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Sunspot Cycle vs. the Power Grid

Last updated: October 7, 2011

From TheCityEdition.com

Whatever happens on the ground, solar phycisists expect the Sun's behavior over the next two years to impact the planet in ways rarely (if ever) experienced by modern man. As a sign of scarier things to come, a medium-sized corona mass ejection, or CME, was detected heading towards us on June 7th. While its effect was inconsequential, NASA officials lamented that another CME, emitted just a few days earlier on the far side of the Sun, was packing serious heat.

"If this event was on a collision course with the U.S., we would have had a major space weather event," Antti Pulkkinen of the Goddard Space Flight Center told the New York Times. "In this regard, we got lucky."

On Valentines Day, a trio of solar flares caused minor disruptions to radio transmissions in China and produced auroras that were visible in the United Kingdom. Incredibly, Earth dodged a bullet on that occasion as well. That's because the flares were followed by a much weaker than expected CME.

NASA released this video depicting a medium-siced CME caught leaving the Sun by the Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 7, 2011.

Last year, forecasts for the next solar maximum led the House Committee on Energy and Commerce to authorize $100 million to upgrade the nation's power grids. It wasn't much of a debate, either. The vote was 47-0, with many legislators acknowledging that a big enough solar event can knock out grids, satellites, microchip circuitry and thousands of pole transformers, all in a single blow. Significantly, once this equipment fails, most of it will require more than an overnight service call to fix. A NASA-funded study published in 2009 went so far as to suggest that electric power and communications to tens of millions of people could virtually disappear for months.

Solar physicist Sami Solanki believes an uncharacteristically high output of solar flares since the 1940's may be the prelude to record activity by 2013. "Except possibly for a few brief peaks, the Sun is more active currently than at any time in the past 11,000 years," he told a 2005 conference of his peers in Boulder, Colorado. Solanki directs the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany.

NASA funded a study by the National Academy of Sciences in 2009 that outlined the long-term consequences to the industrial world should a powerful corona mass ejection overwhelm the Earth's magnetic field.

Despite so much circustantial evidence to the contrary, some experts have recently downgraded their estimates about the next solar maximum. At a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's solar physics division in June, three studies were presented predicting a long-term lull in sunspot activity. The study authors went on to warn, however, that a repeat of the Little Ice Age was possible. This little-known interval in history lasted between 1300 and 1859, and included the timespan of the Maunder Minimum (1645 - 1715), when few sunspots were recorded. As a result, a period of intense cold gripped Europe, destroying crops and causing the River Thames to freeze over every winter.

The first Little Ice Age officially ended on September 1, 1859, when the largest solar storm in recorded history produced auroras along the Equator for a week. Called the Carrington Event, it was named after the British astronomer who witnessed the series of sunspots that erupted in a plume (otherwise known as a solar storm). Richard Carrington would go on to discover the 22-year sunspot cycle. (We're now in Cycle 24.) In 1859, the radiation spike from the Carrington CME disabled the world’s rudimentary telegraph network for a short time. Curiously, it occurred during the trough of the cycle, not its peak.

Watching and Waiting

To keep tabs on a potential doomsday scenario, the European Space Agency and NASA launched the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) in 1995. In 2006, the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) was sent up to join the vigil. Its two satellites are positioned on opposite sides of the space between the Sun and Earth. That makes a fully three-dimensional view of CME's possible. The tip-off for most solar flares is an expanding bubble of plasma on the Sun’s surface one or two days before the burst. To the naked eye, it looks like a black blotch on a bright canvass, hence the term sunspot.

NASAArtist image of the the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

Nearly 20 satellites managed by multiple space agencies, including Japan and India, are monitoring the Sun currently. On the ground, NASA's Space Environment Center tracks most of these probes. In the event of a strong CME heading towards Earth, it's the center's job to alert power grid operators and satellite controllers worldwide. In a severe solar storm, a wave of solar flare activity precedes the arrival of the CME, whose charged particles travel more slowly through space.

