Extreme solar storms may be more frequent than previously thought

Phys.org  October 7, 2019
The Carrington Event of 1859 is one of the most extreme solar storms observed in the last two centuries and was caused by a large coronal mass ejection. Based mostly on records from the Western Hemisphere, leaving a considerable data gap in the Eastern Hemisphere, scientists thought events like the Carrington Event were very rare, happening maybe once a century. To fill the gaps in their knowledge of the Carrington event from studying only the Western Hemisphere records, an international team of researchers (Japan, UK, USA – University of Maryland, NCAR, Italy, Portugal) compiled and analyzed historical observations of auroras during the storm from the Eastern Hemisphere and Iberian Peninsula, and others and several unpublished sunspot drawings made by European astronomers. After reconstructing the storms around the Carrington Event, the researchers compared the solar storm to other storms in 1872, 1909, 1921, and 1989 and found two of them—those in 1872 and 1921 they concluded that means events like the Carrington may not be as legendary and elusive as once thought, and scientists need to consider the hazards of such events more seriously than before…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE

Visualization depicts what a coronal mass ejection might look like as it interacts with the interplanetary medium and magnetic forces. Credit: NASA / Steele Hill

Posted in Space weather and tagged .

Leave a Reply