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If anyone is interested in what "G4" means in context, here's the scale: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales
by jjcm 9mo ago
If anyone is interested in what "G4" means in context, here's the scale: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation
- xeckr 9mo agoLooks like we get these for about 60 days for periods lasting 11 years.
- irthomasthomas 9mo agoWe are at kp 8.67. The Carrington event was a kp 9
- ianruh 9mo agoI am not an expert, but it’s worth noting that the kp index has a maximum value of 9. So though the Carrington event had a kp of 9, its intensity on the related (but not capped) HP30/HP60 scale [1] would likely have been higher. [1] https://kp.gfz.de/en/hp30-hp60 https://kp.gfz.de/en/hp30-hp60
- repeekad 9mo agoQueue Chernobyl documentary clip measuring the radiation as low because that’s as high the meter went
- celsoazevedo 9mo ago3.6 roentgen. Not great, not terrible!
- qingcharles 9mo ago*skin sloughs off*
- anonym29 9mo agoYou didn't see any graphite because it's not there!
- wafflemaker 9mo agoEverything about these miniseries was wonderful. Casting (who played who), acting, costumes and scenography (where did they get all these '80 soviet cars), and choice of scenes to film. I had my hair rising when the guy cleaning roof of a building neighboring the reactor got stuck in deadly radiation zone for 4x the allowed 13 seconds. "You're dead comrade."
- anonymous344 9mo agohere, take one ö
- wyldfire 9mo agoEverybody's a diacritic.
- wyldfire 9mo agos/queue/cue/ Though I suppose you could also queue it.
- repeekad 9mo agoMeant the first and people should do the second, Chernobyl on HBO is great. It’s also technically not a documentary but historical drama.
- banku_brougham 9mo agokp 9 - not great, not terrible
- echelon 9mo agoHave we been having these more recently? I don't ever recall seeing these in the news so frequently. It feels like there are several a year now. A decade ago, never. And I also never remember seeing Aurora at my latitudes. Do we just have better sensing now, or is there some cycle on a period longer than a few years? Or maybe I'm crazy and just never noticed.
- awesome_dude 9mo agoWe've just passed the 11 year peak - the sun spot activity has a period of around 11 years.
- 0manrho 9mo agoMid to late 2025 was the peak of an 11 year solar cycle (25th one since we've started keeping track). We're on the trailing end of that peak activity now, which is why the past year/several months has seemed so active compared to recent years past, and should decrease significantly (in frequency and intensity) as 2026 progresses. There was also a fairly significant geomagnetic storm back in November of 2025 as well. You can see the data here at NOAA's Space Weather site https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression
- ErroneousBosh 9mo ago> Have we been having these more recently? Yes, for suitable values of "recently". > And I also never remember seeing Aurora at my latitudes. How old are you? If you're younger than say your mid-40s you probably won't remember the early 80s, which is the last time we had a solar maximum that really came to anything. Solar activity rises and falls on an 11-year cycle, and right now we're experiencing quite a peak. The previous three, peaking in 2014, 2011, and 1989 were a bit of a bust. There was a massive peak in 1979 and I can remember my dad showing me the aurora when I was about six or seven - it seemed to be present most nights over the winter. That was also around the time of the CB Radio craze, where atmospheric conditions were such that you could use "skip" - bouncing radio signals off the highly-charged ionosphere - to talk to people hundreds of miles away as if they were just down the road, even on the comparatively high frequencies that CB used. There was a bit of a peak in the late 80s, and some good RF propagation too, as well as some incredible aurora - although the big one I remember was in about the end of 1991, early 1992. We had absolutely blistering hot summers followed by really cold and snowy winters, too, kind of like we're having at the moment. If the solar cycles have a longer repeating cycle of intensity on the scale of a hundred years or so (and it looks a bit like they do) then the next solar maximum in about 2036 is going to be even bigger.
- keepamovin 9mo agoThis is also related to weaker solar events leading to stronger Earth storms due to Earth's weakening magnetic field.
- kelseydh 9mo agoDisturbance storm time index (DST) is a better measure of peak intensity as KP is just a weighted average of the intensity from the last three hours across monitoring stations. The May 2024 G5 electrical storm had a peak measured DST of −412 nT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2024_solar_storms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2024_solar_storms The Carrington Event had an estimated peak DST of −800 nT to −1750 nT, but no one really knows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
- neonmagenta 9mo agoso more of a 'bad storm here and there' level?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- 8bitsrule 9mo agoG4: " Induced pipeline currents affect preventive measures, HF radio propagation sporadic..." G5: " Pipeline currents can reach hundreds of amps, HF (high frequency) radio propagation may be impossible in many areas for one to two days..."
- gexla 9mo ago"Cool! What's G13 do?" - Bill Hicks Looks like G5 is the highest level and the scale system is used by NOAA.
- serf 9mo ago>"Cool! What's G13 do?" - Bill Hicks I hear that bit in my head every time a new plane or weapon designation is announced, glad to hear it stuck with others too.
- ck2 9mo agoG13 could be a gamma-ray burst from a collapsing star less than 100 light years from earth in which case, don't worry about it as we won't be around to worry about it further astro-physics is AMAZING (until it kills you lol)
- gosub100 9mo ago"Free Energy!"
- non- 9mo ago> Biological: Unavoidable radiation hazard to astronauts on EVA; passengers and crew in high-flying aircraft at high latitudes may be exposed to radiation risk. Anyone have a sense of magnitude for this advisory? How much more radiation should an airline passenger expect to receive during a G4 event than normal?
- inatreecrown2 9mo agoroughly up to 5-10 times the normal dose.
- NeoInHacker 9mo agosounds "it's okey" ?
- jojobas 9mo agoNowhere near lifetime occupational dose limits.
- Helmut10001 9mo agoInterestingly, there are about 100 events of this severity (G4) per cycle, and a single cycle lasts 11 years. This means there are about nine G4 events on average per year.
- tomr_stargazer 9mo agoNote, however, that the solar cycle [0] is so named due to its minimum and maximum: the most severe events will be clustered around the maximum, rather than spread out over the whole cycle (as your comment suggested) - so the "nine G4 events on average per year" is mathematically true but not so helpful. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle
- velocity3230 9mo agoThis was an S4 event, however.
- velocity3230 9mo agoBelay that. The G-value was high too.
- 9dev 9mo agoThe scale seems capped at a pretty low upper end? It feels like with all the mindbogglingly huge numbers usually involved when talking about space, there must be much, much worse events possible. Is it just that we don't know enough about them due to lack of experience that these aren't included?
- poizan42 9mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event But having been in 1859 we only have estimates on what the consequences would be in the modern world. But pretty grim at the looks of it.