Scientists have confirmed that several geomagnetic storms are going to hit Earth this week.
Geomagnetic storms are caused by ejections of the solar corona into space, resulting in disturbances to the Earth’s upper atmosphere and increased drag on objects in low orbits.
“There is a chance of enhancements to the auroral oval at times during 13th and 14th March as a result of two Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and a coronal hole high-speed stream arriving at Earth,” the British Met Office advised.
The storm, a big cloud of charged particles that will fling from the Sun at about 4.5 million miles per hour (7.2 million km per hour), will be spawned by a pair of solar flares, scientists said.
This is probably the strongest such event in nearly six years, and is likely more intense than a similar storm in late January, said Joseph Kunches, a space weather specialist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
This solar disturbance is a three-stage affair, or as Kunches said in a telephone interview from Boulder, Colorado: “We hit the trifecta.”
In the first stage, two solar flares moving at nearly the speed of light reached Earth late on Tuesday. Such flares can cause radio blackouts.
Then, solar radiation hit Earth’s magnetic field on Wednesday, with possible impact on air traffic, especially near the poles, satellites and any astronauts taking space walks. This phase could last for days.
Finally, the plasma cloud sent by the coronal mass ejection, which is basically a big chunk of the Sun’s atmosphere, is expected to arrive at Earth early on Thursday.
This phase can disrupt power grids, satellites, oil pipelines and high-accuracy GPS systems used by oil drillers, surveyors and some agricultural operations, scientists said.
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There are approximately 4,000 active satellites in this space, which extends to 1,200 miles above the surface, as well as 15,000 pieces of debris like rocket bodies and defunct probes, according to space industry analyst Seradata.
GPS systems used for less-refined functions, such as the turn-by-turn navigation found in many cars, should not be affected, according to NOAA’s Doug Biesiecker.
Kunches said the geomagnetic component of the storm may arrive a bit ahead of schedule because it follows a previous storm that left the Sun on Sunday and is currently buffeting the Earth’s magnetosphere.
“When you’ve already had one coronal mass ejection storm, sometimes the next coronal mass ejection storm is faster to get here,” Kunches said.
These storms could produce some vivid auroras, according to experts. In the Northern Hemisphere, the aurora borealis could be visible at mid-latitudes, which in the United States could include New York, Illinois and Iowa.
Such stormy space weather is unusual in recent history, according to Harlan Spence, an astrophysicist at the University of New Hampshire who is principal investigator on the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
“These relatively large (solar) events, which we’ve had maybe a couple of handfuls total in the course of a decade, we’ve now had two or three of them, more or less right on top of each other,” Spence said by telephone.
The Sun is on the ascendant phase of its 11-year cycle of solar activity, with the peak expected next year, scientists said.
“It’s a clear harbinger that the Sun is waking up,” Spence said. “We’re trying to put this in context not only … of what has the Sun done in the past, but what is the biggest thing the Sun is capable of and what should we be planning for in terms of extreme sorts of events in the future.”
(With inputs from agencies)