# 4843
Twice over the past few months I’ve written about the concerns that FEMA and NASA, along with a host of other agencies and governments, have voiced about potential damage a severe solar storm might cause to our high-tech infrastructure.
NASA Braces For Solar Disruptions
A Carrington Event
While sounding a bit like science-fiction, in truth large and potentially disruptive solar storms do occur on rare occasions – usually at the time of a solar maximum.
The next solar maximum is due in 2012-2013, and some scientists have suggested this could be a particularly active cycle.
Some have gone so far as to suggest we could see a flare as big as 1859’s `Carrington Event’ (described here), or the somewhat lesser event of 1921.
Both were strong enough, that were they to happen today, would likely cause serious damage to parts of our electrical infrastructure.
NASA, while admitting that a serious solar storm could happen practically anytime, also cautions that the next big one could be many decades away. It is a genuine threat, they say, but the timing is impossible to predict.
In 2009 the National Academy of Sciences produced a 134 page report on the potential damage that another major solar flare could cause in Severe Space Weather Events—Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts.
You can read it for free online at the above link.
Last year Space.com produced a spectacular 18 minute video entitled Attack of the Sun, which may be viewed on YouTube.
Which brings us to some slightly frantic news reports that appeared this week – inspired by an article that appears in Australasian Science by David Reneke called Huge Solar Storms to Impact Earth.
Typical is the report from news.com.au that proclaims:
Sun storm to hit with 'force of 100m bombs'
Admittedly, these sorts of disaster headlines sound a bit like a `Scarrington’ event to me, but the point is to draw the reader’s attention to the story, and here I suppose the headline succeeds admirably.
The body of the article is a bit more grounded, and provides an entertaining and interesting overview of the concerns being voiced by some astronomers about the upcoming solar max.
As you might imagine, this threat has been picked up and greatly amplified by a number of prophesy/ Mayan 2012/ End-of-the-World websites, which tends to dilute it’s legitimacy in many circles.
But astronomers know that our sun is a variable star, and it goes through many major, and minor cycles. The best documented of these is the 11-year/22-year sunspot cycle.
Roughly every 11 years (it runs anywhere from 9 to 14 years), the sun experiences a magnetic pole shift at the time of solar maximum – a period of high sunspot and solar flare activity.
Every 22 years, the cycle completes, and the poles return to their `original’ position.
Our sun has, since 2006, been in a solar minimum or quiescent phase. Very few sunspots and solar flares.
The next solar maximum was predicted to occur in 2012, but the sun’s sunspot activity remains low, and so now NASA is looking more towards 2013.
This from science.nasa.gov.
As the Sun Awakens, NASA Keeps a Wary Eye on Space Weather
June 4, 2010: Earth and space are about to come into contact in a way that's new to human history. To make preparations, authorities in Washington DC are holding a meeting: The Space Weather Enterprise Forum at the National Press Club on June 8th.
Many technologies of the 21st century are vulnerable to solar storms. [more]
Solar flares the size of 1859’s `Carrington Event’ don’t happen very often, and in order to affect earth, the flare or CME (coronal mass ejection) must be pointed towards our planet (or where the earth will be when it arrives 2-3 days later).
Still, in 1989 a geomagnetic storm fried several large power transformers in Quebec, causing a province-wide blackout.
And in 2003, a number of satellites were severely damaged by an extremely powerful CME which also caused some power outages in Europe.
Over the past couple of decades we’ve become increasingly dependant upon computers, the Internet, cell phones, electronic devices, and of course . . . the electrical grid.
Systems that are considered vulnerable to unusually severe geomagnetic storms.
While imbued with a certain degree of hyperbole, the media reports this week aren’t without scientific merit, although the immediacy of the threat is far less certain.
As I’ve stated before, another `Carrington Event’ may not happen in our lifetime, or it could happen within the next few years.
No one knows.
Since National Preparedness Month (NPM10) is just a week away, it is a good time to remind my readers that:
If you are well prepared for an earthquake, a hurricane, or a pandemic . . . you are automatically in a better position to weather the disruptions caused any disaster . . . including something as rare as a catastrophic a solar storm.
Preparing is easy. Worrying is hard.
Some resources to get you started on the road to `all threats’ preparedness include:
FEMA http://www.fema.gov/index.shtm
READY.GOV http://www.ready.gov/
AMERICAN RED CROSS http://www.redcross.org/
