Impact of Solar Storms
Our sun is a massive ball of superheated gases that swirl with incredible currents and magnetic fields.
At times the pressure builds up into sunspots, which can explode out from the sun in events known as solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
These “solar storms” bombard the solar system – and Earth – with radiation and magnetic shock waves that can wreak havoc on magnetic fields, power systems, and electronics devices.
The Earth’s atmosphere shields us from much of the radiation, but solar storms can still do quite a bit of damage, including:
Preparing for Outages
The biggest threat of a solar super storm is a knockout of the power and communications grids that might take some time to repair. You can prepare for this the way you’d prepare for any kind of storm, by stocking up on:
Off the Grid Power: Buy a generator and extra fuel, or install a backup energy supply such as solar panels or a wind turbine.
Battery Backup for Computers: An Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) looks a lot like a standard surge protector but contains batteries that keep computers running smoothly without damage during power fluctuations and brownouts.
Emergency Supplies: Create an emergency box with flashlights, batteries, cooking and heating fuel, food, and clean water. Also, consider a backup stash with paper copies of financial and personal records, cash, road maps, address book, radio, first-aid kit, and anything else you’d need if your handy digital gizmos – along with your car, credit cards, bank, and shopping center – are out of commission for a while.
Preparing for Power Surges
Likewise, a powerful solar storm may cause major power surges that might fry anything in its path. Protect your electronics by using:
Surge Protector
Whole House Surge Protector: A whole house surge protector connects to your breaker panel and provides protection from lightning and other power surges.
Individual Surge Protectors: For added protection, or in the absence of a whole house surge protector, install surge protectors on computers, TVs, stereos, and other electronics in your home.
Unplug Electronic Devices: Simply unplugging electronic devices will also ensure that they aren’t zapped by a power surge.
Shielding from Solar Radiation
The biggest threat of solar storms is on a systemic scale (such as taking out cell phone service) rather than an individual scale (like damaging individual cell phones). However, the magnitude of solar events is unpredictable, and we don’t always know the effects solar radiation will have.
If you’ve done any reading on the subject, you’ve found all levels of paranoia about shielding yourself and your home from radiation, with all manner of solutions. My favorite was to build your house with a radiation-shielding pool of water on top – who doesn’t love a rooftop swimming pool?
Short of such radical measures, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared, and one of the easiest ways to shield items from electromagnetic radiation is with an insulated, sealed metal box called a Faraday cage. It can be made of solid metal or wire mesh and needs to be completely enclosed, with an insulated liner so that nothing inside comes into contact with the metal.
Cardboard box and aluminum foil for Faraday cage.
A Faraday cage is easy to make using a cardboard box wrapped with aluminum foil.
To protect emergency backup electronics such as a radio or laptop, put them (unplugged) inside a sealed cardboard box, then wrap the box completely with aluminum foil. Another solution is to line the inside of a metal garbage can with cardboard. During peak radiation storms, it’s a simple matter to put your small electronics inside and close the lid.
If you’re really into radiation protection or are concerned about the health effects of solar storms, the same principles can be applied on a larger scale. People have gotten pretty creative with this principle by lining rooms (and even entire houses) with radiation-shielding metal mesh. And yes, some even try to shield their bodies with Faraday inspired suits and hats.
Keep up with the latest solar storm predictions at Today’s Space Weather on the NOAA website.
Before an Extreme Solar Event
Space weather can have an impact on our advanced technologies, which have a direct impact on our daily lives.
To begin preparing for the potential loss of electrical power in an extreme geomagnetic storm case, you should ;build an emergency kit and make a ;family communications plan.
Other steps you should take to prepare for an emergency:
Fill plastic containers with water and place them in the refrigerator and freezer if there's room.
Leave about an inch of space inside each one because water expands as it freezes. This chilled or frozen water will help keep food cold during a temporary power outage.
Most medication that requires refrigeration can be kept in a closed refrigerator for several hours without a problem. If unsure, check with your physician or pharmacist.
Keep your car tank at least half full because gas stations rely on electricity to power their pumps.
If you have a garage, find out where the manual release lever of your electric garage door opener is located and how to operate it. Garage doors can be heavy, so know that you may need help to lift it.
Keep a key to your house with you if you regularly use the garage as the primary means of entering your home, in case the garage door will not open.
Keep extra batteries for your phone in a safe place or purchase a solar-powered or hand crank charger. These chargers are good emergency tools to keep your laptop and other small electronics working in the event of a power outage. If you own a car, purchase a car phone charger because you can charge your phone if you lose power at your home.
If you have a traditional landline (non-broadband or VOIP) phone, keep at least one non-cordless receiver in your home because it will work even if you lose power.
Prepare a family contact sheet. This should include at least one out-of-town contact that may be better able to reach family members in an emergency.
Make back-up copies of important digital data and information, automatically if possible, or at least weekly.
The vast majority of NOAA Geomagnetic Scale 5 level storms (G5) will not cause catastrophic damage to the electric grid.
On average, the Earth is impacted by such storms about four times during every 11-year solar cycle, so many large storms have impacted the planet since the Carrington Storm with much less signification impact.
Strong space weather events are caused by interaction of the Earth with emissions from the Sun. The Sun continually streams out a solar wind consisting of charged particles, or plasma, travelling at high speeds throughout interplanetary space.
