Geomagnetic storm. In the last hours, those two words set off the alarm on social networks and the media. Nervousness erupted after the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office (NOAA, for its acronym in English) will activate an alert for the possibility of the phenomenon reaching Earth.
“G1 (Minor) and G2 (Moderate) geomagnetic storm alerts were issued for September 1 and 2, 2021. Two solar mass ejections occurred on August 28; the first was associated with an M4 X-ray flash. […] The second, with an eruption of filaments, “wrote the US climate agency in the notice.
NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) indicated that these solar events could hit our planet between Wednesday 1 and Thursday 2 September. But what is a geomagnetic storm and what are the effects it can have on our world?
A Solar Mass Ejection
Through a statement, NOAA explained that the geomagnetic storms that will reach Earth between September 1 and 2 were produced by two “solar mass ejections” or CME (acronym in English), which occurred in the star in the past. August 28.
These CMEs are explosive events that occur in the Solar Corona, that is, the outermost part of its atmosphere. They are produced by changes in the magnetic configuration of this area of the star, and according to experts, significantly affect the interplanetary medium. Shock waves are observed in front of these ejections.
“It is a disturbance that occurs in the solar corona that involves eruptions from the lowest part of the corona and ejections of a large amount of matter towards the solar wind. These ejections have higher magnetic field strengths, density and speed than typical of the solar wind ”.
Possible effects
Although they seem like catastrophic events, they do not pose a risk to human life, not even when they impact Earth. However, they can affect communications and power grid systems. This implies that telephones could stop working in some parts of the world; in addition, radio, TV and cable signals could fail, or there could be a power outage. There is also the possibility that it will affect satellite communications.
On this occasion, NOAA experts could not specify the exact moment or the intensity with which these shock waves will reach our world. However, they did agree that there is a high probability that they are heading towards the terrestrial planet.
“Both CMEs were modeled and while the results were not entirely conclusive, the consensus is that these CMEs could possibly reach Earth between 1 and 2 September,” the agency said in a statement.
“It will be a two-hit punch. Earth is in the line of fire, with no fewer than two, possibly three, consecutive solar storms. The models differ slightly in intensity and impact time, so we could see effects from August 30 to September 2, “space weather physicist Tamitha Skov wrote on Twitter, who also said that these phenomena They may cause Northern Lights in mid-latitudes – and not just in the north.
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