Solar superstorms: UK must brace itself, say engineers

The government must develop a national strategy to cope with the effects of solar superstorms on electricity and communications, according to a study by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

The report's authors recommend that the government creates an expert panel – the UK Space Weather Board – that would formulate a national plan to cope with the effects of periodic huge blasts of radiation and high-energy particles from the sun. These can damage electronic systems including those controlling electricity grids, orbiting satellites, aircraft, GPS navigation systems and mobile phone networks.

Space weather is a result of normal processes on the sun, which emits radiation of all kinds all the time. Occasionally, magnetic storms on the star's surface can cause explosions, called flares, that can release, all at once, as much as a sixth of the entire sun's energy output per second. The strongest storms also produce coronal mass ejections (CMEs), huge clouds of plasma that travel at millions of miles per hour, consisting of energetic electrons and protons with smaller amounts of helium, oxygen and iron.

"Our view is that solar superstorms will be a challenge for the UK to deal with, but it will certainly not be cataclysmic," said Paul Cannon of Qinetiq and the University of Birmingham, who chaired the space weather working group for the academy. "Our motto is don't panic, but do prepare."

If particles and radiation from a superstorm reach the Earth, they could lead to temporary blackouts and put one in 10 satellites out of action. In March 1989, a solar storm caused Canada's Hydro-Quebec power grid to collapse within 90 seconds, leaving millions of people in darkness for up to nine hours.

Minor solar storms occur regularly but extreme events occur once every 100 to 200 years. "Since the start of the space age, we've had no true solar superstorms, consequently our understanding is pretty limited," said Cannon.

The space weather board proposed by the study would, he said, ideally report directly to the Cabinet Office and take strategic decisions to improve our understanding of the effects of a superstorm and harden crucial national infrastructure, such as power lines and satellites, against the worst case scenarios.

Cannon said GPS systems would be disrupted for several days if their satellites were hit by a superstorm, putting satnav systems out of action and forcing ships and planes to navigate by more traditional "dead reckoning" methods, said Cannon. He advised motorists to keep a map handy in their cars.

Radiation in the upper atmosphere after a superstorm could affect the electrical systems and microchips in aircraft. But according to space engineer Keith Ryden of the University of Surrey, "we're not talking about aircraft dropping out of the sky." The radiation dose for passengers on a plane after a superstorm would be the equivalent of three chest CT scans – well below harmful levels.

Mobile phone networks would be worse affected in some countries than in others. "The current UK cellular network is fundamentally resilient to space weather because it does not rely on GPS signals for its timing," said Cannon. "Interestingly, in the USA their cellular network does rely on GPS time. The cellular system in the US is far less resilient than ours in the UK."