Sun Storm

Get ready, earthlings: Another massive solar tsunami headed our way...
This is the news story from Alaska Dispatch...Needless to say Adam and I will be out again tonight to look for the northern lights display

Ben Anderson | Mar 07, 2012

1429 might sound like a pretty dull name for a sunspot. But since it rotated into view of Earth on March 2, it's been creating some spectacular pyrotechnics, including one on Tuesday that was the second biggest solar flare in the last decade -- and it's headed for the home planet.

The flare, which erupted from the sun on Tuesday, was classified as an "X5" event by spaceweather.com. NASA's Goddard Space Centerlater confirmed that the flare reached a magnitude of X5.4. X-class flares are the strongest and most active solar flares, with the potential to interrupt satellite operations and even ground-based communication and electrical grids.

Just an hour later, another flare, this time classified X1, erupted from the same sunspot.
On the upside, a flare of such size and magnitude, pointed in Earth's direction, could bring truly spectacular displays of northern lights, though the term "northern" here might be a bit of a misnomer. One Atlanta television station is optimistically predicting aurora in the skies above Georgia. Northern lights are expected above the more northern states in the Lower 48, including Michigan, Maine, and Washington.

Sunspot 1429 emitted an X1-class flare on Sunday, leading to heightened aurora alerts for far northern latitudes, which were expected to begin appearing Tuesday and possibly continue through Thursday. But Sunday's flare came as the sunspot was largely pointed away from Earth, while Tuesday's eruption occurred with 1429 closer to the center of the star when viewed from terra firma.

Experts confirmed that the byproduct of the flare was likely headed for earth, though it still wasn't clear just how much impact the wave of charged particles would have.

With such a strong eruption, even a glancing blow has potential for atmospheric fireworks.The sun is currently reaching the peak level of activity in an 11-year cycle, and scientists had been watching the recently-revealed sunspot closely, expecting more activity as it grows. They weren't disappointed.

Solar flares occur when large amounts of radiation are released due to magnetic energy created by sunspots on the star. When a solar flare erupts, it often creates a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), which is a group of supercharged particles thrown from the sun into space. When a flare erupts in Earth's direction, the CME and that cloud of particles is what leads to increased aurora -- as well as electrical and magnetic disturbances. Both Tuesday flares caused CMEs to be flung in Earth's direction.

The last few months have seen the sun ramping up its activity, with a series of flares in late January causing breathtaking aurora in the sub-Arctic regions, and producing the strongest radiation storm since May of 2005.
But all that may pale in comparison to what's currently flying toward Earth, since the last time a solar flare of X5 or higher erupted from the sun was in August 2011, when an X6 flare erupted.

"Besides the August 2011 X-class flare, the last time the sun sent out flares of this magnitude was in 2006," the Goddard Space Center reported. "There was an X6.5 on December 6, 2006 and an X9.0 on December 5, 2006. Like the most recent events, those two flares erupted from the same region on the sun. "
In July of 2000, an X6 flare threw 10 billion tons of solar material toward the Earth. Fortunately, even such massive events -- though the largest explosive activity in our solar system -- generally have little impact on humans. Aside from the aurora, the largest impact that humans might experience can be minor disruptions to terrestrial power grids, and occasional satellite interference depending on the severity of the geomagnetic storm.

here have been times when a particularly strong event has had a greater impact. In 1989, a solar storm caused a nine-hour blackout in Quebec, Canada. Just as the poles and polar regions are more likely to experience heightened auroral activity, so too are they more prone to electrical interference. The geomagnetic activity in January of this year caused some polar flights to be redirected for fear of possible electronic interference.
The Space Weather Prediction Center, a product of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that the initial part of Tuesday's flare would likely hit within about 24 hours of the eruption, which occurred about 3 p.m. Alaska time. Best guesses as of Wednesday morning were that it would be hitting in the early morning hours on the East Coast -- ramping up in the late evening for Alaskans.

"Predictions are still being refined on this one," NOAA said of the potential for the impact of Tuesday's flare on Earth, but warned that the continued solar activity would certainly be causing heightened solar radiation storms.

On the SWPC's Facebook page, forecasters called Tuesday's flare event "magnificent," and warned, "This solar flare is one of the largest solar flares of the current solar cycle." The current cycle is expected to peak in 2013.