by Dr. Tony Phillips

Did you know a solar flare can make your toilet stop working?

That's the surprising conclusion of a NASA-funded study by the National Academy of

Sciences entitled

high-tech society in the event of a "super solar flare" followed by an extreme

geomagnetic storm. They found that almost nothing is immune from space weather—not

even the water in your bathroom.

The problem begins with the electric power grid. Ground currents induced during an

extreme geomagnetic storm can melt the copper windings of huge, multi-ton transformers

at the heart of power distribution systems. Because modern power grids are

interconnected, a cascade of failures could sweep across the country, rapidly cutting

power to tens or even hundreds of millions of people. According to the report, this loss

of electricity would have a ripple effect with "water distribution affected within several

hours; perishable foods and medications lost in 12-24 hours; loss of heating/air

conditioning, sewage disposal, phone service, fuel re-supply and so on."

"The concept of interdependency," the report notes, "is evident in the unavailability of

water due to long-term outage of electric power—and the inability to restart an electric

generator without water on site."

It takes a very strong geomagnetic storm to cause problems on this scale—the type of

storm that comes along only every century or so. A point of reference is the "Carrington

Event" of August-September 1859, named after British amateur astronomer Richard

Carrington who witnessed the instigating solar flare with his unaided eye while he was

projecting an image of the Sun on a white screen. Geomagnetic storms triggered by the

flare electrified telegraph lines, shocking technicians and setting their telegraph papers on

fire; Northern Lights spread as far south as Cuba and Hawaii; auroras over the Rocky

Mountains were so bright, the glow woke campers who began preparing breakfast

because they thought it was morning!

"A contemporary repetition of the Carrington Event would cause … extensive social and

economic disruptions," the report warns. Widespread failures could include

telecommunications, GPS navigation, banking and finance, and transportation. The total

economic impact in the first year alone could reach $2 trillion (some 20 times greater

than the costs of Hurricane Katrina).

The report concluded with a call for infrastructure designed to better withstand

geomagnetic disturbances and improvements in space weather forecasting. Indeed, no

one knows when the next super solar storm will erupt. It could be 100 years away or just

100 days. It’s something to think about … the next time you flush.

One of the jobs of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) and

the Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) operated by NOAA is to

keep an eye on space weather and provide early warning of solar events that could cause

trouble for Earth.

You can keep an eye on space weather yourself at the National Weather Service's Space

Weather Prediction Center,

explained and illustrated simply and clearly at the SciJinks Weather Laboratory,

scijinks.gov/weather/howwhy/spaceweather.

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of

Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.