At Delta Air Lines’ (DAL) operations center in Atlanta, meteorologists do more than monitor the usual wind, rain, and snow. They also keep a close eye out for a less common but potentially more dangerous phenomenon known as space weather. The sun’s eruptions can send billions of tons of superheated, electrically charged gas hurtling through the solar system. When these clouds hit the earth’s magnetic field, they can result in geomagnetic storms that disrupt electric power and communications systems.
Space weather can play havoc with air-to-ground communications. Delta and other airlines reroute dozens of flights a year to avoid affected areas. It’s “nearly always minor enough that flight time is not significantly impacted,” says Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant. Transpacific flights between Asia and the East Coast of the U.S. are the most likely to be affected. Don’t expect the pilot on such a flight to come on the intercom and announce the plane is turning to avoid a blast from outer space. Instead, he’ll say it’s because of weather, Durrant says, “which is an accurate characterization.”
Most people have no idea that combating the effects of geomagnetic storms is a part of doing business for industries worldwide. With enough warning time, operators of New York’s power grid can alter voltage and reduce transfers across the system to protect against the strong ground currents generated by the storms. Companies that rely on GPS services may delay drilling, mining, or land surveys when satellite communications are disrupted by space weather. But corporations and the federal government may not be prepared for a severe geomagnetic storm—akin to a 100-year flood—that could fry electrical equipment and wipe out power to major cities for weeks or longer.
From a small office in Boulder, Colo., William Murtagh and a small team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center monitor the sun 24 hours a day, sending alerts to industries and foreign governments when space storms are on the way. Murtagh, the center’s program coordinator, is well-versed in the damage geomagnetic storms can cause. Perhaps the most formidable megastorm on record happened in 1859. Known as the Carrington Event, it lit up night skies from Hawaii to Australia and led to telegraph outages around the world. Of course, no one alive today was around for it. “It is in the human nature,” Murtagh says, “to assess the threat based on your own life span.”
Dorothy Gambrell
Power
companies and airlines routinely compensate for the effects of moderate
sun storms. Some scientists warn that the U.S. is less prepared for an
intense solar blast that could knock out electricity and some critical
services for weeks.
Smaller storms in more recent years offer hints of what could happen if a Carrington-size event hit today. In March 1989, Canada’s Hydro-Québec power system collapsed during a geomagnetic disturbance, leaving 6 million people without electricity for more than nine hours. The storm may have come close to “toppling power systems from the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S. to the Midwest,” John Kappenman, a space weather consultant, wrote in a 2010 report for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. A Halloween storm in October 2003 disabled a GPS-based system used by the Federal Aviation Administration for 30 hours and blacked out part of Sweden. Twelve transformers in South Africa were damaged beyond repair. That event was about a quarter the size of the Carrington storm, says Jeffrey Love, an adviser for geomagnetic research at the U.S. Geological Survey. “Unfortunately, with only a few observations of the occurrence of superstorms in the past, predicting the future occurrence of a similar monster is very difficult,’’ he says....MOREWith solar cycle 24 apparently having double-topped in February we are in the sweet sport for coronal mass ejections and on the downslope in sunspot count:
Here's a picture of a CME from some happy folks at NASA:
NASA Scientist Dives into Perfect Space Storm
