Officials say a powerful solar storm will hit Earth on Friday and its arrival could cause infrastructure problems.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued an alert Thursday for a Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Solar Storm Watch after approximately five “earth-directed coronal mass ejections” (CMEs) were seen and expected to reach Earth, Insider Paper reported.
It is the first G4 storm watch issued since 2005, according to 12 News. The outlet added that the storms are responsible for causing the Northern Lights:
CMEs are described as “large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s corona,” according to the NOAA website:
They can eject billions of tons of coronal material and carry an embedded magnetic field (frozen in flux) that is stronger than the background solar wind interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) strength. CMEs travel outward from the Sun at speeds ranging from slower than 250 kilometers per second (km/s) to as fast as near [sic] 3000 km/s. The fastest Earth-directed CMEs can reach our planet in as little as 15-18 hours. Slower CMEs can take several days to arrive.
The CMEs may remain over the weekend, the Insider Paper stated, adding that the NOAA said officials have recently observed several strong flares connected to a sunspot cluster that is 16 times Earth’s diameter.
Although solar storms can cause problems on Earth, the atmosphere protects us from the sun’s harmful rays, according to a 2022 explanatory video from USA Today:
The NOAA also said “these storms have the potential to affect infrastructure both in near-Earth orbit and on the Earth’s surface, possibly disrupting communication systems, the electric grid, navigation, radio, and satellite operations,” according to Insider Paper.
The Today video noted that scientists throughout history have observed thousands of solar flares, but the most intense one was the 1859 Carrington Event that “crippled telegraphs around the world as sparks flew from equipment, shocking their human operators and even starting fires.”