According to the SpaceWeather website, a few hours ago, a solar flare of intensity X9.05 (classified as severe) that caused shortwave radio blackouts in Africa and Europethe part of the Earth illuminated by the Sun at the time of the eruption.
The solar flare emanated from sunspot group AR3842, which has previously made headlines for causing the northern lights. On October 1, the same sunspot region fired a powerful X7.1 solar flare and unleashed a coronal mass ejection (CME), a column of plasma and magnetic field, which will arrive between now and October 5, possibly causing widespread auroras.
The question is whether this new eruption will also cause a CME in the direction of our planet. Preliminary reports, from Ryan French, an astrophysicist at the British Royal Observatory, suggest that a CME likely aimed at Earth followed the flare.
Early data seems to suggest an eruption from today’s X9 #SolarFlare! Given the flare’s location on the Sun, it’s *more likely* to be Earth-directed than not. But, this is early data, and the event is yet to be modeled. Let’s wait for more data & models before getting too excited! pic.twitter.com/x0C3wsZGQb
— Dr. Ryan French (@RyanJFrench) October 3, 2024
We’re still waiting for more data and models to confirm this, but it looks like we could once again experience auroras further south than usual.
Coronal mass ejections carry electrically charged particles known as ions, and when they collide with Earth’s magnetosphere, they can trigger geomagnetic storms. During these storms, ions interact with gases in the Earth’s atmospherereleasing energy in the form of light. This phenomenon is known as the aurora borealis in the northern hemisphere, and the aurora australis in the southern hemisphere.
We will have to wait and see if a coronal mass ejection will impact the Earth and if, in fact, a geomagnetic storm is triggered. Space weather is fickle and unpredictable, so it certainly keeps forecasters on their toes. One thing we know that Accompanying the Great X Flare was a radio blackout.
The shortwave radio blackouts experienced in Europe and Africa were the result of radiation from the solar flare that reached Earth and ionized the upper atmosphere upon arrival. This ionization creates a denser environment for high-frequency shortwave radio signals, which facilitate long-distance communication, to travel through. As these radio waves pass through ionized (electrically charged) layers, they lose energy due to increased collisions with electrons, which can weaken or completely absorb the radio signals.
Today’s solar flare was the most powerful in this solar cycle so far. In fact, it has been the most powerful in more than seven years: in September 2017, two colossal flares of X13.3 and X11.8 were reported.
Solar flares are classified by size into different classes, with class X being the most powerful. Class M eruptions are 10 times less powerful than class They are 10 times weaker than class M. Class B eruptions are 10 times weaker than Class C, and Class A are 10 times weaker than the previous ones and have no noticeable impact on Earth. Each class is further divided by numbers from 1 to 10 (and beyond for class X eruptions) to indicate the relative strength of the eruptions.