In the fight to protect Earth from solar storms, the battle lines are drawn in space at a point 1.6 million kilometres away. There, a US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite waits for electrons and protons to wash over it, a sign that the Sun has burped a flood of charged particles in our direction.
As early as the end of this month, NOAA should have a much better idea of just how dangerous those electromagnetic storms are. The agency will begin releasing forecasts that use a more sophisticated model to predict how incoming solar storms could fry electrical power grids. It will be the clearest guide yet as to which utility operators, in what parts of the world, need to worry.
“This is the first time we will get short-term forecasts of what the changes at the surface of the Earth will be,” says Bob Rutledge, lead forecaster at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. “We can tell a power-grid customer not only that it will be a bad day, but give them some heads-up on what exactly they will be facing.”
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