National Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, Colorado.

Monday's solar storm hit the G4 or "severe" level, a relatively rare class of storm that can create bright auroras in relatively low latitudes. Such G4 storms — the rating scale goes up to G5 — can also cause problems with power grids on Earth and harm satellites in space.

And another storm of that severe magnitude is likely on its way to Earth now.

Scientists at the SWPC are anticipating that the solar storm predicted to arrive Wednesday could, yet again, produce beautiful auroras in relatively low latitudes.

At the moment, the SWPC is predicting a G3 or "strong" storm on Wednesday and Thursday, but that was the forecast for Monday, as well. [...]

See the whole article for embedded links, photos, videos and more.

For more technical details, and an Aurora Prediction map, see the NOAA website: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

   

First Big Solar Flare of 2015

Active sunspot unleashes X-class solar flare, high-latitude aurora possible Friday

[...] What’s particularly interesting about this week’s eruptions is that the parent region is now near the center of the sun as we look at it, and it’s likely that a coronal mass ejection (CME) is now headed toward Earth thanks to the X2 flare.

Region 2297’s earlier eruptions occurred when it was in a less central position, so the launched CME would be, at worst, a side swipe for Earth’s magnetic field. The event on the afternoon of March 11, though, is much more likely to hit nearly head on.

High-latitude aurora watchers take note — the Space Weather Prediction Center is looking for minor magnetic storm activity on March 13. Plus, the sky will be relatively dark with the moon in its last quarter, so lunar light pollution is minimal. Get away from city lights for your best chance of seeing a glow.

The days following may be even more disturbed if Region 2297 has more in it.

The Ides of March? The Roman soothsayers made dire predictions for Caesar. For us, just a head’s up that some nice northern lights may be coming.

Follow the link for a larger photo. I like how they put the earth on there, for scale. The flare itself is much larger than our small world.

If you are science-minded and want to monitor the progress of this sunspot, you can do so here.
     

Would you live in a Yurt in Winter?

Off the grid, in Northern Minnesota? Apparently, it can be done:



Even in the frozen North, a yurt's so good

Grace Brogan and John Kamman live in a yurt.

It's a squat round structure with lattice walls, a dome skylight and a few layers of canvas over the whole thing — think of a tent with stiff walls. Tents are great in the summer, but this is winter. In northern Minnesota.

Why would two employed people with three master's degrees between them choose to live with only a quarter-inch of material between themselves and the elements? And how do they stay warm?

To find out, I drove a dozen miles north of Bemidji on a recent morning and hiked a quarter-mile across a snowy field. It was not yet dawn, and from the outside, the yurt's vinyl windows glowed with firelight.

Inside, a small home's worth of furnishings lined the circular wall. A calm mutt named Mabel loitered near the crackling wood stove. The yurt was actually a really nice place to be. [...]

They are young, so I'm sure it's an adventure. At first I thought, a grizzly bear could break in and eat them. But it says only that they live off the grid, a dozen miles North from Bemidji. They talk about "going into town", so I think they probably aren't in an extremely remote area.

The inside of the Yurt looks nice, very cozy. Do follow the link to see the other photos, and the interview with them answering questions. Be sure and click on the "gallery" link to see the extra photos.

     

Solar Activity, Double Flare

2 major solar flares Friday -- the second twice as intense as the first

The sun shot out a pair of gigantic solar flares early Friday -- the second one even bigger than the first, a NOAA expert tells the Los Angeles Times.

An X1-class solar flare occurred at about 1 a.m. PDT, followed by an even larger one about eight hours later.

"This one was an X2, twice as intense as the X1 that just occurred," said Bill Murtagh, program coordinator with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in an interview Friday morning.

News of the latest activity came as NASA released a spectacular video and image, see above, of a solar eruption in September, what the space agency termed a "canyon of fire."

The video shows a 200,000-mile-long filament leaping from the atmosphere of the sun and creating a rippling, glowing canyon, which "traces the channel where magnetic fields held the filament aloft before the explosion," NASA says.

So what's with all the activity? Our home star is hitting solar maximum in its 11-year cycle activity, and scientists had predicted it would be meh -- a wimpier maximum than in cycles past.

[...]

The sunspot group that has been active Friday is rotating nearer the center of the sun, he noted. If the flares keep up, there could be more serious effects in store for Earth in the next three or four days.

Murtagh said that indeed this is the "lowest solar maximum since back in the 1900-1910 time frame." But that doesn't mean that X-class flares and their attendant problems will not occur. [...]

If you follow the link, it has video.

     

Big Solar Flares this weekend?

Maybe:

Sunspot Blasting Out Major Solar Flares Will Face Earth Soon

The super-active sunspot responsible for unleashing the three most powerful solar flares of 2013 within a 24-hour stretch this week is slowly rotating toward Earth and will likely be facing our planet by the weekend, experts say.

Active Region 1748, as the sunspot is known, unleashed three monster solar flares between Sunday and Monday (May 12 to 13). Every one of the solar storms registered as an X-class flare — the most powerful type — with each successive event stronger than the last, culminating in an X3.2 megablast Monday night.

These solar explosions did not affect Earth, since AR1748 was not facing our planet at the time. But the sunspot is now circling into view, so future flares and any associated eruptions of super-hot solar plasma — called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — could potentially target our planet, scientists say. [Sun Unleashes Biggest Flares of 2013 (Photos)]

"In a couple of days, it will be far enough onto the disk that any CMEs that we got would probably have some impact on Earth," solar astrophysicist C. Alex Young, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told SPACE.com.

AR1748 should be near the center of the solar disk by around Saturday, Young added.

