4 ms·

Sunspots could send a solar storm our way as early as Saturday

33 points by hsnewman 3y ago

woliveirajr 3y ago
> if they release any Earth-directed particles at all > It is the latest in a slew of bizarre observations as our sun is getting closer to a near-decadal peak of solar activity. > It's not clear how our electrical, communication, and satellite system would fare in that scenario, as such a storm hasn't been spotted in decades, in which time humans have become much more reliant on technology. Or, perhaps, now we are just able to detect those solar activities with more precision than before, earlier, and we got used to have more sensationalist headlines?
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  This won't be it, but such concerns aren't entirely sensationalist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
  - chmod775 3y ago
    Here's the bits that may most directly answer GP's question: > A geomagnetic storm of this magnitude occurring today would cause widespread electrical disruptions, blackouts, and damage due to extended outages of the electrical power grid. > In June 2013, a joint venture from researchers at Lloyd's of London and Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) in the US used data from the Carrington Event to estimate the cost of a similar event in the present to the US alone at US$600 billion to $2.6 trillion (equivalent to $698 billion to $3.02 trillion in 2021[28]), which, at the time, equated to roughly 3.6 to 15.5 per cent of annual GDP.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  I don't think there have been any tremendous, relevant innovations in solar monitoring in a very long time. But (as with many other 10/100/1000 year events) we have been agressively positioning ourselves to be far more vulnerable to catastrophic impact. If contemporary society were written in Rust, quite a lot of it would be tagged "unsafe" for lack of wanting to deal with troublesome edge cases.
  - ianburrell 3y ago
    There are now multiple satellites pointing at the Sun providing real-time updates. The image in the article is from SDO, Solar Dynamic Observatory. They are connected to sophisticated models predicting the Sun's weather. They can predict the direction and size of flares.
    - swatcoder 3y ago
      Sure, and does that materially change our ability to foresee or record the sort of large Earth-facing events we're discussing? The point is that for events of this class, we're not just "testing more often" as the person I replied to suggested. We do collect more data and can make more sophisticated models from that data, but the big stuff is a bit like seeing a thundercloud on the horizon and hasn't materially changed for all that tech.
      - ianburrell 3y ago
        We can predict with difficult if sunspots are going to produce flares, we can detect flares, and we can predict which direction they are going. We couldn't do any that decades ago. For thunderstorms on the horizon, we have tornado warnings. We also know if the thunderstorms belong to a hurricane since we can track them and somewhat predict their track.
godelski 3y ago
Some useful links for people - NOAA Aurora tracker: Shows the predictions of auroras and some other information. Currently predicted that tomorrow you might see something if you're in Vancover BC. Doubtful Seattle ("view line" is best conditions and very faint), we'll need a KP 7 or higher for good visibility in the PNW, but that's not as unlikely as you might think. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-experimental https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-exper... Second link is main space weather page https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/about-space-weather https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/about-space-weather - SpaceWeather: Useful site for all things space weather. Has useful links to other things as well. https://spaceweather.com/ https://spaceweather.com/ - SpaceWeatherGallery: One of aforementioned links https://spaceweathergallery2.com/index.php?title=aurora https://spaceweathergallery2.com/index.php?title=aurora There's some paid services that will ping you but they're absurdly expensive. I'd do this but I'm finishing my PhD so you know how that is. But all the data is available from NOAA (e.g. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/3-day-geomagnetic-forecast https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/3-day-geomagnetic-forecas...) but it's not super neatly organized. Still I love SpaceWeather but $8/mo is an insane price to ask for what looks like a tool that can be thrown together in a weekend. If anyone gets to it before me let me know, otherwise wait a few months and I'll get to it and post a OSS version here.
- uticus 3y ago
  The SUVI composite truly looks like a composite right now. Like someone gave the instrument a few good whacks on the side while it was imaging. Not reassuring when checking to see how bad things are...
  - godelski 3y ago
    This one? https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-solar-ultraviolet-imager-suvi https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-solar-ultraviolet-im... Yeah I don't think they do any processing, including centering. Satellites do jiggle though. You may notice that the video they play isn't actually a video but a slide of images. They don't even bother to use ffmpeg to convert to a better viewing format. But I believe this choice is made so they don't restore redundant information as you can download all those images just fine. I mean you can just access the full directory https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primary/171/ https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primar... The websites aren't really designed for laymen but rather a location for astronomers to just get the public data. That's more up SpaceWeather's alley, where you'll see more animations and some other stuff of that type. But mostly they're leaning off the same public data. (Idk why spaceweather prides themselves on being an "AI Free Zone" when I'd actually be perfectly fine with websites like these being AI driven. I want that front page to be very standardized and it's not like those image captions are in the style that LLMs are going to create catastrophic mistakes for. They're very boiler plate and that's actually what we want) For anyone following along these are sequential images. "Secondary" is fine. Primary is GOES-18 and Secondary is GOES-16. Looks like 18 just got a little jostle, it happens. https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primary/094/or_suvi-l2-ci094_g18_s20231128T204800Z_e20231128T205200Z_v1-0-1.png https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primar... https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primary/094/or_suvi-l2-ci094_g18_s20231128T205200Z_e20231128T205600Z_v1-0-1.png https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primar... https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primary/094/or_suvi-l2-ci094_g18_s20231128T205600Z_e20231128T210000Z_v1-0-1.png https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primar... ... skipping a few ... https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primary/094/or_suvi-l2-ci094_g18_s20231128T221600Z_e20231128T222000Z_v1-0-1.png https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primar... Root directory here in case you want to scrape: https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/ https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/
temp0826 3y ago
I know the parent site (suspicious0bservers) is not popular around here (pseudoscience/cherrypicking of data to support their theories) but SpaceWeatherNews [0] really is a great compilation of all the relevant charts and worth looking at if you care at all about this stuff. Probably avoid their youtube unless you want to go down their rabbithole. [0] https://spaceweathernews.com/ https://spaceweathernews.com/
jihadjihad 3y ago
This was published 5 days ago--I am assuming that "Saturday" refers to 25 Nov. Sunspot group AR3491 mentioned in the article isn't even visible on the nearside of the sun anymore [0]. A current look at sunspot activity (along with lots of other data) can be found at [1] -- region AR3500 seems interesting, and it includes 12 different sunspots. 0: https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/ https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/ 1: https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/solar-activity/sunspot-regions.html https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/solar-activity/sunspot-r...
ortusdux 3y ago
Fund the Strategic Transformer Reserve! https://www.energy.gov/ceser/articles/strategic-transformer-reserve-report-congress-march-2017 https://www.energy.gov/ceser/articles/strategic-transformer-... https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-106180.pdf https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-106180.pdf
0x737368 3y ago
The best resources I found for hunting auroras are: - Met Office Space Weather - https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/specialist-forecasts/space-weather https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/specialist-forecasts/sp... - Aurora Alerts Glendale App - https://aurora-alerts.uk/ https://aurora-alerts.uk/ Both are free and give good results, you can even install the Glendale app on your phone as a PWA(Chrome for best results, Firefox doesn't work as well) and set it to notify you when a potential aurora is about to happen. The met office space weather is good for an overview of when one might see activity and the Glendale is superb at short-term predictions(as accurate as those can be with auroras).

