Expert: Intense solar storms producing aurora around the world are ‘not done yet’ | ABS-CBN News
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01:00.0
of the solar flares, particularly strong ones, and ejecting blob after blob of plasma of the solar atmosphere aimed at Earth.
01:13.5
Each of these blobs carries a magnetic field, and it can connect to Earth's magnetic field.
01:19.6
And the better it connects, the better they stick together, the more energy gets transferred to our atmosphere,
01:26.2
and you get amazing aurora displays that extend normally where they live up in Canada and Alaska.
01:34.8
They'll move down to lower latitudes towards the equator.
01:41.0
So we have seen reports, you know, from North Carolina, and I saw it here in Colorado yesterday.
01:47.4
And that's just a function of particles from space getting trapped in our magnetic field, in Earth's magnetic field.
01:56.2
ducted right down into our atmosphere where they interact with the atoms and molecules that are there and produce the aurora.
02:06.5
The flares haven't been particularly strong, but the fact that we had a sequence, a rapid fire of all these CMEs,
02:15.0
coronal mass ejections, aimed at Earth and arriving at Earth is what drove the geomagnetic field to such an agitated state.
02:22.8
So it's not unusual.
02:25.1
But what made this one exciting was you had seven in a row, and it's still producing them, too.
02:31.6
I mean, it's not done yet.
02:32.9
So it is the biggest storm geomagnetically that we've had in about 21 years.
02:43.7
Well, it does have a significant impact on Earth in a variety of ways.
02:48.6
One of the ways, like you mentioned, the power grid.
02:52.8
What ends up happening is...
02:55.1
when things slam into our magnetic field, our magnetic field starts moving.
02:59.1
And that movement will induce currents on long conductors like power lines and train tracks and pipelines.
03:05.4
And that induced current is unwelcome, unexpected.
03:11.4
They're not built to use this current, so it becomes a problem.
03:14.8
So the power companies need to have ways to mitigate that impact.
03:19.2
And luckily, the Space Weather Prediction Center has been working closely with the industry,
03:24.9
and regulators, to help them understand what space weather is, and to prepare for it.
03:32.8
By making folks aware of space weather, and by having a facility that that's our job,
03:39.1
we keep an eye on this stuff and let people know.
03:42.0
Again, there are ways to try and mitigate and work around some of these things.
03:46.8
So if everything's going right, you won't notice a whole lot other than the aurora.
03:52.7
That's the gift from the sun.
03:54.9
But, you know, the rest of it, with any luck, will be pretty low profile, at least to the average person.
04:04.6
The fact that, you know, two decades had passed since the last one of these,
04:09.1
you know, technology's moved forward a lot in 20 years.
04:12.4
And so now, we can examine the impacts on the newer range of technology.
04:20.8
People were aware of it, and they, you know, tried to build things to mitigate these things.
04:24.9
See how well those things are working, and, you know, what needs shoring up.
04:30.3
So that's from a specifically an impacts standpoint.
04:34.1
But just from a pure science standpoint, understanding how these things evolve and arrive here is fantastic.
04:42.4
In the last big one, they didn't have the types of tools I have available in the forecast office,
04:48.0
and my forecasters can use to model these storms, and to predict their arrival times.
04:53.6
And that's been huge.
