What is a solar storm?
A solar storm is a sudden burst of very fast charged particles from the Sun. It could be the result of a solar flare or a coronal mass ejection (CME) or both.
The sun is always belching globs of its inner self into space, but every 11 years or so, changes in our star’s magnetic field bring on an increase in sunspots, solar flares and events called coronal mass ejections. The result is a barrage of charged particles hurling toward Earth.
The peak in this cycle is called a “solar maximum” or “solar max.”
March 10, 2006: It’s official: Solar minimum has arrived. Sunspots have all but vanished. Solar flares are nonexistent. The sun is utterly quiet.
Like the quiet before a storm.
This week researchers announced that a storm is coming–the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). “The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one,” she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.
That was a solar maximum. The Space Age was just beginning: Sputnik was launched in Oct. 1957 and Explorer 1 (the first US satellite) in Jan. 1958. In 1958 you couldn’t tell that a solar storm was underway by looking at the bars on your cell phone; cell phones didn’t exist. Even so, people knew something big was happening when Northern Lights were sighted three times in Mexico. A similar maximum now would be noticed by its effect on cell phones, GPS, weather satellites and many other modern technologies.
from:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10mar_stormwarning.htm
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Solar maximum expected between 2011, 2012
The peak of the next sunspot cycle will come in late 2011 or early 2012 — the increase in solar storms potentially affecting airline flights, communications satellites and electrical transmissions. But forecasters can’t agree on how intense it will be.
A 12-member panel charged with forecasting the solar cycle is evenly split over whether the peak will be 90 sunspots or 140 sunspots, space-weather experts said at a news conference at Boulder’s Millennium Harvest House Hotel on Wednesday. Sunspots are tied to solar storms.
During an active solar period, violent eruptions occur more often on the sun. Solar flares and vast explosions, known as coronal mass ejections, shoot highly charged matter toward Earth.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Environment Center in Boulder tracks space weather and forecasts its changes, which can affect billions of dollars worth of activities such as oil drilling, satellite communication and Global Positioning System navigation.
Half the panel predicted a moderately strong cycle of 140 sunspots expected to peak in October 2011, while the rest called for a moderately weak cycle of 90 sunspots peaking in August 2012.
“We’re hoping to achieve a consensus sometime in the next six to 12 months,” said Douglas Biesecker, a space environment center scientist who is chairman of the forecast panel.
A peak solar cycle ranges from 75 to 155 sunspots averaged over a 13-month period. The modern record high was 200 in 1956; the low was roughly 40, Biesecker said.
Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, noted that more than $200 billion worth of satellites in space can be affected by changes in solar radiation as the cycle rises and falls.
In addition, space-weather experts say other problems associated with solar-cycle peaks include:
Loss of aircraft communications over popular North America-Asia polar routes that could force airlines to use a different, longer, more costly route.
Disruption of Global Positioning System satellite signals, which can cost offshore oil rigs up to $1 million a day, send farm equipment off-course, and disrupt military, shipping and civilian navigation systems. Baker said GPS will drive more than $21 billion of economic activity and as much as $750 billion by 2017.
Increased radiation risk to humans in space.
Damage to electrical transmission equipment, causing blackouts.
Baker and others said the proliferation of ground-based technology reliant on satellites will only exacerbate the problem in the future.
W. Dean Pesnell of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory said the solar storms also can heat the Earth’s upper atmosphere, causing it to expand. This increases drag on satellites, slowing them down and requiring more frequent boosts.
Solar Maximum
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Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one.
Solar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 “looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago,” says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. He and colleague Robert Wilson presented this conclusion last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. Right: An erupting solar prominence photographed by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). [More]
Their forecast is based on historical records of geomagnetic storms.
Hathaway explains: “When a gust of solar wind hits Earth’s magnetic field, the impact causes the magnetic field to shake. If it shakes hard enough, we call it a geomagnetic storm.” In the extreme, these storms cause power outages and make compass needles swing in the wrong direction. Auroras are a beautiful side-effect.
Hathaway and Wilson looked at records of geomagnetic activity stretching back almost 150 years and noticed something useful:. “The amount of geomagnetic activity now tells us what the solar cycle is going to be like 6 to 8 years in the future,” says Hathaway. A picture is worth a thousand words:
In the plot, above, black curves are solar cycles; the amplitude is the sunspot number. Red curves are geomagnetic indices, specifically the Inter-hour Variability Index or IHV. “These indices are derived from magnetometer data recorded at two points on opposite sides of Earth: one in England and another in Australia. IHV data have been taken every day since 1868,” says Hathaway.
Cross correlating sunspot number vs. IHV, they found that the IHV predicts the amplitude of the solar cycle 6-plus years in advance with a 94% correlation coefficient.
“We don’t know why this works,” says Hathaway. The underlying physics is a mystery. “But it does work.”
According to their analysis, the next Solar Maximum should peak around 2010 with a sunspot number of 160 plus or minus 25. This would make it one of the strongest solar cycles of the past fifty years—which is to say, one of the strongest in recorded history.
Left: Hathaway and Wilson’s prediction for the amplitude of Solar Cycle 24. [More]
Astronomers have been counting sunspots since the days of Galileo, watching solar activity rise and fall every 11 years. Curiously, four of the five biggest cycles on record have come in the past 50 years. “Cycle 24 should fit right into that pattern,” says Hathaway.
These results are just the latest signs pointing to a big Cycle 24. Most compelling of all, believes Hathaway, is the work of Mausumi Dikpati and colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. “They have combined observations of the sun’s ‘Great Conveyor Belt’ with a sophisticated computer model of the sun’s inner dynamo to produce a physics-based prediction of the next solar cycle.” In short, it’s going to be intense. Details may be found in the Science@NASA story Solar Storm Warning.
