Extreme Solar Storm Could Cause Widespread Disruptions on Earth
May 21, 2013
SPACE.com
- If an extreme solar storm
aimed at the Earth hits in just the right way, it could put
interconnected electrical grids around the world at serious risk,
experts say.
In addition to creating beautiful auroras, extreme
solar storms
could knock out a wide range of electric utilities needed to keep life
in the United States and around the world functioning normally,
according to presenters here at the fourth annual Electrical
Infrastructure Security Summit.
"What [a solar storm] can do — even if it isn't causing a
continental-scale outage — it can really cause a regional blackout,"
said
Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado
. "Imagine something like, for example,
Superstorm Sandy.
Imagine that kind of severe storm — but causing regional outages for
weeks. Living without power really cascades and propagates in remarkable
ways throughout our society."
As the sun reaches the peak in its 11-year cycle this year, scientists
expect that active regions of the star — known as sunspots — will erupt,
flinging streams of charged particles out into the solar system. Relatively minor storms can also create temporary radio blackouts and disrupt GPS navigation.
However, this doesn't necessarily mean that all
solar eruptions will impact the Earth. Most
coronal mass ejections
are not aimed toward the planet, and instead shoot out harmlessly into
other parts of the solar system. But once every century or so, an
extreme solar storm is expected to impact the
Earth, Baker told SPACE.com.
The last documented solar storm in this category is known as the
Carrington event. Particles from a powerful coronal mass ejection
overloaded telegraph wires, setting paper messages on fire in 1859.
These kinds of storms from
the sun are notoriously difficult to predict. Experts understand the general conditions under which
solar storms occur, but it's hard to forecast just how powerful the storm will be, said
Karel Schrijver, a solar scientist and fellow at Lockheed Martin.
"A [coronal mass ejection] takes two to four days to get to the Earth,
so if we had more observational resources, to map its motion — and if we
had some measurements of the structure of what's going to hit you —
there are ways by which we can certainly improve the forecast,"
Schrijver told SPACE.com.
Scientists can use sun-observing satellites like NASA's
Solar Dynamics Observatory to monitor, and possibly forecast, solar weather that could be heading toward the planet, Schrijver said.
"There's a lot of space to be explored in terms of computer models that
are becoming ever more powerful," Schrijver added. "The heliophysics
division at NASA has a wonderful fleet of observatories that looks at
the space between the sun and the Earth and the Earth's environment."