Researchers May Have Found A Way To Simulate And Track Unpredictable Solar Storms

Solar storms are unlike storms on Earth in that they’re far more difficult to predict. They aren’t particularly dependent on the systems we rely on here on Earth to tell us what to expect from the weather. And not only are they difficult to predict, there are several types of solar storms to track and study as well, some more difficult than others.

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a way to simulate these unpredictable solar storms, called coronal mass ejections, CMEs or stealth CMEs, that can cause slight disruptions to the Earth’s magnetic field.

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What is a CME?

CME stands for coronal mass ejection and essentially happens when the sun shoots solar material into space. The corona is the outer atmosphere of the sun, structured mostly by strong magnetic fields. Sometimes the atmosphere releases bursts of gas that propel into space, coming in contact with anything in its way. This means the possible billions of tons of matter CMEs expel can end up disrupting Earth. Sometimes these CMEs come with a bit of a warning like a flare or a burst of heat, NASA said. But sometimes they come with no warning at all. These are called stealth CMEs.

What researchers and scientists at Berkeley were able to do was develop a model that can help simulate the pattern of such CMEs so they could have a better understanding of “near-Earth space” and these solar weather events as a whole. The simulations may even help researchers predict space weather in the future. These predictions were led by the Space Sciences Laboratory at Berkeley, thanks to partial funding from NASA as well as access to research completed on NASA missions STEREO and SOHO, a release from NASA said.

What they found is the rotation of the sun is differential, meaning different parts of it rotate at different times, and that causes the magnetic fields to stretch and change shape at different speeds. This causes the magnetic field lines to change and stress over time, and turn into a coil of energy. When that coil gains enough energy, it pinches off and leaves the sun with no warning, the research indicated.

Normal CMEs come off the sun at 1,800 miles per second while stealth CMEs travel 250-435 miles per second, NASA said. The stealth CMEs travel at such a slow speed, they rarely make it out far enough into space to cause major weather events, but they are powerful enough to cause slight disruptions in Earth’s magnetic field.

The research was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, however, the full article is not available to the public for free.