Lots of people talking about this article in the UK daily Mail:
A near miss for Earth: Solar flare that could have knocked out power, cars and phones came so close two weeks ago
- Earth has narrowly missed electromagnetic pulses caused by solar flares
- If they had hit, the pulses could have knocked out electrical equipment over continent-scale regions
An electromagnetic pulse that could have knocked electrical equipment over continent-scale regions barely missed Earth two weeks ago, it has been revealed.
Source: (h/t Jack Simmons)
But, not so fast…NASA’s Dr. Tony Phillips of Spaceweather.com writes:
Many readers are asking about a report in the Washington Examiner, which states that a Carrington-class solar storm narrowly missed Earth two weeks ago. There was no Carrington-class solar storm two weeks ago. On the contrary, solar activity was low throughout the month of July.
The report is erroneous.
The possibility of such a storm is, however, worth thinking about: A modern Carrington event would cause significant damage to our high-tech society.
There is even a recent SciFi movie revolving around the idea which seems to have gone straight to video:
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Anyone happen to know if there are good estimates about how the Carrington event flare(s) would fall on today’s scale? There were several X class flares in May of this year… perhaps one or more of those was responsible for a “carrington” level flare had the Earth been two weeks further advanced in it’s orbit? I did a quick search and just found that the Carrington was a “white light flare” but heck if I know how that fits into the current classification scale….
@ur momisugly Regnad Kcin says: August 2, 2013 at 8:11 pm
It’s my understanding that they pretty much don’t keep any spares to speak of for the biggest transformers, and that those would be quite vulnerable – and that it takes one to two YEARS to gt replacements (and that assumes that one of the few places that makes them isn’t also hit and knocked into the stone age too, I guess).
(http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf)
“Geomagnetic storms represent an approximation to an E3-induced voltage effect. The
experience to date is of events that may be orders of magnitude smaller in scope and less
severe than that expected from an EMP — although the Commission has also investigated
the impact of a 100-year superstorm. The induced geomagnetic superstorm currents
in the transmission lines will cause hundreds of high voltage transformers to saturate,
creating a severe reactive load in the power system leading to voltage collapse in the
affected area and damage to elements of the transmission system. The nature of this
threat did not allow for experimental testing of the E3 effect, so this historical record is
the best information on the effect”
Anthony,
Not to worry, a good share of the population is already pre-enlightenment era, should be a good match.
My apologies for repeating a false report.
However, the threat is very real.
The really scary thing about an Electromagnetic Pulses (EMP), both natural and man-made, is there is a full range of frequencies produced with great power. This means every electrical circuit, from a thousand mile long power line to a mm long wire in a pacemaker becomes an antenna. All of these antennas pick up the pulse at their frequency and transform it into a very high voltage and current event, overloading their respective circuits. Remember, you have either the sun or a nuclear explosion behind all those frequencies.
If my memory serves me right, the first instance of a man-made EMP took place during a high altitude test of a nuclear device over Hawaii. Many circuits were damaged or destroyed. It was a completely unexpected side effect of a nuclear detonation. All the other tests were on or under the ground or at a low altitude, too low to transmit the effect over much of a distance.
The only thing to be done is to wrap your circuit inside a Faraday cage.
A power company may want to consider storing its field vehicles in garages serving as Faraday cages as well. Included might be replacement coils for power plant generators. Or perhaps it might make sense to shield power plants with large Faraday cages.
Dittos for hospitals, police departments, computer server farms, etc.
Not only are we vulnerable to the Carrington effect but a rogue nation could launch a missile topped with a device designed with an enhanced EMP effect. You wouldn’t have to get close, just over a major region of the country.
Imagine the chaos such a simple weapon could cause.
jarthuroriginal is my WordPress.com account name.
My name is Jack Simmons.
Sorry about any confusion.
Rational Db8 says:
August 2, 2013 at 8:18 pm
Anyone happen to know if there are good estimates about how the Carrington event flare(s) would fall on today’s scale? There were several X class flares in May of this year
Our best estimate of the X-ray flux from the Carrington Event is X45 which is 45 times stronger than an X1 event
@jarthuroriginal
I believe you are thinking of the Starfish prime test over Johnson island, very nearly 900 miles away from Hawaii. It wasn’t the first man-made EMP – but it did have a far far greater EMP effect than expected, and it affected electronics etc., on Hawaii (talk about a terrifying concept!). From the notoriously incorrect but oh so convenient Wiki, just to get you started if you are interested in details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime
Apparently there is some intelligence suggesting that N. Korea has been working on an EMP divice capable of attacking the USA directly, with a suspected south polar orbit/vector of attack. I have no idea how legitimate the claim is, or how close they might be to being able to accomplish this. Any large nuke set off from about 200 miles up – a single blast – would wipe out much of the entire USA – depending on how big the nuke anyhow. I don’t have a handy link, but have previously been able to find some maps even showing concentric circles for just how much of the USA would be affected from a single ballistic high atmosphere nuke centered over the USA, based on size and also altitude. It’s a disconcerting thought when one realizes how many nuclear nations are also capable of launching a high altitude bomb that way – and all it would take is one to do massive damage to our infrastructure.
