The threat of solar storms of a thousand years

On 13 and 14 March 1989, not long ago, the Earth experienced the largest geomagnetic storm that has been beaten in decades. The ionized particles from the sun caused a blackout in Quebec (Canada), leaving 5 million people without electricity for nine hours in winter and causing damage worth millions and millions of dollars. They also destroyed a costly transformer in the U.S. repair and sent two teams similar in the UK. During the "temporary" space agency lost track of some of its 1,600 probes and satellites. 


Well, we must prepare for something much worse, an event of such magnitude that can occur once in a thousand years. The problem is we do not know to what extent can swipe intensity. This is the warning that Mike Hap good, the Council of Science and Technology Facilities in the UK and head of a group of experts that advises the British government space weather risks, made ​​in an article in the prestigious journal Nature this week.

Hap good says that today's society is extremely dependent on electrical systems, making it extremely vulnerable. In May 1921, a geomagnetic storm burned a large call center in Sweden. Earlier, in September 1859, a similar event disrupted the emerging telegraph networks, causing fires in offices. If a storm like that would happen today large areas without electricity for several months, according to a report by the UK National Grid (British power grid). In the U.S., some analysts point to large-scale changes, effects that can last years and an economic impact of several billion dollars.

The origin of the threat is in the coronal mass ejections ( CME , for its acronym in English), massive eruptions of magnetically charged plasma that occur during solar storms, which increase the flow of solar wind particles in the hundreds of times. When they reach the Earth, can affect power grids and also modify the orbits of satellites and endanger the spacecraft. The question is, are we prepared a super solar storm when we come over?

There is some ability to predict space weather in the short term. The Climate Prediction Center Space in Boulder (Colorado, USA) can provide an alert for a strong geomagnetic storm with an advance of 10 to 60 minutes and 50% reliability, which would take measures to protect large grids. Hap good believes that the best warning that we must improve our predictions came last March when we hit a large CME. The predictions from the previous day varied about 18 hours. Many were inaccurate. Fortunately, did not pass over. The lesson of the tsunami in Japan.

Electrical systems, says the scientist in his article in Nature, are designed to withstand the level of events seen in the last forty years, and processors are able to withstand a storm like the 1989, but not enough."The earthquake and tsunami in Japan last year showing the dangers of preparing only for what we already know," says Hap good.  In his view, we must be ready to face an event that may occur once in a thousand years.

To do this, Hap good believes that scientists need to improve the availability of space weather data, digitizing old data which, oddly enough, are only in paper format. He also sees a need to develop more sophisticated models to predict future scenarios, data that are essential to improve the protection of our systems at risk from power lines and airlines to GPS or whose financial systems have automatic transaction record date. According to the scientist, this work is being done, but not fast enough.