Solar Storm Warning

[michel]

Solar Storm Warning

03.10.2006

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10mar_stormwarning.htm?list775983

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March 10, 2006: It's official: Solar minimum has arrived. Sunspots have all but vanished. Solar flares are nonexistent. The sun is utterly quiet.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Like the quiet before a storm.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]This week researchers announced that a storm is coming--the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one," she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] That was a solar maximum. The Space Age was just beginning: Sputnik was launched in Oct. 1957 and Explorer 1 (the first US satellite) in Jan. 1958. In 1958 you couldn't tell that a solar storm was underway by looking at the bars on your cell phone; cell phones didn't exist. Even so, people knew something big was happening when Northern Lights were sighted three times in Mexico. A similar maximum now would be noticed by its effect on cell phones, GPS, weather satellites and many other modern technologies. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Right: Intense auroras over Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1958. [More][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Dikpati's prediction is unprecedented. In nearly-two centuries since the 11-year sunspot cycle was discovered, scientists have struggled to predict the size of future maxima—and failed. Solar maxima can be intense, as in 1958, or barely detectable, as in 1805, obeying no obvious pattern.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The key to the mystery, Dikpati realized years ago, is a conveyor belt on the sun.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]We have something similar here on Earth—the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, popularized in the sci-fi movie The Day After Tomorrow. It is a network of currents that carry water and heat from ocean to ocean--see the diagram below. In the movie, the Conveyor Belt stopped and threw the world's weather into chaos.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Above: Earth's "Great Ocean Conveyor Belt." [More][/FONT]​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The sun's conveyor belt is a current, not of water, but of electrically-conducting gas. It flows in a loop from the sun's equator to the poles and back again. Just as the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt controls weather on Earth, this solar conveyor belt controls weather on the sun. Specifically, it controls the sunspot cycle.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Solar physicist David Hathaway of the National Space Science & Technology Center (NSSTC) explains: "First, remember what sunspots are--tangled knots of magnetism generated by the sun's inner dynamo. A typical sunspot exists for just a few weeks. Then it decays, leaving behind a 'corpse' of weak magnetic fields."[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Enter the conveyor belt.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] "The top of the conveyor belt skims the surface of the sun, sweeping up the magnetic fields of old, dead sunspots. The 'corpses' are dragged down at the poles to a depth of 200,000 km where the sun's magnetic dynamo can amplify them. Once the corpses (magnetic knots) are reincarnated (amplified), they become buoyant and float back to the surface." Presto—new sunspots![/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Right: The sun's "great conveyor belt." [Larger image][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]All this happens with massive slowness. "It takes about 40 years for the belt to complete one loop," says Hathaway. The speed varies "anywhere from a 50-year pace (slow) to a 30-year pace (fast)."[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]When the belt is turning "fast," it means that lots of magnetic fields are being swept up, and that a future sunspot cycle is going to be intense. This is a basis for forecasting: "The belt was turning fast in 1986-1996," says Hathaway. "Old magnetic fields swept up then should re-appear as big sunspots in 2010-2011."[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Like most experts in the field, Hathaway has confidence in the conveyor belt model and agrees with Dikpati that the next solar maximum should be a doozy. But he disagrees with one point. Dikpati's forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"History shows that big sunspot cycles 'ramp up' faster than small ones," he says. "I expect to see the first sunspots of the next cycle appear in late 2006 or 2007—and Solar Max to be underway by 2010 or 2011."[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Who's right? Time will tell. Either way, a storm is coming.[/FONT]

 

[Buttercup]

Interesting. Let's just hope the ramped up spots don't fry us to a crisp.

 

[Scarlett Wampus]

What would be the effect on our technology of a large solar storm?

 

[dawny0826]

Gee whiz.

 

[Daniel Burbank]

I'm not exactly a scientist, so what does this mean for us? I've never heard of the Solar Max of 1958.

 

[gnomon]

A bit from a nasa page:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/23oct_superstorm.htm

Within hours, telegraph wires in both the United States and Europe spontaneously shorted out, causing numerous fires, while the Northern Lights, solar-induced phenomena more closely associated with regions near Earth's North Pole, were documented as far south as Rome, Havana and Hawaii, with similar effects at the South Pole.

What transpired during the dog days of summer 1859, across the 150 million-kilometer (about 93 million-mile) chasm of interplanetary space that separates the Sun and Earth, was this: on August 28, solar observers noted the development of numerous sunspots on the Sun's surface. Sunspots are localized regions of extremely intense magnetic fields. These magnetic fields intertwine, and the resulting magnetic energy can generate a sudden, violent release of energy called a solar flare. From August 28 to September 2 several solar flares were observed. Then, on September 1, the Sun released a mammoth solar flare. For almost an entire minute the amount of sunlight the Sun produced at the region of the flare actually doubled.

"With the flare came this explosive release of a massive cloud of magnetically charged plasma called a coronal mass ejection," said Tsurutani. "Not all coronal mass ejections head toward Earth. Those that do usually take three to four days to get here. This one took all of 17 hours and 40 minutes," he noted.

Back in 1859 the invention of the telegraph was only 15 years old and society's electrical framework was truly in its infancy. A 1994 solar storm caused major malfunctions to two communications satellites, disrupting newspaper, network television and nationwide radio service throughout Canada. Other storms have affected systems ranging from cell phone service and TV signals to GPS systems and electrical power grids. In March 1989, a solar storm much less intense than the perfect space storm of 1859 caused the Hydro-Quebec (Canada) power grid to go down for over nine hours, and the resulting damages and loss in revenue were estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

It seems that the amount of damage a massive coronal ejection such as the one in 1859, or perhaps an even larger storm, could translate to extensive damage to our networks and electrical framework. This would result in massive economic damage at the least. As far as "physical damage" to our atmosphere I am not sure. I'm trying to find more info and thought the above was a good intro into the effects of these coronal mass ejections.

I think the Discovery channel is going to air a program this month or perhaps early April on the subject.

 

[finalfrogo]

It's somewhat frightening how things of astronmical proportions can affect us. It makes me worry. What if sometime in the future, there is an colassal incident that we can't prevent, and it wipes out the entire human race? We are truly at the mercy of the universe.

 

[Judgement Day]

It's somewhat frightening how things of astronmical proportions can affect us. It makes me worry. What if sometime in the future, there is an colassal incident that we can't prevent, and it wipes out the entire human race? We are truly at the mercy of the universe.

Yes, and that day is called the end of times, my friend .

 

[FFH]

We are at the low end of the Solar Max, which may insure that we will have relatively stable weather patterns, and will probably have relatively few natural disasters, but as it peaks in 2012, I am sure there will be more crazy weather patterns, that will build up in intensity, as this date approaches, that will cause great end time natural disasters.

 

[Daniel Burbank]

What about all the hurricanes we had last year? Are they just going to get worse because of this thing?