One of the biggest sunspots in years is emerging on the sun today. Hours ago it produced a C-class solar flare and a minor radio blackout over the Indian Ocean. This sunspot, if it holds itself together, will face Earth for the next two weeks as it rotates across the face of the sun, potentially setting the stage for a sustained stretch of solar activity.
This new sunspot group is rotating into view over the sun’s southeastern limb–and it’s a big one. At least three dark cores the size of Earth are inset in this magnetic map from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory:
The +/- polarity of the sunspot group marks it as a member of Solar Cycle 25. This comes as no surprise. Almost every sunspot this year has belonged to the new solar cycle. Solar Cycle 25 is taking a firm hold on the sun.
Earlier today (Nov. 3rd at 0703 UT) the sunspot produced a minor C1-class solar flare. A pulse of UV radiation from the flare briefly ionized Earth’s upper atmosphere, causing a low-frequency radio blackout over the Indian Ocean: map. Mariners and ham radio operators in the area may have noticed unusual propagation effects at frequencies below ~5 MHz.
This sunspot, if it holds itself together, will face Earth for the next two weeks as it rotates across the face of the sun, potentially setting the stage for a sustained stretch of solar activity and solar flares.
via SpaceWeather.com
It is worth noting that the Carrington Event, a powerful geomagnetic storm on September 1–2, 1859, during solar cycle 10 (1855–1867) was during a period of low solar activity preceding it.
It caused a solar coronal mass ejection (CME) hitting Earth’s magnetosphere and induced the largest geomagnetic storm on record.
If such an event occurred today, it would like create havoc with our sensitive electronics, power grids, and space satellites.
Big sunspots tend to do that. The flare is not the cause of the problem. The Coronal Eruption (which may in turn trigger the flares) is what to fear. It all depends on how complex (tangled up) the magnetic field is. We shall see. But it does show that solar cycle 25 has begun in earnest.
Thanks, Leif. Your expertise on these matters is always very much appreciated by me.
Regards,
Bob
PS: Stay safe and healthy, all.
The slow start for SC25 is still higher than SC24 through the 11th month, 4.5 to 3.2 SN.
AR 2781 is already beta-gamma-delta and DKC, maybe EKC.
SWPC forecast is about 10 hours behind this developing AR.
First SC 25 AR capable of an X class flare, IMO.
Jan Alvestad has yet to update his webpage, but soon.
Jan usually makes the SWPC crew look like amateurs.
Can anyone translate that bit of Vulcan into English* for me please?
* French would do at a push.
see here: http://sidc.oma.be/educational/classification.php
Jan classified AR2781 as EKC on his STAR classification.
Hi Doc
Any idea what happened when the flair struck
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/SOHO.gif
more details further down at
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/11/03/huge-sunspot-may-launch-solar-flares-toward-earth-in-the-next-two-weeks/#comment-3118475
Not specifically, but it is not unusual that flares influence the instruments.
Thanks. Keep safe.
Well, it is 2020, and the year isn’t over yet. I wouldn’t be that surprised if we get did hit with a hefty CME, just to confirm Murphy’s Law. Maybe that would be a good thing, in that people would learn that there are natural forces beyond our control, just like natural variability with long term climate change. Global warming, global cooling and climate change are the rule, and we should really accept that we have always lived in a risk adverse climate, including that which comes out of left field, just like a CME event that we have absolutely no control over it, other than how we react to it.
The same line of thought should be mitigating weather and longer term climate issues that we also have no control over by planning and building robust infrastructure, instead of thinking we can appease the CO2 gods to have perfect weather/climate. Which we never had either, but there seems to a line of thinking that the last 100 years of very benign weather/climate has always been the norm. We know with 100% certainty that isn’t the way it has been, and the norm is actually the opposite, which is dreadful natural climate change over long time scales. With cold periods/glacial advances being the long term disastrous norm for life of the good Earth.
CO2 OIL!…Coal and …TRUMP! caused this!
I’m sure if something did happen we would hear at least a few earthy causations attributed to Orang Man.
No, it’s Bush’s fault.
Clinton started it because of his and Gore’s money making schemes. Crime families of the deep state.
Thanks to Leif Svalgaard for his comment about the new sunspot. His contributions to WUWT are invaluable.
+1
Action must be taken to control the sun and to prevent such interruptions in radio communications and to prevent it from playing a roll in climate change. I would like to be awarded a billion dollar contract to search for ways by which mankind can control the sun.
Don’t give them any ideas…
Better call Bill (pedophile) Gates… He seems to be the worlds expert on everything…
No one uses “radio” any more, so …
_Jim says :
“No one uses “radio” any more, so …”
————————————————-
Maybe no one you know.
