Active Week

[Maxime Fiset]

Awright, I give up.

[AbeH]

Wow! The sun is Blank! Also when does the next solar cycle begin?

[Vancanneyt Sander]

Wow! The sun is Blank! Also when does the next solar cycle begin?

It isn't : new spots rotated onto the disk, not that it's much but it is a new region. And 2371 is not completely rotated of the disk yet, also center disk some new spots emerged. 

Also check out our solar cycle progression page where you can see when the new cycle should start

[Guest danderson500]

might ask one more question then i will stop was the severe tension in 2371 the reason we saw so much flaring?

[Guest danderson500]

i was watching a Discovery Channel doco on the perfect solar storm and one expert said that if we get a large South BZ and the CME is very fast the geomagnetic storm would be super huge?

[Maxime Fiset]

Hm...

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but the causality is, more often than not : fast CME = negative Bz.

 

Is that how it works?

[Vancanneyt Sander]

Hm...

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but the causality is, more often than not : fast CME = negative Bz.

 

Is that how it works?

Not necessarily. It all depends on the IMF itself, mostly it will fluctuate heavily. What does happen during very fast solar wind speeds in excess of 900km/sec is that the Earths magnetic field is already taken a big punch that geomagnetic storming also occurs when Bz is north. In the event of the halloween storms (extreme geomagnetic storming G5) we had multiple fluctuations in the direction of the IMF tilting multiple times from north to south.

[Guest danderson500]

it was a miracle  we did not have grid failures other than Sweden

[Maxime Fiset]

it was a miracle  we did not have grid failures other than Sweden

Well I don't know for Sweden and the rest of the world, but Hydro-Québec DID take great mesures, since the 1989 event, to reduce the probabilities of a geomagnetic storm-induced blackout.

 

But whatdya expect? Thousands of kilometers of high-voltage lines between production sites and distribution sites on a rocky/mineral floor, they had to do something =P

[Guest danderson500]

No these CMEs were way to slow. The Halloween Solar Storm CMEs of October 2003 had solar wind speeds at Earth close to 1900km/s and that event did not even come close to the Carrington event. Here is a video you might enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hABmdvKReNo

 

It is at the same location as ACE so the warning time hasn't changed.

but there is one difference  DSCOVR provides faster cadence, once every 10 seconds data as opposed to ACE’s once every 1 minute

[Vancanneyt Sander]

but there is one difference  DSCOVR provides faster cadence, once every 10 seconds data as opposed to ACE’s once every 1 minute

I looked at the first DSCVR science data and still is in de 1-minute cadence;we don't need data every 10 sec; because it doesn't make any difference. When shock arrives at ACE if we know it in 10 sec or 1 minute, still fast enough. 

[Guest danderson500]

also these CME's were not that fast than 1859 or 1989

[Vancanneyt Sander]

So what? that isn"t even related, so even if it was faster, so what? The time between passing L1 point and Earth would still be more than 15 minutes, we get hit anyway so why bother? So that's the time you need to go hide in a deep dark cave  

[Guest danderson500]

although there is a new forecast model from next year that will help give us advanced warning..

[Maxime Fiset]

although there is a new forecast model from next year that will help give us advanced warning..

Source?

[Vancanneyt Sander]

The only advanced warning is currently ACE, it will be replaced with DSCVR which makes the readings more trustful since it's more modern and learned from previous missions. As it will sit in same L1 lagrange point, the distance Earth-DSCVR will be the same so it won't give us sooner warnings than ACE did. 

[Guest danderson500]

was thinking.. had 486 waited till a couple of days later to erupt big time then the storming would have not been so bad..?