Phys.org August 11, 2021 In 2020 NSF and NASA created the Space Weather with Quantified Uncertainties (SWQU) program. The main change in version 2 was the refinement of the numerical grid in the magnetosphere, several improvements in the algorithms, and a recalibration of the empirical parameters. The Geospace Model provides only about 30 minutes of advanced warning. Researchers at the University of Michigan are working to increase lead time to one to three days. They hope to start from the Sun, using remote observation of the Sun’s surface instead of the current data from a satellite measuring plasma parameters one […]
Tag Archives: Solar storm
New method predicts ‘stealth’ solar storms before they wreak geomagnetic havoc on Earth
Phys.org July 20, 2021 Unlike coronal mass ejections which typically show up clearly on the Sun as dimming or brightening, the ‘stealth CMEs’ often originate at higher altitudes in the Sun’s corona, in regions with weaker magnetic fields and they are usually only visible on coronagraphs designed to reveal the corona. An international team of researchers (USA – UC Berkeley, industry, University of Maryland, NASA, Belgium, Romania, UK, India, Russia) has shown that many stealth CMEs can be detected in time if current analysis methods for remote sensing are adapted. They compared remote sensing images of the Sun with the […]
Our Sun Has Entered a New Cycle, And It Could Be One of The Strongest Ever Recorded
Science Alert December 8, 2020 According to an international team of researchers (USA – NCAR, University of Maryland, UK) over the course of about 20 years or so, flickers of extreme ultraviolet light called coronal bright points seem to move from the poles towards the equator, meeting in the middle and cancelling out, referred to as terminator. At this point the new cycle begins. From the 270-year long observational record of terminator events, they see that the longer the time between terminators, the weaker the next cycle and conversely, the shorter the time between terminators, the stronger the next solar […]
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 […]