Thread: Strongest solar storm since 2005 hitting Earth

By SETH BORENSTEIN | Associated Press – 8 hrs ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The sun is bombarding Earth with radiation from the biggest solar storm in more than six years with more to come from the fast-moving eruption.

The solar flare occurred at about 11 p.m. EST Sunday and will hit Earth with three different effects at three different times. The biggest issue is radiation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado.

The radiation is mostly a concern for satellite disruptions and astronauts in space. It can cause communication problems for polar-traveling airplanes, said space weather center physicist Doug Biesecker.

Radiation from Sunday's flare arrived at Earth an hour later and will likely continue through Wednesday. Levels are considered strong but other storms have been more severe. There are two higher levels of radiation on NOAA's storm scale — severe and extreme — Biesecker said. Still, this storm is the strongest for radiation since May 2005.

The radiation — in the form of protons — came flying out of the sun at 93 million miles per hour. "The whole volume of space between here and Jupiter is just filled with protons and you just don't get rid of them like that," Biesecker said. That's why the effects will stick around for a couple days.

NASA's flight surgeons and solar experts examined the solar flare's expected effects and decided that the six astronauts on the International Space Station do not have to do anything to protect themselves from the radiation, spokesman Rob Navias said.

A solar eruption is followed by a one-two-three punch, said Antti Pulkkinen, a physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and Catholic University.

First comes electromagnetic radiation, followed by radiation in the form of protons.

Then, finally the coronal mass ejection — that's the plasma from the sun itself — hits. Usually that travels at about 1 or 2 million miles per hour, but this storm is particularly speedy and is shooting out at 4 million miles per hour, Biesecker said.

It's the plasma that causes much of the noticeable problems on Earth, such as electrical grid outages. In 1989, a solar storm caused a massive blackout in Quebec. It can also pull the northern lights further south. But this coronal mass ejection seems likely to be only moderate, with a chance for becoming strong, Biesecker said. The worst of the storm is likely to go north of Earth.

And unlike last October, when a freak solar storm caused auroras to be seen as far south as Alabama, the northern lights aren't likely to dip too far south this time, Biesecker said. Parts of New England, upstate New York, northern Michigan, Montana and the Pacific Northwest could see an aurora but not until Tuesday evening, he said.

For the past several years the sun had been quiet, almost too quiet. Part of that was the normal calm part of the sun's 11-year cycle of activity. Last year, scientists started to speculate that the sun was going into an unusually quiet cycle that seems to happen maybe once a century or so.

Now that super-quiet cycle doesn't seem as likely, Biesecker said. Scientists watching the sun with a new NASA satellite launched in 2010 — during the sun's quiet period — are excited. "We haven't had anything like this for a number of years," Pulkkinen said. "It's kind of special."

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NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

http://news.yahoo.com/strongest-sola...163628746.html

comments

Maybe we should pass laws to prevent the sun from producing this much emissions...

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Welcome to the year of the Dragon. I guess he started out breathing a little fire.

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Physically people don't have anything to worry about, everyone's electronics on the other hand... well it could be interesting.

[b]Sun Fires Off 2 Huge Solar Flares in One-Two Punch[b]
By Tariq Malik , SPACE.com Managing Editor Space.com – 6 hrs ago

The sun unleashed a cosmic double whammy Tuesday (March 6), erupting with two major flares to cap a busy day of powerful solar storms. One of the flares is the most powerful solar eruption of the year, so far. Both of the huge flares ranked as X-class storms, the strongest type of solar flares the sun can have. They followed several weaker, but still powerful, sun storms on Tuesday and came just days after another major solar flare on Sunday night.

The first big solar storm was also the most powerful one, ranking as an X5.4-class flare after erupting at 7:02 p.m. EST (0002 March 7 GMT), according to an alert from the Space Weather Prediction Center operated by the National Weather Service. It is the strongest solar flare yet for 2012. The second event occurred just over an hour later, reaching a maximum strength of X1.3.