"If it sends something off, then we can expect to get some CMEs sort of head-on" at that point, he said.

[...]

Scientists give AR1748 a 40 to 50 percent chance of firing off another X-class flare, he added, though this probability is a rough estimate that could change as further information becomes available.

X-class flares aimed at Earth can have consequences on a planet-wide scale, triggering widespread radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms.

Earth-directed CMEs have even more destructive potential. When a CME's charged particles interact with Earth's magnetic field, they can spawn geomagnetic storms powerful enough to disrupt GPS signals, radio communications and power grids.

Solar activity waxes and wanes over an 11-year cycle. The current cycle, called Solar Cycle 24, is ramping up toward an expected peak later this year. [...]

See the full article for embedded link, and video.
     

The Unpredictable Variables of Solar Storms

About the solar storm that ended last Friday:

A Strong Backhand Slap From End of Solar Storm

[...] The latest storm started with a flare on Tuesday, and had been forecast to be strong and direct, with one scientist predicting it would blast Earth directly like a punch in the nose. But it arrived Thursday morning at mild levels — at the bottom of the government's 1-5 scale of severity. It strengthened to a level 3 for several hours early Friday as the storm neared its end. Scientists say that's because the magnetic part of the storm flipped direction.

"We were watching the boxer, expecting the punch. It didn't come," said physicist Terry Onsager at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's space weather center in Boulder, Colo. "It hit us with the back of the hand as it was retreating."

Forecasters can predict a solar storm's speed and strength, but not the direction of its magnetic field. If it is northward, like Earth's, the jolt of energy flows harmlessly around the planet, Onsager said. A southerly direction can cause power outages and other problems.

Thursday's storm came in northerly, but early Friday switched to the fierce southerly direction. The magnetic part of the storm spent several hours at that strong level, so combined with strong radiation and radio levels, it turned out to be the strongest solar storm since November 2004, said NOAA lead forecaster Bob Rutledge. [...]

Apparently, we can only find out about the composition of the magnetic field of these flares headed toward Earth, when they come in contact with our ACE satellite which is a million miles out, monitoring this for us:

Our only solar storm warning satellite ‘could falter soon’

Washington: A US satellite that offers the only advance warnings of incoming solar storms is more than a decade past its expected orbital lifetime and is possibly on its last legs, researchers say.

Stationed around 1 million miles from Earth, NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer satellite, nicknamed ACE, cautions about incoming high-energy particles from the sun which can wreak havoc on radio, GPS, satellite communications that are now embedded in modern life.

“It would be a very bad day for us if that spacecraft was not working,” the Discovery News quoted William Murtagh, program coordinator for NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo., as saying.

“When an eruption occurs on the sun, there are still quite a few question marks as to if it’s going to hit the Earth and when it’s going to hit the Earth,.”

Until the sun’s free-flying and highly energetic outbursts, known as coronal mass ejections, hit the ACE spacecraft, forecasters are not acquainted with the orientation of their embedded magnetic fields.

Depending on the polarity, or alignment, Earth’s magnetic shield will either peel away, giving the highly charged particles more freedom to disturb electrically sensitive equipment and communications, or rebuff the particles, like what happened during this week’s outburst. [...]

The aging ACE spacecraft is scheduled to be replaced by the Triana spacecraft, which has a target launch date of June 2014. Lets hope the ACE spacecraft can last for us until then.
     

Recent X5-class solar flare

Sun unleashes huge solar flare; possible Earth-bound solar storm

Between 7 and 8 p.m.Tuesday night, the sun spit out a large, X5-class solar flare. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center called it “one of the largest solar flares of the current solar cycle.”

X class flares are the strongest category of solar flares. According to NASA, they can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms.

These flares are often complemented by phenomena known as coronal mass ejections (CME) which are essentially bursts of solar wind. If a CME is directed towards the Earth, a geomagnetic storm results that can interfere with the Earth’s magnetosphere.

NOAA said predictions for this particular flare/CME event “are still being refined.”

SpaceWeather.com wouldn’t draw any conclusions about where the CME might go.

“First-look data from STEREO-B are not sufficient to determine if the cloud is heading for Earth,” it said.

Its “best guess” was that CME probably won’t directly head for Earth, but rather produce a “glancing blow” on March 8 or 9. [...]

So we wait and see.

UPDATE 03-07-12 9:am

Full Halo CME heading straight for Earth on Thursday, strong effects forecast

(TheWeatherSpace.com) - A sunspot nearly the size of Jupiter; AR1429, has unleashed a powerful X5-Class eruption from the Sun and it could cause geological effects, according to one.

Even though it was not directly squared at our planet, model predictions have put Earth in the center of the blast zone, with 800 k/m + solar wind coming toward our geomagnetic fields on Thursday.

It will hit at 09:00 UT on Thursday, March 8th 2012. This means that it will hit during the United States aurora oval hours tonight when the oval extends down into the country. Will it spark bright auroras into the mid-latitudes?

TheWeatherSpace.com Senior Meteorologist Kevin Martin has studied space weather effects and geological triggers for many years post 1999. Martin has some chilling information to give.

"I'm a meteorologist, but I know patterns and numbers well and the last strong X-event that hit our planet on this scale "coincidentely" triggered the Japan quake and tsunami last year," said Martin. "Geomagnetic storms could very well be a trigger for these quakes as they react deep within the crust and mantle where magnetic rocks lie. There are things we just cannot ignore even if we cannot see them."

NOAA expects a major geomagnetic storm with this arrival. Already a Kp-Index of 6 (Strong) is in progress across the planet due to an X1-Class this past weekend. This X5-Class has yet to impact and is coming — straight for us at 800 km/sec.

