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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The Daily Mail is a comic. Its dead tree media. It has to sell pulverised trees stained with ink to survive. It will print ANYTHING to do with the weather because it is British. Its entertainment on the scale of the National Enquirer. Don’t waste your time
cba says:
August 2, 2013 at 10:48 pm
I thought the X-value scale was a log scale rather than linear.
It is [in this way]:
An n*10^-8 W/m2 [1-8A]
Bn n*10^-7 B1=A10
Cn n*10^-6 C1=B10
Mn n*10^-5 M1=C10
Xn n*10^-4 X1=M10
Yn n*10^-3 Y1=X10
Zn n*10^-2 Z1=Y10=X100
But we don’t use Y and Z [I don’t know why not] so:
X10 is Y1=10^-3
X100 is Z1=Y10=10^-2
I think that X85 would be the theoretical maximum.
This “near miss” story is most likely a well played bit of marketing PR. Google is currently popping up the TV series as the second or third hit. Well played!
jimmi_the_dalek says:
At some point such an event will occur. At some point a major asteroid impact will occur. In the short term the lesson is : Don’t believe anything in the Daily Mail without checking a reliable source.
===
Don’t believe anything in the Daily Mail , period.
The stream of titillating photos and starlet gossip down the right hand side of the site should be a clue. It’s sensational garbage, not a new source.
In fact if you don’t even read it , you’ll save yourself the rest of the day “fact” checking and will be able to do something useful instead.
I imagine air and train travel would be pretty much screwed by an event like this. So what, you say. Well, if your partner travels for work and is on the other side of the world when IT happens, your life ends, slowly, without your loved one by your side. You wouldn’t even be able to communicate with each other.
No, I don’t think I’d wish this ‘teachable moment’ on to anyone. I’d rather be hit by a truck.
There was actually a large CME from current sunspot 1806 when it was still on the backside of the Sun. The blast was large but pointed away from us in SE direction and slightly downward . It hit Venus and Mercury. ( Solarham, mid July).
July 22 old spot 1794, Solarham “old news previous month” archive.
I can’t remember the source but I seem to recall some experiment discussed recently which showed that most vehicles which were thought to be vulnerable to EMP like events were not and didn’t even stall let alone get fried. Did anyone else hear about that? I expect that the military is working on “hardening” their equipment and if cars and trucks don’t shut down, maybe things will be salvageable even if there is a lot of damage. I don’t mean to say that the threat should not be taken seriously.
Pamela Gray says:
August 2, 2013 at 6:03 pm
Gosh that sounds wonderful. Thing is, if the EMP damage turns out to be as bad as they say it could be, it is doubtful you would have electricity or working appliances, not for a long time. And maybe no food. If you could grow some, could you store it? Most important of all, what would you do for water? You may live in the country, but city people will have to set out from their homes to scavenge. When the stores are empty, and the animals are gone, people will eat people. Disease will run wild. Are you ready for that?
Perhaps the military could man existing water treatment plants (maybe only manually operated without SCADA), or possibly set up portable water treatment and defend it. And maybe they could provide some food, but not for 100 or 200 million people. If the grid, vehicles, and electronics go down for good, it would seem a deep infrastructure collapse could not be avoided, and recovery could take a very long time. If we take the full hit, would China or Russia be able to come to our rescue? Would they want to?
They say we would be brought back to technology before the Civil War. We don’t have the animals we would need to run a small city, much less a state or nation. We don’t have the low tech infrastructure in place. Could it somehow be set up in a few weeks or months?
Our military should be functional after a large EMP, since they are supposedly prepared for nuclear war. Aircraft carriers might be the main source of stability, providing water, power, order, and hope, although only in pockets on the coast. The Army might be able to help keep some part of the petroleum infrastructure operating, but probably for their use mainly. How many people have mechanical ignitions in their cars?
How could we maintain agriculture? Or food delivery? Or food storage? Would we live under martial law, moved to farms to work – planting, harvesting, and threshing by hand?
I don’t know why we have not hardened our systems or at least stockpiled transformers for power stations. I suppose we do have CME/solar storm early warning capability. We may be able to power down the grid in time to protect generators and substations. I hope that’s enough.
Increased intensity (Ap>15) and intensity of geomagnetic events would contribute to ‘global temperature’ rise, and alternatively couple of decades of quiet sun (flares and CMEs low count) may provide an indication of true CO2 factor.
Recent found correlation between Danish aurora count and GT spectrum
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/DanAur.htm
was further confirmed by longer period of the Ap index comparisons. Here I took a role of devil’s advocate and assumed that the all GT rise not attributed to the geomagnetic storms (ignoring change in TSI, possible effects of lunisolar tydes, geomagnetic ‘jerks’ such as 1925 and 1970 ) is due to the CO2 rise.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Ap_LT.htm
If that was the case than a CO2 sensitivity factor can be calculated to be 0.7C for doubling of CO2
Correction: Increased intensity (Ap>15) and frequency of geomagnetic events ……
My house has a metal roof, aluminum siding, and metal security doors. How much protection to the stuff inside would that give to these events?