33 points by hsnewman 3y ago

> if they release any Earth-directed particles at all > It is the latest in a slew of bizarre observations as our sun is getting closer to a near-decadal peak of solar activity. > It's not clear how our electrical, communication, and satellite system would fare in that scenario, as such a storm hasn't been spotted in decades, in which time humans have become much more reliant on technology. Or, perhaps, now we are just able to detect those solar activities with more precision than before, earlier, and we got used to have more sensationalist headlines?

ceejayoz 3y ago
This won't be it, but such concerns aren't entirely sensationalist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
- chmod775 3y ago
  Here's the bits that may most directly answer GP's question: > A geomagnetic storm of this magnitude occurring today would cause widespread electrical disruptions, blackouts, and damage due to extended outages of the electrical power grid. > In June 2013, a joint venture from researchers at Lloyd's of London and Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) in the US used data from the Carrington Event to estimate the cost of a similar event in the present to the US alone at US$600 billion to $2.6 trillion (equivalent to $698 billion to $3.02 trillion in 2021[28]), which, at the time, equated to roughly 3.6 to 15.5 per cent of annual GDP.
swatcoder 3y ago
I don't think there have been any tremendous, relevant innovations in solar monitoring in a very long time. But (as with many other 10/100/1000 year events) we have been agressively positioning ourselves to be far more vulnerable to catastrophic impact. If contemporary society were written in Rust, quite a lot of it would be tagged "unsafe" for lack of wanting to deal with troublesome edge cases.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  There are now multiple satellites pointing at the Sun providing real-time updates. The image in the article is from SDO, Solar Dynamic Observatory. They are connected to sophisticated models predicting the Sun's weather. They can predict the direction and size of flares.
  - swatcoder 3y ago
    Sure, and does that materially change our ability to foresee or record the sort of large Earth-facing events we're discussing? The point is that for events of this class, we're not just "testing more often" as the person I replied to suggested. We do collect more data and can make more sophisticated models from that data, but the big stuff is a bit like seeing a thundercloud on the horizon and hasn't materially changed for all that tech.
    - ianburrell 3y ago
      We can predict with difficult if sunspots are going to produce flares, we can detect flares, and we can predict which direction they are going. We couldn't do any that decades ago. For thunderstorms on the horizon, we have tornado warnings. We also know if the thunderstorms belong to a hurricane since we can track them and somewhat predict their track.

