G1-G3 Watches for 17-19 August, 2022 | Hacker News Reader

G1-G3 Watches for 17-19 August, 2022

swpc.noaa.gov

82 pointswatchdogtimer19 comments

Although geomagnetic storms are generally bad for HF propagation, there can be an enhancement at the beginning of a storm. That's what happened today and can be seen in this plot of the Boulder foF2 (the maximum frequency returned from directly overhead).

https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/IONO/rt-iono/realtime/BC840_fo...

At 22:05Z, the 3000km MUF (Maximum Usable Frequency) was 31.9 MHz.

https://lgdc.uml.edu/common/ShowIonogramPage?mid=48624089&ur...

Comparing with the previous day, you can see that the ionosphere is much stronger (at least over Boulder) today.

https://lgdc.uml.edu/common/ShowIonogramPage?mid=48612891&ur...

There’s TamithaSkov space weather report on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/TCypTeodMYo

And there’s Lancaster University’s Aurora Watch, I’ve been brushing off the alerts since there’s so many low level ones. I’ll need to up the threshold.

https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/

But yeah, I might get to see what my degree project was about.

[Hopefully without getting Carringtoned, assuming this storm goes to about 5 - 10% of the magnetic field of the estimated Carrington Event and if such a comparison is linear]

Aurorawatch pinged me with a strong alert last night. Shame it was cloudy.

Not a planetary/astrophysics/whatever scientist myself, but the page mentions "the arrival at or near Earth of multiple coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that have departed the Sun since 14 Aug"

Assuming the CMEs arrive around 18 Aug, and that the distance between the Sun and the Earth is ~150 million km, does that mean CMEs travel at around ~ 150 million km / (4 day * 24h/day) ~= 1.5 million km/h???

Yes. About a thousandth of light speed. A CME is a burst of hot plasma released by a magnetic flux line breaking. Considering the energies involved, and the fact there's nothing to get in the way, you could expect it to be moving at a pretty good clip.

That's some scary numbers.

Does anybody know how much CME mass (in tonnes or kgs) the Earch bumps into in this kind of event? How much mechanical influence does it exert on Earth?

Practically 0. The Earth masses about 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg, or 5.9 sextillion tonnes. Even if there was 100,000 tonnes of material that Earth intercepted, it's a drop in the bucket. For reference, between 5,200 and 40,000 tonnes of space debris lands on Earth annually.

Would looking at the sun through a telescope (hobbyist level telescope with a solar filter) be especially interesting today compared to normal days?

I think the CME happened a few days ago

Any particular effects on us here on Earth? Mainly auroras, I assume?

From TFA

>Impacts to our technology from a G3 storm are usually minimal. However, a G3 storm has the potential to drive the aurora further away from its normal polar residence, and if other factors come together, the aurora might be seen over portions of Pennsylvania, Iowa, to northern Oregon.

G 3

Strong

Power systems: Voltage corrections may be required, false alarms triggered on some protection devices.

Other systems: Intermittent satellite navigation and low-frequency radio navigation problems may occur, HF radio may be intermittent, and aurora has been seen as low as Illinois and Oregon (typically 50° geomagnetic lat.).

I once heard the GS can bring the electrical grid down and in that, case it could take a lot (like months) of time to restore it.

Is that possible or is that uninformed apocalyptic propaganda ?

> Is that possible or is that uninformed apocalyptic propaganda ?

I’m very far from an expert in this field, but yes, it’s possible. Super unlikely, but possible. What would happen that would take months is that if there was a significant enough voltage fluctuation do to the GS, it could damage transformers, substations, disconnects, and in the slimmest of chances, power plants too. For these large scale electrical grid components, there’s only so many spares around and it takes a while to build in significant quantity, so if there was mass destruction of grid attached equipment, yes, it might lead to a multi-month recovery time.

When I was working on a cable company it affects some of the satellite channels and we always get advance notification of this events. So we always monitor earth storm and sun storms :D

There were very faint auroras visible from Helsinki last night. Which is somewhat uncommon this far south. If the G3 storm hits Earth tonight (low chance), then there might be bright auroras. In the surprise storm from a few weeks ago, they said some auroras could be seen as far south as Pennsylvania.

It's cloudy as hell today. I doubt we'll be seeing anything sadly.

The forecast sounds like G3 will be hitting Europe, not the US.

I'm in Ireland this week and yes. Watching broadcast TV last night was challenging, lots of interference.

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