The smartest civilians in the hobby have one or more very old radio receivers, and transceivers in their collections. The old tube type.
They are the most resistant to EMP comms that are affordable to those without a Government credit card.
They will be listening long after all the other current civilian devices are insta-smoked E-waste.
Even if you put modern devices in EMP resistant storage, none the internet/cellular services people use them for now will exist in the civilian world after a big solar flare / Kim family EMP. The internet will be a rumor to the next generations.
Sorry Will, Hunter Biden’s already got that (very lucrative) project sewed up (with 10 percent for the ‘Big Guy’ of course).
A sunspot, barely beta class.
https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/pl/aktywnosc-sloneczna/regiony-wystepowania-plam-slonecznych.html
Chance of C-class flare (10%).
ren says :
“A sunspot, barely beta class.”
——————————————
Yes true, but Earth’s magnetic field is not what is was in 1859 either. And, the weakening is continuing.
Carrington’s flare burned telegraph wires off polls, and set polls on fire. Those wires in1859 were 1.5 to 1.7 mm in diameter. The circuits we use in thousands of ways every day … measures are in nanometers.
Scotty is not happy with our planets shields
re: “Carrington’s flare burned telegraph wires off polls, and set polls on fire. Those wires in1859 were 1.5 to 1.7 mm in diameter. The circuits we use in thousands of ways every day … measures are in nanometers.”
You forget something, we have learned a lot since then. If you are unawares and so inclined look up the measures power transmission companies use to deal with GICs, or Ground Induced Currents. I don’t have but 35 mins left on this library computer session today or I would post a few dozen helpful links …
_Jim I wasn’t talking about power companies, though that information would be interesting to know…
I was talking about the new $ 96K BMW driving down the street past a teen girl staring at her $1200 cell phone … when a combined 1500 computer chips innards in the vehicle and the cellphone vaporize. The girl will stop and tap and swear at her now blank screen. But what does the BMW do. A brick on wheels rolling at 40 MPH ? I’d like to know if any of the vehicle manufacturers have a backup manual “brake and steer” if ALL of the chips fail at once ? I hear the luxury end vehicles have 1000+ microchips each ?
And, _Jim there is again no rule, that limits solar flares to the Carrington level. Far from it. To jump over to an earthquake analogy, no-one I’ve read in the earthquake end of the geology profession thought that either the sections of the Sumatra fault (Indonesia), or the Sendai sections (Japan) could produce the magnitudes of the Boxing Day, and Tohoku quakes … until they did.
The Japanese are at the top of the world in earthquake protection. Yet a lot of their protective dikes were easily over-topped by the Tsunamis, partially because of that underestimation. And, also because they did not know that near coast undersea avalanches triggered by the massive quake could, and did magnify the wave heights like a gymnast jumping on a trampoline to start a routine. They know now.
Likewise we don’t know what the sun can do. We’ve had a century of growingly competent observations. But, we don’t know what clues we might be missing … until that gap manifests. Because those clues might only show up every thousand, or ten thousand years.
So when/if do we start worrying?
I built some Faraday cages to store my laptops and phones in. Probably never need it, but it’s possible.
What materials did you use?
I have come on a recommendation to line a foam insulated coolbox with aluminum foil. Would it really work?
Also I have seen fine wire mesh suggested.
I suppose a typical refrigerator would work as a Faraday cage in a pinch. As a bonus, you can check on your tech-toys while reaching for a cold beer.
Better check the front doors on your ref. If a magnet does not stick it is not truly stainless steel even though it is advertised as such. As most refs are made this way, perhaps it would not be such good protection.
Doesn’t need to be stainless steel. Any old steel will do. But tuning the fridge on could create condensation which is bad for circuitry stored therein.
jorgekafkazar November 4, 2020 at 9:55 am
“Doesn’t need to be stainless steel. Any old steel will do.”
You missed the point. If a magnet doesn’t stick it is not steel at all. I used “stainless steel” because that is how they are advertised.
The Faraday shield does need to be near-continuous: Almost by definition, the refrigerator door is isolated by plastic seals, the back is not continuous by is interrupted by openings and covers that may, or may not be, plastic as well. It would be simplistic to assume the “steel” is continuous all-around.
Considering that the original Carrington event set telegraph wires on fire, I think you’ll need something a lot more substantial than Aluminium foil !
A solid metallic box, connected to ground.
A proper faraday cage has two isolated sealed layers of metal. Inside and outside of a foam insulated coolbox would be a reasonable attempt. But your bonds between the sheets will be a weakness.
re: “A proper faraday cage has ”
Misappropriation, and use, of the term.
