Science
Destructive Super Solar Storms Hit Us Every 25 Years
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Solar storms powerful enough to wreak havoc on electronic equipment strike Earth every 25 years, according to a new study. And less powerful—yet still dangerous—storms occur every three years or so. This conclusion comes from a team of scientists from the the University of Warwick and the British Antarctic Survey.
These powerful storms can disrupt electronic equipment, including communication equipment, aviation equipment, power grids, and satellites.
The team identifies two types of powerful magnetic storms: ‘great super storms’ are the most powerful and occur every 25 years on average. The weaker but still dangerous ‘severe super storms’ occur every three years on average.
The new paper presenting these results is titled “Using the aa index over the last 14 solar cycles to characterize extreme geomagnetic activity.” It’s published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The lead author is Dr. S.C. Chapman from the University of Warwick.
Solar storm are also called geomagnetic storms. They’re caused by disturbances in the Sun that send charged particles into space. When those particles strike Earth’s magnetosphere, they cause the storm. The particles can come from coronal mass ejections (CME), co-rotating interaction regions (CIR), and coronal holes that emit a high-speed stream of solar wind that can travel twice as fast as normal solar wind.
The most famous geomagnetic storm is the Carrington Event of 1859. The Carrington Event is also the most powerful geomagnetic storm ever recorded. That storm knocked out some telegraph systems in different parts of the world, started some fires, and even shocked some telegraph operators.
More recently, a 1989 storm in Quebec disrupted the power distribution system, and created powerful auroras that were seen as far south as the state of Texas.
Solar storms pose an increasing risk as our world becomes more linked electronically. Not just our power distribution systems, but our global communications systems, too. Our satellites might be the most vulnerable, and modern society relies on them more than many people realize. It’s been calculated that a storm as powerful as the Carrington Event, if it were occur today, would cause billions, possibly even trillions of dollars worth of damage.
Scientists are interested in these storms because of the need to predict them. This new paper is based on magnetic field data going back 150 years. The authors say they can detect how many powerful storms there were in that time period, and how often they occurred.
In a press release, lead author Professor Sandra Chapman, from the University of Warwick’s Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics, said: “These super-storms are rare events but estimating their chance of occurrence is an important part of planning the level of mitigation needed to protect critical national infrastructure.”
In their paper, the authors show that ‘severe’ magnetic storms occurred in 42 out of the last 150 years, or about every three years. The more powerful ‘great’ super-storms occurred in 6 years out of 150, or about every 25 years. Usually these storms only last a few days, but they can still be very disruptive to modern technology. Super-storms can cause power blackouts, disrupt or damage satellites, disrupt aviation and cause temporary loss of GPS signals and radio communications. (GPS is not just for navigation. Believe it or not, the modern banking system relies heavily on GPS to synchronize financial transactions.)
“This research proposes a new method to approach historical data, to provide a better picture of the chance of occurrence of super-storms and what super-storm activity we are likely to see in the future,” said Chapman.
The Carrington Event was not part of the study, because the data the researchers looked at doesn’t go back that far. Their magnetic field data is from the opposite ends of the Earth, from stations in the UK and Australia. It covers the last 14 solar cycles, dating back to well before the space age.
Their analysis shows that super storms as powerful as the Carrington Event may be more common than thought, and that they can happen at any time, with very little warning.
Professor Richard Horne, who leads Space Weather at the British Antarctic Survey, said: “Our research shows that a super-storm can happen more often than we thought. Don’t be misled by the stats, it can happen any time, we simply don’t know when and right now we can’t predict when.”
These storms are born in the Sun, but space weather can be monitored by observing changes in the magnetic field at the earth’s surface. There’s high quality data from multiple stations on Earth going back to the start of the space age, around 1957. Scientists know that the sun has an approximately 11-year cycle of activity, and during that cycle the Sun varies in intensity. The problem is that there’s not enough of this data. It only covers five solar cycles.
A better understanding of powerful solar storms and their rate of occurrence requires a larger data set spanning more solar cycles. In this new study, the researchers went back further in time. They looked at the aa geomagnetic index, which comes from sites in the UK and Australia, at opposite ends of the Earth. The aa index cancels out Earth’s background field, and reaches back 150 years, or 14 solar cycles. It’s the longest, almost continuous record of changes in magnetic fields across the earth’s surface.
The team used annual averages from the top few percent of the aa index to reach their conclusion. That’s how they found that a ‘severe’ super-storm occurred in 42 years out of 150, and the rarer but more powerful ‘great’ super-storm occurred in 6 years out of 150. That means these extreme storms occur once in every 25 years. As an example, the 1989 storm that caused a major power blackout of Quebec was a great storm.
A few years ago there was a near miss. In 2012, the Sun unleashed a powerful burst from an exceptionally large and strong coronal mass ejection. Luckily for us, Earth was not in its path. But data showed that it would have been a super storm if it had struck us.
The image above includes an image of Earth to show the size of the CME compared to the size of Earth.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO
There’s more and more interest in the Sun and the space weather it sends our way. As our economy and way of life become more and more reliant on satellites, communications, and power grids, governments and agencies have made understanding and predicting space weather a priority.
There are several spacecraft studying the Sun right now, including SOHO (Solar Heliospheric Observatory), SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory), and the Parker Solar Probe. These spacecraft are growing our understanding of the Sun, and our ability to predict these dangerous storms.
SpaceX sent up the 30th launch from the Space Coast for the year on the evening of April 23, a mission that also featured the company’s 300th successful booster recovery.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites blasted off at 6:17 p.m. Eastern time from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40.