Several space-based observatories witnessed the solar flares, including NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and the agency's Stereo-B spacecraft. The sun-watching observatories spotted huge clouds of charged particles — called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs — erupting from the solar flares. "First-look data from Stereo-B are not sufficient to determine if the cloud is heading for Earth," astronomer Tony Phillips wrote on his website Spaceweather.com, which monitors space weather events. "Our best guess is 'probably, yes, but not directly toward Earth.' A glancing blow to our planet's magnetosphere is possible on March 8th or 9th."

According to Phillips, the big X5.4 solar flare erupted from the giant active sunspot AR1429, which was also responsible for the major sun storm on Sunday.

When aimed directly at Earth, X-class solar flares can endanger astronauts and satellites in orbit, interfere with satellite communications and damage power grids on Earth. They can also amplify the Earth's display of northern and southern lights, also known as auroras. Charged particles from the solar storms can interact with Earth's upper atmosphere, resulting in a glow that is typically visible to observers at high northern or southern latitudes.

Astronomers rank solar flares by strength using five categories: A, B, C, M and X. The A-class flares are the weakest sun storms, while the X-class events are the most powerful solar flares. This ranking system was designed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and resembles the Richter scale used for earthquakes in that each category is 10 times stronger than the one before it, NASA officials have said. So a B-class solar flare is 10 times stronger than an A-class event, while a C-class solar storm releases 10 times more energy than B-class flare (or 100 times more energy than an A-class event).

The categories are also broken down into subsets, from 1 to 9, to pinpoint a solar flare's strength. Only X-class solar flares have subcategories that go higher than 9. The most powerful solar flare on record occurred in 2003 and was estimated to be an X28 on the solar flare scale, NASA officials said.

Tuesday's X-class solar flares followed a string of other eruptions that included M-class and C-class events, space weather officials said. Both of the day's X-class sun storms were stronger than the X1.1 solar flare of March 5.

Prior to this week, the only huge solar flare of 2012 occurred on Jan. 27, when the sun unleashed an X1.7-class eruption.

The sun is currently going through an active phase of its 11-year weather cycle. The current cycle is known as Solar Cycle 24 and is expected to reach its peak level of activity in 2013, NASA officials have said.

http://news.yahoo.com/sun-fires-off-...123401740.html

NASA Warns: Possible Infrastructure Disruptions From Solar Flare
Obtained from The National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA

NASA models using data from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) have now provided more information about the two Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) associated with the two March 6 flares.

Such a CME could result in a severe geomagnetic storm, causing aurora at low latitudes, with possible disruption to:

- high frequency radio communication
- global positioning systems (GPS)
- power grids.

The models also predict that the leading edge of the first CME will reach Earth at about 1:25 AM EST on the morning of March 8 (plus or minus 7 hours) and the event may last 3 days.

The first CME is traveling faster than 1300 miles per second; the second more than 1100 miles per second.

NASA's models predict that the CMEs will impact both Earth and Mars, as well as pass by several NASA spacecraft.

http://www.emergencyemail.org/newsem...sp?a=1833&z=29

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Solar storm barreling toward Earth this weekend
By ALICIA CHANG | Associated Press – Fri, Jul 13, 2012.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The space weather forecast for Earth looks a bit stormy this weekend, but scientists said not to worry.

A solar storm was due to arrive Saturday morning and last through Sunday, slamming into Earth's magnetic field. Scientists said it will be a minor event and they have notified power grid operators, airlines and other potentially affected parties.

"This isn't the mother of all anything," said forecaster Joe Kunches at the government's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo. "We don't see any ill effects to any systems."

The storm began Thursday when the sun unleashed a massive flare that hurled a cloud of highly charged particles racing toward Earth at 3 million mph. It was the sixth time this year that such a powerful solar outburst has occurred; none of the previous storms caused major problems.

In severe cases, solar storms can cause power blackouts, damage satellites and disrupt GPS signals and high-frequency radio communications. Airlines are sometimes forced to reroute flights to avoid the extra radiation around the north and south poles brought on by solar storms.

In 1989, a strong solar storm knocked out the power grid in Quebec, causing 6 million people to lose electricity.

Juha-Pekka Luntama, a space weather expert at the European Space Agency, said utility and navigation operators "will certainly see something but they will probably find ways to deal with any problems" from the incoming storm.

