Solar Storms
“The greatest threat our world will ever face is coming, and we are not ready for it at all”
Introduction
The greatest threat facing our generation is not climate change or war. It is not a series of earthquakes or famines. The greatest danger facing the next generations is a massive solar storm. Massive solar storms have happened before, and even with almost no electrical infrastructure, disasters fell upon the diminutive version of an electrical grid the earth then boasted. If such a disaster was to befall earth today, there would be a complete electrical grid failure. Although some precautions are being taken against future massive solar storms, and people are being warned about the immense damages communications and the electrical grid would face, the general populous is not informed about this, and they should be.
Basic background information
A solar storm is an amalgamation of many types of energy and material ejecta that originate from the sun, and they are often accompanied by geomagnetic storms, which are when the earth’s magnetosphere is disturbed. The basic constituents of a solar storm can be solar flares, CMEs (coronal mass ejection), and SPEs (solar proton event). A solar flare releases high energy particles such as energized protons, but the real effect lies with the colossal amounts of energy emitted throughout the energy spectrum. CMEs release high energy radiation as well as clouds of incredibly hot ionized particles, which are also known as plasma. The plasma interacts with the earth’s magnetosphere and weakens it, not only leaving the earth more susceptible to the sun’s harmful radiation and the plasma and radiation from the remnants of the CME. but also increases the chance of sudden electrical discharges. An SPE is another type of event that can impact the earth during a solar storm. In short, an SPE occurs when protons become hyper-accelerated by one of many ways. These hyper-accelerated particles can become supercharged, and they can be very destructive to many kinds of satellites and other spacecraft.
Why they are a threat
Solar storms are a threat to modern society because of the widespread damage they can cause to space crafts and communications at the atmospheric level. The majority of the damage that a solar flare deals is in radio communications. Radio communications depend on high-frequency (HF) radio wave propagation in the ionosphere, which is the electrically charged layer of the atmosphere, and these frequencies can be impacted by solar flares. According to NOAA, “[the] photons ionize the atmosphere and create an enhancement of the D layer of the ionosphere. This enhanced D-layer acts both as a reflector of radio waves at some frequencies and an absorber of waves at other frequencies” (NOAA). The photons from the solar flare change the ionization levels in the lower ionosphere, which are vital to radio communications. Radio communications are integral to modern life, as GPS systems are reliant on radio communications, and disrupting GPS systems would cause all sorts of mayhem. SPEs also can cause great amounts of damage to satellites, which tie into atmospheric communications. SPEs “occur(s) when protons emitted by the Sun become accelerated either close to the Sun during a flare or in interplanetary space by coronal mass ejection (CME) shocks” (Hu 1). These super-accelerated protons are highly charged. According to researcher James Marusek, their charges usually vary on the scale of 10s of mega electron-volts, from 10-100 MeV, but some particles can be charged to up to 1 GeV. The higher the charge of an energized particle in an SPE, the faster it travels, and thus the faster it reaches earth. At an energy level of 1 GeV, particles can travel at up to ⅞ of the speed of light, and they can reach earth in mere minutes (Marusek). These particles can interfere with satellites and spacecraft by depositing large amounts of radiation in them. Because this can be enormously dangerous for astronauts, this can severely inhibit both future growths into the field of space exploration, and it can also derail future NASA funded manned missions.
Likelihood of disaster
A massive solar storm like the Carrington Event of 1859 is quite likely to happen again in the foreseeable future. Solar storms are dependent on sunspots. A sunspot is a location on the sun where the magnetic fields on the sun have stopped circulating and they have become tangled. When this happens the surface of the sun above the tangled magnetic field lines cools down and darkens in color. Eventually, these spots of high tension ‘break’ and they release their energy in massive quantities, and the different components of solar storms previously mentioned emerge (Sarp and Kilçik). Sunspots have an activity cycle of 11 years called the Saros cycle. Each Saros cycle contains a maximum and a minimum of sunspot activity. While it is impossible to exactly predict when a Carrington-type storm will hit earth, many experts believe that a solar storm of a high, or even a similar magnitude will not hit earth in one of the next solar maximums. Those believing that think that events like that are so unlikely because they would need to hit the earth, and the earth can be anywhere on its huge orbit ecliptic. According to Dr. Sten Odenwald of NASA, “The number of sunspots during the peak year, called sunspot maximum, can vary from as few as 50 to as many as 260, they are very unpredictable, and solar weather depends on them” (3). This shows that the sunspot cycle is very unreliable. The 23rd solar cycle was expected to be a quiet cycle, but there was a superstorm in that same cycle that the earth just escaped, as the damage a solar storm incurs upon earth depends on whether or not its trajectory will impact the earth’s orbit around the sun (Möstl et al.). In an interview between Dr. Phillips of NASA and Dr. Baker from the University of Colorado and her colleagues, Dr. Phillips said that the earth is “incredibly fortunate that the 2012 eruption happened when it did”, because if the storm had occurred one week earlier, the earth would be directly in the line of fire. A colleague of Baker’s calculated that there is a 12% chance of a Carrington-type storm hitting earth within the next 10 years (Phillips). Scholars who think that the earth is not due for a massive solar storm are ignoring obvious evidence showing that the earth has been lucky so far. Eventually, we won’t be so lucky and we’ll be hit, and we need to be prepared, especially considering how little pinpoint accuracy there is in solar storm forecasting.