Look on the bright side; if this CME kicks off big time we’re all going to get an epic dose of vitamin D exposure.
Justin Burch says :
” So when/if do we start worrying?”
——————————————————-
It’s not a new threat. It is ancient. More people just suddenly know about it, and it never mattered until people got hooked on electricity. Worrying is worth zero. Action does count.
If you ever bought “the big jackpot” lottery tickets you were already investing in a jackpot probability less than that of a major solar flare in a single lifetime. What are you willing to invest/exchange to make your prospects better in the event a major solar flare like Carrington, Carrington +, or Carrington ++, wiped out the last three centuries technology worldwide ? Or, any unrelated disaster where it is crucial to be totally independent, and isolated far from the urban ? There are tons of free preparing videos/texts to peruse online.
Appropriate for 2020.
It is nice that the sun is so quite (as it always is during solar minimum) that we can write an entire news article about a single sun spot group.
She was stronger spot, 2778 class of beta-gamma.
https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/solar-activity/solar-flares.html
Multiple C solar flares have originated from AR 2778. Clicking on that region, we see probabilities for C, M, X respectively 55%, 10%, 1%. This seems up to date and correct. However, under the Solar Flare section below the blue solar disk image, we see probabilities for C, M, X respectively 5%, 1%, 1%. This seems wrong, perhaps latched with stale data?
https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/community/topic/1859-solar-flare-probability-discrepancy/
A “brilliant” start to the solar cycle that started in January 2020.
If there is another Carrington Event….and the odds are there will be one day….which would be netter – today’s electrical grid or one based on MSRs providing local power without the huge transmission lines?
One that actually exists. !
Sigh. I keep on starting a blog post titled “The Apocalypse That Wasn’t.”
It will cause more dust so you put your dust mask on skeptic-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/terrawatch-dust-is-speeding-up-melting-of-himalayan-snow/ar-BB1aF2jg
Doomed I tell ya. We’re all doomed!
Somehow, one large sunspot is worse than the dozens of sunspots that we used to get daily
Is someone aware of the SPE datasets (Proton Flux (pfu @>10 MeV) ?
I ask because I don’t understand the differences in dataset in 2017
1.
2017
Jul 14/0900 Jul 14/2320 22
Sep 05/0040 Sep 08/0035 844
Sep 10/1645 Sep 11/1145 1490
found here
and
2.
2017
Sep 05/0751 Sep 05/1930
Found here
Any idea ? Thx in advance
correction:
2.
2017
Sep 05/0751 Sep 05/1930 210
well, that hit the spot!
We’re all going to die?!
Not true. 1859 was very close to the SC10 peak in activity that took place in 1860.
http://www.sidc.be/silso/IMAGES/GRAPHICS/wolfaml2.png
I’ve read it several times. It appears that checking the data before saying something is no longer in fashion.
“… the Carrington Event, a powerful geomagnetic storm… during solar cycle 10 was during a period of low solar activity preceding it.”
It’s not even English. The Carrington Event seems to be both during SC10 and during something preceding “it.”
Just curious about something: if/should this happen, how much damage might it do to eletronic communications devices such as iPhones and routers for your desktop PC service? Anyone have any ideas about it (besides Leif, whose wisdom about such things is deep enough to spook even me :).
Is there any way I can protect my computers and other such things, including the thermostat for my furnace, and the newly-installed furnace/AC itself, because winter’s heading this way and I really don’t want to have to report “SUN SPOT DAMAGE’ to my insurance agent.
On the other hand, the new equipment has a warranty included, so it may be covered by that, to a certain extent. Seriously, the installers walked me through how the heat/AC power plant generates its workload, and after seeing all that electronic stuff, now I”m a bit worried, and legitimately so. The things we take for granted are so easily disrupted by Ma Nature’s quirks and foibles that I almost feel as though I should sacrifice a piece of turtle cheesecake (add caramel sauce, choco chips and chopped nuts to your plain cheesecake) to keep any rampages and damage from happening.
Sara you asked a sensible question; did you know Leif Svalgaard did ground-breaking research in solar-induced geomagnetism? I don’t recall any computer failures due to solar storms throughout SC24, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.
The amount of electrical current generated in electrical lines by spaceweather-induced magnetic fields is proportional to the strength of the field and size and length of wires exposed to the time-varying magnetic field. Power-line transformers tend to be more adversely affected than household lines due to the size of the connected network that can intercept the incoming magnetic field.
It is far more likely your appliances and home power system would be affected by transformer failure before any actual direct effect on your home wiring.