Most scientists say there is no proven link between flares and earthquakes. But others argue that, there are lots of "coincidences".
     

Solar Storm Continues on with a New Blast

Biggest solar storm since 2005 underway, will peak Tuesday

Fast on the heels of a solar storm that delivered a glancing blow over the weekend — triggering bright auroras in Canada and Scandinavia — the sun released an even more energetic blast of radiation and charged plasma overnight that could disrupt GPS signals and the electrical grid Tuesday, especially at high latitudes, space weather experts warned Monday morning.

Already, the storm could be disrupting satellite communications as streams of radiation from the sun bounce across the Earth’s magnetic field, which extends above the surface into space.

“With the radiation storm in progress now, satellite operators could be experiencing trouble, and there are probably impacts as well to high frequency [radio] communications in polar regions,” said Doug Biesecker, a physicist at the Space Weather Prediction Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo.

Such radio blackouts can force airlines to reroute flights between North America and Europe or Asia.

Biesecker said any rocket launches scheduled for Monday probably would have to be scrubbed, although he said he was unaware of any planned launches.

The solar storm is the biggest since 2005, he added.

The storm will peak Tuesday when a speeding cloud of plasma and charged particles blasts past Earth, distorting the planet’s magnetic field with impacts possibly ranging as far south in latitude as Texas and Arizona.

“We expect moderate to potentially strong geomagnetic storming that can cause pipeline corrosion effects and power grid fluctuations,” Biesecker said.

Predictions from NASA scientists show the storm peaking about 9 a.m. Tuesday, although uncertainty in the prediction means the storm could peak up to seven hours earlier or later, said Michael Hesse of NASA’s Space Weather Laboratory, at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.

“It’s not going to be a catastrophe, but there could be noticeable geomagnetic current induced on the electrical grid,” Hesse said. [...]

It goes on to say that this plasma cloud is heading towards earth at high speed, the fastest one so far in this solar cycle. And speed matters, because the speed at which it hits the earths magnetic field will increase it's likely affects.

We shall see.



Planes expected to reroute following massive solar eruption

[...] According to NOAA, this is the strongest solar radiation storm since May 2005, and as a precaution, polar flights on Earth are expected to be re-routed within the next few hours, Kathy Sullivan, deputy administrator of NOAA, said today at the 92nd annual American Meteorological Society meeting in New Orleans, La.

[...]

"There is little doubt that the cloud is heading in the general direction of Earth," Spaceweather.com announced in an alert. "A preliminary inspection of SOHO/STEREO imagery suggests that the CME will deliver a strong glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field on Jan. 24-25 as it sails mostly north of our planet." [...]

A "strong glancing blow". See the whole thing for embedded links.

For updates from NOAA, check here:

NOAA / Space Weather Prediction Center

     

Space Weather: Aurora as seen from Space

Recent solar weather has been stimulating Aurora's on earth. This video from the International Space Station shows us the view from above the earth's atmosphere:


Amazing... and stunningly beautiful.

WATCH: An unusual view of the Aurora Australis, from space

[...] This weird, gripping shot of earth was recorded on Sept. 17, 2011, as a solar storm battered the atmosphere with ionizing particles. Waves of Ecto-Cooler-green luminescence shimmer over the surface of the planet like an iridescent oil slick. The video was shot while the Space Station passed south of Madagascar to north of Australia over the Indian Ocean, thus these lights are known as the Aurora Australis.

The sun has been frantically blatting with these plasma outbursts over the past 36 hours, an indication that it is ascending toward the peak of its 11-year solar cycle. Yesterday, the star unleashed one of the largest class of flares, an X-1, with a corresponding strong radio blackout. Here's what that looked like. NOAA's Space Weather Prediction agency is advising heavenly forecasters that more solar ejections could be in the forecast from the cursed Region 1302: [...]

Read the whole thing. With embedded links.
     

The Sounds of the Sun; What can they tell us?

Perhaps quite a bit:

Listening to the sun may improve space weather forecasts

Scientists at Stanford University find they can predict sunspots up to two days before they appear, which could help better foretell solar flares.

August 20, 2011|By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times

Sunspots, those dark regions on the surface of the sun whose high magnetic activity has ripple effects for Earthlings, seem to emerge and fade without warning. But now, by listening to the sounds the sun makes, scientists have managed to predict when a sunspot will appear up to two days beforehand.

[...]

A team of Stanford University researchers tracked sound-generated activity at different points on the sun's surface and found that sound waves that would normally take an hour to cross from one point to the next traveled 12 to 16 seconds faster when a sun spot was emerging — a surprise, since the researchers expected to see perhaps only one second or so shaved off.

By monitoring sound waves about 37,000 miles below the solar surface, the physicists said, they can predict the emergence of a sunspot one to two days before it appears, depending on how large it is.

"It's very exciting that we can detect them before they become visible," said lead author Stathis Ilonidis, a graduate student studying solar physics at Stanford University. But he added that more data would be needed to show that their results hadn't turned up false positives.

The findings could prove useful to scientists looking to tie sunspots to the space weather events generated days later. Because areas of high magnetic activity are closely linked to dangerous solar activity — from flares to violent coronal mass ejections — being able to understand that magnetic activity may help predict oncoming solar storms and allow people to prepare for them, rather like putting up storm windows in response to a hurricane warning. [...]

Interesting. Thanks to new technologies, we are rapidly finding out a lot more about the sun than we ever knew before. But of course, the more we find out, the more questions we have, too.

