Signs In The Sun, The Moon, And The Stars
How coming solar storms could cripple world's economy
Published On Thu Sep 23 2010
Toronto Star
Debra Black Staff Reporter
Severe solar weather could knock out electrical and satellite
communication infrastructure on Earth in 2012 or 2013, according to a
NASA scientist who is director of the space agency’s Heliophysics
division.
The calculation – albeit imprecise – of when the solar storms will hit
is based on the magnetic cycle of the sun as it waxes and wanes over 22
years, said Dr. Richard Fisher. During those 22 years sun spots or
solar flares ebb and flow over an 11-year period. The next peak in
those sun spots is expected to be around 2013 or 2012.
“We don’t have a physical theory that lets us predict how severe or the
magnitude of how strong this peak will be,” he explained in an
interview with the Star. Or even when exactly it will strike.
But when it comes, it could have serious effects – potentially
disabling our worldwide telecommunication, electrical, commercial
airline, shipping and navigation systems.
In an article on the NASA website Fisher describes the sun as “waking
up from a deep slumber and in the next few years we expect to see much
higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological
society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms.”
The consequences of these solar weather episodes — known in the
scientific literature as coronal mass ejections or solar flares or
solar particle events — have become more profound and more apparent as
society has developed technology, Fisher said.
During the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Middle Ages the solar
flares did not affect much. With the development of technology and the
use of electricity and electrical power solar flares and solar magnetic
activity began to have an impact on the earth and society.
Solar magnetic activity has an impact on the earth’s ionosphere — or
the charged part of the earth’s atmosphere. And those changes can knock
out radio communication, smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel,
electrical power, hospitals and financial networks.
According to the National Academy of Sciences a “century-class” solar
storm — a very rare extreme solar storm — could cause twenty times more
economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.
The intercontinental power transmission grid could potentially be
crippled by intense sun activity. Flare events send up big waves of
charge particles that occasionally create a pulse in the electrical
transmission lines, Fisher said. The result is a burn out, with power
down for hours, maybe even days.
This happened in March, 1989 during a Quebec power outage which was
caused by a geomagnetic storm which caused a the Hydro-Québec power
failure which left 6 million people in the Canadian province of Quebec
without power for 9 or more hours. A similar event happened in South
Africa during the last solar cycle, he said.
Scientists are now looking at ways to study solar activity more closely
and fine tune a way of predicting them so steps can be taken to perhaps
alleviate any serious damage.
A Space Weather Enterprise Forum has been meeting for the past four
years to examine the impact of space weather and look at possible ways
to protect the public.
Already some sectors take steps to avoid any problems from solar
storms. Fisher points to the commercial shipping and oil exploration
business that often cease work or travel when the sun is active and the
ionosphere is charging because of the fear that errors in their
navigation systems will occur due to sun activity. And commercial
airlines – which make about 10,000 transpolar flights a year – often
choose to reroute planes away from the North Pole during active solar
periods.
“We need to plan and understand the nature of the threat,” he said.
“It’s a public policy issue.”
“We do have a societal infrastructure that extends up to space. We have
satellite communications. We have GPS. When we have connections with
space we’re into the realm of the sun. That’s the driver out there.”