godelski 3y ago

Some useful links for people - NOAA Aurora tracker: Shows the predictions of auroras and some other information. Currently predicted that tomorrow you might see something if you're in Vancover BC. Doubtful Seattle ("view line" is best conditions and very faint), we'll need a KP 7 or higher for good visibility in the PNW, but that's not as unlikely as you might think. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-experimental https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-exper... Second link is main space weather page https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/about-space-weather https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/about-space-weather - SpaceWeather: Useful site for all things space weather. Has useful links to other things as well. https://spaceweather.com/ https://spaceweather.com/ - SpaceWeatherGallery: One of aforementioned links https://spaceweathergallery2.com/index.php?title=aurora https://spaceweathergallery2.com/index.php?title=aurora There's some paid services that will ping you but they're absurdly expensive. I'd do this but I'm finishing my PhD so you know how that is. But all the data is available from NOAA (e.g. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/3-day-geomagnetic-forecast https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/3-day-geomagnetic-forecas...) but it's not super neatly organized. Still I love SpaceWeather but $8/mo is an insane price to ask for what looks like a tool that can be thrown together in a weekend. If anyone gets to it before me let me know, otherwise wait a few months and I'll get to it and post a OSS version here.

uticus 3y ago
The SUVI composite truly looks like a composite right now. Like someone gave the instrument a few good whacks on the side while it was imaging. Not reassuring when checking to see how bad things are...
- godelski 3y ago
  This one? https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-solar-ultraviolet-imager-suvi https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-solar-ultraviolet-im... Yeah I don't think they do any processing, including centering. Satellites do jiggle though. You may notice that the video they play isn't actually a video but a slide of images. They don't even bother to use ffmpeg to convert to a better viewing format. But I believe this choice is made so they don't restore redundant information as you can download all those images just fine. I mean you can just access the full directory https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primary/171/ https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primar... The websites aren't really designed for laymen but rather a location for astronomers to just get the public data. That's more up SpaceWeather's alley, where you'll see more animations and some other stuff of that type. But mostly they're leaning off the same public data. (Idk why spaceweather prides themselves on being an "AI Free Zone" when I'd actually be perfectly fine with websites like these being AI driven. I want that front page to be very standardized and it's not like those image captions are in the style that LLMs are going to create catastrophic mistakes for. They're very boiler plate and that's actually what we want) For anyone following along these are sequential images. "Secondary" is fine. Primary is GOES-18 and Secondary is GOES-16. Looks like 18 just got a little jostle, it happens. https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primary/094/or_suvi-l2-ci094_g18_s20231128T204800Z_e20231128T205200Z_v1-0-1.png https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primar... https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primary/094/or_suvi-l2-ci094_g18_s20231128T205200Z_e20231128T205600Z_v1-0-1.png https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primar... https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primary/094/or_suvi-l2-ci094_g18_s20231128T205600Z_e20231128T210000Z_v1-0-1.png https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primar... ... skipping a few ... https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primary/094/or_suvi-l2-ci094_g18_s20231128T221600Z_e20231128T222000Z_v1-0-1.png https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/suvi/primar... Root directory here in case you want to scrape: https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/ https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/

temp0826 3y ago

I know the parent site (suspicious0bservers) is not popular around here (pseudoscience/cherrypicking of data to support their theories) but SpaceWeatherNews [0] really is a great compilation of all the relevant charts and worth looking at if you care at all about this stuff. Probably avoid their youtube unless you want to go down their rabbithole. [0] https://spaceweathernews.com/ https://spaceweathernews.com/

jihadjihad 3y ago

This was published 5 days ago--I am assuming that "Saturday" refers to 25 Nov. Sunspot group AR3491 mentioned in the article isn't even visible on the nearside of the sun anymore [0]. A current look at sunspot activity (along with lots of other data) can be found at [1] -- region AR3500 seems interesting, and it includes 12 different sunspots. 0: https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/ https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/ 1: https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/solar-activity/sunspot-regions.html https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/solar-activity/sunspot-r...

ortusdux 3y ago

Fund the Strategic Transformer Reserve! https://www.energy.gov/ceser/articles/strategic-transformer-reserve-report-congress-march-2017 https://www.energy.gov/ceser/articles/strategic-transformer-... https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-106180.pdf https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-106180.pdf

0x737368 3y ago

The best resources I found for hunting auroras are: - Met Office Space Weather - https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/specialist-forecasts/space-weather https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/specialist-forecasts/sp... - Aurora Alerts Glendale App - https://aurora-alerts.uk/ https://aurora-alerts.uk/ Both are free and give good results, you can even install the Glendale app on your phone as a PWA(Chrome for best results, Firefox doesn't work as well) and set it to notify you when a potential aurora is about to happen. The met office space weather is good for an overview of when one might see activity and the Glendale is superb at short-term predictions(as accurate as those can be with auroras).