Powerful solar flare collides with earth
By Christine Hauser/NYT (NYT)
Thursday, October 30, 2003
A powerful blast of gas from the sun has hit the earth's magnetic field, affecting power grids and airplane radio communications but posing no danger to air travel, experts said Wednesday.
"We got the real McCoy today," said the chief of space weather operations at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Joe Kunches. "The eruption from the sun yesterday just squared up with the earth and it has caused the Earth's magnetic field to become extremely disturbed."
On Tuesday, the third-most powerful solar flare ever observed in X-ray wavelengths erupted from a spot on the sun, propelling electrically charged gas at the Earth, said scientists with the National Aeronautic and Space Administration, and the European Space Agency.
Kunches said the space-weather storm was the strongest since July 14, 2000. "This is a big deal," he said.
For a brief period early Wednesday Eastern time, gusts in the solar wind as it blew by the Earth caused a geomagnetic storm of G-5 magnitude on the NOAA Space Weather Scales, a systemized measuring index, like the Richter scale for earthquakes. G-5 is the highest category.
But Kunches said the storm had since weakened from the G-5 level, which meant it was capable of degrading satellite and high-frequency radio communications as well as causing power blackouts.
A radiation storm Wednesday morning strong enough to expose people on aircraft in high latitudes to elevated radiation also tapered off.
Scientists have been monitoring unusually fierce eruptions from the Sun since last week and have stayed in contact with power-grid operators in the Northeast United States to inform them of the potential for disturbances.
"They have told us they are seeing induced currents in their power grids, but they are able to work their way through them," Kunches said. "They are running their power systems in a much more conservative fashion that is not nearly as profitable but more resilient."
He said the agency had also discussed the solar storms with radio communications operators working with aircraft. "We know there have been difficult conditions at times over the North Atlantic," Kunches said. "They can't use the frequencies that they normally use."
This means that as some of the frequency paths become disrupted, the aircraft must switch to others. For passengers, it could mean only enduring a bumpy ride for a little longer if there is turbulence.
An official with the high-frequency radio provider to the Federal Aviation Administration said that the normal radio path for aircraft is impaired, but that there is access to other channels.
Gaffney said it usually took three minutes to deliver messages between the aircraft and the FAA, but over the last day or so, a few had run over three minutes.
The New York Times