I wish I could say it was just a light show in the sky, but the solar storm that hit Earth on May 10 last year with its aurora borealis was much more than that. I was in Paris, taking my daughter to Eurodisney, and as I watched the strange reddish colors in the sky with her, I jokingly wondered if we would have problems or delays on our return flight.
I had no idea that my joke had more scientific basis than expected. While millions of people looked up in wonder at multicolored auroras visible even in Italy and the southern United States, the self-driving tractors of the American Midwest went crazy as if possessed, Elon Musk's Starlink satellites went into survival mode and GPS systems lost precision. Gannon's Superstorm It brought with it a lot of wonder but also a brutal lesson on the fragility of our technological infrastructure.
The name behind the phenomenon
The strongest geomagnetic storm in the last twenty years, between May 10 and 11, 2024, quickly reached the G5 level, the highest on the classification scale of geomagnetic storms, takes its name to honor the memory of Jennifer Gannon, a scientist of the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center who passed away a week before the event.
The unexpected technological impacts
The effects of the storm were as spectacular as they were problematic. Elon Musk confirmed on its social media that its Starlink satellites were “under severe pressure” due to the event. Its fleet of low-orbit satellites suffered significant degradation of service, although it remained operational.
One of the most surprising and unexpected impacts, however, occurred in the agricultural sector. On the same weekend as the storm, several self-driving tractors in the American Midwest had to stop planting crops. due to GPS problems.
A study published in Geophysical Research Letters documented unprecedented changes in the position and diffusion of particles in the upper atmosphere, while a second study analyzed the changes in atmospheric composition and temperature that produced the widespread auroras seen at different locations on the planet.
Aurora School: Lessons Learned and Future Precautions
Despite advances in space weather, our forecasting and mitigation capabilities are still limited. Scott England of Virginia Tech explains that while there have been significant advances in predicting these events, their intensity and the speed at which they can evolve remain difficult to accurately predict.
Sure, the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center was able to provide early warnings, but the storm hit hours earlier than expected and with greater intensity than initial forecasts, which called for a G4 rather than a G5.
What was the “lesson” of the auroras, one year later? What have we learned? First, we have accelerated the development of protection systems for critical infrastructure. NASA has continued to refine its DAGGER, an early warning system that could provide up to 30 minutes of warning before a strong solar storm hits, giving electrical systems and communications networks a chance of survival.
Electric grid operators, meanwhile, have revised their emergency protocols, while agricultural equipment manufacturers have begun implementing more resilient GPS systems or analog backups for outages. Is that enough? No. Not yet.
The future is worrying
What is most alarming to scientists is that this storm occurred before the peak of solar cycle 25, which is expected to occur this year. Based on the solar cycle, we expect the conditions we saw last year to be present for the next two years, perhaps three. This means we could see events of similar or even greater magnitude in the near future.
From solar storms and auroras a new awareness
If there is a silver lining to all this, it is that Gannon's storm has led to increased public awareness of space weather. Spectacular auroras visible at unusual latitudes have captured global attention, leading many people to become interested in these phenomena for the first time.
As he pointed out Kelly Korreck of NASA,
“A lot of people who have seen the auroras couldn’t have done so, and they’re wondering why it happens, why they could see it better with their phones than with their eyes, why it was red here and green there.”
And then, above all, Gannon's storm reminded us that the technology we rely on every day is fragile. Extremely fragile. More than we think (think, for example, of what happened in Spain (a short time ago).
But it has also given us the opportunity to learn and better prepare for the next extreme event—and with solar peak coming up, that preparation could be put to the test very soon.
