Technology: Mar 8, 2012

WASHINGTON: Space weather storm that predicted to be the strongest in five years fizzled out and ended up causing no impact to power networks and modern navigation systems, U.S. experts said on Thursday.

A series of eruptions on the Sun this week sent a radiation and solar plasma hurtling to Earth at high speeds but in the end, the geomagnetic storm recorded the lowest level, G1, on the five step scale.

"Our forecasters really struggling with this," said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist Joseph Kunches, comparing the bungled forecast to looking at a pitcher throwing a baseball, but knowing nothing until it reaches the receiver.

"We lost the spin of the ball," said Kunches. NOAA had forecast the storm would be a level three, or "strong" and said that it would be the worst since 2006. NASA had said that it might be "severe."

In this case, the "spin" that forecasters failed was contained in the orientation of the magnetic field within the coronal mass ejection from the Sun, which ran to Earth and arrived early Thursday after a 34-hour trip. "It's very difficult for forecasters, literally almost impossible, as you look at the coronal mass ejection off the sun to be able to predict the orientation of the embedded magnetic field," he said.

Kunches said there were no reports of GPS disruption, reports of problems in terms of electrical energy, and the expected displays of the northern lights, or aurora borealis, it would be visible to the north than at the beginning NOAA said. However, the impacts could worsen over the next 24 hours as the storm continues, he said.

NOAA and NASA warned on Wednesday that the storm could disrupt global positioning systems, satellites and power grids, and already caused some airlines to change their aircraft flying polar routes. Astronaut on the International Space Station is not affected by the radiation storm, NASA said.

Geomagnetic and radiation storms are growing more frequent as the sun leaves its solar minimum period and move into solar maximum over the next few years, but people are generally protected by Earth's magnetic field.

However, some experts want because the world is more dependent on GPS and satellite technology now than it was during the last solar maximum, more interruptions to modern life are likely. The confusion began late on Sunday in an active region on the Sun known as 1429, with a large Solar Flare that was associated with a coronal mass ejection that thrust the Earth at some four million miles (6.4 million kilometers) per hour).

A pair of solar flares and CME continued overnight Tuesday-Wednesday. NASA said the first of the two flares of March 6-7, ranked in the powerful X-class looking directly at the Earth, was the largest this year and one of the largest of this cycle known as the solar minimum, which began in early 2007.

In fact, it was second only to a fort that erupted in August. The solar flares only caused a brief high-frequency radio blackouts that have already passed, according to NOAA.

But during a solar radiation storm recorded level 3, the geomagnetic storm ended up being the same small level as a similar event in January, Kunches said.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Space weather storm fizzles out on arrival

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