High-speed solar winds from a “hole” in the sun’s atmosphere will rub off on Earth’s magnetic field on Wednesday (August 3), causing a small G-1 geomagnetic storm.
Meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) made the prediction after observing “gaseous material flowing from a hole in the southern solar atmosphere.” according to spaceweather.com.
Coronal holes are areas of the Sun’s upper atmosphere where our star’s electrified gas (or plasma) is cooler and less dense. These holes are also where the sun is magnetic field the lines, instead of turning back on themselves, radiate out into space. This allows the solar material to leave in a stream that travels at speeds of up to 1.8 million miles per hour (2.9 million kilometers per hour), according to the exploratory, a science museum in San Francisco.
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On planets with strong magnetic fields, like ours, this shower of solar debris is absorbed, causing geomagnetic storms. During these storms, Earth’s magnetic field it is slightly compressed by the waves of highly energetic particles. These particles are swept along magnetic field lines near the poles and shake up molecules in the atmosphere, releasing energy in the form of light to create colorful auroras, similar to those that make up the northern lights.
The storm produced by these debris will be weak. As a G1 geomagnetic storm, it has the potential to cause small fluctuations in power grids and affect some functions of satellites, including mobile devices and GPS systems. It will also bring the aurora com as far south as Michigan and Maine.
The most extreme geomagnetic storms can disrupt our planet’s magnetic field with enough force to send satellites crashing to Earth, Live Science previously reported, and scientists have warned that extreme geomagnetic storms could even bring down the Internet. Debris from the sun, or coronal mass ejections (CMEs), typically takes 15 to 18 hours to reach Earth, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center.
This storm comes as the sun enters the most active phase of its roughly 11-year solar cycle.
Astronomers have known since 1775 that solar activity rises and falls in cycles, but recently, the sun has been more active than expected, with nearly twice as many sunspot occurrences as predicted by NOAA. Scientists predict that the sun’s activity will increase steadily over the next few years, reaching a general maximum in 2025 before declining again. A paper published July 20 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics proposed a new model for the sun’s activity by separately counting sunspots in each hemisphere, a method the paper’s researchers argue could be used to make forecasts more accurate plots.
Scientists believe that the largest solar storm ever witnessed in modern history was the Carrington event of 1859, which released about the same energy as 10 billion 1-megaton atomic bombs. After crashing into Earth, the powerful stream of solar particles fried telegraph systems around the world and caused auroras brighter than the light of a full moon to appear as far south as the Caribbean. If a similar event were to happen today, scientists warn, it would cause billions of dollars in damage and cause widespread blackouts, like the 1989 solar storm that released a billion-ton gas plume and caused a worldwide blackout. Canadian province of Quebec, NASA reported.
Originally published in Live Science.