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The storm is expected to hit Earth on Monday, March 28. A solar storm is a disturbance of incoming particles caused by electromagnetic eruptions from the sun.
NASA expects the solar storm to arrive around midnight GMT Monday.
However, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) believes it will arrive eighteen hours earlier, around 6 a.m.
When the solar wind hits the Earth’s magnetic field, its interaction causes the atmosphere to glow.
This is known as the aurora borealis or aurora borealis in the northern hemisphere.
Dr. Tamitha Skov, known as the “Space Weather Woman” for her online weather forecasts, predicts problems with high-frequency radio reception and problems anywhere on Earth when a solar storm hits.
He added that forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “indicate a faster solar storm that will hit more.”
Dr Skov said the effects “can reach mid-latitudes” on the planet’s surface.
When asked where skywatchers might see the storm’s northern lights, he suggested that people in rural New York might be able to spot it, but someone in the far south might not.
New York lies below the UK, so there’s a chance the eagle-eyed Britons will be in the spotlight.
In the Southern Hemisphere, Dr Skov said residents of southern New Zealand and Tasmania could see the aurora borealis “provided it was dark enough” and the storm hit there overnight.
However, those who live in Australian cities like Victoria and Perth may not be so lucky.
This is because the solar particles that hit the Earth during the storm are “polar-biased” by the Earth’s magnetic field.
Billy Tates, an astronomer at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, explained that the deposits of energy this produces cause the atmosphere around the poles to glow.
As beautiful as the spectacle for some, solar storms can have detrimental effects on the planet’s navigation and logistics systems.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warns: “While storms create beautiful aurorae, they can also disrupt navigation systems such as the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and create harmful geomagnetic currents (GIC) in the power grid and tubes.”
Large solar storms, in the form of coronal mass ejections, can have devastating effects on Earth and human infrastructure.
The Carrington event of 1859 is the deadliest geomagnetic storm on record, which saw the northern lights as far south as the Caribbean, but telegraph lines failed across the United States.
Investigators believe that if the Carrington event had occurred today, it would have caused widespread electrical disturbances, blackouts, and damage to the power grid.
Similar storms were recorded in the following years. In February, a small magnetic storm destroyed 40 satellites of SpaceX Starlink.
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