From EOS, Vol. 93, No. 25, 19 June 2012
White House and Agencies Focus on Space Weather Concerns
“Space weather is a serious matter that can affect human economies around the world,” Tamara Dickinson, a senior policy analyst with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), told attendees at the 2012 Space Weather Enterprise Forum, held 5 June in Washington, D. C. With the 2013 solar maximum nearing, researchers and government agencies are focusing on how the greater solar activity could affect our increasingly technological society and what measures can be taken to help prevent or mitigate any threats to the electricity grid, GPS, and other potentially vulnerable technologies.
Dickenson said that there has been an increased awareness about space weather in the White House and that President Barack Obama recently has requested briefing memos on the topic. She highlighted several efforts the administration is taking related to space weather, including a forthcoming national Earth observation strategy, which could be released in July and will include an assessment of space weather. She explained that the strategy document will be part of the fiscal year 2014 presidential budget request and that it will be updated every 3 years.
Dickinson added that the administration also is acting on earlier federal interagency recommendations to ready the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) mission for launch in 2014 as a near-term risk reduction measure to provide space weather data; there is concern about the continued healthy operation of the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE), which has gone well beyond its expected mission life.
Earlier this year, Obama directed OSTP and the national security staff “to aggressively move forward with space weather mitigation efforts,” Dickinson said. Based on the president’s direction, she restructured OSTP’s Geomagnetic Interagency Working Group. “We are focusing on achievable, strategic implementation actions, at least initially focused on the [electricity] grid,” she said. Dickinson noted that she has included additional federal agencies in the working group. However, she also said that OSTP itself now has only one staff member working on space weather. With the departure of two OSTP staff in March, “it was determined that OSTP should consolidate all the space weather activities under one person,” she said.
Full story here
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Depending on duration, when a disruptive CME encounters the Earth, the greatest immediate damage will occur in the hemisphere of impact. Pray that it involve the hemisphere of least damage – the Pacific Ocean.
Back in ’73, I listened to a local IEEE talk by a Engineer/Scientist from Magnavox about electromagnetic pulse. At the time, this was freshly declassified information. The only thing I remember that he said (I can’t even remember his name) was to assume the flux from an air burst of a nuclear device over the geographic center of the US would be 50 KV/meter over virtually all of the continental US. In other words the potential developed in of a piece of wire a meter long perpendicular to line of sight to the burst, could be fifty thousand volts. A millimeter long, 50 volts.
Virtually all electrical devices would be disrupted by insulation breakdown. Not all would suffer permanent damage, and many could potentially be restarted.
Electronics were much less evolved at the time, semiconductor devices were fairly large and easy to fry. The sorts of hardening techniques presented that were then being developed for military and critical civil applications included supplementing solid state junctions with dead end reverse polarity legs to cancel the effect.
But this scenario was just from a Soviet nuke. I wonder what the Sun could do.
“White House gets serious about space weath”
This would be buffoonish and laughable, just another asinine cartoon, if we could be sure it wasn’t a ‘violent space weather’ ploy to extend bureaucratic controls even to the limits of earth’s orbit and beyond. Will the current administration use this to exert even greater dictatorial ‘management’ of all forms of US energy production AND distribution, through the Department of Energy and the EPA shared regulatory control? Is this another ‘reason’ we need ‘one world government’? Ye Gods, I am sick of their crap!
We can continue to complain about the Obama administration, his EPA, and the zealots in and out of congress that support their economic suicide…….. or we can commit ourselves right now to work our butts off until November to defeat as many of them as possible in the coming elections!
If not Now, When? If not You, Who?
MtK
Stark Dickflüssig says:
June 16, 2012 at 8:45 am
But, seriously: it’s not that we should ignore the possibility, but there are already myriads of backup generators in the US. So you’ll be able to go to a hospital, emergency broadcasts will go out, & Arby’s will still be serving. The only people who will be SOL are the dips in Cah-lee-for-nee-ah who actually depend on the high-tension lines, since they have so little generation capacity within the state.
EMP will either fry the wiring in the backups or reverse the polarity in their coils — and unless they’re pull-start, either will be moot. When Viktor Belenko defected in his MiG-25P in ’76, the engineers who disassembled it couldn’t understand why the Sovs were still using vacuum tubes in their ‘lectronic gear, until a USAF tech told them the “obsolete” technology had a better chance of surviving the EMP from a nuke.
If you want to protect your electronic toys, make a Faraday cage for each one. No guarantee that you’ll have ‘net access in the event of a solar burp, but your stored information will be safe.
The concept of “Space Weather Mitigation” intrigues me. Since the primary effect of a Carrington is on long wires in transmission lines, the obvious best way to “mitigate” against them burning up is to get rid of them. Energy needs to become as local as politics. A windmill in every pot!
Want to know more of what really happened during the 1859 Carrington event? Here’s some detailed info between the various telegraph operators themselves during those days in 1859:
http://www.h2g2.com/entry/A43562586
Also, I wish some of the scared (or scare mongers) would just apply a little high school physics to this matter of solar storms and the grid. A magnet flux across all three of three-phase transmission lines is applied equally and in phase, so there is no huge differential between any line and the other two legs. Huge voltage just doesn’t occur but the differentials of the metal wires to ground does occur and most have voltage sensing somewhere in the system to the ground. Automatic equipment may sense this and trip. Want to know more of what really happened in Quebec in 1989?
http://www.ips.gov.au/Educational/1/3/12
So many have applied their imaginations in place of history and simple science. I’m not saying there would not be any problems, most of the far isolated edges of the grid, Australia outback, Alaska, and rural Canada, and others, use the single-line-earth-return systems for saving cost and this could be a problem in extraneous e.m.f. inductions over long lines, just like back in 1859 with the single-line telegraph lines. The grid might show imbalances and trip due the very low frequency a.c. (basically varying d.c.) fluctuations and transformer saturation as occurred in Quebec but I see no huge melt-down disaster. If you read the story in Quebec it was more a problem of LOW voltage, not high. Maybe take a refresher on the history, electricity, and magnetism, and the actual grid.
