[Scan-DC] --[ (11/25) NY Times Article Re: Sun Spot cycle pick-up soon ]--

[Emissary]

Source:  New York Times [http://www.nytimes.com/]
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November 25, 2003
Thanksgiving Forecast: Potential Fireworks on the Sun
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR

BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 22 - Snapping like rubber bands pulled too tightly,
tangled magnetic fields on the surface of the Sun have been spewing waves of
radiation and superheated particles at Earth.
So far, the damage has been relatively minor in comparison with significant
communications disruptions three years ago. The culprits this year are three
volatile sunspots that began erupting last month and set off blackouts in
Sweden, damaged satellites and forced some airlines to divert flights from
polar routes to escape extra radiation.

And now, after a three-week lull while the Sun's rotation spun them out of
view, the sunspots are back within striking distance. The one with the
potential to produce the most fireworks, Region 507, is expected to fix its
sights squarely on Earth just as Thanksgiving arrives. While all three have
decayed a bit, 507 is still roughly eight times the size of Earth.
Predicting the level of havoc that can be wrought by 507 or any other
exploding sunspot is a minute-to-minute science. The erratic nature of
exploding sunspots leaves researchers with as little as 30 minutes to warn
of radiation storms or as much as 17 hours to prepare for speeding clouds of
plasma.
Nowhere perhaps is the pressure greater to assess the magnitude of these
blasts than within the walls of the Space Environment Center here, home of
what could be called the solar storm trackers. Vivid, up-to-date images of
the Sun captured by satellites a million miles from Earth constantly blare
across an elevated, oversize television screen demanding the team's
attention.
To the forecasters here, every sunspot has its own personality and can be
dangerously unruly or quickly fizzle into obscurity.
For the last month, the rotating team of several space weather forecasters
at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has focused on
nothing else, darting from computer images of the sun flares to e-mail
messages and to telephone calls in an effort to warn thousands of
subscribers, like utilities, NASA and the airlines, of the newest storm
ratings.
They also answer queries from the public that range from the humorous, like
the woman who blamed a speed-trap radar reading of 90 miles an hour on a
flare, to the tragic, like those who believe relatives' pacemakers failed
during such events. Or those who complain the hair on their arms stands on
end. Or that their flaring arthritis is in sync with a solar flare. Or that
a homing pigeon loses its internal compass in a geomagnetic storm.
And lately, with the likelihood of storms resuming, so too has the number of
calls from concerned travelers fearing extra radiation during their holiday
flights.

On Thursday, when the sunspots reappeared with a new round of storms, the
space forecasters fell back into formation. A locustlike cloud of charged
particles shot out of the Sun at more than two million miles an hour,
swarming Earth just after midnight.
Standing beside a fortress of computers, William Murtagh, a forecaster,
described the storm as relatively slow moving. Still, he brimmed with the
satisfaction of knowing that at least for the day, he had tried to restrain
the Sun's devastating fury.
"This one we predicted would arrive in 50 hours, and it actually reached us
in 46 - so I'd say that's a pretty good job," Mr. Murtagh said with a smile.
"We expected major to severe geomagnetic storm levels, and that's exactly
what we're getting now - right on target."
Those predictions have far-reaching impact. The agency's subscribers also
include the Coast Guard, most airlines and the military.
The storm trackers' alerts prompted power companies throughout North America
to switch to "safe mode" to protect grids from collapse with the heightened
solar storm currents. All it took to plunge six million people in Quebec
into darkness during a storm in March 1989, Mr. Murtagh said, was one
transformer that overheated and shut down.
The frenetic activity in the forecast center on Thursday was only a glimpse
of what could come this week, when Regions 507 and 508 stare at Earth. As
508 was rotating away from Earth on Nov. 4, it unleashed a flare that some
scientists say was the biggest explosion ever recorded in the solar system.

"It was like being in Miami and seeing a giant hurricane coming toward you
that eventually veers off to sea," said Dr. Devrie S. Intrilligator,
director of the space plasma laboratory at the Carmel Research Center in
Santa Monica, Calif. "We really lucked out because the full force of it
didn't head toward Earth."
When it was tucked away on the backside of the Sun, 508 ejected clouds of
plasma so enormous that scientists could see them dwarfing the Sun in size
as they roared off into space. Now it is Region 507 that Mr. Murtagh's team
is bracing for. Rivaling Jupiter in size, it has the potential to bathe
Earth with intense storms that could expose airplane passengers to abnormal
amounts of radiation around Thanksgiving.
The last time that happened, in late October, the Federal Aviation Authority
warned passengers on planes over 25,000 feet at some latitudes that they
would accumulate about two millirems of radiation per hour, or two days'
worth of radiation on the ground.
What will happen in the next several days is still uncertain. "A severe one
could happen, but I think a moderate one at most is more likely," Court
Williamson, an operations specialist, told one caller who was concerned
about her husband's flight from San Francisco to London the weekend after
Thanksgiving.

The forecasters can be on 24-hour call at times like these. Mr. Murtagh
recalled talking to an airline from bed at 11 o'clock one night as the
company tried to decide whether to proceed with a Newark-to-Beijing flight
the next day.
Now and then, even the forecasters are dumbfounded by the connections people
draw between the force of the solar storms and everyday life.
"The deputy," began one woman about her son's speeding ticket, "at first
said he was going 90, then 75 m.p.h. My son was trying to pull over due to a
flat tire, and told the deputy there is no way he could drive at that speed
on a flat."
Mr. Murtagh said he was reluctant to rule anything out. "If someone did a
study showing geomagnetic storms affect radar guns, you can be sure the
legal system would be flooded with millions of people fighting traffic
tickets."

The space environment center is fighting a battle of its own in Washington.
Instead of the $8.3 million that the agency requested for the fiscal year
that began on Oct. 1, the House allocated $5.3 million and the Senate
budgeted no money at all.
"If a major storm hits and we don't exist, the airlines will have no reason
not to divert planes away from polar routes or the higher latitudes," said
Dr. Ernest Hildner, the center's director. "How much is it worth to expose
all those people to all that radiation and increased cancer risk?"
As 507 glares into view, the storm trackers already have warned power
companies, satellite operators and holiday travelers.
Those who would have the most reason to be concerned if a major storm did
hit, Mr. Murtagh says, would be passengers or crew members on flights that
cross over the North Pole, like New York to some parts of Asia. Because of
the shape and location of Earth's magnetic field, radiation from violent
solar events tends to flow toward the poles and regions at higher latitudes.

"It's costly for airlines to send their planes on the longer route or make
them drop from say 38,000 feet to 28,000 to avoid radiation," he said. "But
generally they would if we give them the data that shows a strong radiation
storm is on the way."
Some European countries have adopted legislation mandating studies into how
much radiation passengers are exposed to during solar flares and others have
regulations to protect flight crews. One popular analogy that quantifies
radiation exposure while flying in numbers of chest X-rays, said Joe
Kunches, chief of the space weather operations division, is often imprecise.
"Are we talking about chest X-rays today or many years ago?" Mr. Kunches
said. "What side of the plane are you on? How high is it flying? There are
just too many variables involved."