The first-stage booster set a milestone of the 300th time a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy booster made a successful recovery landing, and the 270th time SpaceX has reflown a booster.
This particular booster made its ninth trip to space, a resume that includes one human spaceflight, Crew-6. It made its latest recovery landing downrange on the droneship Just Read the Instructions in the Atlantic Ocean.
The company’s first successful booster recovery came in December 2015, and it has not had a failed booster landing since February 2021.
The current record holder for flights flew 11 days ago making its 20th trip off the launch pad.
SpaceX has been responsible for all but two of the launches this year from either Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral with United Launch Alliance having launched the other two.
SpaceX could knock out more launches before the end of the month, putting the Space Coast on pace to hit more than 90 by the end of the year, but the rate of launches by SpaceX is also set to pick up for the remainder of the year with some turnaround times at the Cape’s SLC-40 coming in less than three days.
That could amp up frequency so the Space Coast could surpass 100 launches before the end of the year, with the majority coming from SpaceX. It hosted 72 launches in 2023.
More launches from ULA are on tap as well, though, including the May 6 launch atop an Atlas V rocket of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner with a pair of NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.
ULA is also preparing for the second launch ever of its new Vulcan Centaur rocket, which recently received its second Blue Origin BE-4 engine and is just waiting on the payload, Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spacecraft, to make its way to the Space Coast.
Blue Origin has its own rocket it wants to launch this year as well, with New Glenn making its debut as early as September, according to SLD 45’s range manifest.
2024 Orlando Sentinel. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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The common loon, that icon of northern wilderness, is under threat from climate change due to declining water clarity. Published earlier this month in the journal Ecology, a study conducted by biologists from Chapman University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the U.S. has demonstrated the first clear evidence of an effect of climate change on this species whose distinct call is so tied to the soundscape of Canada’s lakes and wetlands.
Through the course of their research, the scientists found that July rainfall results in reduced July water clarify in loon territories in Northern Wisconsin. In turn, this makes it difficult for adult loons to find and capture their prey — mainly small fish — underwater, meaning they are unable to meet their chicks’ metabolic needs. Undernourished, the chicks face higher mortality rates. The consistent foraging techniques used by loons across their range means this impact is likely echoed wherever they are found — from Alaska to Canada to Iceland.
The researchers used Landsat imagery to find that there has been a 25-year consistent decline in water clarity, and during this period, body weights of adult loon and chicks alike have also declined. With July being the month of most rapid growth in young loons, the study also pinpointed water clarity in July as being the greatest predictor of loon body weight.
One explanation for why heavier rainfall leads to reduced water clarity is the rain might carry dissolved organic matter into lakes from adjacent streams and shoreline areas. Lawn fertilizers, pet waste and septic system leaks may also be to blame.
The researchers, led by Chapman University professor Walter Piper, hope to use these insights to further conservation efforts for this bird Piper describes as both “so beloved and so poorly understood.”
Return of the king
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The artwork and publicity materials showcasing a giant salmon that lived five million years ago were ready to go to promote a new exhibit, when the discovery of two fossilized skulls immediately changed what researchers knew about the fish.
Initial fossil discoveries of the 2.7-metre-long salmon in Oregon in the 1970s were incomplete and had led researchers to mistakenly suggest the fish had fang-like teeth.
It was dubbed the “sabre-toothed salmon” and became a kind of mascot for the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon, says researcher Edward Davis.
But then came discovery of two skulls in 2014.
Davis, a member of the team that found the skulls, says it wasn’t until they got back to the lab that he realized the significance of the discovery that has led to the renaming of the fish in a new, peer-reviewed study.
“There were these two skulls staring at me with sideways teeth,” says Davis, an associate professor in the department of earth sciences at the university.
In that position, the tusk-like teeth could not have been used for biting, he says.
“That was definitely a surprising moment,” says Davis, who serves as director of the Condon Fossil Collection at the university’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History.
“I realized that all of the artwork and all of the publicity materials and bumper stickers and buttons and T-shirts we had just made two months prior, for the new exhibit, were all out of date,” he says with a laugh.
Davis is co-author of the new study in the journal PLOS One, which renames the giant fish the “spike-toothed salmon.”
It says the salmon used the tusk-like spikes for building nests to spawn, and as defence mechanisms against predators and other salmon.
The salmon lived about five million years ago at a time when Earth was transitioning from warmer to relatively cooler conditions, Davis says.
It’s hard to know exactly why the relatives of today’s sockeye went extinct, but Davis says the cooler conditions would have affected the productivity of the Pacific Ocean and the amount of rain feeding rivers that served as their spawning areas.
Another co-author, Brian Sidlauskas, says a fish the size of the spike-toothed salmon must have been targeted by predators such as killer whales or sharks.
“I like to think … it’s almost like a sledgehammer, these salmon swinging their head back and forth in order to fend off things that might want to feast on them,” he says.
Sidlauskas says analysis by the lead author of the paper, Kerin Claeson, found both male and female salmon had the “multi-functional” spike-tooth feature.
“That’s part of our reason for hypothesizing that this tooth is multi-functional … It could easily be for digging out nests,” he says.
“Think about how big the (nest) would have to be for an animal of this size, and then carving it out in what’s probably pretty shallow water; and so having an extra digging tool attached to your head could be really useful.”
Sidlauskas says the giant salmon help researchers understand the boundaries of what’s possible with the evolution of salmon, but they also capture the human imagination and a sense of wonder about what’s possible on Earth.
“I think it helps us value a little more what we do still have, or I hope that it does. That animal is no longer with us, but it is a product of the same biosphere that sustains us.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2024.
Brenna Owen, The Canadian Press
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