Earth unprepared for super solar storm
Baku, April 23 (AZERTAC). Powerful blasts from the sun have triggered intense geomagnetic storms on Earth before, and they`ll do so again. But at the moment our ability to predict these events and guard against their worst consequences — which can include interruptions of power grids and satellite navigation systems — is lacking, says Mike Hapgood of the British research and technology agency RAL Space. The solar storms we need to worry about, Hapgood says, are coronal mass ejections, huge clouds of charged solar plasma that can rocket into space at speeds of 3 million mph (5 million kilometers per hour) or more. CMEs that hit Earth inject large amounts of energy into the planet`s magnetic field, spawning potentially devastating geomagnetic storms that can disrupt GPS signals, radio communications and power grids for days. The world witnessed such effects not too long ago. In March 1989, a CME caused a power blackout in Quebec, leaving 5 million Canadians in the dark in cold weather for hours. But CMEs are capable of much greater mischief. A huge ejection — now known as the Carrington event, after a British astronomer— slammed into Earth in 1859, setting off fires in telegraph offices. The world was not technologically advanced enough yet to suffer worse consequences, Hapgood noted.
And the short-term problems caused by such a storm could pale in comparison with its long-term impact, he added.
"What scares me is the possibility that this recovery could take a long time in many parts of the world," Hapgood said. SWPC scientists and other space-weather forecasters generally rely on observtions of approaching CMEs made by a handful of spacecraft. These include NASA`s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) and Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) probes, as well as the NASA/European Space Agency Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Researchers also need to develop better physics-based models to improve their understanding of extreme space weather, Hapgood says. And he suggests that studying storms on other, sunlike stars could be helpful, too. In general, Hapgood is calling for powerful geomagnetic storms to be regarded as natural hazards similar to big earthquakes and volcanic eruptions: infrequent, potentially devastating events.
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