This double-CME traveled through a region of space that had been cleared out by yet another CME four days earlier.
Liu describes the process: The July 23rd CME was actually two CMEs separated by only 10 to 15 minutes. Some of those CMEs "plowed the road" for the superstorm.Ī paperin the March 2014 edition of Nature Communications by UC Berkeley space physicist Janet G. It turns out that the active region responsible for producing the July 2012 storm didn't launch just one CME into space, but many. "Thanks to STEREO-A we know a lot of about the magnetic structure of the CME, the kind of shock waves and energetic particles it produced, and perhaps most importantly of all, the number of CMEs that preceded it." "The rich data set obtained by STEREO far exceeded the relatively meagre observations that Carrington was able to make in the 19th century," notes Riley. STEREO-A is almost ideally equipped to measure the parameters of such an event. The reason researchers know so much about the July 2012 storm is because, out of all the spacecraft in the solar system it could have hit, it did hit a solar observatory. "If that CME had hit Earth, the resulting geomagnetic storm would have registered a Dst of -1200, comparable to the Carrington Event and twice as bad as the March 1989 Quebec blackout." Modern estimates of Dst for the Carrington Event itself range from -800 nT to a staggering -1750 nT. The worst geomagnetic storm of the Space Age, which knocked out power across Quebec in March 1989, registered Dst=-600 nT. Ordinary geomagnetic storms, which produce Northern Lights around the Arctic Circle, but otherwise do no harm, register Dst=-50 nT (nanoTesla). The more negative Dst becomes, the worse the storm. Essentially, it measures how hard Earth's magnetic field shakes when a CME hits. In his study, Riley looked carefully at a parameter called Dst, short for "disturbance – storm time." This is a number calculated from magnetometer readings around the equator. "Initially, I was quite surprised that the odds were so high, but the statistics appear to be correct," says Riley. By extrapolating the frequency of ordinary storms to the extreme, he calculated the odds that a Carrington-class storm would hit Earth in the next ten years. published a paper in Space Weather entitled "On the probability of occurrence of extreme space weather events." In it, he analyzed records of solar storms going back 50+ years. In February 2014, physicist Pete Riley of Predictive Science Inc. "In my view the July 2012 storm was in all respects at least as strong as the 1859 Carrington event," says Baker. "The only difference is, it missed." Multi-ton transformers damaged by such a storm might take years to repair. According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, the total economic impact could exceed $2 trillion or 20 times greater than the costs of a Hurricane Katrina. MoreĪ similar storm today could have a catastrophic effect. Intense geomagnetic storms ignited Northern Lights as far south as Cuba and caused global telegraph lines to spark, setting fire to some telegraph offices and thus disabling the 'Victorian Internet."Ī report by the National Academy of Sciences details the consequences of extreme solar storms.
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In the days that followed his observation, a series of powerful CMEs hit Earth head-on with a potency not felt before or since. 1859, named after English astronomer Richard Carrington who actually saw the instigating flare with his own eyes. Most people wouldn't even be able to flush their toilet because urban water supplies largely rely on electric pumps.īefore July 2012, when researchers talked about extreme solar storms their touchstone was the iconic Carrington Event of Sept. Analysts believe that a direct hit by an extreme CME such as the one that missed Earth in July 2012 could cause widespread power blackouts, disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket. Then come the CMEs, billion-ton clouds of magnetized plasma that take a day or more to cross the Sun-Earth divide. Moving only slightly slower than light itself, electrons and protons accelerated by the blast can electrify satellites and damage their electronics. Minutes to hours later, the energetic particles arrive. X-rays and extreme UV radiation reach Earth at light speed, ionizing the upper layers of our atmosphere side-effects of this "solar EMP" include radio blackouts and GPS navigation errors.
They begin with an explosion-a "solar flare"-in the magnetic canopy of a sunspot. Extreme solar storms pose a threat to all forms of high-technology.
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