Extreme geomagnetic storm has been raging on Earth for the last 15 hours: threatening radio communications

A similar one was recorded on Earth 21 years ago

An extreme geomagnetic storm is raging on Earth — the strongest magnetic storm of class Kp9 (or G5), which, according to experts, has not happened in recent years 20+ years. According to the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism and Radio Wave Propagation of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IZMIRAN), it began on the evening of May 10.

Photo: freepik.com

The extraordinary event was caused by a series of powerful solar flares consisting of 100 sunspots belonging to the group AR3664. Shock waves from coronal mass ejections from the Sun overlapped and led to a series of powerful “volleys” across our planet of the highest class X and middle class M from May 8 to 9. Experts counted about 5 emissions that occurred over the past two days. The later ones caught up with the earlier emissions and were summed up. As a result, they reached a maximum speed of 1200 km/s by the evening of May 10.

Recall that the vector of this storm was directed directly towards our planet. The solar wind caused a strong magnetic storm of class Kp9 (or G5) and auroras throughout Russia.

As reported to MK in IZMIRAN, the intensity of the interplanetary field reached its maximum on May 10 at 21.00 Moscow time. It was 50 nanotesla (with normal intensity up to 20 nanotesla). ⚡️This was first recorded by the American “solar” satellites DSCOVER and ACE (Russia, by the way, does not yet have a single one like this). About an hour after this, by 10 p.m., the solar wind had already reached our planet.

It caused the brightest auroras in the atmosphere throughout almost all of Russia, including even its southern regions, located at 43 degrees north latitude, for example, in the Volgograd region. Reports of auroras that painted the sky bright red came even from Armenia, located at 40 degrees north.

“Starting from 18:00 on May 10, the storm produced five 3-hour intervals with a power of Kp9. This is the maximum value for a geomagnetic storm,” says Artem Abunin, head of the IZMIRAN Space Weather Forecast Center, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. – In the entire history of observations, there have been 41 such observations. The last one was recorded from October 28 to 29, 2003, before it there were in 2000, 1989, 1986, 1982…”

Experts are waiting for the continuation of this storm for several days. It is likely to cause interruptions in radio communications, especially in the northern regions of the country. It is possible that, due to the increased density of the atmosphere, it will be necessary to raise the orbit of the International Space Station, which slows down faster and begins to descend earlier than expected.