Solar storms and space weather have the ability to disrupt global technology, and in a world so reliant on electronics the consequences could be catastrophic. As a barrage of solar particles bombard Earth’s atmosphere, it expands. The expansion makes it more difficult for satellite signals to penetrate the atmosphere, leading to a lack of GPS navigation, mobile phone signal and satellite TV such as Sky.
A surge of particles can also lead to high currents in the magnetosphere, which can lead to higher than normal electricity in power lines, resulting in electrical transformers and power station blow outs and a loss of power.
Tamitha Skov, a space weather physicist, said in an article for the Michigan Technological University’s (MIT) Technology Review: “As consumers, we didn’t have the technology that will be impacted, but now we do. Now it’s ubiquitous.
“This is space, and it’s affecting you.”
Michael Cook, space-weather forecaster lead at Apogee Engineering, an engineering contractor, added: “The more technology dependent we become, the more sensitive we will be to even moderate to severe storms.”
Sophie Murray, a research fellow at Trinity College Dublin, added more needs to be done to improve the ways scientists can forecast space weather, as to give people more of a warning.
She said: “We are trying to take terrestrial weather forecasting techniques and use it for space-weather forecasting.
“We are quite a few decades off from catching up with them.”
The UK and US have just announced a collaboration in a bid to battle space weather and protect Earth from what the Government describes as a “global concern”.
The UK Space Agency has invested £7 million, through the European Space Agency (ESA), to help create, alongside University College London (UCL), a ‘plasma analyser’ which will be placed in deep space and “give early warning of imminent, damaging space weather.”
The UK and the ESA plan to send two monitoring posts into space within the next five years to assist the Solar Orbiter, which will launch next year.