Rare severe solar storm could produce northern lights in the U.S., disrupt power and communications this weekend

NOAA alerted operators of power plants and spacecraft in orbit to take precautions, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“For most people here on planet Earth, they won’t have to do anything,” said Rob Steenburgh, a scientist with NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

The storm could produce northern lights as far south in the U.S. as Alabama and Northern California, according to NOAA. But it was hard to predict and experts stressed it would not be the dramatic curtains of color normally associated with the northern lights, but more like splashes of greenish hues.

“That’s really the gift from space weather — the aurora,” said Mr. Steenburgh. He and his colleagues said the best aurora views may come from phone cameras, which are better at capturing light than the naked eye.

Snap a picture of the sky and “there might be actually a nice little treat there for you,” said Mike Bettwy, operations chief for the prediction center.

Also Watch: What causes the northern lights?

The most intense solar storm in recorded history, in 1859, prompted auroras in central America and possibly even Hawaii. “We are not anticipating that” but it could come close, said NOAA space weather forecaster Shawn Dahl.

This storm poses a risk for high-voltage transmission lines for power grids, not the electrical lines ordinarily found in people’s homes, Mr. Dahl told reporters. Satellites also could be affected, which in turn could disrupt navigation and communication services here on Earth.

An extreme geomagnetic storm in 2003, for example, took out power in Sweden and damaged power transformers in South Africa.

Even when the storm is over, signals between GPS satellites and ground receivers could be scrambled or lost, according to NOAA. But there are so many navigation satellites that any outages should not last long, Mr. Steenburgh noted.

The sun has produced strong solar flares since May 8, resulting in at least seven outbursts of plasma. Each eruption — known as a coronal mass ejection — can contain billions of tons of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona.

The flares seem to be associated with a sunspot that’s 16 times the diameter of Earth, according to NOAA. It’s all part of the solar activity that’s ramping up as the sun approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle.

NASA said the storm posed no serious threat to the seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The biggest concern is the increased radiation levels, and the crew could move to a better shielded part of the station if necessary, according to Mr. Steenburgh.

Increased radiation also could threaten some of NASA’s science satellites. Extremely sensitive instruments will be turned off, if necessary, to avoid damage, said Antti Pulkkinen, director of the space agency’s heliophysics science division.

Several sun-focused spacecraft are monitoring all the action.

“This is exactly the kinds of things we want to observe,” Mr. Pulkkinen said.

The Earth experienced the warmest June-August period on record this year, according to American space agency NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It was the hottest summer in the Northern Hemisphere and the warmest winter in the Southern Hemisphere.

The months of June, July, and August were 0.23 degrees Celsius warmer than any previous summer in NASA’s record and 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than the average summer between 1951 and 1980. Additionally, August temperature was 1.2 degrees Celsius higher than usual. It is to be noted that in the Northern Hemisphere, meteorological summer lasts from June to August.

This new record comes as a global heat wave intensified wildfires in Canada and Hawaii and fueled intense heat in South America, Japan, Europe, and the US, as per NASA.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement, “Summer 2023’s record-setting temperatures aren’t just a set of numbers – they result in dire real-world consequences. From sweltering temperatures in Arizona and across the country, to wildfires across Canada, and extreme flooding in Europe and Asia, extreme weather is threatening lives and livelihoods around the world.”

Greenhouse gas emissions have been identified as a major driver behind climate change and the worldwide warming trend that resulted in such a sweltering summer. NOAA chief scientist Sarah Kapnick said, “Not only was last month the warmest August on record by quite a lot, it was also the globe’s 45th-consecutive August and the 534th-consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th-century average. Global marine heat waves and a growing El Nino are driving additional warming this year, but as long as emissions continue driving a steady march of background warming, we expect further records to be broken in the years to come.”

The tropical Pacific Ocean experiences El Nino, a natural climate trend characterised by higher-than-normal sea surface temperatures. The phenomenon may have wide-ranging consequences, frequently bringing colder, wetter weather to the Southwest of the US and drought to nations in the western Pacific, such as Australia and Indonesia, according to NASA.

“Unfortunately, climate change is happening. Things that we said would come to pass are coming to pass. And it will get worse if we continue to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into our atmosphere,” Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist with the space agency stated.