Humans would get a 12 hour warning to prepare for prepare for damaging solar storm, said a report by News.com.
According to spaceweather.com, solar winds have been blowing and hovering the planet Earth during the weekend. However, the storm in question does not appear to be a geomagnetic storm. Experts say that there is a 30% chance of a storm breaking out in a week's time.
12 hours notice for a solar storm? That’s all the time “earthlings” will have to prepare for the storm, shared “Supplied.”
“MASS power outages, satellite disruptions and failure of transport networks are just some of threats humans would face if there was an explosion of the sun, “shared news.com.au. “What makes this even worse is we would only have 12 hours warning to prepare for such an event.”
The British Government’s Space Weather Preparedness Strategy report outlines the requirements that a prerequisite for facing a solar storm.
The UK report also mentioned that the worst case scenario during a catastrophic space event related to space weather is would be add coronal mass ejection.
In such a setting, “the aura of plasma surrounding the Earth would detach, hurling high-energy particles and X-rays toward our planet,” said the report.
In order to develop the the preparedness strategy, scientists looked at the the 1859 Carrington event, which was the last major coronal mass ejection to hit Earth.
“Generally speaking, the faster the ejection, the greater the potential impacts,” the report from the UK‘s Space Weather Preparedness report.
“The Carrington event,” reportedly reached the Earth in just 18 hours as an example.
“It is therefore likely that our reasonable worst case scenario would only allow us 12 hours from observation to impact.”
The report predicts that the modern day equivalent of such an event would result in major blackouts and a disruption to satellite communications.
Researchers suggest this would cause GPS systems and high frequency radio communication to be affected, which would leave trains, ships and aircraft all disrupted.
The authors believe in order to deal with the phenomenon, countries should design safeguards in infrastructure, develop an ample alert system to warn of space weather and have emergency procedure in place.
“Much more needs to be done to encourage potentially vulnerable sectors to adopt measures to mitigate the likely impacts,” the report said.
“Communication with the public is an important component in preparing for and responding to an event … not all impacts may happen during every space weather event but pre-agreed messaging is important to allow rapid and effective communication from government, if and when they do happen.”
“Preparation is needed to the national level, with the support of local capabilities to deal with the consequences. This all requires international co-ordination,” said the report.
