Auroras a 'Visual Warning' of the Damaging Power of Space Shocks—Study

The same space weather that sparks spectacular auroras across the night skies can also damage infrastructure due to the flow of electrical currents, potentially causing power outages, a study has warned.

Auroras can be caused by geomagnetic storms resulting from coronal mass ejections from the sun, or also result from something called interplanetary shocks.

According to a new paper in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, the presence of auroras could be used to warn us of potential damage to the electrical grid and other infrastructure.

"Auroras and geomagnetically induced currents are caused by similar space weather drivers," paper co-author Denny Oliveira, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement. "The aurora is a visual warning that indicates that electric currents in space can generate these geomagnetically-induced currents on the ground."

Geomagnetic storms can be triggered by coronal mass ejections from the sun, which are huge plumes of solar plasma spat out from active regions of the star's surface, but may also be sparked by interplanetary shocks, which are disturbances that propagate through the solar wind (the stream of charged particles emitted by the sun). These shocks travel outward from the sun through the solar system, traveling at speeds exceeding that of the ambient solar wind.

"The auroral region can greatly expand during severe geomagnetic storms," Oliveira said. "Usually, its southernmost boundary is around latitudes of 70 degrees, but during extreme events it can go down to 40 degrees or even further, which certainly occurred during the May 2024 storm—the most severe storm in the past two decades."

These interplanetary shocks compress the Earth's magnetic field, creating beautiful aurorae, but also generating geomagnetically induced currents that can damage infrastructure.

"Arguably, the most intense deleterious effects on power infrastructure occurred in March 1989 following a severe geomagnetic storm—the Hydro-Quebec system in Canada was shut down for nearly nine hours, leaving millions of people with no electricity," said Oliveira.

"But weaker, more frequent events such as interplanetary shocks can pose threats to ground conductors over time. Our work shows that considerable geoelectric currents occur quite frequently after shocks, and they deserve attention."

The paper reveals that the angle at which these interplanetary shocks hit our planet determines the strength of the electrical currents created and therefore the degree of damage to things like pipelines and the electrical grid.

The researchers measured the readings of geomagnetically induced currents from a natural gas pipeline in Mäntsälä, Finland, and compared them with records of interplanetary shocks.

According to the paper, head-on impacts by interplanetary shocks result in stronger currents due to a greater degree of magnetic field compression, with the highest peaks in currents being recorded at magnetic midnight, when the North Pole was between the sun and Mäntsälä.

As the angles of interplanetary shocks can be forecast before the shock wave arrives on our planet, this discovery may help protect electrical grids and other infrastructure in the lead-up to an impact.

"One thing power infrastructure operators could do to safeguard their equipment is to manage a few specific electric circuits when a shock alert is issued," Oliveira said. "This would prevent geomagnetically induced currents reducing the lifetime of the equipment."

However, these findings are based only on the geomagnetically induced currents recorded in Mäntsälä.

"Current data was collected only at a particular location, namely the Mäntsälä natural gas pipeline system," said Oliveira.

"Although Mäntsälä is at a critical location, it does not provide a worldwide picture. In addition, the Mäntsälä data is missing several days in the period investigated, which forced us to discard many events in our shock database. It would be nice to have worldwide power companies make their data accessible to scientists for studies."

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