Solar Storms Could Cause More Auroras

AFP/APP

Paris: Massive explosions on the Sun have triggered warnings of geomagnetic storms that could create dazzling auroras in the northern United States, Europe, and southern Australia from Tuesday night.

In May, the most powerful geomagnetic storm to strike Earth in more than two decades lit up night skies with colorful displays in Hawaii, Spain, South Africa, and other places far from the extreme latitudes where auroras are normally seen.

“We’ve seen several large coronal mass ejections — plasma and other material from the Sun’s surface shooting out into space,” Mike Bettwy, operations chief of the US-based Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), told AFP on Tuesday.

“As a result, the potential for space weather has ramped up significantly,” he said. The coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are expected to arrive from Tuesday to Thursday, with “geomagnetic storm watches” declared on those days.

But “the brunt of the activity is most likely” to come on Tuesday, when there is a “strong” geomagnetic storm warning of G3 on the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scale, the SWPC said.

May’s record storms were classified as the most extreme level of G5. This means any potential auroras this week are unlikely to stray as far or be as powerful as those seen earlier this year.

If the current forecast is correct, during the late evening hours in the United States on Tuesday, an “aurora could become visible as far south as the northeast US through the upper Midwest and across the rest of the northern states to include northern Oregon.”

The aurora borealis — also known as the northern lights — may become visible in Scotland over the next three nights but could be “impeded by limited hours of darkness,” the UK’s Met Office said Tuesday.

“With a bit of luck,” auroras could also be spotted in northern Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium, according to the website SpaceWeatherLive.

Aurora australis — the southern lights — could be visible in the south of the Australian state of Tasmania and similar latitudes, the Met Office said.