Written by By Harry Weber, CNN
It could be up to 100 million times more powerful than a nuclear bomb.
The strongest geomagnetic storm to hit Earth since 2013 will take place at the end of this year and in the early part of next year, according to an alert by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Monday. The storm’s impact could be felt across the planet from the northwestern United States to the central Pacific, with some predictions it could be the worst event since 1994.
The geomagnetic storm (from a side-effect of what happens when the sun undergoes a period of extreme activity known as the sunspot cycle) could reach severe levels, depending on the action of a “zephyr,” the space weather phenomenon with a negative energy density and that is expected to coincide with the powerful solar flare, according to NASA.
The storm could also give the Northern Lights a chance to be seen in the Northern Hemisphere from as far south as Alaska, the storm alert said.
Meteorologists are closely monitoring the event, which brings with it a large number of satellites in space and satellite-tracking radios and sensors, said Charles Foley, a space weather forecaster for NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
“We’re not specifically looking for extreme impacts. We’re looking for average impacts,” Foley said. “Right now, it’s not necessarily taking on the magnitude of a geomagnetic storm, but it could deliver.
“Today we’re looking at — could potentially be severe — a 75% chance of really big (Geomagnetic Storms).”
How to track a solar flare
A previous solar flare detected last week, which occurred August 14 and began as a super X-class solar flare, was expected to create the geomagnetic storm according to NASA’s spacecraft which were tracking the flare.
X-class flares are the strongest types of solar flares, with M-class being the second strongest. While M-class flares have less energy, X-class are potentially more disruptive for the Earth.
This new solar flare followed a closely followed X-class flare from April, the fifth and sixth in a row. The sun unleashed more powerful flares than usual in 2013 and 2016, resulting in electrical outages and power disruptions in the United States.
Just last year, NASA mapped out the incredible power of the sun as images were taken of its giant magnetic craters.
It has been 99 years since the last solar blast that caused severe electrical-related disruptions on Earth, the NOAA said.
The last severe event was the extreme X9.5 flare observed back in 2006.
Stratospheric CMEs, or coronal mass ejections, are explosions of hot plasma and gas that travel in space.
They typically involve a large region of the sun’s surface – known as the corona — that is a million to a billion degrees Fahrenheit. When a coronal mass ejection (CME) hits Earth, it results in an enormous cloud of charged particles that can interact with Earth’s magnetic field, eventually resulting in geomagnetic storms.
It is difficult to forecast these storms, and the best way to prepare for them is to pay attention to alerts from the NOAA, NASA said. “It’s very frustrating because sometimes you can see the event coming but you really can’t do anything about it,” said Don Banfield, NASA’s geomagnetic storm scientist.