I wonder how much we will find out by 2013, when the predicted solar maximum peaks? And it looks like there will be plenty of activity in the meantime too:

More Mammoth Solar Flares Expected From 'Old Faithful' Sunspot, Scientists Say

An active region of the sun that blasted out powerful solar storms four days in a row last week likely isn't done yet, scientists say.

Officially, the flare-spouting region is called sunspot 1283. But space weather experts have dubbed it "Old Faithful," after the famous geyser in the United States' Yellowstone National Park that goes off like clockwork. And the solar Old Faithful should erupt again before it dissipates, researchers said.

[...]

From Sept. 5-8, sunspot 1283 produced four big flares and three CMEs. Two of the flares were X-class events and two were M-class flares. (Strong solar flares are classified according to a three-tiered system: X-class are the most powerful, M-class are of medium strength and C-class are the weakest.)

While the rapid motion previously observed in sunspot 1283 seems to have died down a bit, Young said, the sunspot looks poised to erupt again sometime soon.

"There's a good probability that we're still going to see at least another M-class flare, possibly another X-class flare," Young told SPACE.com.

It's not uncommon for sunspots to pop off a number of powerful flares in quick succession the way 1283 has done, he added. That seems to be the natural order of things.

"When you see one big flare, your chances of seeing another one are pretty good," Young said. [...]

Well it looks like there will be lots more "chances" over the next couple of years.
     

Just what IS an "X-Class" Solar Flare?

This is a pretty good explanation:

Solar Flares: What Does It Take to Be X-Class?

Solar flares are giant explosions on the sun that send energy, light and high speed particles into space. These flares are often associated with solar magnetic storms known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The number of solar flares increases approximately every 11 years, and the sun is currently moving towards another solar maximum, likely in 2013. That means more flares will be coming, some small and some big enough to send their radiation all the way to Earth.

The biggest flares are known as "X-class flares" based on a classification system that divides solar flares according to their strength. The smallest ones are A-class (near background levels), followed by B, C, M and X. Similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy output. So an X is ten times an M and 100 times a C. Within each letter class there is a finer scale from 1 to 9.

[...]

Although X is the last letter, there are flares more than 10 times the power of an X1, so X-class flares can go higher than 9. The most powerful flare measured with modern methods was in 2003, during the last solar maximum, and it was so powerful that it overloaded the sensors measuring it. The sensors cut out at X28.

The biggest X-class flares are by far the largest explosions in the solar system and are awesome to watch. Loops tens of times the size of Earth leap up off the sun's surface when the sun's magnetic fields cross over each other and reconnect. In the biggest events, this reconnection process can produce as much energy as a billion hydrogen bombs.

If they're directed at Earth, such flares and associated CMEs can create long lasting radiation storms that can harm satellites, communications systems, and even ground-based technologies and power grids. X-class flares on December 5 and December 6, 2006, for example, triggered a CME that interfered with GPS signals being sent to ground-based receivers. [...]

Follow the link for more info about all the different classes of flares, and a video too.


Also see: TheTchijevsky Index of Mass Human Excitability
     

Tottenham, and Riots and Geomagnetic Storms.

I've posted before about Geomagnetic storms/solar flares and riots. Coincidentally, the recent riots in Tottenham seem to coincide with this weekends solar weather:

BIG SUNSPOT GETS BIGGER; WEEKEND AURORAS; NIGHT-TIME SOLAR RADIO BURST

BIG SUNSPOT GETS BIGGER: Behemoth sunspot 1263 has almost doubled in size this weekend. A 28-hour movie from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the spot developing a tail that has added some 50,000 km of length to the active region. This development may increase the likelihood of a strong flare. Images: #1, #2, #3

WEEKEND AURORAS: A widespread display of auroras erupted late Friday, Aug. 5th, when a double-CME hit Earth's magnetic field and sparked a G4-category geomagnetic storm. "It was the most impressive display I've seen in years," reports Lance Taylor of Edmonton, Alberta. "From 10:00 PM on Friday to 3:00 AM on Saturday, the sky was pulsing from horizon to horizon in every direction." He took this picture during the most intense phase of the storm:



The show was not restricted to Canada. Northern Lights spilled across the border into the United States as far south as Utah, Colorado, and Nebraska. (Note: The faint red lights photographed in Nebraska are typical of low-latitude auroras during major geomagnetic storms.) Observers in Europe as far south as England, Germany and Poland also witnessed a fine display. Browse the gallery for more examples. [...]

Follow the link to the original article, which has many embedded links, and for information about the night-time solar radio burst, which has not happened since 1958.
     

Will we end up wanting global warming?

Scientists predict rare 'hibernation' of sunspots

WASHINGTON (AFP) – For years, scientists have been predicting the Sun would by around 2012 move into solar maximum, a period of intense flares and sunspot activity, but lately a curious calm has suggested quite the opposite.

According to three studies released in the United States on Tuesday, experts believe the familiar sunspot cycle may be shutting down and heading toward a pattern of inactivity unseen since the 17th century.

The signs include a missing jet stream, fading spots, and slower activity near the poles, said experts from the National Solar Observatory and Air Force Research Laboratory.

"This is highly unusual and unexpected," said Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO's Solar Synoptic Network, as the findings of the three studies were presented at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

"But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation."

Solar activity tends to rise and fall every 11 years or so. The solar maximum and solar minimum each mark about half the interval of the magnetic pole reversal on the Sun, which happens every 22 years.

Hill said the current cycle, number 24, "may be the last normal one for some time and the next one, cycle 25, may not happen for some time.

"This is important because the solar cycle causes space weather which affects modern technology and may contribute to climate change," he told reporters.

Experts are now probing whether this period of inactivity could be a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period when hardly any sunspots were observed between 1645-1715, a period known as the "Little Ice Age."

