156 years ago, a geomagnetic mega-storm

Soheil_Esy

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The 1859 Carrington event

Wednesday, Sep. 2, 2015

On Sept. 2nd, a billion-ton coronal mass ejection (CME) slammed into Earth's magnetic field. Campers in the Rocky Mountains woke up in the middle of the night, thinking that the glow they saw was sunrise. No, it was the Northern Lights. People in Cuba read their morning paper by the red illumination of aurora borealis. Earth was peppered by particles so energetic, they altered the chemistry of polar ice.

Hard to believe? It really happened--exactly 156 years ago. This map shows where auroras were sighted in the early hours of Sept. 2, 1859:

carrington_strip.jpg


As the day unfolded, the gathering storm electrified telegraph lines, shocking technicians and setting their telegraph papers on fire. The "Victorian Internet" was knocked offline. Magnetometers around the world recorded strong disturbances in the planetary magnetic field for more than a week.

The cause of all this was an extraordinary solar flare witnessed the day before by British astronomer Richard Carrington. His sighting marked the discovery of solar flares and foreshadowed a new field of study: space weather. According to the National Academy of Sciences, if a similar storm occurred today, it would cause a trillion dollars in damage to society's high-tech infrastructure and require four to ten years for complete recovery.

In fact, a similar flare did occur just a few years ago. On July 23, 2012, a CME of rare power rocketed away from the sun. The storm was in all respects at least as strong as the 1859 Carrington event. The only difference is, it missed. no harm done. The July 2012 event serves as a reminder, however, that extreme space weather is not a thing of the past.

http://spaceweather.com/

A Super Solar Flare

May 6, 2008

At 11:18 AM on the cloudless morning of Thursday, September 1, 1859, 33-year-old Richard Carrington—widely acknowledged to be one of England's foremost solar astronomers—was in his well-appointed private observatory. Just as usual on every sunny day, his telescope was projecting an 11-inch-wide image of the sun on a screen, and Carrington skillfully drew the sunspots he saw.

sunspot_med.gif

Above:Sunspots sketched by Richard Carrington on Sept. 1, 1859. Copyright: Royal Astronomical Society: more

On that morning, he was capturing the likeness of an enormous group of sunspots. Suddenly, before his eyes, two brilliant beads of blinding white light appeared over the sunspots, intensified rapidly, and became kidney-shaped. Realizing that he was witnessing something unprecedented and "being somewhat flurried by the surprise," Carrington later wrote, "I hastily ran to call someone to witness the exhibition with me. On returning within 60 seconds, I was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled." He and his witness watched the white spots contract to mere pinpoints and disappear.

It was 11:23 AM. Only five minutes had passed.

Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet Earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Indeed, stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii.

Even more disconcerting, telegraph systems worldwide went haywire. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted.

"What Carrington saw was a white-light solar flare—a magnetic explosion on the sun," explains David Hathaway, solar physics team lead at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Now we know that solar flares happen frequently, especially during solar sunspot maximum. Most betray their existence by releasing X-rays (recorded by X-ray telescopes in space) and radio noise (recorded by radio telescopes in space and on Earth). In Carrington's day, however, there were no X-ray satellites or radio telescopes. No one knew flares existed until that September morning when one super-flare produced enough light to rival the brightness of the sun itself.

"It's rare that one can actually see the brightening of the solar surface," says Hathaway. "It takes a lot of energy to heat up the surface of the sun!"

flare_sxi_strip.gif

Above: A modern solar flare recorded Dec. 5, 2006, by the X-ray Imager onboard NOAA's GOES-13 satellite. The flare was so intense, it actually damaged the instrument that took the picture. Researchers believe Carrington's flare was much more energetic than this one.

The explosion produced not only a surge of visible light but also a mammoth cloud of charged particles and detached magnetic loops—a "CME"—and hurled that cloud directly toward Earth. The next morning when the CME arrived, it crashed into Earth's magnetic field, causing the global bubble of magnetism that surrounds our planet to shake and quiver. Researchers call this a "geomagnetic storm." Rapidly moving fields induced enormous electric currents that surged through telegraph lines and disrupted communications.

"More than 35 years ago, I began drawing the attention of the space physics community to the 1859 flare and its impact on telecommunications," says Louis J. Lanzerotti, retired Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories and current editor of the journal Space Weather. He became aware of the effects of solar geomagnetic storms on terrestrial communications when a huge solar flare on August 4, 1972, knocked out long-distance telephone communication across Illinois. That event, in fact, caused AT&T to redesign its power system for transatlantic cables. A similar flare on March 13, 1989, provoked geomagnetic storms that disrupted electric power transmission from the Hydro Québec generating station in Canada, blacking out most of the province and plunging 6 million people into darkness for 9 hours; aurora-induced power surges even melted power transformers in New Jersey. In December 2005, X-rays from another solar storm disrupted satellite-to-ground communications and Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation signals for about 10 minutes. That may not sound like much, but as Lanzerotti noted, "I would not have wanted to be on a commercial airplane being guided in for a landing by GPS or on a ship being docked by GPS during that 10 minutes."

transformer_vert.jpg

Above:Power transformers damaged by the March 13, 1989, geomagnetic storm: more.

Another Carrington-class flare would dwarf these events. Fortunately, says Hathaway, they appear to be rare:

"In the 160-year record of geomagnetic storms, the Carrington event is the biggest." It's possible to delve back even farther in time by examining arctic ice. "Energetic particles leave a record in nitrates in ice cores," he explains. "Here again the Carrington event sticks out as the biggest in 500 years and nearly twice as big as the runner-up."

These statistics suggest that Carrington flares are once in a half-millennium events. The statistics are far from solid, however, and Hathaway cautions that we don't understand flares well enough to rule out a repeat in our lifetime.

