Space and Earth Weather Align to Make a Bad Situation Worse

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured this image of the sun as it pumped out a powerful X1.8-class flare solar flare on 12/19/14. X-class flares are the biggest and most intense of these solar explosions that blast large amounts of energy, light and high speed particles into space. (NASA)

Rick Pantaleo

August 2, 2018

A new study suggests that an unfortunate confluence of space weather and Earth weather events in early September 2017, may have made a bad situation worse in the wake of devastation left by a line of hurricanes in the Caribbean.

As three tropical storms, including the category 5 hurricane Irma, were making their way across a number of Caribbean islands, a storm was also brewing on the Sun some 150 million kilometers away.

Hurricanes Katia, Irma, and Jose (labeled in white) are seen lined up in the Atlantic on September 6, 2017. The image was captured by the Suomi NPP weather satellite. (NASA)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center says that several powerful X class solar flares exploded from the surface of the Sun on September 6^th and 10^th2017.

Scientists rate a solar flare’s intensity by five classes, with A-Class being the least powerful and X-Class being the most powerful and intense.

Here on Earth, the three blasts of high-energy solar particles caused periods of radio communication blackouts, September 4^th through the 13^th, as efforts to mitigate effects of the hurricanes were underway.

The study outlining the scientist’s research has been published in the American Geophysical Union (AGU) journal, “Space Weather”.