Greatest threat
CMEs would cause the most damage of all types of solar storm components. Low level CMEs generally cause only disturbances around the poles due to a ring current enveloping the magnetosphere, but stronger ones can wreak havoc (Kutiev et al.). In the documentation of an interview between NASA researcher Antti Pulkkinen and National Geographic journalist Victoria Jaggard, Pulkkinen said: “When the [CME] cloud reaches our magnetosphere, its charged particles become electromagnetically coupled to earth's magnetic field, generating large electrical currents millions of amperes strong” (14). Jaggard then proceeded to write that “the sprawling electrical grid on earth's surface then acts like an antenna, allowing these currents to flow into transmission lines” (14). Together, these are colloquially called the antenna effect, and they show how CMEs impact the earth’s magnetosphere and how they can create dangerous electrical surges by concentrating the sudden increases in electric potential energy into power lines. CMEs are the most dangerous of the various types of solar weather. CMEs can overpower the earth’s magnetosphere and send shocks of electricity measuring up to and above millions of amperes through the electrical grid after it focuses its energy into the electrical grid. The electrical grid transfers the energy captured from the CME via long-line power delivery systems, which are basically transcontinental transmission lines. These lines depend on the ability of transformers to safely transmit the electrical currents, and transformers are only built to handle what they need to be able to handle from an industrial standpoint (Butt 18). Handling a large GIC (geomagnetically induced current), is beyond the capabilities of almost all transformers. GICs are caused by the magnitude of the derivative in a geomagnetic field. The derivative of a GIC is how fast the rate of change of the measure of the GIC changes, and it is measured in nanoteslas per minute. The famous event of the disruptive solar storm of Quebec in 1989 clocked in at 480 nT/min. That solar storm was enough to cut power to millions and it was a loss of billions of dollars in repairs and industry. The great storm of 1921-22 was around 10 times as powerful as the Quebec storm at ~5000 nT/min, but the damage it caused was minimal because of the relative infancy of the electrical grid (Butt 19). Almost all if not all high-end modern industrial transformers would be destroyed at such a high power geomagnetic storm. According to Harvard scientist Yousaf Butt, “Excessive levels of internal heating brought on by strong flux when GICs cause the magnetic core of a transformer to saturate and to spill flux outside the normal steel magnetic circuit” (20). Once the current cannot be contained in the magnet, it will flood the rest of the transformers in close proximity with uncontrolled electricity. A chain collapse is very close when a lot of transformers break down and flood the grid with uncontrolled electricity. After a major solar storm, most if not all transformers will die, but assuming a decent amount of transformers survive, they would need to reboot the grid while repairs and replacements are taking place. However, “they might not be able to muster enough juice to reboot the grid” (Kiger 6). If that were to happen, it would be known as a ‘black start’. A black start is notoriously difficult to fix, and the only fix for this would be to replace much of the grid, or maybe even the entire grid if the transformer model that was being used before the solar storm is outdated, as are most models of current transformers. The modern electrical grid has not seen anything on the level of the Carrington event, or even the great storm of 1921-22, and if such an event were to occur today, the world would be shell shocked at the widespread devastation to both the electrical grid and the economy.
Conclusion
If a massive solar storm were to happen tomorrow, the damage to the electric grid and industry would be unparalleled by anything we have ever seen. A massive solar storm is a unique threat that we have never truly been able to comprehend. If the type of damage that was seen in Quebec with a moderate solar storm is consistent with a massive solar storm, that damage could ruin the modern world. The threat of a solar storm is high as always, and we have to be prepared for one by researching how they work to see if we can predict them.
Works cited
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