Solar flare tomorrow could make northern lights visible | News Tech

A colossal solar flare could graze the Earth tomorrow, prompting speculation of northern lights sightings and blackouts.

A coronal mass ejection – an enormous solar explosion sending streams of charged particles into space – fired off the sun at 1.39pm yesterday.

Space weather forecasters (yes, they’re a thing) categorised the blast of plasma as a M5.8 (moderate) flare, the second-most powerful rating.

The eruption from the sunspot AR4436 has already triggered a radio blackout over the Atlantic Ocean.

While it’s heading away from Earth, there’s a probability it should ‘brush’ past us within the early hours tomorrow morning, in response to the Met Office.

More flares could follow because the sunspot is now rotating into Earth’s ‘strike zone’, so any ejections from it should be on a direct path towards us.

Solar flares ‘can affect power grids and GPS’

When solar particles hit the magnetic bubble that protects our planet from radiation, it causes a geomagnetic storm, also called a solar storm.

These particles generate electrical currents and magnetic fields. All this extra energy can damage spacecraft, pipelines and railroad tracks, in addition to disrupt power grids.

Communication blackouts mainly affect methods which use high-frequency radio waves, similar to ham radio and business aviation.

Jim NR Dale, a meteorologist with the British Weather Services, told Metro that blackouts occur since the flares weaken radio waves.

‘That is because of ionisation inside the ionosphere,’ he says, referring to the fuzzy, glowing layer of the planet which meets space.

‘Mainly, the waves are blocked and dispersed.

‘The flares within the worst-case scenarios can affect other technical apparatus similar to satellites, power grid outputs and GPS.’

This probably means your phone won’t be affected by the storm, but navigation systems could also be knocked out.

Earth’s magnetosphere can get peeled back, meaning satellites in high altitudes (like GPS ones) are hit with more radiation than usual.

Satellites in low-Earth orbit are higher protected but can still experience technical hiccups, like signal dropouts and reboots. 

Forecasters expect the arrival of tomorrow’s ejection arrival to cause a G1-level geomagnetic storm.

But Dale says this one is ‘minor’, so blackouts shouldn’t be much of a worry. ‘G4/5 are the biggies,’ he added.

GPS can be much more resilient than you would possibly think, Lisa Dyer, executive director of the GPS Innovation Alliance, tells Metro.

‘Past experience of those events has shown us that the system continues to operate normally even during intense space weather,’ she says.

‘The satellites remain protected even under extreme conditions, and we are able to expect operations to stay stable throughout the space weather event.’

Where can I see the northern lights?

One nice potential side effect of all this solar material is a blinding light shows within the nighttime sky.

When the particles mingle with the gases in Earth’s atmosphere, they create various colors: Oxygen creates green or red light, while blue and purple come from nitrogen.

This cosmic light show, often known as the aurora borealis or northern lights, might be seen across northern Scotland tomorrow if the skies are clear enough, space forecasters say.

The monitoring service AuroraWatch UK is currently reporting no significant geomagnetic activity.

The sun’s activity ebbs and flows on an 11-year cycle and reached its peak, called solar maximum, last 12 months. During this, the sun spits out more flares than usual.

That’s why auroras were seen as far south as London last 12 months, because the powerful solar storms drive auroras further south.

Get in contact with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

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