Massive Geomagnetic storm Sept/2/1859

[Bluesman]

From Spaceweather.com


GEOMAGNETIC MEGA-STORM: On Sept. 2nd, a billion-ton coronal mass ejection (CME) slammed into Earth's magnetic field. Campers in the Rocky Mountains woke up in the middle of the night, thinking that the glow they saw was sunrise. No, it was the Northern Lights. People in Cuba read their morning paper by the red illumination of aurora borealis. Earth was peppered by particles so energetic, they altered the chemistry of polar ice.

Hard to believe? It really happened--exactly 150 years ago. This map shows where auroras were sighted in the early hours of Sept. 2, 1859:


Above: Aurora sightings, Sept. 2, 1859. Image courtesy J.L. Green, NASA

As the day unfolded, the gathering storm electrified telegraph lines, shocking technicians and setting their telegraph papers on fire. The "Victorian Internet" was knocked offline. Magnetometers around the world recorded strong disturbances in the planetary magnetic field for more than a week.

The cause of all this was an extraordinary solar flare witnessed the day before by British astronomer Richard Carrington. His sighting marked the discovery of solar flares and foreshadowed a new field of study: space weather. According to the National Academy of Sciences, if a similar flare occurred today, it would cause $1 to 2 trillion in damage to society's high-tech infrastructure and require four to ten years for complete recovery.

A repeat of the Carrington Event seems unlikely from our low vantage in a deep solar minimum--but don't let the quiet fool you. Strong flares can occur even during weak solar cycles. Indeed, the Carrington flare itself occured during a relatively weak cycle similar to the one expected to peak in 2012-2013. Could it happen again? Let's hope not.

[Toveri]

I would consider to be possibly the most realistic PAW around these parts. While it would be a very survivable catastrophy in that rarely anyone would die directly from the event itself the infrastructure would be in a very bad shape.

And considering what I hear about the emergency plans of the local electric companies I would expect a very long blackout...

[thefirebuilds]

I would consider to be possibly the most realistic PAW around these parts. While it would be a very survivable catastrophy in that rarely anyone would die directly from the event itself the infrastructure would be in a very bad shape.

And considering what I hear about the emergency plans of the local electric companies I would expect a very long blackout...

ah but the financial grid is much better protected than the electrical, so at least you wont lose your debt

electrical backup is scheduled "indefinetely" and multiple diesel supply lines are secured for backup power. good stuff.

[airballrad]

So, if this historical instance was observed a day before its effects were felt, does that mean we'll have some warning? Will I have time to grab all my vital electronics and throw them in my stock pot...err, faraday cage?

[Chef]

Indeed, the Carrington flare itself occured during a relatively weak cycle similar to the one expected to peak in 2012-2013. Could it happen again?

Did you say two thousand . . . twelve?

Toward the end of December, perhaps?

[rpc]

Yes, there would be warning. The CME consists of "stuff" that travels at less than the speed of light.

I'm not sure how well heeded the warnings would be, though. It seems to me that if I were an electric utility, phone company, etc., I would want to do an orderly shutdown of my entire system, or at least of those parts I didn't consider expendable. But frankly, I don't see that happening. That would cause people to be without televison, and there would be a debate (on television, of course), that they were over-reacting. A task force would probably be appointed to study the problem.

There's no need to put anything in a Faraday cage, IMHO. The effect on any individual piece of electronic equipment would be negligible. However, long pieces of wire would have large currents induced into them, and these currents could burn up things that are plugged in to them. If you haven't noticed, most of the stuff in your house is connected to a long piece of wire. So it would be a good idea to unplug anything that you wanted to save. The good news is that they are very unlikely to be damaged.

The bad news is that you might not be able to plug them in for a few years, since everything else is connected to long pieces of wire. They'll need to replace a lot of transformers, generators, etc., etc. And the factories that produce those things (probably in China) will be experiencing the same problem.

I suspect that scattered areas will have their power back within days. But most people will probably have to wait months. And it will probably be years before things are back to normal.

150 years isn't much when you're dealing with something as old as the sun. It happened then, so something similar could happen again in our lifetimes, IMHO.

[airexurb]

...150 years isn't much when you're dealing with something as old as the sun. It happened then, so something similar could happen again in our lifetimes, IMHO.

or it could happen in another 100,000 years. Something happening 150 after the first event is basically instantaneous to something that is already 6 billion years old. Who knows. It is a bit worrisome though.

