Tamitha Skov, known as the “Space Weather Woman”, is a research scientist at the US-funded Aerospace Corporation and is an award-winning science educator on social media. Last Saturday she posted a video of NASA’s prediction model and wrote: “Direct hit! A snake-shaped filament launched as a large solar storm while in the Earth’s impact zone.”
“NASA predicts the impact on July 19. Strong Aurora displays are possible with this one, in the mid-latitudes,” he added.
Skov also warned that there could be a GPS and radio outage.
Solar flares are like the muzzle blast of a cannon, according to NASA. A burst of light that reaches Earth in a matter of minutes and also carries high-energy particles that interact with our atmosphere.
Following her forecast, the scientist posted an impressive five-second video of the sun. “The long snake-like filament sweeps across the Sun in an impressive ballet,” she wrote. “The magnetic orientation of this Earth-directed solar storm is going to be difficult to predict. If the magnetic field of this storm is oriented to the south, G2 (possibly G3) level conditions can occur,” she explained.
Geomagnetic storms are rated on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the weakest and 5 having the greatest damage potential. G2 storms are moderate.
The surface of our sun is an incredibly hot and chaotic place, with immense amounts of energy creating magnetic fields. The interaction between these fields is the starting point of the solar climate. Since the Sun is not a solid body, it spins faster around its equator than it does around its poles. Over time, NASA details, the complex magnetic fields bend, accumulating energy.
As a solar flare releases more energy it can create shock waves that accelerate particles moving away from the sun, causing what is known as a particle storm. These particles can reach Earth almost as fast as solar flares, in less than an hour. With enough energy, a solar flare can project material out of the sun: a coronal mass ejection. Billions of tons of particles shoot out of the sun at high speed, and can reach Earth in a day or two.
In an 11-year solar cycle there can be up to 2,000 solar flares of varying intensity. Not all of them will produce coronal mass ejections and, in the vast expanse of space, fewer will reach Earth. The study of sunspots and the continuous monitoring of solar activity allow scientists to develop better prediction models.
What happens when they reach Earth? “The energy from a solar flare will interact with the ionosphere – the outermost layer of the atmosphere that is critical for radio signals,” Alex Young, associate director of science in the Flight Center’s heliophysics division, told The Washington Post. NASA Goddard in Greenbelt, Maryland. “When those layers change because they get hot, that can cause degradation in high-frequency radio.”
Solar flares can also disrupt radio signals used for navigation or disrupt GPS signals. The more energy the eruption emits, the longer these interruptions can last. In the case of the weakest, it can be a few minutes; in the strongest, it can be hours.
Smaller coronal mass ejections create the kind of vibrant auroras that amaze residents of the northern and southern hemispheres, as the mass of particles ejected from the sun trigger reactions in Earth’s upper atmosphere.
In the coming years, solar storms are likely to occur more frequently: at the end of 2019, the Sun began a new cycle with minimal solar activity that will increase over the course of its natural cycle of approximately eleven years. Peak activity is expected to occur between 2024 and 2026.
The violent eruptions of particles and radiation in phases of high activity can have increasingly serious consequences on a highly technical and interconnected planet like Earth.