Washington
CNN
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Brace yourselves: This week’s unusual amount of solar activity could disrupt some of the most critical technologies society relies on.
On Thursday, the US government issued its first tough statement. magnetic storm clock For almost two decades, it advised the public about “at least five Earthward coronal mass ejections” and a sunspot covering an area 16 times the size of Earth itself. A severe geomagnetic storm (G4) is his second highest grade in the U.S. government’s classification system.
Radiation from the activity will begin hitting Earth’s magnetic field on Friday and continue through the weekend, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
NOAA’s rigorous space weather monitoring suggests this storm could cause a variety of impacts on life on Earth, potentially impacting power grids as well as satellites and high-frequency radio communications. . Here’s what this means for technology users.
The solar activity NOAA is referring to involves the release of energy from the sun, which travels through space and ultimately reaches Earth.
When that radiation hits the magnetic sphere surrounding the planet, it causes fluctuations in the ionosphere, a layer of the upper atmosphere.
These changes can directly affect satellites and other spacecraft in orbit, causing them to change direction or destroy their electronic equipment.
In addition, changes in the ionosphere can disrupt or degrade radio communications trying to travel through the atmosphere to reach satellites. It can also prevent wireless communications from reflecting off the ionosphere. Some wireless carriers usually do this to increase the range of their signals.
Because GPS satellites rely on signals passing through the ionosphere, scientists expect that geomagnetic disturbances could affect critical technologies used in aircraft, ocean-going ships, agriculture, and the oil and gas industry. I am. It can also affect shortwave radio communications used by ships and aircraft, emergency management agencies, the military, and even amateur radio operators, all of which rely on high-frequency radio waves that are scattered by storms. NOAA says it’s possible.
Cost Photo/NurPhoto/AP
On May 10, 2024, the sun rises with a flare over Korla, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China.
“Geomagnetic storms can impact infrastructure near Earth’s orbit and on the surface, disrupting communications, power grids, navigation, radio, and satellite operations,” NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center said in a release. “SWPC has notified the operators of these systems so that they can take protective measures.”
The storm is unlikely to directly impact cell phone service, as consumer wireless networks rely on radio frequencies that are different from radio frequency bands. Cell phone GPS functionality typically uses a combination of pure GPS and cell phone base station-based location tracking, allowing the phone user to maintain a rough location fix even if the GPS signal is interrupted. There is a possibility.
Even extreme weather events in space will have minimal direct impact on public safety line-of-sight radio and commercial cellular services as long as the underlying electrical infrastructure supporting the wireless network is not affected. It is thought that the primary impact on household electronic devices will not occur. ,” the researchers said, summarizing the results of a 2010 study of extreme space weather conducted by NOAA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency outlined a similar report in its 2021 presentation on space weather, revealing that line-of-sight radio transmissions are generally not affected by space weather except in certain circumstances. . The presentation mentioned several risks of land-based copper cables and telephone lines.
In a slightly different scenario in February, NOAA noted two large solar flares. However, the agency said it was “very unlikely” that Flair was responsible for those outages, even though “mobile phone network outages were widely reported” during the same period.
NOAA officials reiterated Friday that there should be little to no impact on cellphones this weekend unless there is widespread disruption to the power grid.
“We have not seen any evidence in the past that space weather storms can have an impact in the present,” Brent Gordon, director of SWPC’s space weather services division, told reporters in a conference call. “If power is not available to them, certainly the secondary effects of that will be significant.”
Severe space weather can put power grids at risk, according to NOAA, with this week’s warning that “pervasive problems with voltage control could occur” and that “some protection systems could accidentally cause damage to critical assets.” could be cut off from the power grid.”
In 1989, a space weather event caused a massive power outage in the Canadian province of Quebec that lasted more than nine hours after geomagnetic fluctuations damaged transformers and other critical equipment.
This weekend’s more extreme geomagnetic storm than expected caused power outages in Sweden and damaged transformers in South Africa in October, SWPC said.
The largest geomagnetic storm in history, known as the Carrington phenomenon in 1859, caused sparks and fires in telegraph stations.
Power grid outages can have cascading effects on communications and other technologies, including mobile phones. Cell phone towers can lose power, as can the data centers that host websites and their information.
Still, many wireless carrier providers already maintain backup generators and mobile cell phone towers in case of natural disasters or other major incidents. Redundancy and resiliency are the watchwords of all critical infrastructure providers, so even if the power grid fails, consumers care more about how to keep their phones charged than whether they can stay online. You may need to worry.
As if to drive home that point, the U.S. government’s advice to the public on how to prepare for space weather events is much the same as the steps it takes to respond to prolonged power outages.
Contributed by CNN’s Ashley Strickland to this report.
