NEWS: NOAA Issues First Severe Geomagnetic Storm Watch Since 2005

This episode discusses the severe geomagnetic storm expected to hit Earth, caused by solar activity including coronal mass ejections.

1. Severe geomagnetic storms are rare and can have significant impacts on Earth's technology and infrastructure.
2. The episode discusses the 1859 Carrington Event, highlighting its historical significance and the potential for similar events today.
3. NOAA monitors solar activity closely to provide warnings and help mitigate the effects of geomagnetic storms.
4. The episode explains the scientific background of solar storms, including solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
5. It emphasizes the importance of preparedness and the existing strategies to protect critical infrastructure and space assets from solar phenomena.

1. Introduction to the Storm

Regina Barbour introduces the severe geomagnetic storm and its origins from solar activity. Regina Barbour: "That's a storm caused by activity on the sun's surface, like a coronal mass ejection."

2. Historical Context

Discussion of the 1859 Carrington Event and its effects on Earth, providing a historical perspective on solar storms. Samayya Farid: "People knew about the aurora, but they didn't know it was related to the sun."

3. Potential Impacts

Exploration of how a similar event today could disrupt modern technology and infrastructure. Samayya Farid: "It's estimated that that kind of event right now will be catastrophic across the globe."

4. Current Preparedness

Discussion on current strategies and international cooperation to mitigate the effects of severe solar storms. Samayya Farid: "So I know that there's a council that has been set up that is a collaboration between all the agencies."

1. Stay informed about solar weather through reliable sources to prepare for potential disruptions.
2. Understand the basics of how solar storms affect Earth to better appreciate their impact.
3. Develop a personal and community preparedness plan for extended power outages.
4. Follow guidelines from authorities during severe solar weather for safety measures.
5. Participate in community awareness programs about solar weather and its impacts.

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observed a cluster of sunspots on the surface of the sun this week. With them came solar flares that kicked off a severe geomagnetic storm. That storm is expected to last throughout the weekend as at least five coronal mass ejections — chunks of the sun — are flung out into space, towards Earth! NOAA uses a five point scale to rate these storms, and this weekend's storm is a G4. It's expected to produce auroras as far south as Alabama. To contextualize this storm, we are looking back at the largest solar storm on record: the Carrington Event.

People

Regina Barbour, Sean Dahl, Samayya Farid

Companies

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Samayya Farid

Content Warnings:

None

NPR Sponsor
Support for this NPR podcast and the following message come from ezcader, committed to helping companies from nonprofits to the Fortune 500, find food for meetings and company events with online ordering and 24/7 live support. Learn more@easycater.com this message comes from NPR sponsor Grammarly. 96% of users report that Grammarly helps them craft more impactful writing. Save time with one click and go from editing drafts in hours to seconds. By understanding your writing and context, Grammarly provides relevant, personalized suggestions to help your team make their point and move faster. Make a bigger impact at work. Sign up and download for free@Grammarly.com. Podcast that's Grammarly.com podcast Grammarly easier said.

Short Wavers
Done hey, short wavers.

Regina Barbour
Regina Barbour here with a special report of shortwave in time for the arrival of a huge geomagnetic storm this weekend. That's a storm caused by activity on the sun's surface, like a coronal mass ejection where chunks of the sun are flung out into space, sometimes towards Earth.

Sean Dahl
We have a very rare event on our hand. The last time that we issued a G four watch, which is a geomagnetic storm watch for severe levels, was 2005.

Regina Barbour
Sean Dahl is a project service coordinator with the National oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction center.

He kicked off a press conference about the event Friday. The agency monitors the sun's activity, and this week they noticed a large cluster of sunspots on the surface of our nearest star. With those sunspots came flares that kicked off this geomagnetic storm Wednesday.

Since then, there has been at least five coronal mass ejections, or cmes, pointed towards Earth.

Sean Dahl
Some are catching up with other ones. So our level of confidence is high that we will have an arrival of this CME, or the beginning of these cmes, as early as this evening, eastern daylight time, kind of later in the evening. Perhaps.