The storm is part of the sun's normal 11-year cycle of solar activity, which is supposed to reach peak storminess next year.

There's a bright side to stormy space weather: It tends to spawn colorful northern lights as the charged particles bombard Earth's outer magnetic field. Shimmering auroras may be visible at the United States-Canada border and northern Europe this weekend, Kunches said.

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AP writer Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

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Online: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov

http://news.yahoo.com/solar-storm-ba...162629211.html

Strong solar storm zipping to Earth, but worst effects skim above planet, scientists say
10 hr ago | By SETH BORENSTEIN of Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A strong solar flare is blasting its way to Earth, but the worst of its power looks like it will barely skim above the planet and not cause many problems.


It has been several years since Earth has had a solar storm of this size coming from sunspots smack in the middle of the sun, said Tom Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. The flare on the sun barely hits the "extreme" on forecasters' scale, but with its worst effects missing Earth it is only looking "potentially strong" at most when it arrives at Earth as a solar storm, he said.

New calculations from satellite data show that the worst of the energetic particles streaming from the sun likely will go north or above Earth this time, Berger said late Wednesday.

So while the power grid may see fluctuations because the storm will cause changes in Earth's magnetic field, it won't knock power systems off line, Berger said. It may cause slight disturbances in satellites and radio transmissions but nothing major.

"We're not scared of this one," Berger said.

The storm is moving medium fast, about 2.5 million miles per hour, meaning the soonest it could arrive is early Friday. But it could be later, Berger said.

Solar storms occur often, especially during peaks in the solar cycle, and don't directly harm people.

"There's been a giant magnetic explosion on the sun," Berger said. "Because it's pointed right at us, we'll at least catch some of the cloud" of highly energized and magnetized plasma that can disrupt Earth's magnetic sphere, which sometimes leads to temporary power grid problems.

On the plus side, sun flares expand the colorful northern lights so people farther south can see them. But don't expect them too far south, Berger said.

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Online: Space Weather Prediction Center: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/index.html

http://news.msn.com/science-technolo...-say?gt1=51501

'Extreme' Solar Storm Heading to Earth
Wednesday, 10 Sep 2014 07:03 PM



Scientists say an extreme solar flare is blasting its way to Earth and could mess up some power grids, satellites and radio transmissions.

Forecasters at the Space Weather Prediction Center don't yet know when Wednesday's solar storm will arrive here and which part of the planet will be facing the sun and bear the brunt of the effects. It could be as early as Thursday morning to a few days.

Prediction Center director Tom Berger said scientists will have a better idea after they get more satellite data.

The flare is considered extreme on forecasters' scale, but just barely. Flares like this cause geomagnetic storms which can knock some power grids offline temporarily. They also can damage satellites and disrupt radio transmissions. But they expand the colorful northern lights.

http://www.newsmax.com/Newswidget/US...kt_nbr=125BD-1


Back-to-Back Sun Storms May Supercharge Earth's Northern Lights

By Joe Rao, Skywatching Columnist | September 11, 2014

Powerful solar flares from the sun this week may amplify the northern lights displays over parts of the northern United States through the weekend, space weather scientists say.

The forecast for potentially supercharged auroras comes after powerful solar storms fired off eruptions of solar material, first on Monday (Sept. 8), then again on Wednesday (Sept. 10). During Wednesday's solar flare, the sun unleashed a major X1.6-class flare directly at Earth. While aurora activity could spike overnight tonight (Sept. 11), the best chance of strong northern lights displays along the northern U.S. states will be Friday night.

"The most intense storming is expected tomorrow, Friday night into Saturday morning," William Murtagh, program coordinator for the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, Colorado, said in a teleconference with reporters today.

It is solar material from the earlier solar flare this week that could spark amplified auroras on Thursday night. That storm, which erupted about 8:30 p.m. EDT (0030 GMT Sept. 9) from a sunspot region cataloged as number AR2158 — the same sunspot that later fired off the massive X1.6 flare. In terms of overall size, the spot measures about 40,000 miles across (62,000 km) — about five times the width of our Earth.