[Y.T.]

I'm not really freaked out by this. I had read previously that scientists were expecting significantly more solar activity (such as flares) in the next year, due to natural cycles of solar changes. so this 150 year cycle makes sense in that context

I mean, sure, it's wiggy that it set the telegraph papers on fire (wiggy because of the immense distance). and the idea of aurora borealis in CUBA is so out there and crazy.

but it's not a sign of doom. the way I read it, it's the solar equivalent of "oh, it's Fall".


edit for clarity

[Y.T.]

or it could happen in another 100,000 years. Something happening 150 after the first event is basically instantaneous to something that is already 6 billion years old. Who knows. It is a bit worrisome though.

brilliant. that thought is going to keep me busy all day.

[andygates]

Coronal Mass Ejections on le Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection

NASA's STEREO solar observatory satellites are out there watching the Sun and getting tons of data.

"The frequency of ejections depends on the phase of the solar cycle: from about one every other day near solar minimum to 5–6 per day near solar maximum. " -- they're common things. What's not common is a very big one pointed straight at us (space is big).

They travel pretty slowly compared to light, "range in speed from about 20 km/s to 3,200 km/s with an average speed (based on SOHO/LASCO measurements between 1996 and 2003) of 489 km/s" -- so by my calculations, we'd have on average three and a half days warning, and at minimum 13 hours between seeing the CME and it hitting us.

(Which makes Knowing double bogus, as its CME would have been known since the outset of the movie!)

[rpc]

...150 years isn't much when you're dealing with something as old as the sun. It happened then, so something similar could happen again in our lifetimes, IMHO.

or it could happen in another 100,000 years. Something happening 150 after the first event is basically instantaneous to something that is already 6 billion years old. Who knows. It is a bit worrisome though.

Yes, when I was writing that, I originally used the word "probable", and then I went back and crossed it out.

But we've only been keeping close track of historical events for the past few hundred years. And we've only had to deal with electrical items for less than two hundred years.

So a single instance of electrical items getting burnt out on a large scale does lead me to believe that such things happen every few hundred years, rather than every few hundred thousand years.

If we assume that such things happen every 200 years (which is basically just an educated guess on my part), then any given individual has about a 1 in 3 chance of experiencing such an event in his or her lifetime. Therefore, it strikes me as the type of thing for which one should do at least some planning.

[Neville]

Next time this happens, the calendar is getting turned back to 1859.

Except without all the horses to pull things like plows and the knowledge and equipment to do things without electricity.

Yea, ezackly. We'll be majorly screwed.

[Bunsen]

But we've only been keeping close track of historical events for the past few hundred years. And we've only had to deal with electrical items for less than two hundred years.

While nobody would have noticed the electrical effects before we started stringing long wires around, the aurora borealis showing up in the tropics would have gotten plenty of notice. We could expect any such event in the last thousand years or so to have been pretty well chronicled. Wikipedia reports "Ice cores show evidence that events of similar intensity recur at an average rate of approximately once per 500 years," so it wouldn't be terribly remarkable that we had a millenium or so without any of them.

[Toveri]

While a geomagnetic storm of the size of the Carrington event might or might not happen in our lifetime it's certain we'll see several geomagnetic storms of lesser force (or if we don't we would have some bigger things to worry about). It doesn't need a monster storm to cause serious damage to the modern infrastructure. If you read some of the linked articles they mention a far lesser storm of 1921, if that happened today:

He found more than 350 transformers at risk of permanent damage and 130 million people without power. The loss of electricity would ripple across the social infrastructure with "water distribution affected within several hours; perishable foods and medications lost in 12-24 hours; loss of heating/air conditioning, sewage disposal, phone service, fuel re-supply and so on."

The reason I'd worry about this stuff is that we're getting more vulnearable every day. Bigger and bigger parts of the society rely on electricity and wireless communications. And the more sophisticated the electronics become the more vulnearable they become to fluxuations in the current.

Another thing is that in this case preparations will actually help. However it will cost money to build more reliable electric grids and to put aside enough resources to fix the grid after a major melfunction. Obiously no publicly traded company wants to do that, since the stock market will not care if you're in business after a geomagnetic storm in 2012 if it means you'll loose $1 billion this quarter.

For example around here the goverment mandates electric companies to employ a set number of electricians to deal with emergencies. Since that costs money the companies found they can buy the service from another company and still fill the goverment requlations. So there is one company with the mandaded number of workers that offers that service to all the power companies in the country. So when a bigger SHTF there will be some 10 times less people to fix the system than what is deemed necessary.