"If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we'll see for a few decades. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth's climate," said Hill. [...]

It sounds like guessing. And then it goes on to say that even if a "Little Ice Age" happens, we will still have to worry about Global Warming. Huh? Go figure.
     

Solar Weather Update, March 14th

From SpaceWeather.com

SUBSIDING STORMS: The geomagnetic storms of March 10th and 11th are subsiding. Earth's magnetic field began shaking on March 10th in response to a CME impact; the reverberations continued for more than 24 hours. In Sweden the auroras were so bright, they competed with campfires:

"When I was sitting next to the fire and had the Aurora dancing above me, I felt like it could have been 100 years ago," says photographer Peter Rosén in Sweden's Abisko National Park. "I wonder what people thought when they saw this phenomenon in centuries past. Old stories say that the Sami people believed the Aurora was home for the spirits of the dead, and that we should show respect when the lights appeared."

They could appear again, soon. A new solar wind stream is buffeting Earth's magnetic field today, and NOAA forecasters estimate a 10% chance of severe geomagnetic storms. Get your aurora alerts here!

Sunspots are continuing. Solar storms, not so much. For now.

And a bit of solar storm history, with contemporary relevance:

CAUTIONARY TALE: This week marks the 22nd anniversary of the Quebec Blackout. On March 13, 1989, a geomagnetic storm brought down Hydro-Québec's power grid and blacked out the entire province. Brownouts and other power irregularities were experienced across much of North America. Today's "smart power grids" are even more vulnerable because they are interconnected by high voltage lines spanning thousands of miles. In good times, this arrangement allows utilities to guide power wherever it might be needed. During geomagnetic storms, however, it spreads the danger of a blackout far and wide. What we need is a Solar Shield.

The Solar Shield article is interesting, it mentions the Quebec event of March 13th 1989, and other storms like the Carrington event of 1859. The Shield is a warning system that interprets solar data and alerts utility companies to act accordingly.


Also see:

The Solar Storm that hit Quebec in 1989

Solar Flare: The "Carrington Event" of 1859

Our growing reliance on satellite technology, and it's vulnerability to solar flares. Why it matters.
     

Our recent Solar Weather continues

It really started getting interesting with the "Valentine's Day Flare":



Mega Solar Flare Fuels Earthly Disruption and Light Shows

A whopper of a solar flare that fired up earlier this week is wreaking havoc on some radio communications on Earth, and could spark exceptional auroras soon.

The class X solar flare – the most powerful kind of solar flare – spewed from the sun Monday (Feb. 14), unleashing a massive wave of charged particles speeding toward Earth. Now the flare has triggered a geomagnetic storm in our planet's magnetic field that interrupted radio communications in China and could disrupt satellites and power grids as well, AFP reported.

[...]

Monday's class X flare was the most powerful solar eruption in four years. It came on the heels of a few less powerful flares in the days before. [...]

The article has an embedded link, with video footage of the flare occurring.

I had read elsewhere that the number of sunspots had rapidly doubled in the days leading up to this. And particles from the CME will be continuing to hit the earth.

Catastrophe Looming? The Risks of Rising Solar Storm Activity

The sun let loose its most powerful eruption in more than four years Monday night (Feb. 14), disrupting radio communications in China and generating concern around the world. But it could have been a lot worse, experts say.

[...]

Solar flares are intense bursts of radiation that send waves of photons streaming toward Earth. The scale measuring their strength has three general categories – Class C, Class M and Class X – with Class X flares being the most powerful.

Monday's Valentine's Day solar flare registered a Class X2.2 on that scale.

Other storms, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), are large clouds of plasma and magnetic field that erupt from the sun's surface, sending lots of particles our way.

Both flares and CMEs have the same root cause — a disruption of the magnetic field in the sun's outer atmosphere. And both events can affect life here on Earth. Major flares, for example, can interfere with satellites, causing disruptions in GPS and high-frequency radio communications that can last from a few minutes to a few hours.

These impacts are felt almost immediately, since it only takes light about 8 minutes to travel from the sun to Earth.

"It's like the sun is a giant noise source," said Bob Rutledge, head of the forecast office at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center. "It can disrupt anything that depends on a link between the ground and satellites."

But the most severe damage comes from powerful CMEs. The particles from these outbursts take longer to reach us — up to three days or so. But when they get here, their interaction with Earth's magnetic field can cause massive "geomagnetic storms," which have the potential to wreak long-lasting havoc on power and communications infrastructure around the globe.

[...]

But Earth has been walloped by monster solar storms before. One of the most powerful hit us in 1859, a blast that Rutledge estimates may have been 30 times more powerful than Monday's event, though it's tough to put hard numbers on such comparisons.

The 1859 storm shorted out telegraph wires, causing fires in North America and Europe, and spawned spectacular auroras — the light shows visible near Earth's poles — bright enough to read by, according to some accounts.

If the 1859 storm occured these days, it would likely have devastating impacts, since our electrical and communications infrastructures are so much more developed. A recent report by the U.S National Academy of Sciences found that such a severe storm could cause up to $2 trillion in initial damages by crippling communications on Earth and fueling chaos around the world.

It might take up to 10 years for authorities to re-assert control and get everyting fixed, the report concluded. For comparison, Hurricane Katrina likely inflicted somewhere between $80 billion and $125 billion in damage. [...]

I recently posted about a theory that solar flares affect people and stimulate political rebellions. The rapid increase in sunspots and the occurrence of these flares sure is a coincidence with the rebellions in the Middle East.

