A new study from the Tihany Magnetic Observatory in Hungary has explained why solar weather indicators wouldn’t have been able to predict the Carrington Event, a large solar storm that occurred in 1859, according to a press release from the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT).
Predicting solar flares is important for keeping power supplies and communication networks safe, as the flairs can disrupt or even damage electronics.
However, the methods currently used to predict solar storms aren’t perfect.
One method used for measuring geomagnetic storms is the Disturbance storm time (Dst) method. Every hour, the data from four different sources is averaged—the observatories are in Hermanus (South Africa), Kakioka (Japan), Honolulu (Hawaii, United States), and San Juan (Puerto Rico), according to the source.
Another method, called SYM-H, measures the horizontal component of Earth’s magnetic field using more observatories and taking measurements more frequently—once every minute.
Neither method was able to predict a solar storm that occurred in October 2003– a storm that burned transformers at Swedish and South African power plants.
This made researchers question whether modern instruments would’ve been able to predict the Carrington Storm.
“One of the conclusions is that the indices commonly used by scientists—such as Dst or SYM-H, which are based on an overall perspective of the Earth and obtained by calculating averages—failed to detect such an important event, and they most likely would have failed to detect the Carrington Event as well,” explains Consuelo Cid, the lead author of the study, which is published in the Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate.
The study explains that positive and negative magnetic disturbances may cancel each other out and not show up on instruments.
“A Carrington-like event may occur more often than we expect; actually, it might have already happened without us even realizing it,” Cid notes.
This demonstrates a need for the development of more reliable methods of predicting solar weather and new instruments to execute those methods with.
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Image credit: NASA
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