The solar wind carries the solar magnetic field into space where it can interact with the magnetic field of planets like the Earth. Sometimes the solar wind gets particularly fast or turbulent and its magnetic field can trigger changes in the Earth's magnetic field and ionosphere–the region of the upper atmosphere that can conduct electricity.
Such changes were termed Geomagnetic Storms as far back as the 19th century because they caused strong episodic gusts of compass needles that were unexplained until the 20th century when the solar wind was finally discovered.
The largest space weather events are caused when the Sun experiences a giant magnetic eruption from a sunspot region. These eruptions are announced by an immediate burst of electromagnetic radiation, including X-rays and ultraviolet light, called a solar flare.
The impact of solar flare X-rays on the Earth's ionosphere causes a prompt loss of its ability to reflect long-range radio waves, resulting in a so-called Radio Blackout event.
Following the X-ray flare, solar magnetic eruptions sometimes accelerate huge quantities of charged particle radiation into interplanetary space.
If these particles impact the Earth's atmosphere they trigger solar radiation storms that can sometimes penetrate down to the ground. Most large eruptions also produce a coronal mass ejection (CME), a gigantic cloud of plasma and concentrated solar magnetic field hurling through space at millions of miles an hour.
When a CME impacts the Earth's magnetic field, it can trigger the largest magnitude geomagnetic storms.
For more details on each of these aspects of solar-driven space weather, see the links below. To see how space weather forecasters quantify each of these aspects, see the Space Weather Scales link in the side panel to the right.
Our sun is a restless star. When it’s particularly active, it can eject effervescent packages of magnetic energy and charged particles known as solar flares. If it releases a minor flare aimed at Earth, the solar material can produce harmless but spectacular displays of auroras when it slams into our atmosphere.
However, more powerful solar outbursts can give birth to geomagnetic storms that wreak havoc in Earth’s magnetic bubble, potentially delivering serious damage to the planet’s electrical infrastructure.
So here's WIRED's six top tips for keeping yourself, your family and your data safe during a geomagnetic storm.
Buy a Faraday cage
A Faraday cage is an enclosure of conducting material that blocks out external static electric fields. If the conductor is thick enough, and the holes are smaller than the incoming electromagnetic radiation's wavelength, then that radiation won't be able to pass through. This is the reason why phones don't work in some buildings and lifts, why microwaves don't cook you, and is why some shoplifters line their pockets or bags with tinfoil to confound RFID detectors.
So make or buy yourself a Faraday cage, and if you've got a computer or external hard drive you just can't be without, then keep it inside. The only problem, though, is that you can't plug it in. Any wire that runs from the outside to the inside can be used as an aerial, and transmit the very electromagnetic radiation that you're trying to avoid. So keep things unplugged unless you absolutely need them.
Stuff all your cash under your mattress
Almost all modern banking is conducted electronically.
While every bank has vaults full of ingots and other valuables, your cash actually exists in a database, albeit one that's backed up in multiple locations across the world, so that a disaster that's confined to a local area can't cause too many problems that won't be resolved by a swift restoration of a backup.
However, that policy doesn't work for global events. If that database, along with all its backups, gets wiped by a particularly nasty solar flare, then so does your money. Get it out of the bank, and in a safer, more physical, place instead. Bury it in the garden, hide it in your roof, or stuff it under the mattress. Just get it out of that database.
Get yourself a generator
The power grids of northern Europe, especially Britain, are particularly flaky. A well-aimed and timed flare could easily knock out power to large areas of Britain for days, and potentially even large areas of the whole world for months, depending on the damage.
A 1989 storm, which was rather less powerful than the 2013 event is likely to be, knocked out the Hydro-Québec power grid, sent satellites spinning out of control and halted all trading on Toronto's stock market.
So grab yourself a petrol-powered generator, and stockpile some fuel for it. Alternately, hook up a bicycle to a dynamo and a battery. Either way, you're going to need to be able to still make heat and light in the event of the power being shut off for months at a time.
Don't plan any holidays
Far more likely than getting stuck at home without power is the risk of getting stuck in a foreign country unable to travel home.
While the inside of an aeroplane is essentially a Faraday cage, severe deviations in the Earth's magnetic field would cause haywire in an aircraft's navigation systems, making it difficult or impossible for planes to get where they're going, except by flight.
You thought the ash cloud was bad? The magnetic storm could prove far, far more disruptive for airlines.
Walk everywhere
Similarly, an electrical shutdown could come at any time without warning, meaning that travelling in a large, fast vehicle is a risk that you just don't want to be taking when traffic lights stop working, street lights go out, and your onboard computer fails.
Far safer is to just buy yourself a comfortable pair of boots and get used to walking everywhere, ideally not too close to the edges of roads. Even if the electrical apocalypse never arrives, you'll be fitter and know your city better than ever before.
Look up
Lastly, any strong geomagnetic storm will come with extraordinarily intense aurorae.
This won't be just visible at the poles -- during the 1989 storm, the aurora borealis was seen as far south as Texas, and the auroras of 1859 are thought to be perhaps the most spectacular ever witnessed throughout recent recorded history.
Such a display could also prove useful as a warning of incoming magnetic disruption. So be sure that you've got a camera -- not a digital one, obviously, pointed at the sky so that you can show your kids how you lived through the great geomagnetic storm of 2013.
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