And I have posted previously about the hazards of solar storms to our technology (see links below). In the past few decades we have added thousands of communication satellites, and adopted widespread use of new technologies (like GPS) that are very sensitive to solar weather. A storm that previously we would have considered not so big or dangerous, might now present more concerns than it used to. Some precautions are being taken, by hardening the electrical grid, but has enough been done? Let's hope we don't have to find out the hard way.


Also see:

Our growing reliance on satellite technology, and it's vulnerability to solar flares. Why it matters.

Solar activity and it's disruption of GPS functions

Solar Flare: The "Carrington Event" of 1859
     

TheTchijevsky Index of Mass Human Excitability

Excitability, due to solar activity? I had previously posted about this last May. But with the recent increase in solar activity as we enter our Solar Maximum, I can't help but think of the Middle East. Compare what Tchijevsky said, and what is happening there now:

A. L. Tchijevsky’s Theory of Sunspot Activity and Human Activity

[...] That sunspot cycle activity increased and decreased in a cycle of approximately 11 years was established in the 1750s when astronomers began to make the first charts of the numbers of sunspots over time. During World War I, A. L. Tchijevsky, a Russian professor of Astronomy and Biological Physics who continued his studies at the war front, noticed that particularly severe battles regularly followed each solar flare during the sunspot peak period of 1916-17.

To test his hypothesis that sunspot cycle influenced human activity, Tchijevsky constructed an Index of Mass Human Excitability covering each year form 500 BC to 1922 AD. He then investigated the histories of 72 countries during that period, noting signs of human unrest such as wars, revolutions, riots, expeditions and migrations, plus the numbers of humans involved.

Tchijevsky found that fully 80% of the most significant events occurred during the 5 years of maximum sunspot activity. (Tchijevsky's merely noting that the 1917 Russian Revolution occurred during the height of the sunspot cycle earned him almost 30 years in Soviet prisons because his theory challenged Marxist dialectics.)

Tchijevsky divided the eleven year sunspot cycle into four social periods:

Period 1: (approximately 3 years, minimum sunspot activity). Peace, lack of unity among the masses, election of conservatives, autocratic, minority rule.

Period 2: (approx. 2 years, increasing sunspot activity). Increasing mass excitability, new leaders rise, new ideas and challenges to the elite.

Period 3: (Approximately 3 years, maximum sunspot activity). Maximum excitability, election of liberals or radicals, mass demonstrations, riots, revolutions, wars and resolution of most pressing demands.

Period 4: (Approximately 3 years, decreasing sunspot activity). Decrease in excitability, masses become apathetic, seek peace.

Tchijevsky did not believe solar disturbances caused discontent as much as they acted as detonators that set off the smoldering discontent of the masses--discontent often channeled into war by their rulers. Nor did he deny that even during minimum solar activity some people would rebel against intolerable conditions or that nations would seek advantage through war and conquest. Some have since noted that the number of sunspots during any period may not be as significant as whether there is a rapid increase in the numbers, triggering unexpected passions. [...]

In terms of solar activity, we are in a "period 3" now. Sunspot activity has been steadily increasing. Recently, we've had an X-class solar flare, with a coronal mass ejection. Does that count as a "sudden increase"?

Aurora borealis activity possible February 17-18, NOAA X-class solar flare

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that the most energetic solar flare in four years occurred on February 15, 2011. This X2 class solar flare also produced a coronal mass ejection which will increase the likelihood of aurora borealis activity, also known as the northern lights, on the night of February 17/18.

The solar flare originated from Sunspot 1158. X class solar flares are the most energetic solar flares. Flares also have sub classifications represented by numbers from 1 to 9, with the larger numbers representing more energetic flares. This X2 flare is energetic but near the lower end of X class flares.

This flare also produced a coronal mass ejection (CME) which is likely to strike Earth on February 18 (UTC date). During a CME the Sun spews out charged particles which can interact with Earth's magnetic field to cause aurora. The most likely night to see aurora activity (northern or southern lights) from this solar flare is the night of February 17/18, but it is also possible on the night of February 16/17.

This illustration shows how Earth's magnetosphere deflects, for the
most part, a magnetic cloud of plasma from a coronal mass ejection.

At high latitudes, NOAA predicts a 45% chance of aurora causing geomagnetic activity and a 25% chance of a minor geomagnetic storm. At mid latitudes the probabilities are 35% and 20%. [...]

It goes on to predict continuing activity from this sunspot.

I know that scientifically, there is insufficient data to prove any connection with political unrest in the Middle East. But still, I think it's "interesting" none the less.

But even if one considers that people are affected by solar activity, is the affect necessarily a negative one? Other research has shown that the peaks of solar activity have also been times of great advancement in human endevors, such as the arts and sciences:

Sunspots and Human Behavior

[...] In another historical study Suitbert Ertel writes in his article “Synchronous Bursts of Activity in Independent Cultures; Evidence for Extraterrestrial Connections” that evidence has been reported suggesting a link between historical oscillations of scientific creativity and solar cyclic variation. Eddy’s discovery of abnormal secular periods of solar inactivity (Maunders minimum type) offered the opportunity to put the present hypothesis to a crucial test. Using time series of flourish years of creators in science, literature, and painting (A.D. 600-1800) It was found as expected:

1. Cultural flourish curves show marked discontinuities (bursts) after the onset of secular solar excursions synchronously in Europe and China;

2. during periods of extended solar excursions, bursts of creativity in painting, literature, and science succeeded one another with lags of about 10-15 years;

3. The reported regularities of cultural output are prominent throughout with eminent creators. They decrease with ordinary professionals. The hypothesized extraterrestrial connection of human culture has thus been strengthened.

The evidence seems to show that during the maxima of sunspot activity human behavior is stimulated. [...]

