Solar magnetic storm expected to light up polar regions of Earth on Diwali

Prof Dibyendu Nandi at CESSI, IISER Kolkata, told The Indian Express that if the storm does hit on November 4, it could be dubbed the ‘Diwali solar storm’.

Solar storms have earlier been named based on the day they have originated or impacted Earth. For example, there was a solar storm named after Bastille Day in 2000, a Halloween Day storm that hit Earth in 2003 and a St Patrick’s Day storm that occurred in 2015.

Solar flares are highly energetic phenomena that sometimes occur within strong magnetic structures on the Sun known as sunspots.

Sunspots, generated by the solar magnetic cycle in the deep interior of the Sun, rise up, forming relatively dark spots at the surface.

When a flare occurs, the energy stored in the magnetic structures are converted to heat and light energy, generating intense X-ray radiation and accelerating charged particles in the Sun’s atmosphere to very high speeds. Sometimes, they also eject a large amount of hot magnetised plasma from the Sun’s atmosphere into space, resulting in a solar storm, which are known as coronal mass ejections. These are the largest explosions in the solar system, generating as much energy as a billion atomic bombs.

When a coronal mass ejection impacts the Earth’s magnetosphere, it can create geomagnetic storms that are hazardous to electric power grids, oil pipelines and under-sea internet cables. These solar storms also energse atoms in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, resulting in the emission of multi-coloured lights that produce spectacular auroras across countries situated in high-latitude polar regions.

Although solar storms impact our technologies, since the high-energy radiation from these events is absorbed by the Earth’s upper atmosphere, they are not harmful to the health of human beings.
The current solar magnetic cycle is expected to be weak cycle, with lower than average solar storms expected, said Prof Nandi. Therefore, the recent spate of intense solar activity has solar physicists around the world all excited.

In fact, a team of solar physicists at CESSI, IISER Kolkata including PhD student Suvadip Sinha and Prof Dibyendu Nandi had predicted the strong phase of current flaring activity based on their ongoing research.

The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Centre has released an independent forecast recently, which confirms the CESSI estimate and indicates that there is a strong possibility of geomagnetic storms, and hence of auroras lighting up the night skies.

However, Prof Nandi also said that the field of space weather predictions is challenging because of the rarity of observations in interplanetary space. “Solar storms may get deflected just like cyclones veer off from their projected path. Only on the evening of Diwali will we know the actual impact of the storm once near-Earth observations become available,” he said.

Professor Durgesh Tripathi from the Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics said that prediction of solar eruptions is one of the holy grails in solar physics, and is very important for space weather. “CESSI has started predicting solar eruptions since last few months and doing it from our own soil is something to be proud of,” he said.

“Atmospheric phenomena such as aurorae, which we do not see from our geographic location, and also upper atmospheric electrical disturbances, which can lead to outages in phone and internet connectivity, are caused by storms on the Sun. There has been massive solar activity, which is a gigantic coronal mass ejection of charged particles towards the Earth’s direction. Now, this has been successfully predicted by several groups, including CESSI solar astronomers at IISER Kolkata,” said Prof Somak Raychoudhury, director of IUCAA.

“As the CME will reach the Earth throughout the night of November 3 and 4, and because of spectacular effects, it is in a way our own kind of lighting up for Diwali,” said Prof Raychoudhury.

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