People also recorded electric surges in telegraph lines. Before the 19th century, the only sign of a solar superstorm would be the Northern or Southern Lights-auroras extending unusually far from the poles.ĭuring the Carrington Event of 1895, the strongest solar storm ever recorded, witnesses saw the Northern Lights stretching down all the way to the Caribbean. Space weather wasn’t really on humankind’s radar until we began to develop more advanced forms of technology, particularly electrical technology. Civil Aviation Authority estimates the global aviation industry would need two weeks to recover from a superstorm. The impact of superstorms is gargantuan, since they can affect airliners and other technologies and equipment around the world, all at once. The sun’s activity follows a quasi-regular fluctuation every eleven years, known as the solar cycle.Įven rarer are the notorious superstorms, known to occur around once in a century. But they are difficult to forecast and often seem to appear at random. The big ones, which can incite geomagnetic storms, appear a few times per year on average. “In the worst case scenarios, space weather events could inflict air travelers with high amounts of radiation, perhaps more than one year of natural levels in just a few seconds.”Īs the sun’s surface is in a constant state of commotion, most of these events are frequent but negligible. And in the worst case scenarios, space weather events could inflict air travelers with high amounts of radiation, perhaps more than one year of natural levels in just a few seconds. Highly energized particles could damage satellites and lead to a cascade of problems further down in aircraft navigation. Or space weather can form irregularities in Earth’s ionosphere, a layer of high concentrations of ions and free electrons-stopping the reflection of radio waves and cutting off communications between technologies. If their course brings them to Earth’s upper atmosphere, they have many ways to affect technology on and, particularly, around the planet.įast particles zipping through space, such as protons, can hit atoms in the superconductors in airplanes’ and satellites’ circuitry, at high enough altitudes where the planet’s atmosphere is too thin to slow them down. Space weather involves the abrupt release of X-rays, highly energetic subatomic particles, and big chunks of plasma (magnetized solar material) into space. High-frequency radio communications in the polar regions can also be impacted.” Awareness of so-called space weather effects has been increasing over the last years, with regulatory bodies and airlines scrambling to catch up.īoth events were the result of intense bursts of light on the sun’s surface, one of the kinds of phenomena that make up space weather. “This can pose a hazard for flight crew and passengers as well as for avionics. “The largest solar radiation storms can result in enhanced radiation at aviation flight levels,” Hazel Bain, a research scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) at the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Daily Beast. But according to reports by aviation regulators, the issue is not whether it will happen, but when.Įruptive events on the sun’s surface do not directly affect life on Earth but they are a known threat to aviation and other technologies. This is a hypothetical scenario-as far as has been documented by modern aviation records, nothing of this sort of impending disaster has ever actually happened. Dozens of other pilots are experiencing the same issue in their own cockpits at the moment. The pilot realizes that the plane should move a few thousand feet lower and asks the traffic control for permission, only to find that communication has cut out. Almost simultaneously, a warning from the local air traffic control arrives, letting flights know that an intense solar event has started. After a few seconds, the radiation counter begins to tick up. A passenger jet is flying steadily over Alaska when the pilot notices that the coordinates on the console look incorrect.
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