Could it be that, solar maximums don't stimulate people in ways that make them agitated, but rather, they stimulate human creativity, causing people to strive for improvement. But in places where that creativity is stifled and repressed, where their creative energy has no creative outlet, no chance of improvement, that energy would then be directed to removing obstacles to the manifestation of that creativity and improvement? It's an interesting idea.
     

Solar storm not very dramatic

Most people in the USA won't get to see the aurora, either:

Where the best seats will be for northern lights after solar eruption

[...] The southernmost points in the United States where some form of northern lights may appear lie along the US-Canadian border – from northwestern Montana through northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula to the northern tip of Maine.

In the parlance of space-weather forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo., this is likely to be a G-1 (out of 5) solar storm – instead of a gee-whiz event for anyone south of Bemidji, Minn.

While that may be discouraging news for the aurora-starved, for commercial satellite owners and people who have to run electric transmission grids it's relatively good news. Geomagnetic storms can wreak havoc with electrically sensitive segments of today's high-tech infrastructure.

"There may be some temporary communications blackouts in the polar regions. If you're a GPS user needing centimeter accuracy, you'll feel this. If you're measuring currents on the power grid, you'll definitely see some changes in them. But only those intimately familiar with space weather are going to notice any effects," says Douglas Biesecker, a physicist at the Space Weather Prediction Center.

[...]

Several factors determine how intense a geomagnetic storm will be once a CME arrives, researchers say. They include the plasma's speed, its density (on average, perhaps one charged particle for every 0.06 cubic inches), whether Earth takes a direct hit from the densest region of the plasma, and the orientation of the plasma's magnetic field.

This ejection certainly had the speed at launch, Dr. Biesecker notes. Scientists clocked it at a hair less than 2.7 million miles an hour. So far, however, the plasma's speed near Earth has slowed to a more sedate 1.3 million miles an hour.

NOAA is testing a new space-weather forecast model that indicated Earth wouldn't take a direct hit from the densest part of the cloud, but instead would find itself enveloped roughly halfway between the densest region and the cloud's edge as the plasma sped past.

That may help account for the low ranking forecasters are giving this encounter.

Magnetic fields also matter.

Earth's field is not uniform around the planet, but somewhat flattened on the sunward half and stretched into a cometlike tail on the night half. As the plasma strikes Earth's magnetic field, it squashes and stretches Earth's field more than usual.

If the plasma's magnetic field is oriented in a way that offers the same average polarity to Earth as the planet's own field, it's like an express train passing a local station: The plasma's field races past Earth's magnetotail with little effect on the locals.

But if the polarities are opposite and attract, the plasma's field couples to the magnetotail and stretches it until it can stretch no farther. It snaps back toward Earth. The energy released in that snap accelerates charged particles already in the magnetotail, hurtling them on their collision course with Earth's upper atmosphere at the poles, where Earth's fields originate.

The more energy a snap releases, the stronger the storm and the lower the latitudes at which people can see auroral displays.

However, with today's orbiting sensors, the orientation of the plasma's field becomes clear only after it's passed and scientists have had a chance to study the data. [...]

The article has a video clip too. The storm is a class C, which is not very significant for us to worry about. A class M would be more serious, and a class X would be very serious.


Also see:

Our growing reliance on satellite technology, and it's vulnerability to solar flares. Why it matters.     

Our growing reliance on satellite technology, and it's vulnerability to solar flares. Why it matters.

Electronic Armageddon? Congress Worries That Solar Flares Could Spell Disaster

High-energy electric pulses from the sun could surge to Earth and cripple our electrical grid for years, causing billions in damages, government officials and scientists worry.

The House is so concerned that the Energy and Commerce committee voted unanimously 47 to 0 to approve a bill allocating $100 million to protect the energy grid from this rare but potentially devastating occurrence.

The Grid Reliability and Infrastructure Defense Act, or H.R. 5026, aims "to amend the Federal Power Act to protect the bulk-power system and electric infrastructure critical to the defense of the United States against cybersecurity and other threats and vulnerabilities."

It cites electromagnetic pulses from geomagnetic or solar storms as the big threat to our energy distribution grid, and demands "an order directing the Electric Reliability Organization to submit … reliability standards adequate to protect the bulk-power system from any reasonably foreseeable geomagnetic storm event."

Solar storms occur when sunspots on our star erupt and spew out flumes of charged particles that can damage power systems. The sun's activity typically follows an 11-year cycle, and it looks to be coming out of a slump and gearing up for an active period.

"The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity," said Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division. "At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms." [...]

I've posted previously about EMP dangers, both man-made (military attack or terrorism) and naturally occurring (solar storms and flares). That congress has decided to protect our infrastructure from these threats is hopefully a good thing (that the money is spent wisely). But I would like to examine another aspect of this threat, that deserves special scrutiny; our growing dependence on satellite technology, and it's vulnerability to the sun.

The following link starts off describing the Quebec power failure of 1989, that was caused by a solar flare. The Quebec power grid had extensions reaching far North, where in inducted electricity from the flare. One of their main transformers was permanently damaged. What is even more alarming is, that the Northeast United states power grid was also almost collapsed, which would have resulted in 50 million Americans without power. The Quebec failure is now a textbook case as an example of the destructiveness of solar flares on modern power grids.