Retrieved from “http://2012wiki.com/index.php?title=Solar_Maximum”
Solar Storm Expected Around 2012 Could Leave the World in Darkness and Chaos for Months
A report commissioned by NASA has concluded that a solar storm could cause massive, long lasting, worldwide devastation and has called for a program of reducing the vulnerability of infrastructure and improvements to to solar storm forecasting.
The next peak is expected in 2012 and may be particularly severe. A solar storm could knock out power grids with cascades blacking out massive areas. The water supply and sewer would fail quickly and perishable foods/medicines wouldn’t last long.
“A catastrophic failure of commercial and government infrastructure in space and on the ground can be mitigated through raising public awareness, improving vulnerable infrastructure and developing advanced forecasting capabilities,” said the report.
Why should anyone prepare for a Solar Storm, Earth Changes, Global Warming, or Climate Change which are just some of the subjects touched on in the documentary “Contact Has Begun” (featuring futurist James Gilliland).
Have we not been assured and reassured by many scientists that all their worst fears are going to take decades and possibly centuries to actually happen.
Why then would a documentary such as “Contact Has Begun” suggest that there might be global changes as soon as 2010?
Slide 1The Solar System BY Ruben
Slide 2Sun The core of the sun is about 28,Million degrees Fahrenheit. The surface of the sun is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It takes the sun 200 million years to orbit the center of the Milky way Galaxy once’ traveling at 150 miles per second.
Slide 3Mercury Mercury has the biggest temperature variance of any of the planets with temperature reaching 467 degrees Celsius and as low – 183 degrees Celsius. The length of one day on Mercury is to 58 Earth day. 1 year on Mercury is equal to 87.9 Earth days.
Slide 4Venus Venus rotates so slowly that it completes 1 year {224 Earth Days} before it completes 1 day {243 days.} It is the only planet that spins clock wise. Venus is the brightest planet
Slide 5Earth The Earth orbits the Sun at a speed of 67,000 miles per hour. 70% of the surface of the Earth is covered with water. Earth is estimated to be 4.5 million years old.
Slide 6Mars Mars has 2 moons named Phobos and Deimos . Mars has the largest canyon in the solar system ,Valles Marineris , it is more than 2,480 miles long and 3 to 6 miles deep. Mars has the longest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons, Which is 16.8 miles high 370 miles in daintier.
Slide 7Jupiter Jupiter has 63 moons. Most of them are small, but it dose have the largest moon in the solar system named Ganymede. The red eye of Jupiter is actually a giant hurricane type storm. The storm is2 x larger than the planet Earth and has been constant for more than 300 year. Jupiter is so larger than all the other planets in the solar system can fit inside 2 x.
Slide 8Saturn The winds near Saturn’s equator below at 1,100 miles per hour, making Saturn the windiest planet. The average temperature on Saturn is -285 degrees F. The length of one day on Saturn is equal to 11 hours.
Slide 9Uranus Uranus is known as the sideways planet because it’s axis is tilted 98 degrees. Uranus takes 84 years to orbit the Sun. Uranus has 11 ring mostly made of dust and rocks.
Slide 10Neptune Neptune and Pluto switch positions during their orbit around the Sun Neptune is closer for 220 years and then Pluto is closer for 20 years. Neptune has at least 13 moons. Neptune has a grate dark spot, similar to the spot on Jupiter, Wind speed in the storm were clocked at 1,250 miles per hour.
Slide 11Pluto It takes 248 years for Pluto to orbit the Sun. Pluto average distance from the Sun is 3.6 billion miles. Pluto is smaller than Earth’s moon.
According to scientists, the biggest solar storm in recent history could occur in 2012.http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,478024,00.html5 Some scientists predict that the 2012 solar storms could disrupt communications on Earth during the 2012 London Olympics. The warning comes from British scientists involved in NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory project (SDO), which began monitoring the sun’s atmosphere after it is launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral on February 9, 2010.http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/about.php6
A major solar storm could emit enough radiation to disrupt satellites which would interrupt GPS and any satellite reliant technology on Earth.http://www.scpr.org/news/2010/02/27/solar-storms-could-be-earths-next-katrina/7
In March 2009, the National Center for Atmospheric Research warned that the sun, which has 11-year sunspot cycles, was nearing a “Solar Maximum.” This event was predicted to occur around 2011. The upcoming Solar Max is expected to be 30% to 50% stronger that the last, which was in 1958.http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10mar_stormwarning.htm8
What is a Solar Maximum and What Happens?
The sun is always belching globs of its inner self into space, but every 11 years or so, changes in our star’s magnetic field bring on an increase in sunspots, solar flares and events called coronal mass ejections. The result is a barrage of charged particles hurling toward Earth.
The peak in this cycle is called a “solar maximum” or “solar max.”
Solar flares, one type of “space weather” associated with solar maximums, release tremendous amounts of energy, equivalent to a million hundred-megaton nuclear explosions, in just moments, scientists say.
Past disruptions
During the last maximum in 1989, a power surge triggered by solar energy damaged transformers of the Hydro-Quebec power system, leaving 6 million people in Canada and the northeast United States without power for more than nine hours. The event also knocked satellites out of orbit and disrupted radio communications.
Now, with a world that relies increasingly on satellites for daily communication, the risks are higher. Cellular telephones, pagers and the Global Position System — used for airline navigation — could be particularly vulnerable, experts say.
Strongest Geomagnetic Storm Hits Earth – Worldnews.com
[Apr 13, 2010] A sudden geomagnetic storm, the strongest in the past 18 months, was caused by the Sun. The geomagnetic storm that began on April 5 still continues, …