Angry sun may be beautiful and more importantly beneficial to the humanity (see my post above), just remember what Maunder minimum did to Europe’s climate in the late 17th century. We can partially protect our electrical systems (by disconnecting everything for 12-24 hours) but onset of 2-3 decades of cold climate would be disastrous for our energy resources and specially for the agriculture.
This is a regular on my desktop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ddt5Y1hXfgI
Hoser Aug 3rd 2013 12:55 am:
While I share Pamela Gray’s nostalgia, (hi Pamela) the fact is that in the last fifty or sixty years our population has more than doubled, and there is no way we could all survive a compete breakdown of the electricity system even if we hadn’t thrown away the old tools and old skills. As you say, it’s worrying.
rogerknights says:
August 3, 2013 at 1:22 am
….
For total safety from magnetic induction mu-metal box is required. However no need to get concerned, providing you know some hours in advance and disconnect everything from power and telephone lines..
Ground level equipment is endangered by electromagnetic induction. Frequency of oscillation within geomagnetic storm is low (fraction to a few Hertz), i.e. wave length is very large (you need quarter wave length or above for serious damage). Power lines, telephone over/under ground lines and railway tracks are ones at serious risk and the equipment physically connected to those.
Satellites are at danger from the energetic particles direct hit, which may not reach ground in the intensity or volume required to do any serious damage.
Doing a bit of digging regarding large X-class flares over the past few solar cycles, it seems that the largest flare of SC24 so far, of X6.9, is lower than those seen in cycles 21-23 at this stage of the cycle. However, most of the large flares have occurred after the sunspot maximum. They then seem to cease in the last few years of the cycle.
If this is any sort of guide, then it would suggest we have a fair few more X-class flares to come in SC24 but maybe no real biggies >X10. If SC25 and subsequent cycle(s) are quiet too, maybe we have a few decades of Carrington-type flares being less likely (and more time to develop protective systems). Then again, the Carrington event occurred during the fairly moderate SC10.
Leif, do you have anything to suggest if there’s any sound reason behind my general assumptions, or is there too much noise in the data to draw any conclusions?
I am wondering (again, sorry!) how insurance companies would react to such an event.
Take modern cars for example, with their ECU’s and electronic gadgets. Parked outside my house during such an event would probably fry it and make it useless!
I’m now thinking of force majeure and the ‘act of god’ type scenario would be applied…….
Kev-in-Uk says:
August 3, 2013 at 2:26 am
…..
Your car is safe, unless you are charging your battery (batteries) from mains at the time. See my post above, there is too much hype around.
Diving a bit into the kook pool a bit? This sounds worse than peak oil, climate chaos and the commie menace all rolled into one. Meh, a walk on the doom side is okay from time to time I guess.
I remember on the 70’s a Mig fghter defected from Russia to Japan. It was returned to Russia by ship which just happened to involve dimantling it. IInitally there was a lot of sneering at Soviet technology as they found they were using valaves instead of transistors. Then it was realised that valaves were much more robust against EMP’s. NATO planes would have dropped out of the sky and the Migs would still be flying.
When you consider all the mircohips in cars, computers, fridges the potemtial to be returned to Medieaval times in a day is quite thought provoking
Been discussed here before
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/14/homeland-security-takes-on-the-carrington-event/
All you need to know – Retired Admiral, Physicist, James A. Marusek has already done all the research.
http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/SSTA.pdf
Russ Hatch says:
August 2, 2013 at 6:05 pm
If it happens it will be interesting to see how the greenies react. they seem to want us to be in the preindustrial era anyway.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
82% of US citizens are in cities or suburbia and in 1990, 31% lived in central cities. The urbanized west and east coasts are the centers of ‘Green’ the rest is ‘Flyover country’
I doubt the urbanite greens would last to give us their opinions. Think the 1992 Los Angles Riots happening simultaneously in every city in the world. The elite would barricade themselves in and let the world burn.
Unlike politicians the inner city ‘socialists’ only stay bought as long as the money keeps coming. With the Obama Admin intentionally stirring the racial hatred pot it makes the situation all that much more explosive.
“Gail Combs says:
August 3, 2013 at 5:33 am
The elite would barricade themselves in and let the world burn.”
That process began decades ago. They would burn too, eventually.
wayne says:
August 2, 2013 at 6:39 pm
Hey, that one’s right up there in scientific realism ratings with the “Absolute Zero” movie!
Loving to scare people who love to be scared….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
FWIW: I worked at a company where our well shielded very expensive X-ray machine was taken out by a lightening strike. The installers were really scratching their heads over how the equipment got fried. They think the electrical spike traveled from the ground up the grounding rods.
Until we have a ‘Carrington Event’ we will not know exactly how it will effect our equipment but with much of our civilization dependent on that equipment it is worth considering.
NASA on ‘Carrington Event’