Space weather scientists have met recently in Washington, D.C. to discuss the potential problems of solar flares, eruptions on the sun’s surface that can cause massive disruptions in the electrical power grid. Solar flares send off little bursts of radiation that travel down to the Earth, and can impact communications systems, GPS systems, satellites, power grids, aviation interests and Polar Regions, according to Bill Murtagh, who works at the Space Weather Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.And he says get ready for more: Solar activity comes in cycles, and the next one starts in 2013. “It could be ugly: a storm could disrupt credit card and ATM transactions. Cell phone networks could go down.” According to Murtagh, the entire power grid could get zapped, which could cause trillions of dollars of damage. A major solar storm could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina, warned the National Academy of Sciences in a 2008 report.
Unlike hurricanes, which generally strike within a relatively small region, the effects of an electromagnetic storm can be continent-wide and arrive with very little warning. A flare caused by a large solar storm, for instance, can reach the earth’s electromagnetic field within eight minutes. Routine solar storms can degrade the performance and lifespan of satellites by, for example, damaging memory circuits or the solar panels that recharge the satellite’s batteries. The effects of those storms can range from momentary disruptions to the accuracy of GPS devices to more severe consequences.
A solar storm that disrupts radio communications over the North Pole, for example, could prevent air travel though the region and lead to disruptions similar to those caused by the Icelandic volcano ash earlier this year. Similarly, large-scale disruptions to undersea communications cables could affect financial and currency trading.
Solar flares have disrupted electrical grids and communications before. In 1989, for instance, a large geomagnetic storm damaged Quebec’s power grid and left six million people without power for more than nine hours. Less severe storms have disrupted shortwave and maritime radio communications in 1930 and 1978. Large transformers that increasingly serve high-voltage power grids are expensive and time-consuming to manufacture, which means replacing a large number of them after an electromagnetic storm could be difficult.
