If you live in the northern US, you want to
keep your eyes to the skies this week.
The Northern Lights they may be.
They may be making a special appearance thanks to a
heightened solar activity being released by the sun.
But it's not all pretty, the solar storm.
It may also cause a couple of problems, especially for
radio and GPS users here on Earth.
So here to break it all down for us is
space weather physicist Dr.
Tamatha Scove.
Dr.
Scove, thanks so much for joining us here tonight.
This is something to be excited about for some folks
who like to view the Northern Lights.
But can you explain to our viewers, you know, what
exactly a geomagnetic storm is and how it can actually
affect us here on Earth?
Well, a geomagnetic storm occurs.
It's basically Earth reacting to something that the sun is
throwing at us.
The sun launches these magnificent looking ejections that then actually
travel with a lot of material as well as magnetic
field and it interacts with our Earth's magnetic shield.
And that ends up having to often times the Earth
has to pump a lot of energy back down into
the upper atmosphere to kind of let off some steam.
And that's what causes the Aurora that we see often
times in the night sky.
And I've actually had a pleasure of seeing these in
person.
They're absolutely gorgeous.
But I know for folks who live here in the
continental US, they may be asking themselves, is it visible
where I am?
Can I see it where I am?
Explain to us how it may be visible for some
places this go around, but not for the entire US.
Yes, unlike the May 10th storm that was seen pretty
much all over the world, this storm is much weaker.
And just like you would have expect, if the storm
isn't all that large, there isn't as much energy that
needs to be, you know, exhausted indoor upper atmosphere.
Therefore this go around the storm is likely only going
to reach down as far South as the upper tier
of the United States.
So states like let's say Maine and possibly the upper
part of New York in the dark sky region and
possibly maybe as far South as Iowa or even Colorado
as we get to the central part of the United
States and then possibly even Washington state with they could
possibly see Aurora anything above that.
But likely not going to be strong enough to see
all the way down to places like Arkansas or Oklahoma
like we did last during that May 10th storm.
And that's just simply because we don't have enough energy
this go around.
And I kind of want to talk and elaborate a
little bit more on that energy.
What are, you know, coronal mass ejections and how are
they something that may affect maybe the radios or the
GPS frequencies?
We've seen that happen in the past, yes.
Now coronal mass ejections, they're just one type of multiple
different types of solar phenomena that occur that affect Earth
in a very particular way.
And coronal mass ejections, they are the one, they're really
what the eye candy is of the, of our sun.
It launches these big gorgeous loops of material that then
take days to reach Earth typically.
And when they hit Earth, they, they, like I said,
they interact with our Earth's magnetic shield and that shield
sometimes depending upon the, the magnetic orientation of these, these
big solar storms, these kind of like fridge magnets.
If you have two fridge magnets and they're oriented the
same way, they kind of repel each other and nothing
happens and they bounce off each other.
But if you reverse one, they click together and their
magnetic systems become one system.
And all that energy from that solar storm or that
chronal mass ejection is pumped into the Earth system.
The Earth system has to just exhaust it.
And that is why we get the Aurora.
Now, Aurora sadly can affect GPS through kind of a
similar kind of situation is like twinkle, twinkle little *
when you see the stars twinkling or the city lights
twinkling, we call that scintillation.
And it's beautiful when it's a visible phenomena.
But you don't really want that happening to your GPS
signal or your radio signals.
And sadly, that is what happens sometimes.
In fact, tonight, we're already getting reports of amateur radio
operators dealing with issues on several frequencies on the radio
because of tonight's storm.
So there's such a deep science behind the Aurora borealis,
and of course, they're gorgeous to look at.
But they also come with that caveat of maybe disrupting
your frequencies.
I do want to ask really quickly before we let
you go for those who may not be able to
catch the Northern Lights tonight, but they do want to
catch a glimpse of them maybe in the future.
When and where is the best time to see them?
Well, we actually have two different types of seasons.
We have the, what we call the Russell Mcferrin effect,
which is a seasonal thing where every equinox we get
a peak in the, in the solar activity or not
the solar activity, but really the way the Earth responds
to that solar activity.
So it's always good to catch them in spring and
in fall.
But also we have the solar cycle, which is a
lot much longer spate of activity.
And right now we're going through solar maximum.
And right now, just literally this last 24 hours, we
had a very large solar flare on the, the far
side of the sun and the region that caused it
is going to be rotating back into Earth view in
about two weeks.
So you know what, maybe they should check the space
weather in about two weeks because we might get another
chance for a big storm.
All right, so you heard it from the expert herself,
Doctor Tam with the scope.
Thank you so much for joining us here on Fox
Weather.
Space weather physicist.
Again, thanks so much for sharing those Tibbets.