Posted on 11/08/2010 11:34:56 AM PST by TaraP
Oct. 26, 2010: Every hundred years or so, a solar storm comes along so potent it fills the skies of Earth with blood-red auroras, makes compass needles point in the wrong direction, and sends electric currents coursing through the planet's topsoil. The most famous such storm, the Carrington Event of 1859, actually shocked telegraph operators and set some of their offices on fire.
A 2008 report by the National Academy of Sciences warns that if such a storm occurred today, we could experience widespread power blackouts with permanent damage to many key transformers.
What's a utility operator to do?
The sun rises behind high-voltage power lines in North America. A new NASA project called "Solar Shield" could help keep the lights on.
"Solar Shield is a new and experimental forecasting system for the North American power grid," explains project leader Antti Pulkkinen, a Catholic University of America research associate working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "We believe we can zero in on specific transformers and predict which of them are going to be hit hardest by a space weather event."
The troublemaker for power grids is the "GIC" – short for geomagnetically induced current. When a coronal mass ejection (a billion-ton solar storm cloud) hits Earth's magnetic field, the impact causes the field to shake and quiver. These magnetic vibrations induce currents almost everywhere, from Earth's upper atmosphere to the ground beneath our feet. Powerful GICs can overload circuits, trip breakers, and in extreme cases melt the windings of heavy-duty transformers.
This actually happened in Quebec on March 13, 1989, when a geomagnetic storm much less severe than the Carrington Event knocked out power across the entire province for more than nine hours. The storm damaged transformers in Quebec, New Jersey, and Great Britain, and caused more than 200 power anomalies across the USA from the eastern seaboard to the Pacific Northwest. A similar series of "Halloween storms" in October 2003 triggered a regional blackout in southern Sweden and may have damaged transformers in South Africa.
While many utilities have taken steps to fortify their grids, the overall situation has only gotten worse. A 2009 report by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and the US Department of Energy concluded that modern power systems have a "significantly enhance[d] vulnerability and exposure to effects of a severe geomagnetic storm." The underlying reason may be seen at a glance in this plot:
Wow. Something actually USEFUL, HELPFUL, and that leads to COST SAVINGS.
Thanks for the article.
Ping!
No. That’s the single piece of toilet paper that Sheryl Crow keeps talking about.
Until the advent of recent spaceborne orbital solar observatories, a 24-48 hour warning would have been impossible.
Given that most of us cannot imagine the havoc a repeat of the 1859 event would wreak today, I fully endorse taxpayer dollars going into a failsafe system for events of this nature. We’ve been truly fortunate to have avoided a repeat long enough to begin working on a contingency plan to deliver us from the next one.
Ahem! Could someone PLEASE explain this for me. The light from the sun takes 8 MINUTES to reach Earth. Please explain how ANYONE can give us a 24 - 48 HOUR warning that something big and bad is on its way?!
>> I fully endorse taxpayer dollars going into a failsafe system for events of this nature. <<
Agreed 100%.
But the system described here seems to be only a stop-gap measure, since it wouldn’t offer protection against a man-made EMP — something the Chinese and Russians no doubt can deliver today, and something the Iranian will probably be able to deliver in a few years if the Israelis don’t nuke them first.
In my locality I ask every official in companies and government I can about this and EMP pulse just to get them at least thinking about doing something sensible vs being as dumb and stupid as a slug about it all.
Think of the delay between seeing the cannon's muzzle flash on the horizon and the shell arriving on your lap.
In a coronal mass ejection, the sun shoots off a cloud of very high-energy charged particles. The particles are fast but nowhere near the speed of light. We detect the radiation from the mass ejection in 8 minutes, but the particles that cause the aurora arrive days later.
Then we have this!
The International Space Weather Initiative
Nov. 8, 2010: Prompted by a recent increase in solar activity, more than a hundred researchers and government officials are converging on Helwan, Egypt, to discuss a matter of global importance: storms from the sun. The “First Workshop of the International Space Weather Initiative (ISWI)” meets Nov. 6th through 10th and is convened by the United Nations, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
“Strong solar storms can knock out power, disable satellites, and scramble GPS,” says meeting organizer and ISWI executive director Joe Davila of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “This meeting will help us prepare for the next big event.”
These are global phenomena,” says Davila, “so we need to be able to monitor them all around the world.”
Industrialized countries tend to have an abundance of monitoring stations. They can keep track of local magnetism, ground currents, and ionization, and provide the data to researchers. Developing countries are where the gaps are, particularly at low latitudes around Earth’s magnetic equator.
Although space weather is usually associated with Earth’s polar regions—think, “Northern Lights”—the equator can be just as interesting. For example, there is a phenomenon in Earth’s upper atmosphere called the “equatorial anomaly.” It is, essentially, a fountain of ionization that circles the globe once a day, always keeping its spout toward the sun. During solar storms, the equatorial anomaly can intensify and shape-shift, bending GPS signals in unexpected ways and making normal radio communications impossible.
“International cooperation is essential for keeping track of the equatorial anomaly,” he adds. “No single country can do it alone.”
From Wikipedia...Coronal mass ejections reach velocities between 20km/s to 3200km/s with an average speed of 489km/s, based on SOHO/LASCO measurements between 1996 and 2003.
There is much to do beyond the equator, too. During the meeting, researchers and students will learn how they can set up monitoring stations for cosmic rays, ground currents, magnetic storms, and auroras. There’s a phenomenon for every latitude and level of expertise.
“We are offering a whole buffet of research opportunities,” says Davila.
Researchers who miss the first meeting will get many more chances. The International Space Weather Initiative is an ongoing program with get-togethers planned on an annual basis at different spots around the world. The next meeting will be held in Nigeria in November 2011.
No country is too remote, too small, or too poor to participate. Indeed, notes Davila, “the smallest most out of the way places are often where data are needed most. Everyone is invited.”
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/08nov_iswi/
LIGHT takes 8 minutes to reach us from the sun. Charged ionized particles are NOT light...They’re highly-accelerated solar mass.
Much like thunder and lightning, we see the flash before we hear the crash.
Same principle here.
The protection we need is simply a supply of spare parts for the power grid. Various things knock out parts of the grid. The parts through which power flows are big and tough and the grid should have a minimum of delicate supposedly smart electronics telling it what to do.
We have tornados, hurricanes, floods, Obama, etc. This solar flare hazard isn’t where we need to be putting scarce money.
Another thing: we don’t need “the power grid”. We need a lot of smaller dumb-as-possible grids that are loosely connected so that a disturbance in one doesn’t bring a bunch more down. I’ve said that before.
Wouldn’t the Cone of Silence work to protect things?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.