Mega solar storm even brought us solar lamps

“Exactly how a solar storm affects the Earth depends very much on its magnetic structure. Intensive research is being done in this area worldwide to be able to predict solar storms as early as possible,” says Christian Möstl, head of the space weather office of Geosphere Austria in Graz.

Sometimes aurora visible
The sun is constantly emitting radiation and charged particles into space. If this particle stream (solar wind) is significantly stronger in a limited area of ​​the sun for a short time, it is called a solar flare. If radiation and particles from a solar flare hit the Earth’s magnetic field, this solar storm could, for example, cause the Northern Lights and, in extreme cases, even disrupt navigation systems and power grids.

A solar flare occurred on Friday, the solar storm hitting Earth on Sunday evening. As of 1 a.m. Monday, Earth was in the core of the solar storm. “Saturday, our measurement and forecasting systems pointed to a very likely structure of the current solar storm, which is currently being measured by satellites. This storm is slightly stronger than the storm of March 24 this year. These two magnetic storms represent the strongest events since June 2015,” said Möstl.

Photos of possible northern lights in Austria are circulating on social media portals on Monday night. From North America to the south of the USA there were even very pronounced northern lights on Monday. “The intensity of the solar storm is likely to decrease over the course of Monday, so the northern lights should no longer be visible in Austria by Tuesday evening,” Möstl predicted.

Often storms and northern lights
The sun is currently in a phase of increasing magnetic activity, which is expected to peak in 2025. The frequency of geomagnetic storms and northern lights will therefore increase in the coming years.

Bad consequences for technical infrastructure possible
Space weather has only been studied more intensively for about 30 years. It turned out that there have been solar storms over the past 150 years that would have devastating effects on current engineering infrastructure. The recurrence frequency of such supersolar storms is about 50 to 100 years.

Space weather research and the development of forecasting and warning systems are becoming increasingly important due to the potential impact of space weather on air traffic and on critical infrastructure such as power grids and satellite navigation. Geosphere Austria works on space weather forecasting in various projects and together with the Conrad Observatory operates one of the world’s most modern geophysical observatories, which also measures space weather and solar storms.