In the category of one more thing to worry about, the National Academy of Sciences just released a report that quantifies the economic risk of extreme space weather.
“Modern society depends heavily on a variety of technologies that are susceptible to the extremes of space weather—severe disturbances of the upper atmosphere and of the near-Earth space environment that are driven by the magnetic activity of the Sun. Strong auroral currents can disrupt and damage modern electric power grids and may contribute to the corrosion of oil and gas pipelines. Magnetic storm-driven ionospheric density disturbances interfere with high-frequency (HF) radio communications and navigation signals from Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, while polar cap absorption (PCA) events can degrade—and, during severe events, completely black out—HF communications along transpolar aviation routes, requiring aircraft flying these routes to be diverted to lower latitudes. Exposure of spacecraft to energetic particles during solar energetic particle events and radiation belt enhancements can cause temporary operational anomalies, damage critical electronics, degrade solar arrays, and blind optical systems such as imagers and star trackers.”
While these risks have been documented in the past, this report puts the impact of such events into an economic perspective, citing numerous earth-based consequences that are deemed a potential “space weather Katrina.” Previous events that are cited are the March 1989 failure of the Hydro-Quebec power grid due to a geomagnetic storm, the disabling of the GPS-based Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) for 30 hours in October 2003, and other dramatic events with severe consequences.