And what then?

Lanzerotti points out that as electronic technologies have become more sophisticated and more embedded into everyday life, they have also become more vulnerable to solar activity. On Earth, power lines and long-distance telephone cables might be affected by auroral currents, as happened in 1989. Radar, cell phone communications, and GPS receivers could be disrupted by solar radio noise. Experts who have studied the question say there is little to be done to protect satellites from a Carrington-class flare. In fact, a recent paper estimates potential damage to the 900-plus satellites currently in orbit could cost between $30 billion and $70 billion. The best solution, they say: have a pipeline of comsats ready for launch.

Humans in space would be in peril, too. Spacewalking astronauts might have only minutes after the first flash of light to find shelter from energetic solar particles following close on the heels of those initial photons. Their spacecraft would probably have adequate shielding; the key would be getting inside in time.

No wonder NASA and other space agencies around the world have made the study and prediction of flares a priority. Right now a fleet of spacecraft is monitoring the sun, gathering data on flares big and small that may eventually reveal what triggers the explosions. SOHO, Hinode, STEREO, ACE and others are already in orbit while new spacecraft such as the Solar Dynamics Observatory are readying for launch.

Research won't prevent another Carrington flare, but it may make the "flurry of surprise" a thing of the past.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/06may_carringtonflare/

Description of a Singular Appearance seen in the Sun on September 1, 1859

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http://adsbit.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1859MNRAS..20...13C

December 2006 Flare Activity

An exceptionally active solar region (930) rotated onto the solar disk at a time when solar cycle 23 was theoretically approaching minimum levels.

On December 5th 2006 at 10:18 UT region 930 generated an X9 flare that can be seen in both the sequence of GOES-13 SXI images (pdf) and in the plot of GOES Space Environment Monitor data. Region 930 continued to generate flares over the ensuing two weeks and resultant ion storms were also recorded by GOES. One such storm had sufficient energy to be recorded at ground level by neutron monitoring stations.

GOES 13 SXI sustained damage to several pixels of its detector while observing this X9 flare event. The source of the damage was the large X-ray flux of the flare convolved with the observing sequence. At the time, the susceptibility of the detector to radiation damage was not well understood or constrained. The type of damage affects 8 lines of pixels across the CCD and is unlikely to recover. Operational constraints and updates to on-board observing sequence software will enable the SXI to continue its mission without further damage to its detector. The impact on observations and prediction is currently being assessed as the new sequence software and operational constraints are developed. In addition, ground algorithms will be developed to minimize the appearance of the 'lost' lines through interpolation or other means.

Read about other impacts of this flare:

http://sxi.ngdc.noaa.gov/sxi_greatest.html
 

Urwumpe

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The strongest geomagnetic event I ever witnessed myself as adult resulted in me hearing a local radio station from Madrid (as much as my Spanish allowed), about 2000 km away, for about 4 minutes while driving with my car through a village on my way to university - instead of the local rock station that I usually hear. The village of Lehre is right at the border between two frequency cells, which means the antenna booster of my cars radio had already been working hard to receive some weak signals - and the ionosphere reflection from Madrid was suddenly much stronger than the weak local signals. The receiver frequency was 104.5 MHz, in case somebody can tell by it, which station I was receiving.

During the few minutes of Spanish, as much as I understood was the opening of a new shopping mall there and some municipal politics. Sadly I stopped learning Spanish after the essential insults and curses you need as teenager.
 

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Extreme solar storms could be more common than expected


Oct 27, 2015 11:20pm CET

Analysis of ice cores finds two severe events occurred in the last 1,300 years.

Scientists studying ancient ice cores extracted from Greenland and Antarctica have found further evidence of two very powerful solar storms in the last 1,300 years, raising concerns about similar events in the future. Extreme solar storms pose a threat to all forms of electronic technology.

In 2012, Japanese scientists first reported the discovery of a spike of carbon-14 in cedar trees on that island during the AD 774-775 time frame. Since then, similar spikes have been observed in tree rings from the same era obtained on other continents. And thanks to a college biochemistry student, scientists have rooted the event in history through a reference in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which cites a “red crucifix” appearing in the heavens after sunset in the year 774.

It hasn't been entirely clear what caused this radioactive spike, however, and exotic theories such as a giant comet hitting the Sun or a nearby supernova have been put forward to explain it. Now researchers led by geologist Raimund Muscheler of Lund University in Sweden say they have solved the mystery of both the 774-775 AD event as well as a similar one in 993-994 AD. In addition to carbon-14, they have linked radioactive beryllium to both events, firmly establishing them as solar flares.

“In this study we have aimed to work systematically to find the cause for these events," Muscheler said. "We have now found corresponding increases for exactly the same periods in ice cores. With these new results it is possible to rule out all other suggested explanations and thereby confirm extreme solar storms as the cause of these mysterious radiocarbon increases.”

The new analysis of these past solar storms also confirms that they were several times stronger than the most intense solar storms that have been recorded on Earth. The largest solar flare ever measured came in 1859, during the so-called Carrington Event. Named for British astronomer Richard Christopher Carrington who discovered and tracked the solar outburst, the event disrupted telegraph service around the world.

In 2013, Lloyd's of London and the Atmospheric and Environmental Research Center estimated that the duration of power outages during a Carrington-like event today could last five months or longer for 20 to 40 million Americans at a total economic cost of $0.6-2.6 trillion.

Additionally, were an event the magnitude of the AD 774 or AD 993 solar storms to occur today, the study authors say it would critically disrupt satellite-based technology and means of communication. They urged a reassessment of the risks associated with very intense solar storms, which may very well occur more frequently than currently believed.

Nature Communications, 2015. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9611 (About DOIs).

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/extreme-solar-storms-could-be-more-common-than-expected/
 
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