The safest easiest thing to do to protect your computers and other potentially sensitive equipment is to power them with an uninterruptable power supply which will also filter out power surges associated with incoming solar storms.
I call these geomagnetic storms ‘electric weather events’ for their electrical effects. For the purpose of knowing when they might occur, I developed an application that collects and calculates the incoming solar wind parameters every 5 minutes and posts this image of the data online, which is usually about 45-55 minutes ahead of when the solar storm effects are first registered on earth due to the travel time from the satellite of energetic particles from CMEs, although solar flares can ionize the upper atmosphere much quicker with less warning.
Event example:
I and Penelope have often experienced heart palputations, headaches, tiredness, and irritability during ‘electric weather’ events, ie magnetic storms, especially during high proton densities that precede CMEs and sector boundaries or high negative Bz (solar wind). A quick glance at the electric weather app image (always linked at my name here) every so often helps to dispel whether we’re ornery/not feeling well from that or for some other reason(s) 😉
Thanks, Bob. Yes, I do know that about Leif, which is why I said what I did. He knows more about this stuff than you could fit into 25 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
We had a power outage last week, which my neighbors and I reported, and a very short one afterwards, and that’s what I was really wondering about: would the electric service be affected ahead of my few pieces of electronic stuff. Anything is possible these days.
Thank you.
I do not think your warranty would cover any power surges or brown outs. But you need to read the fine print on those warranties.
Example: Most appliance manufacturers offer a 1 year parts and labor warranty. However, that does not apply to cosmetic defects, those warranties are usually only 30 days. Those warranties also have fine print about usage, for instance, your warranty will not cover a residential appliance if the appliance is used for commercial purposes or is used in a non resident location.
Tom in Florida says:
“I do not think your warranty would cover any power surges or brown outs. But you need to read the fine print on those warranties.”
——————————————
I’ve read that the Earth’s magnetic field has weakened by 10-15% since the 1800’s. And, it continues to weaken.
That means our “shields” against the effects of solar flares has degraded, and will continue to degrade further. Hence, less powerful flares than the Carrington Event flares will have the potential to cause equal or greater damage. And much lesser flares may do damage that even now may be slipping by unnoticed to most of us. Did that aging transformer that blew up spectacularly three blocks away from your house get a last extraterrestrial nudge ?
You can bet as the legal eagles in manufacturers dens will latch onto this at some point and adjust the fine print. High end cars have over a thousand microchips that control … well virtually everything. Without them the car is a ummm … $124,000 lawn ornament.
Scotty is worried about the shields.
re: “I and Penelope have often experienced heart palputations, headaches, tiredness, and irritability during ‘electric weather’ events, ”
I’m willing to bet a proper lab experiment would show you have zero susceptibility to such affects, WHICH again could be created in a lab for a proper test.
The affects you see are likely psychosomatic, like the lawyer Chuck Mcgill in the series Better Call Saul experiences …
(You DO realize you live, like most of us, in a constant 1/2 Gauss magnetic field? I’m surprised you don’t become dizzy when turning a corner or spinning around, conditions under which currents would be generated directly in your brain.)
Similar effects can come from regular weather storms as they affect the local electrical field.
Effects of Geomagnetic, Solar and Other Factors on Humans
re: “The amount of electrical current generated in electrical lines by spaceweather-induced magnetic fields is proportional to the strength of the field and size and length of wires exposed to the time-varying magnetic field. ”
YOU FORGET higher latitude lines are affected MORE than those more southerly …
ALSO, do not forget these ‘GIC” (ground induced current) effects can, and are, mitigated by power TRANSMISSION companies today, through the use of something as simple as DC blocking capacitors. Yes … SO SIMPLE a cure … no?
Also, systems can be “ISLANDED” for a short time while the storm passes. This means LOCAL generation is used instead of some more economical electric generation source further away, obtained by LONG LINES affected by the geomagnetic storm in the form of the aforementioned GICs.
YOU FORGET …
I didn’t forget that, so you’re a liar. What else will you lie about?
Not all GICs are mitigated otherwise it wouldn’t concern power companies so much.
We usually have a few hours warning of an event which can affect the earth.
Just unplug all of your electrical equipment or easier still, switch off at your main switch where your supply enters your property.
Thank you. I have a gut feeling the power company might actually shut off everything ahead of time, with a warning locally, just to try to stop any damage. The actual transmitter box is not accessible, so I”d have to hit the shut-off switches in the breaker box in my utility room.
I’m just hoping that we might get a real warning ahead of time.
If you can imagine the lawsuits that might occur if a utility company shut down the local grid, you can imagine them leaving it running in the hope that any disturbance they were warned about wouldn’t be too disruptive. Industrial processes interrupted and possibly ruined, gas stations unable to supply fuel, traffic lights shut off causing gridlock, etc., etc.
