‘Solar storm as a hurricane on the ocean: apart from the Northern Lights we notice little’

The Earth is experiencing one of the strongest solar storms in more than twenty years this weekend. That storm creates a spectacular display of colors in the sky in the Netherlands, but also in other countries. Experts call it striking, but apart from the Northern Lights we will probably not notice much of it in the coming days.

Astronomer Lucas Ellerbroek speaks of a special storm and “fairly high solar activity”. This phenomenon awaits us more often in the coming year, he thinks, but we don’t have to worry. “The spectacle takes place in the polar lights,” says Ellerbroek. “Other than that, people hardly notice it.”

“Spectacular”, is how Esther Hanko describes last night’s northern lights. She is involved with the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy at the University of Amsterdam. Last night she only slept three hours, the rest of the time the amateur astronomer admired the northern lights.

“You can often take beautiful pictures of it in the Netherlands, but it is not easy to see with the naked eye. This was unmistakable and almost unbelievable. It didn’t seem real. It really is a big solar storm.”

Satellites of Musk

According to the U.S. Bureau of Meteorology and Oceanography, the solar storm could affect GPS, power grids, spacecraft, satellite navigation and other technologies. Starlink, the satellite division of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, warns of “deteriorating service” as a result of the solar storm.

Starlink owns about 60 percent of the approximately 7,500 satellites orbiting the Earth. Earlier today, Musk reported that those satellites are under great pressure, but have held up so far.

Really major disruptions will not occur, Ellerbroek and Hanko think. In the nineteenth century, solar storms did lead to power outages, Hanko knows. But in a world where we cannot do without electricity, she believes that enough measures have been taken to deal with any disruptions.

Everywhere in the Netherlands the Northern Lights produced beautiful pictures:

Ellerbroek says that nowadays there is more equipment that is sensitive to malfunctions, but that there are also plenty of backup options. “If a power network goes down, there is often a backup.” Satellites have less protection. “They are more vulnerable than, for example, the power grids on earth.”

Astronomer Niek de Kort was previously also sober about the possible consequences for the networks, because they are “well secured and built to withstand it”. Most satellites are protected by the Earth’s magnetic field, he explains. “And if it does happen, the outage will be short. Think of it like a computer that freezes: you turn it off and on, and it works again.”

A ‘solar maximum’

Solar storms actually happen all the time, but now they are in the news more often. This is because the solar activity is at the end of a cycle. Such a cycle lasts on average more than eleven years. At the end of it, more solar storms occur. The Northern Lights were also clearly visible in March. This also applied in mid-April, above the Wadden and some places in Drenthe.

“We are approaching the so-called ‘solar maximum’,” says meteorologist Wouter van Bernebeek of Weerplaza. During that period, most sunspots occur on the solar surface. And without a sunspot you don’t have a storm. A sunspot is a cooler spot on the sun.

A solar flare is created from such a sunspot, as astronomer at Leiden University Simon Portegies Zwart once explained. “The poles are connected to each other by magnetic field lines. Magnetically charged particles follow those lines. Gas – the solar wind – comes from the sun and if the pressure becomes too strong, those magnetic lines break.”

Mass of the Sun

That is the moment when a huge amount of energy is released in a huge explosion: a solar flare. Then not only radiation comes from the sun, but also electrically charged particles, Ellerbroek explains. “These particles are heavier than light particles. They are continuously emitted by the sun, but during a solar storm this happens intensely. It is actually just like a hurricane on the ocean. Mass is thrown from the sun into space. Some of it comes our way.”

Due to the Earth’s magnetic field, these charged particles do not immediately reach Earth, but they deflect, as it were, towards the north and south poles, says Hanko. “If the solar storm is strong enough and the magnetic field is favorable, it can cause the particles to react with particles in our atmosphere, which can produce colorful pictures in the sky.”