- A solar flare that erupted last week is expected to cause a geomagnetic storm on Earth.
- While the severity shouldn’t get higher than a G3, this can still have negative effects on electronics, electricity systems and satellites.
- The geomagnetic storm is expected to hit from 20:00 SAST tonight.
Had loadshedding not been enough of a disruption in your life, now the Sun may cause even more problems, tonight.
At the weekend the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center detected a coronal mass ejection (CME). The effects of this CME will hit Earth between today and Wednesday.
The effects of a CME hitting our atmosphere and triggering a geomagnetic storm can include disruption to communications, danger to satellite operations and potential power disruptions.
Of course, the effects could pass unnoticed but according to Newsweek this storm will have a G2 severity with a chance of it upgrading to G3. This is pretty low with G5 being the most severe category of storm. However, the publication notes that power grids could experience voltage problems, radio wave transmission could be scrambled and satellite orbits may require adjustments to their orbit.
One, positive aspect of a geomagnetic storm is the ability to see aurora’s further from the poles.
While CMEs and geomagnetic storms are quite common, the largest event on record happened in 1859. The event came to be known as the Carrington Event. Days after amateur astronomers Richard Christopher Carrington and Richard Hodgson independently recorded the earliest observations of a solar flare, a massive geomagnetic storm hit Earth. The storm was so severe that telegraph operators were shocked by their equipment.
There have been larger geomagnetic storms since of course but should a massive storm hit Earth today, it could upend most of our modern technology including the computers that power the internet. A solar flare eruption in 2006 caused disruptions to GPS navigation signals for about 10 minutes on Earth.
Just to be safe, it may be worth unplugging sensitive electronics for a few hours from 20:00 SAST this evening, when the geomagnetic storm is expected to hit Earth.
[Image – Javier Miranda on Unsplash]