It is hard to imagine a public utility, operating under the regulations they do, intentionally shutting the power off without some kind of a federal order. And the lag time between the warning of certain danger, and any decision actually being made likely isn’t long enough for the decision to reach the local authority.
We usually have a few hours warning of an event which can affect the earth.
Just unplug all of your electrical equipment or easier still, switch off at your main switch where your supply enters your property.
Thank you. I have a gut feeling the power company might actually shut off everything ahead of time, with a warning locally, just to try to stop any damage
Hopefully, they would do just that. As I understand, the greatest danger isn’t to your appliances and electronics, but potential damage to the grid (as mentioned, the transformers are especially vulnerable). So the question is, would they do that? You would think so, but sometimes it’s hard to fathom the mind of a bureaucrat, whether government or corporate. Somebody needs to be willing to make that call.
We get a few hours of warning for the accelerated particles, but the zero warning of ionizing radiation UV, X-ray.
It is good to remember that our only known, and understood human experience with big solar flares is a little over a century and a half old.
There is no rule that our sun can’t do much worse. Hyper flares, and micro-novas are a real thing out there in the cosmos.
re: “Just curious about something: if/should this happen, how much damage might it do to eletronic communications devices such as ”
Oh please; don’t fall for the hype here or any where else …
_Jim says ”
“Oh please; don’t fall for the hype here or any where else …”
—————————————————
Are you seriously positing the notion that even if our magnetic field 10-15% wasn’t weaker than in the 1800’s, (it is) … a modern Carrington “level” event would spare iPhones, and home router’s ?
+1
I used to have a long aerial wire out of the window back home for SW listening at night, suspended 20ft above ground
I also used to leave a meter attached to it permanently.
It was quite mystifying to see a constant charge on the wire, which varied by time of day, seemingly randomly.
The explanation given was the charge produced at the equator during daylight hours producing the daily thunderstorm in the tropics.
It way also for all I know have also been affected by the solar wind, and proton charge variations in the space/atmosphere interface.
One thing I do notice, taking a portable geiger – muller on my airline flights, is just how suprisingly radioactive it is at 30 000′.
The air hostesses often ask, what is that?
Then an explanation follows.
Up to 4.5mR/hr is the going rate which is quite a bit, when spread over 6-8hrs flying.
https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2018/06/15/what-is-e-rad/
I have videos showing an very audible g-m counter clicking away real strong at FL 33
re: “It was quite mystifying to see a constant charge on the wire, which varied by time of day, seemingly randomly.”
On a clear day my JCI model 111 electrometer read exactly zero volts; your wire on the other hand was likely being hit with fine dust particles and being charged via the triboelectric effect.
Yes, higher radiation doses are known to be a problem with high-flying professionals, but it is a “hidden/not-talked-about-problem that few (even in the flight unions) want to bring up.
In the nuclear navy, everybody working around the reactor or engine room spaces wears a TLD and their monthly doses are tracked. So all these engineering types snugged in down below decks and below the armor plate and ocean water are wearing dosimeters, and getting very, very little radiation each month. The CO and XO, also reactor-qualified but seldom in the engineering spaces, usually receive the highest does of all on board – They are two most often above the flightdeck on the bridge or flight control center, or flying themselves at 30,000 – 45,000 feet in the wild blue (radioactive) spaces!
Carrington event = bye bye cryptocurrencies
ECB Lady Gaga Lagarde just announced a digital eEuro also for retail – survey is now running:
https://epsilon.escb.eu/limesurvey3/434111?lang=en%22
The survey allows comments 🙂
Not known if BoJo has eSterling plans…
He might not but Bill Gates has it covered with Patent #W020200606061A cryptocurrency system using body activity data.
Unless you have the implanted device to authenticate your identity, you would be unable to use your eEuro, eDollar or eYuan. Without the mark of ‘The Gates” you will be unable to do anything.
The number of the patent 060606 was purely fortuitous
High values of galactic radiation indicate a very weak solar wind.
“Hours ago it produced a C-class solar flare and a minor radio blackout over the Indian Ocean.”
SOHO camera caught a brief flash yesterday late evening
There is a flare roughly at the correct latitude followed by a ‘violent’ camera reaction (possibly some kind of overload in the circuitry) as you can see here
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/SOHO.gif
If Dr. Svalgaard is still about, it would be interesting to know what happened there coincidental or not.
C 1.1 and what next?
https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/pl/aktywnosc-sloneczna/rozblyski-sloneczne.html
The polar vortex in the lower stratosphere will soon be split.
