Solar Flare Impact

Analysis: Solar flare impacts capricious


By Dan Whipple
UPI Science News


BOULDER, Colo., Oct. 31 (UPI) -- The potential for solar events to
influence life on Earth -- apart from sunny days and photosynthesis --
was first discovered on Sept. 1, 1859 by British astronomer Richard
Carrington, who saw a huge "white light" eruption on the sun with an
unshielded telescope. A few days later, "all hell broke loose on
Earth," as space weather scientists describe the event. Compass
needles started going crazy and sparks leaped from telegraph keys to
operators fingers.

Though the impacts of solar weather remain largely as unpredictable
now as they were in 1859, there is a considerably larger
infrastructure -- a bigger target, if you will -- for the streams from
those storms to hit here on Earth.

On Wednesday, the planet was pummeled with the largest solar storm in
the last 30 years. Then, just as that barrage was hitting, another
huge flare erupted on the sun, sending a second titanic storm racing
to catch up with the first, perhaps doubling the impact of the events.

"What impact?" you might be asking.

Although the results still are being analyzed, it seems the giant
storm's terrestrial effects were most notable for their absence. As a
momentous scientific phenomenon, a natural catastrophe, it turned out
to be a bust.

Still, "the Sun is really churned up," said John Kohl, a solar
astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in
Boston. "The timing of two very large X-class flares aimed directly at
the Earth, occurring one right after another, is unprecedented. I have
not seen anything like it in my entire career as a solar physicist.
The probability of this happening is so low that it is a statistical
anomaly."

The reason the storms were so worrisome was similar events in the past
occasionally have wrought dramatic results on Earth. The best known is
the 1989 event that disrupted electric power at Quebec-Hydro in
northeastern Canada. More than a million of the company's customers
lost service.

That event could have been even worse, according to John Kappenman of
Metatech Corp., in Duluth, Minn., a space weather consultant to the
U.S. power industry. Speaking on Thursday to the House Subcommittee on
Environment, Technology and Standards, Kappenman said there were
important power system anomalies across the U.S. northern tier and in
southern California during the 1989 event. "We barely held on to the
system," he said.

This time around, even though there were strong reactions to the storm
in Earth's magnetic field, there have been no reported power outages.
One satellite, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Data Relay
Test Satellite, also known as Kodama, went into safe mode because of
the storm. It is unclear whether the spacecraft has been permanently
damaged.

In addition, some aircraft flying over the poles were rerouted to
avoid high exposures of radiation -- potentially the equivalent of 10
chest X-rays -- to passengers. Hank Krakowski, vice president of
corporate safety, quality assurance and security for United Airlines,
said flight 895 from Chicago to Hong Kong was rerouted away from the
pole because of a solar event late last week.

The earthbound impacts of even large solar storms are hard to predict,
but the potential for disruption is great. Pointing to the recent
blackout in the East and Midwest, Kappenman noted there has been a
decline in power grid investment. "That has done nothing but increase
our vulnerability to space weather," he said. "Large U.S. blackouts
are possible," which could effect as many as 100-million people in a
single event.

Satellites in space are particularly vulnerable to solar storms.
Earthbound revenues from the commercial satellite industry totaled
$49.8 billion last year, according to Robert Hedinger, executive vice
president of Loral Skynet of Bedminster, N.J. Problems for satellites
include "hits" on deep space satellites, degradation of solar panels,
navigation interference, electrical arcing across circuits,
communication difficulties and other problems, Hedinger said.

"Space weather has been suggested as a cause or contributor to over
$500 million in insurance claims in the past five years," said Chris
Kunstadter, of U.S. Aviation Underwriters Inc., in New York City, a
major satellite insurer. "There have been roughly a half-billion
dollars worth of insured satellite losses where solar activity may
have been a contributing factor," and only about 20 percent of all
satellites are insured.

David Hathaway, solar physics group leader at the NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said it is impossible to
predict from the size of a solar flare whether there will be any
terrestrial impact. The eruption's size, orientation toward the Earth
and the direction of the magnetic field all contribute to the risk.

"The key ingredient is the direction of the magnetic field within the
cloud of material," Hathaway told United Press International. "If it
is in the opposite direction of the Earth's magnetic field, there is a
potential for a lot of magnetic activity. That's the sort of thing
that would cause power distribution problems."

Earth's magnetic field is like a gigantic bar magnet oriented north
and south inside the planet's core that extends up through the
atmosphere and into space. A large solar flare can overpower that
magnetic field and blow it back on Earth, compressing it.

Though the atmosphere shields the planet from the most harmful effects
of the solar flare, there is considerable randomness involved. The
flare Wednesday was very large, and it featured a strong southward
component relative to the magnetic field -- that is, it moved opposite
to Earth's field. This is a major danger sign for power disruption,
but none occurred.

There were no problems in part because power companies, satellite
companies -- and the astronauts on the International Space Station --
had been warned about the flare by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Center and were able
take mitigating actions. In the power companies' case, this meant
reducing loads and putting peaking capacity online so they could
handle unexpected bumps in the system.

Despite this success, the SEC's budget is under attack. It has been
eliminated in the Senate's version of the new Commerce, Justice and
State appropriations bill. Saving this budget was a primary topic of
the House hearing on Thursday -- though the hearing was not, strictly
speaking, the result of Wednesday's geomagnetic storm.

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