When the aurora borealis made a rare appearance in Virginian skies earlier this year, the vivid colors were the result of highly charged particles that reached the top layer of our atmosphere. Scientists want to better understand what future events like this could mean for satellite and space technologies.
The sun has 11-year cycles, and we’re currently in the peak of what’s called solar maximum, which can mean more solar storms.
“So, it’s quite possible that we might see something like this again in the next year or two,” said Scott England, an associate professor in aerospace and ocean engineering at Virginia Tech. “This particular storm was the biggest, the strongest in the last two decades. It was the third strongest since we started to have spacecraft,” he said.
England is part of a team of researchers who operate and analyze data from a NASA space instrument, called Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk, or GOLD.
During the May storm, GOLD recorded significant changes in the top layer of the Earth’s atmosphere: there were more temperature changes than usual, more wind, as well as highly charged particles in locations they’d never seen before.
Some farmers in the Midwest reported issues with GPS-guided tractors, though for the most part, technology was unaffected.
Scientists are trying to figure out how larger solar storms could affect GPS signals, or other technologies, like cell phones and internet connections.
England and other researchers are hoping to use data from the May aurora, as well as possible future solar storms, to create better solar storm models, to predict what could happen in future events.
Their initial findings from the May storm were published in two studies in the journal “AGU Earth and Space Science.”
