Carrington Event

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Sunspots of September 1, 1859, as sketched by Richard Carrington. A and B mark the initial positions of an intensely bright event, which moved over the course of five minutes to C and D before disappearing.

The Carrington Event[1] was a powerful geomagnetic storm on September 1–2, 1859, during solar cycle 10 (1855–1867). A solar coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetosphere and induced the largest geomagnetic storm on record. The associated "white light flare" in the solar photosphere was observed and recorded by British astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson. The storm caused strong auroral displays and wrought havoc with telegraph systems. The now-standard unique IAU identifier for this flare is SOL1859-09-01.

A solar storm of this magnitude occurring today would cause widespread electrical disruptions, blackouts, and damage due to extended outages of the electrical grid.[2][3] The solar storm of 2012 was of similar magnitude, but it passed Earth's orbit without striking the planet, missing by nine days.[4]

Carrington flare[edit]

A coronal mass ejection in 1999, near solar maximum

Just a few months before the solar maximum on 1860.1, during the 10th solar cycle,[5] many sunspots appeared on the Sun from August 28 to September 2, 1859. Bright and variable sky colors were observed in the evening on August 28 and subsequently reported in various newspapers in the New England area.[6] On August 29, southern auroras were observed as far north as Queensland, Australia.[7] Just before noon on September 1, the English amateur astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson independently recorded the earliest observations of a solar flare.[8] Carrington and Hodgson compiled independent reports which were published side by side in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and exhibited their drawings of the event at the November 1859 meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society.[9][10]

The flare was associated with a major coronal mass ejection (CME) that travelled directly toward Earth, taking 17.6 hours to make the 150 million kilometer (93 million mile) journey. Typical CMEs take several days to arrive at Earth, but it is believed that the relatively high speed of this CME was made possible by a prior CME, perhaps the cause of the large aurora event on August 29 that "cleared the way" of ambient solar wind plasma for the Carrington event.[8]

Because of a geomagnetic Solar Flare Effect ("magnetic crochet")[11] observed in the Kew Observatory magnetometer record by Scottish physicist Balfour Stewart, and a geomagnetic storm observed the following day, Carrington suspected a solar-terrestrial connection.[12][page needed] Worldwide reports on the effects of the geomagnetic storm of 1859 were compiled and published by American mathematician Elias Loomis, which support the observations of Carrington and Stewart.[13]

Aurora during a geomagnetic storm that was most likely caused by a coronal mass ejection from the Sun on May 24, 2010, taken from the ISS

On September 1–2, 1859, one of the largest geomagnetic storms (as recorded by ground-based magnetometers) occurred. Auroras were seen around the world, those in the northern hemisphere as far south as the Caribbean; those over the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. were so bright that the glow woke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning.[8] People in the northeastern United States could read a newspaper by the aurora's light.[14] The aurora was visible from the poles to low latitude areas such as south-central Mexico,[15][16] Queensland, Cuba, Hawaii,[17] southern Japan and China,[18] and even at lower latitudes very close to the equator, such as in Colombia.[19] Estimates of the storm strength range from −800 nT to −1750 nT.[20]

Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving telegraph operators electric shocks.[21] Telegraph pylons threw sparks.[22] Some telegraph operators could continue to send and receive messages despite having disconnected their power supplies.[23]

On Saturday, September 3, 1859, the Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser reported:

Those who happened to be out late on Thursday night had an opportunity of witnessing another magnificent display of the auroral lights. The phenomenon was very similar to the display on Sunday night, though at times the light was, if possible, more brilliant, and the prismatic hues more varied and gorgeous. The light appeared to cover the whole firmament, apparently like a luminous cloud, through which the stars of the larger magnitude indistinctly shone. The light was greater than that of the moon at its full, but had an indescribable softness and delicacy that seemed to envelop everything upon which it rested. Between 12 and 1 o'clock, when the display was at its full brilliancy, the quiet streets of the city resting under this strange light, presented a beautiful as well as singular appearance.[24]

In 1909, an Australian gold miner C. F. Herbert retold his observations in a letter to The Daily News in Perth:

I was gold-digging at Rokewood, about four miles from Rokewood township (Victoria). Myself and two mates looking out of the tent saw a great reflection in the southern heavens at about 7 o'clock p.m., and in about half an hour, a scene of almost unspeakable beauty presented itself, lights of every imaginable color were issuing from the southern heavens, one color fading away only to give place to another if possible more beautiful than the last, the streams mounting to the zenith, but always becoming a rich purple when reaching there, and always curling round, leaving a clear strip of sky, which may be described as four fingers held at arm's length. The northern side from the zenith was also illuminated with beautiful colors, always curling round at the zenith, but were considered to be merely a reproduction of the southern display, as all colors south and north always corresponded. It was a sight never to be forgotten, and was considered at the time to be the greatest aurora recorded... The rationalist and pantheist saw nature in her most exquisite robes, recognising, the divine immanence, immutable law, cause, and effect. The superstitious and the fanatical had dire forebodings, and thought it a foreshadowing of Armageddon and final dissolution.[25]

In June 2013, a joint venture from researchers at Lloyd's of London and Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) in the United States used data from the Carrington Event to estimate the cost of a similar event in the present to the U.S. alone at $0.6–2.6 trillion,[2] which at the time equated to roughly 3.6% to 15.5% of annual GDP.

Other evidence and similar events[edit]

Ice cores containing thin nitrate-rich layers have been analysed to reconstruct a history of past solar storms predating reliable observations. This was based on the hypothesis that solar energetic particles would ionize nitrogen, leading to the production of NO and other oxidised nitrogen compounds, which would not be too diluted in the atmosphere before being deposited along with snow.[26] Beginning in 1986, some researchers claimed that data from Greenland ice cores showed evidence of individual solar-proton events, including the Carrington event.[27] More ice core work casts significant doubt on this interpretation, and shows that nitrate spikes are likely not a result of solar energetic particle events but can be due to terrestrial events such as forest fires, and also correlate with other chemical signatures of known forest fire plumes. Indeed, no consistency is found in cores from Greenland and Antarctica regarding the nitrate events, so that hypothesis is now in doubt.[26][28][29] Other research has looked for signatures of large solar flares and CMEs in carbon-14 in tree rings and beryllium-10 in ice cores, finding such a signature of a large solar storm in 774 CE but finding that such events occur on average only once every several millennia.[30]

Less severe storms occurred in 1921 and 1960, when widespread radio disruption was reported. The March 1989 geomagnetic storm knocked out power across large sections of Quebec. On July 23, 2012 a "Carrington-class" solar superstorm (solar flare, coronal mass ejection, solar EMP) was observed; its trajectory narrowly missed Earth.[4][31]

See also[edit]