Extreme Solar Storms may be More Frequent than Previously Thought

martyb writes:

Extreme Solar Storms may be More Frequent than Previously Thought:

The September 1859 Carrington Event ejected concentrated solar plasma towards Earth, disrupting the planet's magnetic field and leading to widespread telegraph disturbances and even sporadic fires. New research in AGU's journal Space Weather indicates storms like the Carrington Event are not as rare as scientists thought and could happen every few decades, seriously damaging modern communication and navigation systems around the globe.

"The Carrington Event was considered to be the worst-case scenario for space weather events against the modern civilization... but if it comes several times a century, we have to reconsider how to prepare against and mitigate that kind of space weather hazard," said Hisashi Hayakawa, lead author of the new study and an astrophysicist at Osaka University in Osaka, Japan and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom.

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