Regina Barbour
Scientists think the storm could last through Sunday.

Sean Dahl
We have notified all of our infrastructure operators that we coordinate with, such as communication folks, satellite operators, and of course the power grid here in North America. So they are able and prepared to take mitigation efforts as much as possible.

Regina Barbour
But one good thing about geomagnetic storms is that they can produce auroras, which in the northern hemisphere are called the northern lights.

This storm is expected to be so large that people as far south as Alabama may be able to see these rare auroras.

We want to contextualize this weekend storm by sharing the story of the biggest recorded geomagnetic storm to hit earth and how these storms are made. That storm happened almost 200 years ago, before the American Civil War. Then the northern lights were seen as far south as Cuba. Enjoy the show.

Short Wavers
You're listening to short wave from NPR.

In 1859, an english scientist named Richard Carrington spent much of his time watching the sun's activity.

And in September of that year, he noticed something next to a large sunspot, one of those dark areas on the.

Samayya Farid
Sun'S surface, really big flash, and he wasn't sure what happened.

Short Wavers
Doctor Samayya Farid is a solar physicist at Yale University.

Samayya Farid
He thought there was some kind of accident with the instrument or something like that.

Short Wavers
Less than a day later, on the other side of the world, a group of gold miners in the Rockies woke up to what they thought was the sunrise.

Samayya Farid
Come out the tents, and people have started, you know, going about the date, and they realize, wait, the sun is not rising. This is actually just.

Short Wavers
They were seeing the aurora borealis, the northern lights. This aurora was so huge, it was witnessed in places where it's rarely seen, like Cuba. This event even caused strong southern lights in places like Chile and Colombia.

And it was doing weird things to the technology of the era. Telegraph machines sparked shocking operators catching the telegraph paper on fire. And some of the machines stopped working completely. And in one case, an unplugged telegraph machine continued operating, powered by a rogue current in the atmosphere. What Richard Carrington observed that day taught us a lot about the sun and space weather.

Samayya Farid
People knew about the aurora, but they didn't know it was related to the sun. So he was the first person to kind of correlate the two.

Regina Barbour
Today on the show, the Carrington event. Plus, we'll learn about what's happening on the surface of the sun and what may happen the next time a massive solar storm like the one in 1859 hits earth. Im Regina Barbour. Youre listening to short wave, the science podcast from NPR.

NPR Sponsor
This message comes from NPR sponsor Yahoo Finance. Think youve done it all when it comes to your financial future. Take those investments to the next level with Yahoo Finance. Whether youre a seasoned investor or are looking for that extra guidance, Yahoo Finance gives you all the tools and data you need in one place. For comprehensive financial news and analysis, visit the brand behind every great investor, Yahoo Finance.com comma, the number one financial destination.

PNC Bank
This episode is brought to you by PNC bank, who believes some things in life should be boring, like banking, because boring is steady, pragmatic, responsible. You dont want your bank to be exciting. Exciting is for setting trends, not banks. Thats why PNC bank strives to be boring with your money so you can be happily fulfilled with your life. PNC bank brilliantly boring since 1865 brilliantly boring since 1865 is a service mark of the PNC Financial Services Group Bank.

Short Wavers
PNC Bank National association member, FDIC a geomagnetic storm happens when the earths magnetic field fluctuates. It changes. It can be generated from the suns activity. But to understand this huge 1859 solar storm called the Carrington event, we need to understand two other things. First, solar flares. Solar flares are caused by a sudden release of high energy photons, which are particles of light and other high energy particles from the sun's atmosphere.

Samayya Farid
That's kind of the largest type of eruptive event on the sun.

Short Wavers
Solar flares release an explosion of mostly electromagnetic radiation. Some of them are white light flares. The photons that white light flares release are in the visible portion of the electromagnetic or light spectrum. But sometimes these eruptions also send matter toward Earth.

Samayya Farid
It releases sometimes a CME, which is a coronal mass ejection.

Short Wavers
These coronal mass ejections, or cmes, blast hot plasma superheated gas from the sun into space at more than a million miles per hour.