Remember, lines not connected in a strong magnetic flux do, well… nothing. Hear of an impending solar storm, SDO and SOHO will know… unplug your computer and devices if you are frightened of the plug.
I just get so tired of all of the man-ufactured doom and gloom.
And bwdave, a huge solar storm will never be as a nuclear e.m.f. pulse device detonated a few kilometers over your head unless the sun goes nova (but, it’s too small, and young), so I also don’t ever seeing even 1/10000th of the 50,000 volts per meter you mentioned from a CME.
Sure wish some operators from within large electric plants or electrical engineers who build them would get on here and clear up some of the confusion, I’m not immune to it either. Need more info.
wayne says:
June 17, 2012 at 6:27 am
“Want to know more of what really happened during the 1859 Carrington event? Here’s some detailed info between the various telegraph operators themselves during those days in 1859:
http://www.h2g2.com/entry/A43562586 ”
Excellent historical summary of the 1859 event, Wayne!
That was an enjoyable and informative ‘read’.
Thanks!
MtK
Ok, There’s lots of talk about the power grid. Mark has some physics to back his assertion that the power grid, from a high transmission line standpoint anyway, will be fine…Hummm, OK, for argument I’ll accept that. EXCEPT – my post is centered on the burnout of integrated circuits including microprocessors not the voltage differential of arial high voltage transmission lines…and not just your computer. Sorry, but that’s a minor issue.
As little as 25 volts across the wrong junctions will fry an integrated circuit. Boiling down my first post, can a CME fry integrated circuits – and if so how well protected are these chips? Police use a pulse to shut down automobile engines by frying its chips. Can a CME of 1859 amplitude do that?
If so how will the computers that control our power grid function? I think a valid question, and one without political overtones. I get the political overtones.
Mike
The time interval of the solar cycle just before the notorious Carrington Event and our last solar cycle, 23, were a very close match although the details of the peaks were different. We are now coming up on almost the same equivalent time in the solar cycle when that event happened. This does not mean another such event will occur or that it will be directed toward the Earth if it does.
BTW, I have sometimes wondered if a solar flare could be so large that its magnetic field might force a reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field.
Thanks MtN. That is a very interesting read isn’t it. I didn’t get the entire article read until tonight and noticed it gave me the one big missing parameter, ~-1600 nT, of the field strength produced in 1859. I’m going to calculate a bit with that later. Also noticed our friend Leif is referenced within and it has a link to one of his papers. Good read also Leif!
Seems to me that these CME magnetic fluxes only affect on a very large distance scale. Many kilometer wires, greater voltage to ground and possible large currents, and was surprised that the maximum effect happened on north-south lines, I had wrongly assumed east-west would put the magnetic flux perpendicular. Got to think on that one. I also had never considered long rail road lines, long pipe lines, etc.; those are all susceptible when left unprotected but sound like they are already frequently grounded at intervals to remove this danger of excess voltage between any two points for this very reason.
One point six micro-Tesla… really can’t envision that affecting any tiny iPhone or PC due to their physical smallness. Calculate it. Now satellites might be difference case. They could be physically pushed out of physical alignment with the ground stations or I guess possibly accumulate large static charges from the ions, that I’m not versed enough to comment on those aspects.
All with nifty microprocessor controlled start sequences and microprocessor controlled automatic transfer switches. You might be able to work around that, but the solution will be ugly and slow to materialize. It may well be that the only one with an operable generator will be the farmer running a 1950’s John Deere with a PTO tied to an equally ancient motor/genset.
Awright, I got my old “Blue Goose” Fordson Tractor and Hawkins is thinking GREEN with his John Deere…any other takers??? Sorry Hawk but looks like I’m the skeptic here. (If I need to say it
SARC!)
Mike
The real concern in a CME event is damage to huge power generation transformers. These are connected to long power lines that act as antennae for the very low frequency, high amplitude, electric current surges induced by the CME event if and when it strikes the Earth. If these transformers are not disconnected in time or otherwise protected, it may take many months to replace them. I do not think local power-pole transformers are considered to be at risk for known magnitude events.
The notorious 1859 Carrington Event only had the telegraph system to disrupt. Some telegraph operators were reportedly shocked by strange induced voltages during that event. Again, the important factor here, was the presence of long-wire electromagnetic antennae.
“The real concern in a CME event is damage to huge power generation transformers. These are connected to long power lines that act as antennae for the very low frequency, high amplitude, electric current surges induced by the CME event if and when it strikes the Earth.”
Spector, I agree with that completely and your right on the very low frequency, almost half-wave direct current nature of the induced voltage and you can get this by “reading between the lines” of what the telegraph operators were reporting in 1859. Their galvanometers were pegged to one side over long periods, not oscillating that points to steady or very slowly varying d.c. only.
When wuwt had another article on this same subject about a year ago, I read somewhere (can’t find it again) that it was this heavy d.c. component that downed the Quebec transformers. Said these transformers are not designed nor built to handle heavy underlying direct currents under the 50 or 60 a.c. load. Sure looks like there should be some way to shunt that d.c. to ground at the ends of these lines and I’m not sure if that is not exactly what utilities are doing right now, on the surface that seems this is all the protection needed but can’t seem to find any confirmation.