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Sunspot Cycle vs. the Power Grid

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A graphic rundown of some of the satellite probes and ground-based monitoring of the Sun, radioactive particles and magnetism. Unfortunately, none of this equipment can stop a CME, just give us a little warning as it barrels toward us. Credit: NASA

By reducing current on the grid and shutting down satellites, sensitive circuitry and transformers won't be overloaded. If they are, it could take months or even years to replace the equipment. However, the counter-measures come at a huge cost. As California's rolling blackouts of 2000 proved, cutting power to a grid without warning customers first can cause life-threatening outages. Officials will have to make a risk assessment, pitting deaths from traffic light failures, elevator stoppages and loss of communications against the possibility of a power grid overload. In 2006, the Discovery Channel took a closer look at this quandary in a docu-drama called Solar Storm - Perfect Disaster.

Electricity transformers take a long time to manufacture. Replacing two thousand of them on the ground, and 140 million of them on electric poles, would cost about a trillion dollars and take up to ten years.

It doesn't help that the Earth's magnetic field appears to be petering out, losing 10 percent of its charge since measurements were first taken by Carl Gauss in 1835. Some phycisists (and more than a few doomsday proponents) believe a sudden magnetic pole reversal is in the works. Geologic records show that this happens periodically and is typically accompanied by low magnetism, which is generated by the planet's iron core.

Wikimedia Commons

Artist's rendition of earth's magnetosphere as it blocks the sun's radiation. The Earth is the white spot on the neck of the blue spidery insect, portrays by the shape of the magnetic waves.

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There are several spots in the South Atlantic Ocean where such a north-south flip may have already occurred in recent years. While a reversal carries its own consequences for electric power and circuitry (including computer hard drives), what worries scientists more is the loss of a critical shield against space radiation at a time when it's needed most.

In 2007, a set of five satellite probes known as the THEMIS mission stumbled onto a breach of Earth's daylight side during a solar storm. Specially designed instruments were able to track a deluge of radioactive particles as they became trapped inside the magnetosphere. Had it been a more significant event, the radiation would have sent electrical current downward in an arc. The arc would have likely triggered a cascading failure of power grids around the world.

As it was, solar physicists were astonished by the data they collected. "At first I didn't believe it," David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center said in a NASA press release.

Project physicist Jimmy Raeder explained, "1027 particles per second were flowing into the magnetosphere — that's a 1 followed by 27 zeros. This kind of influx is an order of magnitude greater than what we thought was possible."

NASA

Artist's conception of the five THEMIS probes tracking a solar storm.

Defying a standard premise of physics, the event demonstrated that a CME has a far worse impact when the magnetic lines of the Earth and the Sun are both aligned to the north. Scientists expect the situation to reach white-knuckle stage when Sunspot Cycle 24 peaks in 2012 or 2013. The press release continued:

"For reasons not fully understood, CMEs in even-numbered solar cycles tend to hit Earth with a leading edge that is magnetized north. Such a CME should open a breach and load the magnetosphere with plasma just before the storm gets underway. It's the perfect sequence for a really big event."

NASA's Sibeck added:

"The sequence we're expecting … is just right to put particles in and energize them to create the biggest geomagnetic storms, the brightest auroras, the biggest disturbances in Earth's radiation belts."

THEMIS, by the way stands for a real mouthful: Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms. The mission merged with other satellites in 2010 and became known as ARTEMIS: Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun”.

Back in 2009, NASA funded a study and report from the National Academy of Sciences called "Severe Space Weather Events--Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts." The workshop group of scientists concluded that the interdependent nature of high-tech society might prove our unraveling should a strong enough solar flare or CME broadside the planet.

With communications satellites disabled and the power grid inoperative, everything from water coming out of your tap to the public transit system would go out of service indefinitely. Gasoline could no longer be pumped from underground tanks, since that requires electricy. Stoplights would fail, causing a transportation nightmare and disrupting store delivers. Consumers wouldn't be able to shop in any case, since banking and most retail transactions also depend on electricity. Hospitals would quickly bcome inaccessible and law enforcement personnel would have no way to communicate with each other in the field.

So while NASA continues to insist there's no looming catastrophe on the horizon for 2012, plain facts might suggest otherwise. In February 2010, the space agency launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory, a bigger and more elaborate probe than its predecessors. But like the others, this one can do nothing to thwart the impact of a CME, just film its spectacular and apocalyptic approach in living 3-D color.