Samayya Farid
So the flare is like the bomb going off, and then the CME is like the rocks and the particles and the waves.

Short Wavers
There's a big chunk of the sun coming at us, right?

Samayya Farid
Exactly. So, yeah, it's too. Sometimes you can have a flare without a CME, and sometimes you can have a CME without a flare, but they're very also highly correlated to each other. So a lot of times we have a flare, you also have a CME.

Short Wavers
Okay, so solar flares are large explosions of electromagnetic radiation from the sun's atmosphere. And you're saying they're sometimes accompanied by these coronal mass ejections, or these cmes, which are huge plasma eruptions from the sun.

So can you tell our listeners, how do these auroras even happen? How do northern lights happen?

Samayya Farid
So a lot of people think that the particles that are causing the aurora are coming from the sun, and they do, kind of indirectly. But really, we have the earth in a magnetic field, and there's already particles inside of that magnetic field, the earth just sitting there. And so when those particles and radiation come from the sun in the CME, it interacts with Earth's magnetic field, causes it to push around all its particles, and then push those particles down inside of the earth's atmosphere. And that's what you see as the aurora, right.

Short Wavers
You're seeing these particles colliding with the hydrogen and nitrogen in the atmosphere.

So what do we think happened in the 1859 solar storm, the Carrington event. Did we see a flare and a Cme?

Samayya Farid
Yep. So we had a CME that happened before the Carrington event. That one didn't have as much impact on Earth. People did notice some aurora and then this flare, white light flare, which means that it was observed in white light. And then the CME that followed that one is what caused a lot of the disruption on earth.

Short Wavers
And not only are we having charged particles coming into our magnetic field, but we're also having a changing magnetic field. And when you have a changing magnetic field, you induce electricity. So that's another reason why those telegraph wires in 1859 got all messed up.

Samayya Farid
Yeah, exactly. It's overload of electricity generated just from those moving magnetic fields, moving quickly and generating electricity, which is nuts. It is.

Short Wavers
Right, okay. But brings us to like, because you have Earth's magnetic field changing, your energy grids are getting, like, busted. So, like, what would happen if we had a storm like that now?

Samayya Farid
Yeah. It's estimated that that kind of event right now will be catastrophic across the globe. That means no Internet, no phone, no tv, no power. And not just that, even, like, the water cleaning systems and health systems, all those things could be potentially wiped out. Anything with an electrical circuit could be potentially destroyed. You know, people have estimated it would take us years to recover, ten years to recover from one storm like that.

Short Wavers
So has anything come close to a Carrington event in recent years?

Samayya Farid
We have, but did not impact the earth. But we have seen white light flares that were the size of the keratin event. You know, it would have been very impactful if they had been directly aimed at earth.

Short Wavers
These huge events, how often do they happen?

Samayya Farid
Well, so the sun goes through a solar cycle and that happens every eleven years. When we go from having a lot of flares at solar maximum to not that many flares and solar minimum. But that large kerangin event type storm a lot of people think only happened, you know, once every ten years, at least to 100 years, it depends on which estimation.

Short Wavers
And the Carrington event happened way back in 1859.

Samayya Farid
So we're overdue past due 401, definitely, by any estimation.

Short Wavers
Makes me think of like the big earthquake in Seattle.

Regina Barbour
They're like, any day now.

Samayya Farid
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, any day, anytime, any day.

Short Wavers
But so what are we doing then? Like, what are we doing to prepare if these events are coming?

Samayya Farid
Yeah. So I know that there's a council that has been set up that is a collaboration between all the agencies, like National oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science foundation, and then NASA and Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security. So I believe that organization is called swarm space weather operations research and mitigation.

And so what it does is develop a strategy and a plan to implement how to prevent having such a catastrophic effect on the electrical system, and then what to do after that kind of event.

Short Wavers
So let's say there's even smaller storms, you know, like, how much time do we have? What would that warning be like?