Of course that won't be the end of the world, but it means that if there is a geomagnetic storm of the same power as the 1921 one I'd expect at least several days of darkness, weeks in some areas. And after that it'll take weeks to actually fix all the electronics that got fried in cellphone towers, shops and whatnot.

[Ellie With An Axe]

I don't know if I can imagine 130 million people and businesses, and their local governments, without power and doing okay. For something so wide-scale and potentially catastrophic, I imagine people would try to get on for a short time, and pretend that somebody, somewhere is fixing the power in a few days. But with the traditional ways to gather news no longer viable, people would get unbelievably anxious very quickly - I know I would. I don't know how my plains pioneer ancestors did it - often going without news or mail for months, until the telegraph and railroad came along.

Somebody will have to drag out the old fashioned printing presses, or reorganize the pony express, or something. We are just too used to being able to get news on tap, the moment we want it. And we can get news about any topic, from any far-flung corner of the world. We're addicted. Seems like the worst of the addiction started after 9/11, with the advent of the 24-hour newstainment stations and the breaking news crawl.

But forgetting the news, there are more important things to stress over, such as how to get prescriptions refilled, how to cook if your house is all-electric, or would gas lines be affected, too? There's some electric powerhouse cranking out the gas somewhere, right? How do you take care of a parent in a nursing home if the nursing home is in darkness and has no power? What about the patients in the hospital on ECMO? What about the people with pacemakers? Those are just immediate problems.

I'm guessing it would take quite a while to recover from a storm like this?

[Rock2Fox]

We're addicted. Seems like the worst of the addiction started after 9/11, with the advent of the 24-hour newstainment stations and the breaking news crawl.

So true.

[andygates]

...as electronic technologies have become more sophisticated and more embedded into everyday life, they have also become more vulnerable to solar activity. On Earth, power lines and long-distance telephone cables might be affected by auroral currents, as happened in 1989. Radar, cell phone communications, and GPS receivers could be disrupted by solar radio noise. Experts who have studied the question say there is little to be done to protect satellites from a Carrington-class flare. In fact, a recent paper estimates potential damage to the 900-plus satellites currently in orbit could cost between $30 billion and $70 billion. The best solution, they say: have a pipeline of comsats ready for launch.

-- NASA, http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008 ... nflare.htm

Things expected to get sick: all broadcast spectra; large running power transformers.

Things not expected to get sick: domestic installations; radio, etc, equipment; personal electronics; vehicles.

A CME is not an EMP.

So while there may be no power to pump the gas, you can drive just fine; pacemakers, insulin pumps and the like should be just fine too; in hospitals backup generators will run to provide essential power; once the radio disruption passed, radio TV GPS and so on will work again so long as they have power.

The disruption to electrical infrastructure in the aftermath of Rita, Katrina et al serves as a good lesson in what happens when the power infrastructure gets toasted -- as of course does the Canadian flare-triggered outage. You'll have the additional problem of no radio, or very spotty radio, while the event is happening. The sneakernet will have to take over for a day or two. Expect a return to medium-wave radio, which is easier to broadcast over very long distances, to transmit news.

Satellites will suffer the worst: expect GPS to be down or unreliable until they've launched sufficient satellites to restore the constellation. Long-distance telecomms in general will suffer badly.

Stone age? No. Horses? Not unless you run out of gas before the pumps get power again (remember to keep a full tank, neh?). Anxiety? MW radio will inform the masses.

Nursing homes have to have "what if" protocols, though "SHTF everywhere" isn't usually on them. Life-support patients are covered by the internal gennies; pacemakers are not affected, drugs come from warehouses and every warehouse has a paper fallback because IT isn't perfect (refrigerated drugs - those fridges are on the 'E' line for 'e'ssential power).

[Y.T.]

I don't know how my plains pioneer ancestors did it - often going without news or mail for months, until the telegraph and railroad came along.

I hear you on that. it amazes me as well.

But forgetting the news, there are more important things to stress over, such as how to get prescriptions refilled, how to cook if your house is all-electric, or would gas lines be affected, too? There's some electric powerhouse cranking out the gas somewhere, right?

you could probably still get prescriptions filled locally, with what the pharmacy had on hand, if they kept paper records or you could provide proof of your prescription (such as your last prescription bottle which lists pharmacy, doctor, date, and refills left). people with all electric households or gas appliances with electric starters would likely have to make use of camping stove and grills. There would likely be a run on propane stoves and such. I would think things like food and refrigeration would be handled just like in any hurricane/flood. It's the crime rate from lack of lights and security that I'd guess would be more problematic.