While the Quebec portion of the article is certainly worth reading, I'm going to excerpt a portion from the latter part of the article, that deals with satellite technology. It shows how our dependency on satellites has grown by leaps and bounds, and how it represents a new, growing vulnerability:

Chapter 1 : A Conflagration of Storms

[...] Why should we care that we are now once again living under 'sunspot maximum' conditions? After all, we have already weathered at least five of these solar activity cycles since the end of World War II. What is different about the world today is that we are substantially more reliant upon computers and telecommunications to run our commerce, and even our forms of entertainment and recreation. In 1981, at the peak of solar cycle 21, there were 15 communication satellites in orbit. Cellular phones were rare and there were 800,000 PCs sold in the U.S. with 300 hosts on the Internet. By the time the peak of solar cycle 22 came around in 1989, there were 102 communication satellites, and 3 million cellular phone users in the United States. With the new Intel 80486-based PCs, you could send e-mail to your choice of 300,000 host machines on the Internet.

As we arrive at the peak of the 23rd sunspot cycle in 2000-2001, however, we enter a very different world far more reliant on what used to be the luxuries of the Space Age. By 2000, 349 communication satellites orbit the Earth supporting over $60 billion of commerce. Over 100 million people have cellular phones, and Global Positioning System handsets are a commonplace for people working, or camping, 'off road'. By 2003, 400 million people will routinely use wireless data transmission via satellite channels. There will be over 10 million Internet hosts with 38% of US households Internet-connected.

[...]

As if to emphasize today's exuberance and expectations, 'Individual Investor' magazine announced on its cover 'The Sky's the Limit: In the 21st century satellites will connect the globe'. The International telecommunications Union in Geneva has predicted that by 2005, the demand for voice and data transmission services will increase to $1.2 trillion. The fraction carried by satellite services will reach a staggering $80 billion.

To meet this demand, many commercial companies are launching; not just individual satellites, but entire networks of them with names like 'Iridium', 'Teledesic', 'Skybridge' and 'SpaceWay'. The total cost of these systems alone represents a hardware investment of $35 billion between 1998 and 2004. The actual degree of vulnerability of these systems to solar storms is unknown, and will probably vary in a complex way depending on the kind of technology they use, and their deployment in space. They do, however, share some disturbing characteristics: They are all light-weight, sophisticated, built at the lowest cost, and following only a handful of design types replicated dozens and even hundreds of times, often with off-the-shelf electronics.

It is common to base future expectations on recent past experiences: "Past is prologue" some say. Increasingly, these past experiences with, for example, commercial space technology, do not extend back much beyond the last solar maximum in 1989-1990. So, when we wonder why infrequent events such as solar storms aren't more noticeable, we have to remind ourselves that most of our experience comes from times when the Sun was simply not very active, and when we were a lot less technologically vulnerable. [...]

So we can see a dramatic increase in satellite usage in the eleven year intervals in solar maximums. This article projected figures up until 2005. What is our satellite usage now? Here are some contemporary figures:

How many communications satellites were launched?

1,107 satellites provide civilian communications and 792 military communications. Some seven hundred of them were placed into geosynchronous orbit.

Civilian and military communications satellites represent the most numerous kind of spacecrafts launched.

(See lists of civilian Communications Satellites, of Military Communications Satelites and of Spacecrafts in Geostationary Orbit.)

Follow the link for detailed lists of those satellites.

If we consider non-communication satellites as well, the list gets longer:

How Many Satellites Are Orbiting the Earth?

Satellites are tracked by United States Space Surveillance Network (SSN), which has been tracking every object in orbit over 10 cm (3.937 inches) in diameter since it was founded in 1957. There are approximately 3,000 satellites operating in Earth orbit, according to the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), out of roughly 8,000 man-made objects in total. In its entire history, the SSN has tracked more than 24,500 space objects orbiting Earth. The majority of these have fallen into unstable orbits and incinerated during reentry. The SSN also keeps track which piece of space junk belongs to which country.

[...]

As space technology matured, satellites were launched for military and commercial purposes. The price of satellite launches has dropped to as low as a few million dollars for light satellites, and a few tens of millions for heavy satellites. This put satellite technology within the reach of many nations and international companies.

Satellites have an operating lifespan between five and 20 years. As of 2008, the former Soviet Union and Russia had nearly 1,400 satellites in orbit, the USA about 1,000, Japan more than 100, China about 80, France over 40, India more than 30, Germany almost 30, the UK and Canada 25, and at least ten each from Italy, Australia, Indonesia, Brazil, Sweden, Luxembourg, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea. [...]

So humankind is using and depending on satellite technology to a degree never seen before, and most of the growth of this usage has occurred in the past few decades.

We have gone from 15 communication satellites in 1981, to 1,899 communication satellites in 2010. We have yet to experience a severe solar storm, with all this satellite technology. Are we ready for it? Military satellites may be reinforced with extra shielding to withstand EMPs. But what about the many light-weight "cheap" satellites made with off the shelf parts? Are we ready to suddenly do without all this technology we've come to depend on, if many or most of these satellites get fried in a solar storm?


Related Links:

As the Sun Awakens, NASA Keeps a Wary Eye on Space Weather

National Geographic Explorer: "Electronic Armageddon"

Solar Storms Could Be Earth's Next Katrina

The Sun Also Flares
     

"Electronic Armageddon" happens tonight...

... on National Geographic Explorer:

National Geographic Explorer: "Electronic Armageddon"

What do future presidents need to know about existential dangers this country could face? Explorer investigates the science behind the dangers of a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, or HEMP. Picture an instantaneous deathblow to the vital engines that power our society, delivered by a nuclear weapon designed not to kill humans but to attack electronics. What could happen if an electromagnetic pulse surged to earth, crippling every aspect of modern society's infrastructure?

I've posted previously about EMP dangers, both man-made (military attack or terrorism) and naturally occurring (solar storms and flares). I think this Explorer episode intends to address both.

Also see: Is this why our ancestors worshiped the sun?