The true absurdity of it all is that our government has known this full well for decades, and the estimates of the cost to significantly harden our infrastructure is utterly miniscule compared to the amount being spent towards global warming b.s.
@ur momisugly Leif Svalgaard says: August 2, 2013 at 9:07 pm
THANK YOU Leif! What’s the biggest recorded X class that you can recall offhand? Or if anyone has a link handy to a site listing all the really big ones we’ve recorded over an extended timeframe (regardless of the direction of the blast)….
Well, they couldn’thave been referring to the may x class flares then – those weren’t anywhere close to an X45:
from spaceweather.com:
Rational Db8 says:
August 2, 2013 at 9:12 pm
THANK YOU Leif! What’s the biggest recorded X class that you can recall offhand?
X35 in 2003. See the discussion in the link I gave http://www.leif.org/EOS/swsv130015.pdf
May 1921 – Telegraph Services interupted and Aurora observed in Southern Australia:
from: The Argus (Melbourne, Vic.) Tuesday 17 May 1921
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/1757393?searchTerm=telephone&searchLimits=l-decade=192|||l-month=05|||l-year=1921|||sortby=dateAsc
It is interesting that no one has addressed what happens at the ends of the many long pipelines. The lower frequencies do penetrate the surface and do induce large telluric currents.
When this happens, the large grocery stores in the affected area will run out of food within days. Chaos will follow. Those of us with a store of food, and garden areas, and independent water sources will be much better off. Any amount of preparation for a disaster is better than no preparation. Not to live in fear of such, but to be realistic that the “when” does happen. Water, food, fuel, protection, etc. Be smart.
How many ambitious global, national, regional, state, county, city, township, and ghetto civil and military leaders will look out at the carnage produced by a Carrington event and ask “If not now, when?” and then launch all out war against their weakest neighbor? I think the answer is: more than 1. I think, in fact, it will be the new norm, and old frontiers will be forever changed and society with it. Civilization will pause and climate will not be discussed.
There are differences between EMP and a CME event. EMP has very high frequency (fast rise time) electric fields, followed later by long lasting (tens of minutes) strong geomagnetic storm.
The former would represent a danger to lots of electronic devices, even unconnected to the power system. It would also represent a danger to the power system.
The later would *destroy* the power system, especially custom-made high voltage/high power transformers upon which our grid is absolutely reliant.
And no, we don’t have nearly enough spares, and it would take many months for them to be made overseas (our industry would be dark and useless).
There are congress-critters who keep trying to get some money put into the budget to solve this. It wouldn’t take but a few tens of billions to keep the power system alive, and critical communications and computing infrastructure sort of intact.
Without that, tens of millions would probably die, unless overseas help could transport food to us and feed us. Many would die anyway – from violence and shortages before any help arrived.
It is criminal that the US has not protected itself against these events, especially since an EMP attack is *easier* than an ICBM attack (no re-entry vehicle needed). To do grave damage to the US, an asymmetric enemy like Iran or North Korea need merely orbit a nuke – even a primitive, low-yield one, and set it off over the center of the country.
Listen to what mesocyclone says:
August 2, 2013 at 9:53 pm
@Leif, RE: Karlstad 1921
That anecdote was about the worst hit station in an event 92 years ago. Other stations suffered less. People learned.
Was there a repeat in 1921 of US telegraphs sparking and starting fires from the 1859 event? A NY Central Signal and Switch yard and fire in a control tower. One telegraph building burned. But given the number of potential places of failure, civilization came through and learned some more. http://www.solarstorms.org/SRefStorms.html
Have electrical engineers learned nothing from 92 years of technology, engineering, and grid management? Grids manage to continue operation through all but the worst electrical storms. A Carrington EMP gives us hours of warning. I suppose we have one benefit from wind-farm installations: Grid operators have learned to work with live, ever changing, transmission line loads. Fortunately more and more of our communications are on non-conducting fiber-optic.
That is million, not billion.
Yes, there is some engineering to do, if it hasn’t already been done. And prudent precautions in case of a day’s warning of an event. But I’m smelling a “Y2K” doomsday hype.
Frankly, we have much more to worry about from an unstable grid as a consequence of politically generated disasters from increases in wind power and losses in coal-fired base load generation. FERC may be charged with protecting us from EMP, but they are falling down on the job in their everyday duties.