How do you take care of a parent in a nursing home if the nursing home is in darkness and has no power? What about the patients in the hospital on ECMO? What about the people with pacemakers? Those are just immediate problems.

I'm not positive, but I believe most nursing homes have backup power for outages and generators if their residents require electrical devices to breathe, etc. I don't know of any hospital that doesn't have generators and backup power. Theoretically the only challenge there would be getting enough fuel.

I don't know if I can imagine 130 million people and businesses, and their local governments, without power and doing okay.

I think businesses are the hard part since many many companies utilize computers in some way or electronic equipment. Even something like a fast food business would be crippled without a generator since nearly all cooking equipment requires electricity and has electric timers, and all cash registers are electronic as well. so I'd imagine the loss of income for many would probably be more difficult than having to make-do with no home electricity. My guy and I agreed that we'd have to bug out to another location that wasn't effected in order to continue earning income since we require computers and internet to work.

[andygates]

There would be a lot of signs up saying "Yes! We are open! (grill only)" and "Cash Only"

It's one of many SHTF scenarios that validate a nice stash of cash money for when the plastic dies.

[Y.T.]

There would be a lot of signs up saying "Yes! We are open! (grill only)" and "Cash Only"

lots of that during the 2003 blackout. and the bars were packed.

[andygates]

And we Brits are already used to warm beer!

[sheddi]

And we Brits are already used to warm beer!

Warm beer FTW!

(OTOH this Pinot Grigio I'm drinking at the moment wouldn't be the same if it wasn't chilled. Let's hope the CME happens between November and April.)

[Ellie With An Axe]

But forgetting the news, there are more important things to stress over, such as how to get prescriptions refilled, how to cook if your house is all-electric, or would gas lines be affected, too? There's some electric powerhouse cranking out the gas somewhere, right?

you could probably still get prescriptions filled locally, with what the pharmacy had on hand, if they kept paper records or you could provide proof of your prescription (such as your last prescription bottle which lists pharmacy, doctor, date, and refills left).

I would hope so, but I don't know of any pharmacy I've been to around here that uses paper records and doesn't verify your bottle against their records. If there's a pharmacy that's still keeping paper records, I'd like to know where it is that isn't in a 3rd world country, or in a tiny town in BFE. I think they might possibly call your doctor to get their records, though, because most doctors still keep paper records on top of the electronic ones. But my doctor's office does everything on electronic tablets now to cut down on paperwork. They might have some basic info on paper, but I'm not sure they'd have everyone's prescriptions printed out and stored on paper.

I would think things like food and refrigeration would be handled just like in any hurricane/flood.

In the mountains, we don't get many hurricanes and floods. Are you talking ice chest and ice? That's assuming you can find an ice box somewhere that has power or still some good ice left?

I'm not positive, but I believe most nursing homes have backup power for outages and generators if their residents require electrical devices to breathe, etc. I don't know of any hospital that doesn't have generators and backup power. Theoretically the only challenge there would be getting enough fuel.

It depends on how long you have to go without power. My dad used to run a nursing home and I, myself am a CNA/Patient care tech. During the ice storm back in January, he ran the place on a generator for 2 weeks, but it wasn't pretty. They had no air conditioning, so they shut off most of the halls and moved all the beds into the halls and cranked on the fans. There was no way to cook hot meals, so following state guidelines about meals and giving consideration to residents with dietary needs was a huge hurdle. Hospitals have redundant systems for power. But there's a limit to what's possible. With no air conditioning and poor ability to provide proper nutrition, on top of a strained staff and a finite power supply, the end of the rope comes fast. And again with the computerized records. Though we chart on paper still at the hospital here, the day is coming when we won't.

[Y.T.]

Ellie With An Axe,
I've just come to the realization that (a) that annoying feeling I've been having for the past few hours is now a full fledged headache and (b) this is/was making me not write good or with the thinking and stuffs. Which means my last post may have been much with the questionable sense and any attempt to fix that will likely make with the even less sense. So I'm going to tackle that later when I can write... with the sense... and stuff.

As a public service announcement:
all may feel free to ignore most of what I've written this afternoon in that vein.