Severe geomagnetic storms are likely to continue until at least Sunday, forecasters said, after a night of stunning auroras across much of the United States and Europe last Friday.
The U.S.-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Prediction Center's Space Weather Prediction Center said “extreme” G5 conditions persisted as of Saturday morning due to increased solar activity. I observed.
“The threat of additional powerful flares and CMEs (coronal mass ejections) will remain until the massive, magnetically complex sunspot cluster disappears from view over the next few days.” The agency has posted an update. on social media site X on Saturday morning.
good and bad influences
On Friday night, many observers welcomed the increase in solar activity. Large areas of the United States, Europe, and other regions not accustomed to displays of the Northern Lights have seen vivid glow as energetically charged particles from solar storms pass through Earth's atmosphere. Brilliantly pink skies were observed as far south as Texas. Given the forecast for ongoing solar activity, another night of extended Northern Lights is likely on Saturday.
There were also some harmful effects. According to NOAA, there were some irregularities in power grid transmissions and satellite communications and GPS services were degraded. Users of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet constellation have reported slow download speeds. Early Saturday morning, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said. The company's Starlink satellites are “under a lot of pressure, but they are holding up so far.”
This is the most powerful solar storm recorded in over 20 years. The last G5 event, the most extreme category of these storms, occurred in October 2003 when power problems were reported in Sweden and South Africa.
If the storm strengthens over the next day or two, scientists say major risks include wider power outages, satellite outages and long-term damage to GPS networks.
Cause of this storm
Such storms are triggered when the sun releases significant amounts of magnetic field and plasma into the solar wind. The underlying causes of these coronal mass ejections from deeper within the Sun are not fully understood. But the hope is that data collected by NASA's Parker Solar Probe and other observations will help scientists better understand and predict these phenomena.
When these coronal mass ejections reach the Earth's magnetic field, they can alter it and introduce significant currents into power lines and transformers, causing damage or power outages.
The most powerful geomagnetic storm occurred in 1859 during the so-called Carrington Event. This caused aurora lights to appear across the world and caused fires to break out in several telegraph offices. At that time there were 125,000 miles of telegraph wires around the world.
According to a research paper on the Carrington Event, “At their peak, the Aurora was described as blood or deep crimson, so bright you could read a newspaper.”