“Solar Storm Threat Analysis”, James A. Marusek, Impact 2007 (PDF 29 pgs, 0.8 MB)
Correction. instead of EMP I meant CME GMS (geomagnetic storm)
Much of the West’s essential electronic comms network has been hardened against the EMP from nuclear device(s). The rationale behind the development of the Net was to maintain comms in a nuclear exchange. Would not these measures provide a degree of protection against a Carrington event? Another point is that we would have warning of a Carrington event. Would this be long enough to enable emergency measures to be taken such as closing down power generation on the night side of the Earth, and taking similar measures in the time available on the day side while the event is building to dangerous levels?
”
August 2, 2013 at 8:29 pm
My apologies for repeating a false report.
However, the threat is very real.
The really scary thing about an Electromagnetic Pulses (EMP), both natural and man-made, is there is a full range of frequencies produced with great power. This means every electrical circuit, from a thousand mile long power line to a mm long wire in a pacemaker becomes an antenna. All of these antennas pick up the pulse at their frequency and transform it into a very high voltage and current event, overloading their respective circuits. Remember, you have either the sun or a nuclear explosion behind all those frequencies.
If my memory serves me right, the first instance of a man-made EMP took place during a high altitude test of a nuclear device over Hawaii. Many circuits were damaged or destroyed. It was a completely unexpected side effect of a nuclear detonation. All the other tests were on or under the ground or at a low altitude, too low to transmit the effect over much of a distance.
The only thing to be done is to wrap your circuit inside a Faraday cage.
A power company may want to consider storing its field vehicles in garages serving as Faraday cages as well. Included might be replacement coils for power plant generators. Or perhaps it might make sense to shield power plants with large Faraday cages.
Dittos for hospitals, police departments, computer server farms, etc.
Not only are we vulnerable to the Carrington effect but a rogue nation could launch a missile topped with a device designed with an enhanced EMP effect. You wouldn’t have to get close, just over a major region of the country.
Imagine the chaos such a simple weapon could cause.
”
Partly right but partly wrong.
A Faraday cage works for electrostatic charges, not for changing magnetic fields. For that you need mu metal and it is not very effective. Besides, a Faraday cage tends to have openings – like a screen or bird cage frame and openings are openings for the EMP. A metal shield is simply going to have the varying magnetic field generate eddy currents and that can create varying magnetic fields inside the enclosure.
Fortunately, most of the problems will be associated with longer wires and antennas. Disconnect a transformer from the power grid and it will be safe during an event strong enough to fry it if still attached. Equipment not plugged in to the power or other cables will be much more likely to survive than those that are.
As an example, a very long wire located a thousand feet from a major lightning strike can have peak currents approaching a thousands amps and this is not really the equivalent of an EMP and doesn’t contain the high frequencies a atomic bomb EMP would create.
Some ultra bad news is that it is possible to create a small EMP bomb without having to have a nuke bomb which could damage equipment over as much as a few city blocks.
It’s all a matter of energy density as to whether something is damaged. It takes a lot of energy to melt heavy transformer wiring, either wire or insulation. Pick the wrong spot to zap inside a cell phone and the electrical energy generated by walking across a carpet on a dry day is fully capable of ruining it. EMPs are very good at getting energy into just about everywhere.
Solar events have lots of energy even compared to atomic bombs.
Note that surge protectors similar to what is available in power strips offers a great deal of help for a lot of equipment but these sorts of things are of limited benefit.
The best thing that can be done for something like the power grid is to take everything off line while the event is happening. That requires knowing when the CME is coming. An EMP bomb will not have that but it will not have the energy available to damage most of the transformers even if it were capable of damaging or destroying most computers in the lower 48.
Back during Rita/Katrina emergencys, there was something like an x19 or x28 event. It took out HF radio communications for a couple of hours but did not damage normal (unprotected) radio equipment which was in operation at that time. This was either the largest flare ever measured with modern measurement equipment or it was at least one of the top 3. While Leif’s 1921 event might have been as substantial as the Carrington event, there hasn’t been anything like it since the invention of the transistor. His value of x-45 may be correct but I don’t think those events are merely twice that of the recent one. I thought the X-value scale was a log scale rather than linear.
Those big transformers are produced only a few a year. Assuming civilization hangs together, it would take years to replace all the damaged ones at anything close to the current production rate. With copper shortages, etc., and a severely damaged electronic infrastructure alternative approaches would probably be necessary. Perhaps locally generated power with a far more limited supply would likely be the result.
Since I’ve no desire to live in a post civilization wasteland, I hope we do not experience either the EMP bomb or the Carrington sized CME direct hit.
oops above post was quoting jauthororiginal – but that didn’t copy into the text box.
500 yr events seem to be radically underestimated sometimes. 500yr flood plains might tend to flood in more like 50yr time frames.
I just want another geomagnetic storm big enough for me to see it from down here in San Diego. I was so shocked and surprised the one time I saw the aurora and still think it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. I can’t imaging how our modern society would deal with a Carrington type event!
The bats and swallows will enjoy the bugs that bloom from the dead bodies crawling with maggots. 🙂