Will northern lights, solar storms cause cellphone, power outages? Maybe. What to know
In addition to possibly bringing the northern lights to Ohio, the severe geomagnetic storm caused by solar eruptions that is predicted for this weekend might wreak havoc on cellphones, the power grid and GPS navigation, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center.
The center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has issued a Severe Geomagnetic Storm Watch for Saturday. The prediction center ranks the threat at G4, one step away from the worst of G5. It's the first G4 watch the center has issued since 2005. Additional solar eruptions could cause the storm to persist through the weekend.
NOAA space weather forecasters have observed at least seven coronal mass ejections from the sun (explosions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun) that are directed right towards the Earth and are expected to arrive as early as Friday evening and last through Sunday, causing the geomagnetic storms.
NOAA alerts critical infrastructure to take precautions against geomagnetic storm that causes northern lights
Geomagnetic storms can have an impact on infrastructure in near-Earth orbit and on Earth’s surface, potentially disrupting communications, the electric power grid, navigation, radio and satellite operations, according to the NOAA.
To help lessen that potential, the weather prediction center has notified satellite and communications operators, as well as the North American power grid, Shawn Dahl, service coordinator for the Space Weather Prediction Center, said in a teleconference on Friday, "so they are able and prepared to take mitigation efforts as much as possible throughout this event, if it should unfold to the levels that we currently are anticipating."
Dahl said the NOAA won't know the intensity of the coronal mass ejections until they arrive at a pair of satellites about 1 million miles from Earth that monitor solar wind.
"That's when we'll know the intensity that may develop here at Earth by different things in the solar wind that we look for," he said. "That's when we'll have more certainty and that's when we'll begin to issue warnings."
The ejections are traveling at about 800 kilometers per second, he said, giving the prediction center 20 to 45 minutes of lead time to issue warnings once they reach those satellites.
What is a coronal mass ejection that causes the northern lights?
NASA describes coronal mass ejections as "huge bubbles of coronal plasma threaded by intense magnetic field lines that are ejected from the Sun over the course of several hours." The Akron Beacon Journal reports that the space agency says they often look like "huge, twisted rope" and can occur with solar flares, or explosions on the sun's surface.
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Will aurora, solar storms cause cellphone outage? What to know