The Monday flare ranked as a long-duration class M4.6 and could ramp up northern lights displays for skywatchers living in northern latitudes and graced with clear skies. Observers must be far from city lights to see any northern lights, Murtagh said.

Such a flare, covering nearly 1 billion square miles of the sun's surface (called the photosphere), was described as "moderate" in intensity. M-class flares are stronger than the weakest category (C-class). They are second only to the most intense X-class solar flares, whichare the most powerful types of sun storms and can cause disruptions to satellites and communication systems, and pose a hazard to astronauts in space.

NOAA's SWPC initially forecast a 75 percent possibility of additional M-class flares and a 30 percent chance of an X-class flare from the same sunspot region over the next two or three days. That prediction was realized on Wednesday afternoon with the X1.6 solar flare.

The sun storms should not endanger satellites and astronauts in space, or spark severe interruptions with power grids on Earth, Murtagh said. But an increase in auroras is expected.

Solar storm warning

NOAA forecasters issued a geomagnetic storm warning for Friday night (Sept. 12) when a cloud of electrified gas, known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME, is expected to deliver a potent blow to Earth's magnetic field. The best forecast available suggests the cloud from Monday's sun storm could reach the Earth around 10 p.m. EDT Thursday night as a minor geomagnetic storm.

The projected storm could reach moderate intensity levels with auroras visible across northern-tier U.S. states such as Maine, Michigan and Minnesota. There is usually a margin of error of several hours or more with these forecasts, so the cloud might arrive before sundown on Thursday or perhaps not until before sunrise early Friday morning. [How Auroras Work: The Northern Lights Explained]

In addition, if the stream of electrified particles turns out to be less energetic than forecast, aurora visibility might be confined to places farther to the north, and nearer to the Canadian border. Conversely, if the particle stream turns out to be stronger than forecast, an aurora might sighted farther south into the central U.S.

Those wanting to try to see any aurora activity should find a dark location with a flat northern horizon and look north. Look for greenish or reddish glows, or streamers.

A dark sky also helps. Unfortunately, the moon is currently in a waning gibbous phase and pretty much will light up the sky after it rises around 8:50 p.m. (your local time) on Thursday night. The sky will be darker of course before the moon rises, making it easier to observe whatever northern lights might be visible.

Sun flares are gas pains

Solar flares appear to be caused by a sudden release of magnetic energy. The flare itself occurs in the solar atmosphere, generating a brilliant emission of visible light, as well as ultraviolet waves and powerful X-rays.

With major flares, there is a disruption of radio communications shortly after the eruption. Indeed, Monday's eruption produced a loud blast of radio waves that was heard in shortwave receivers around the dayside of our planet. [Worst Solar Storms of All Time]

But solar flares also can act as a type of explosion that sends streams of electrons and protons out into space. These electrons, protons and other particles are hurled out of the sun's magnetic field in a coronal mass ejection.

As these electrons and protons come into contact with the Earth's magnetic field andstream toward the magnetic poles, the chance of a collision between these charged energy particles and the rarefied gases of the upper atmosphere increases dramatically, producing a disturbance, or "magnetic storm," in the Earth's magnetic field.

Along with causing additional disruptions to radio communications, a magnetic storm might also prompt a view of the aurora borealis,also known as the northern lights, across parts of the northern United States. The same effect occurs at the South Pole, where the aurora australis (or southern lights) occur.

But, predicting the aurora borealis can be as difficult as predicting the weather on Earth. So there are no guarantees you'll see anything.

Fall equinox ups aurora chances

The impending arrival of the autumnal equinox on Sept. 22 signals a transition from northern summer to fall in an astronomical sense. But it also signals the start of aurora-watching season.

From now through the end of October, the chances of sighting the glow of the mysterious northern lights will be reaching a peak.

Auroras appear to peak in frequency twice a year, with the other peak coming in the weeks before and after the vernal equinox, which marks the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.

In fact, geomagnetic disturbances are almost twice as likely in spring and fall compared with winter and summer, according to 75 years of historical records analyzed by solar physicist David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. Such disturbances are usually the cause for aurora displays.


http://www.space.com/27126-solar-fla...-displays.html