Solar storms are back, may affect satellites and power grids

Millions of tons of gas at a very high temperature took off from the sun’s surface and sped towards Earth at 90 million miles, a few days ago. This eruption is coined as coronal mass ejection, and its force was not particularly powerful when measured on the space-weather scale. But when it hit the Earth’s magnetic field, it triggered a strong geomagnetic storm, Bloomberg reports.

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The geomagnetic waves are relatively harmless to the Earth’s surface. But it can impede the radio signals, shower the airline crews and ruin the power grids.

Last year, the sun began a new 11-year cycle, and as it nears its peak in 2025, chaos in weather rises. “It is still remarkable to me the number of people, companies, who think space weather is Hollywood fiction”, Bloomberg quoted Caitlin Durkovich, a senior director of resilience and response in the National Security Council.

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Four years ago, a solar storm turned ham radios into static as the Category 5 Hurricane Irma was tearing through the Caribbean. Six years ago, solar storms thumped out the positioning systems in the northeastern region of the US.

In 1989, a solar storm passed over the Quebec region, which caused a power outage for nine hours, according to Hydro-Quebec’s official website. The latest solar storm has been the Earth’s growing concern over the last few days.