Although Earth largely managed to weather last weekend’s strong solar storm, experts have warned that more powerful outbursts could continue to hit until 2025.
A Harvard astrophysicist told DailyMail.com that the sun has not yet reached its “solar maximum,” the most energetic point of its recurring eleven-year solar cycle, during which greater turbulence increases the sun’s total energy output.
That ‘maximum’ will finally come in the heat of summer next year: July 2025.
“We could easily have much bigger storms in the next two years,” Dr. Jonathan McDowell to DailyMail.com.
The ‘extreme (G5) geomagnetic conditions’ of last weekend’s solar storm were caused by a disturbance on the Sun’s surface, a ‘sunspot’, that was larger than the solar disturbance that caused the infamous 1859 Carrington event.
The Carrington solar storm set fire to telegraph wires, disrupted global communications and even disrupted ship compasses. Space weather experts expect that a direct hit from the upcoming larger solar storms could be even worse.
Although Earth managed to weather last weekend’s historic solar storm, experts warn that the risk of more powerful eruptions will continue to increase until July 2025. “We could easily have much bigger storms in the next year or two,” astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told DailyMail.com
“It’s certainly a scary time for satellite operators,” said Dr. McDowell.
At the 2019 ‘solar minimum’ the number of visible sunspots on the Sun’s surface was effectively zero, but at the upcoming maximum in July 2025 the number of sunspots on the Sun’s surface was effectively zero. US National Space Weather Prediction Center estimates that there may be as many as 115 sunspots.
These magnetically dense areas of turbulence on the solar surface cause solar flares and more powerful coronal mass ejection (CME) bursts of plasma.
While the 11-year solar cycle only increases the total radiation coming from the sun by a deceptively small 0.1 percent, that excess is highly concentrated in sunspot activity.
These have been documented to increase up to 173,000 terawatts (trillion watts) of solar energy continuously hitting the Earth, disrupting satellites, blackening radio communications and disrupting the electrical grid.
But even before the most hectic phase of next year, when Earth could easily find itself in the line of fire of multiple sunspots, there is still continued pressure on the world’s satellite infrastructure right now – if only from increased radiation from the sun as it approaches solar maximum.
“Over the past few months, even without solar storms, the drag on Hubble has been ten times greater than during solar minimum,” Dr. McDowell to DailyMail.com
“These solar storms, while dramatic, are really only part of the story for satellites,” he explained.
“This entire period of the next few years will be downing satellites far more than most of the previous decade.”
Sunspot AR3664, which sent off flares over the weekend, had reached a size that now rivals the sunspot responsible for the infamous 1895 Carrington event – which set telegraph wires ablaze and shut down international communications
Last Friday’s G5 geomagnetic solar storm disrupted farmers’ GPS (Global Positioning System) satellites and halted planting equipment in the U.S. Midwest.
“All the tractors are at the ends of the field and are currently shut down due to the solar storm,” farmer Kevin Kenney said. 404 Media last weekend. ‘No GPS.’
“I’ve never had to deal with anything like this,” said Patrick O’Connor, who owns a farm about a 90-minute drive south of Minneapolis, told the New York Times.
Some impacts were also felt by the orbital astronomy platforms that Dr. McDowell is better known, but he suspects the bigger risks are yet to come.
“We had this one – you know, the aurora was beautiful, it was a big storm – but it certainly wasn’t the biggest storm on record or anything like that,” said Dr. McDowell.
As energetic particles from the solar storm warmed Earth’s upper atmosphere this weekend, the heat generated a thickening of the air — similar to how air feels thicker in a sauna — causing “drag” to the orbital movements of satellites.
Astronomers found that the Hubble Space Telescope is likely to end its life cycle slightly earlier, thanks to the drag caused by the solar storm.
Although Hubble is relatively stable in its orbit, its path can be thought of as a long, spiraling ‘free fall’ back inevitably to Earth, and Dr. McDowell said that Hubble’s speed of orbital decay doubled ‘about 80 meters per day instead of 40 meters per day’, as a result of last weekend’s storm.
“You have multiple consequences,” Dr. McDowell to DailyMail.com.
‘You have greater resistance. You have increased radiation. You have an increased risk of electrostatic discharges in your spacecraft.’
“Mission controllers are a little more on the edge of their seats during a solar storm than on a normal day,” the astrophysicist noted.
Dr. McDowell’s work with NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope (above), launched in 1999 to collect X-rays from exploded stars, distant galactic clusters and matter-swirling black holes. The Chandra team partially disabled the satellite to weather the solar storm
Dr. McDowell works directly with NASA’s Chandra
“This weekend we took a number of precautions to save some of the instruments so that they are as protected as possible against the onslaught of the storm,” he said.
“Disabling certain parts,” Dr. explained. McDowell explains, to reduce the threat of short circuit or electrical damage to Chandra’s sensors, “but not to the entire spacecraft.”
“We have lost expensive satellites in the past in solar storms.”
According to a NASA presentation on solar stormsA 1994 event caused electrical malfunctions in three satellites: one Intelsat K communications satellite made by U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin and two Canadian Anik television satellites.
While two of the satellites were partially recovered, one was lost without a trace.
“Satellite engineers and scientists are cautious about admitting that the sun was ultimately to blame, when hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake and lawsuits could result from the wrong answers,” the NASA presentation said.
Currently, the only predictive method space weather experts have for predicting when a major solar storm is likely to hit is by following the path of sunspots.
“If you see the sunspot moving around the sun, what we call an ‘active region,'” said Dr. McDowell, ‘you can say, ‘Oh, I see that sunspot, and it’s going to be pointing toward the Earth. two days.’ So if it happens to burp, we could be in trouble.”