NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center says the Sun launched yet another X-class solar flare today, sending a blast of energy through our solar system.  “Flares of this magnitude in and around solar maximum are generally not common, although not necessarily unusual,” the SWPC said today. Today’s solar flare was rated a X 4.0.

Solar flares are giant explosions on the Sun that send energy, light and high speed particles into space.  These flares are often associated with solar magnetic storms known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Solar flares are rated on a five letter scale: A, B, C, M, and X. Similar to the Richter scale used for earthquakes, each letter reflects a 10-fold increase in energy output from the sun. As such, an X class flare is 10 times stronger than an M class flare and 100 times stronger than a C class flare. In addition to classifying solar flares with a letter, there is an accompanying number that provides additional clarity on how potent a flare is on a scale of 1 to 9.

“Solar flares of this magnitude can be impulsive, meaning quick to rise and decrease, lasting some minutes or a few hours,” the SWPC said.

According to the SWPC, there could be a variety of impacts in the short-term for Earth from such a powerful blast.  There’s an immediate, wider area of strong degradation or signal loss in high frequency (HF) communication bands over the sunlit side of the Earth; HF radio signals may experience loss of contact or major disruptions for a number of minutes to a couple of hours in the affected areas.
A solar flare can lead to a geomagnetic storm, but it’s not a direct one-to-one event. A solar flare is a burst of radiation and charged particles, and it often triggers a much larger eruption called a coronal mass ejection (CME). It is the CME, which is a massive cloud of solar matter and magnetic energy, that can hit Earth and cause a geomagnetic storm.

A solar flares move faster than CMEs because solar flares are bursts of electromagnetic radiation that travel at the speed of light, while CMEs are massive clouds of particles that travel much slower. A solar flare’s light can reach Earth in about eight minutes, whereas a CME can take anywhere from a few hours to several days to arrive.

There is a CME associated with today’s solar flare. According to heliophysicists tracking the event, the CME has a full halo signature, meaning there is some sort of Earth directed component but it appears a significant part of it is directed away from Earth. It appears a glancing blow to Earth is possible over the weekend but the SWPC needs to perform additional analysis to understand what the impacts to Earth could be.

Heliophysicists are scientists who study the Sun and its influence on the solar system, from its internal workings to its effects on Earth and other planets. This field, called heliophysics, focuses on the Sun’s magnetic activity, space weather, and the heliosphere, which is the bubble of plasma and magnetic field that surrounds our solar system.

According to NASA, the biggest X-class flares are by far the largest explosions in the solar system. Loops tens of times the size of Earth leap up off the sun’s surface when the sun’s magnetic fields cross over each other and reconnect. In the biggest events, this reconnection process can produce as much energy as a billion hydrogen bombs. If they’re directed at Earth, such flares and associated CMEs can create long lasting radiation storms that can harm satellites, communications systems, and even ground-based technologies and power grids.

While these solar events can help illuminate the sky with stunning aurora and threaten spacecraft like the SpaceX satellites and International Space Station (ISS) above the Earth, they can also  do considerable harm to electronics, electrical grids, and satellite and radio communications on Earth.

One such destructive incident was a solar event which occurred on September 1-2 in 1859. Also known as the “Carrington Event”, this event unfolded as  powerful geomagnetic storm struck Earth during Solar Cycle 10. A CME hit the Earth and induced the largest geomagnetic storm on record.  The storm was so intense it created extremely bright, vivid aurora throughout the planet: people in California thought the sun rose early, people in the northeastern U.S. could read a newspaper at night from the aurora’s bright light, and people as far south as Hawaii and south-central Mexico could see the aurora in the sky.

The event severely damaged the limited electrical and communication lines that existed at that time; telegraph systems around the world failed, with some telegraph operators reporting they received electric shocks.

A June 2013 study by Lloyd’s of London and Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) in the U.S. showed that if the Carrington event happened in modern times, damages in the U.S. could exceed $2.6 trillion, roughly 15% of the nation’s annual GDP. Scientists believe that another Carrington-like event will occur, but not sure when it’ll happen.

 

 

Some scientists believe a  larger space weather event could be extremely disruptive on earth in modern times, shutting down the electrical grid and bringing an end to the internet for a month or longer.  A  paper written last September by University of California assistant professor Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, entitled “Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse”, describes the threats the sun pose to the global web of computers and the communications between them. “In this paper, we investigate the impact of solar superstorms that can potentially cause large-scale Internet outages covering the entire globe and lasting several months,” the author wrote.

Until that happens, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center continues to keep an eye out for possible dangers from the Sun.

NOAA forecasters analyze a variety of solar data from spacecraft to determine what impacts a geomagnetic storm could produce.  If Earth is experiencing the effects of a coronal hole and a coronal mass ejection is forecasted to impact Earth, the combined effects could result in a more significant impact and more intense geomagnetic storming. Analyzing data from the DSCOVER and ACE satellite is one way forecasters can tell when the enhanced solar wind from a coronal hole is about to arrive at Earth. A few things they look for in the data to determine when the enhanced solar wind is arriving at Earth:

• Solar wind speed increases
• Temperature increases
• Particle density decreases
• Interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) strength increases

While typically known for their weather forecasts, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its National Weather Service (NWS) is also responsible for “space weather.” While there are private companies and other agencies that monitor and forecast space weather, the official source for  alerts and warnings of the space environment is the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). The SWPC is located in Boulder, Colorado and is a service center of the NWS, which is part of NOAA. The Space Weather Prediction Center is also one of nine National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) as they monitor current space weather activity 24/7, 365 days a year.