Samayya Farid
Yeah, so if we have a big, large flare, it's pretty much immediate. Eight minutes is how much time it takes energy to travel from the sun to the earth, which is dangerous because astronauts and the commercial private space industry is booming now. Also, high altitude flights would be really effective because you could get extra radiation exposure. So that's almost immediate. That's eight minutes. We don't have very much warning at all, but for the cmes, for the particles that are coming with the CME, we have about two or three days warning.

Short Wavers
Okay. These coronal mass ejections, they're composed of matter, right? So they're moving super fast, but they're not traveling at the speed of light. So we have more time than a flare. That's, that sounds better.

Samayya Farid
Slightly better, you know, and we do have now we have observatories that observe the sun. Twenty four seven. The solar dynamics observatory is one of them, and it takes images of the sun every 12 seconds of the whole corona. And so if a flare goes off then, or if we see even a configuration that might cause a flare, they often will put out a flare alert.

Short Wavers
What do the astronauts do? What do satellites do? Like, what do they do to prepare?

Samayya Farid
Yeah, so they have a safety plan. So, for instance, the astronauts have a room on board the International Space Station that has denser walls to protect them from radiation. So they would all go into those rooms. And, and for satellites that are orbiting the earth, the plan is for them to turn their electronics away from the sun so that they can miss the highest energy particles. They do have a contingency plan for these type of things, but it's hard exactly to predict, but they do have a plan.

Short Wavers
So the radiation from solar flares can cause problems high in the atmosphere. And we know that here on Earth that cmes can destroy our energy grids. Have you thought about what you'd do if that were to happen? Like, have you prepared?

Samayya Farid
I haven't. I don't have, like, a bomb shelter or anything like that, you know, prepared because I'm originally from Alabama and I grew up in the country. So I feel like if I just had to walk to Alabama or go back some person in the rural area and kill a rabbit and eat it, I could do that. I'll be fine.

Short Wavers
Okay, we're going from a dark topic, a very apocalyptic scenario. But let's come back to the light, literally, because I love solar physics. How would you suggest everyday people observe all this amazing activity on our sun?

Samayya Farid
You don't have to do a lot to be able to observe the sun, but one thing you have to keep in mind is that you have to protect your eyes so you can go out on any sunny day and build something called a solar viewer, which will kind of project the shadow of the sun onto a piece of paper. And that's the similar setup to what Carrington used to observe, the sunspots. You can do that right now every day.

That's what I love the most, just watching the sheer beauty of science taking place in front of you eyes.

Short Wavers
Solar physicist Samayyah Fareed, thank you so much. Thank you so much for talking to me about everything solar. I loved it.

Samayya Farid
Thank you. I love it too. It's awesome.

Short Wavers
The producer of this episode was Eva Tessfi. Stephanie O'Neil was the editor, and Margaret Sereno checked the facts. The audio engineer for this episode was Patrick Murray. I'm Regina Barbour. Thanks for listening to the daily Science podcast from NPR.

Samayya Farid
When the economic news gets to be.

G
A bit much, listen to the indicator from Planet money. We're here for you, like your friends trying to figure out all the most confusing parts. Hearts, one story, one idea every day, all in ten minutes or less.

Sean Dahl
The indicator from Planet money, your friendly.

G
Economic sidekick from NPR.

H
This message comes from NPR sponsor Osea. This Mother's Day treat mom to healthy, glowing skin with Osea's limited edition skincare sets. Osea has been making clean, seaweed infused products for nearly 30 years. Their advanced eye care duo brightens and firms skin around your eyes, while the golden glow body trio nourishes and smooths skin all over. They both come in giftable boxes with savings up to $46 and free shipping for a limited time. Go to oseamalibu.com and use code mom for 10% off your first order. Site wide.

I
I'm Rachel Martin. You probably know how interview podcasts with famous people usually go.

Regina Barbour
There's a host, a guest, and a.

I
Light q and A. But on Wildcard we have ripped up the typical script. It's a new podcast from NPR, where I invite actors, artists and comedians to play a game using a special deck of cards to talk about some of life's biggest questions. Listen to wild card wherever you get your podcasts, only from NPR.