A Solar Storm Could Destroy Our Power Grid — But You Probably Did Not Notice The One That Is Happening Right Now
By Bruce Cinnamon
Originally Published on February 20, 2018
Composite Risk Rating: 4
On 2 September 1859, the night sky exploded with light. Brilliant auroras bathed the earth in shades of red and green and purple, stretching from the Arctic all the way south to the Caribbean. Even as people flooded the streets to stare up in wonder at the heavenly spectacle, telegraph systems around the world erupted into chaos. Today, we call this unique historical episode the Carrington Event — after British astronomer Richard Carrington, who witnessed the origins of the chaos through his telescope on the day before the incident. In his observatory on September first, Carrington became the first human to note the existence of solar flares — gigantic flashes of light emitted from the sun’s surface.
Solar flares are often symptoms of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) — explosions that propel huge clouds of solar plasma into space. As NASA puts it, “one can think of the [two] explosions using the physics of a cannon. The flare is like the muzzle flash, which can be seen anywhere in the vicinity. The CME is like the cannonball, propelled forward in a single, preferential direction, this mass ejected from the barrel only affecting a targeted area.”
During the Carrington Event, the Earth was in the sun’s firing path. The ejecta — billions of tonnes of magnetized particles travelling at 2,000km per second — took 17 hours to travel from the sun to the Earth’s upper atmosphere, where it created the largest geomagnetic solar storm on record. Although the Earth has not been struck by a solar storm on the magnitude of the Carrington Event for a century and a half, there have been hundreds of CMEs since 1859 — some of which have caused real damage.
On 13 March 1989, a solar storm brought down the Hydro-Québec power grid in 90 seconds. It left 6 million people without power for more than nine hours. People got stuck in elevators, heating was cut in houses, and key transportation infrastructure like the Montreal metro and airport were shut down. This solar storm demonstrated the Earth’s increased vulnerability to CMEs and raised a terrifying question: what if the Carrington Event took place in the modern world?
A 2008 report by the US National Academy of Sciences provides the most comprehensive picture of a Carrington-level solar storm hitting North America. The report identifies the increased interconnectedness of electrical grids as a key risk factor; joining distant grids together allows electricity to be redistributed to areas of high demand, but it also creates the conditions for “cascade failures” that collapse the entire system. Furthermore, powerful ground currents could melt copper wiring inside power transformers, requiring them to be physically replaced before they could work again — a process which could take weeks or months. The report concludes that the total economic impact could reach USD $2 trillion in the first year alone. That does not even account for the risks of social chaos if authorities are unable to restore food/water/energy/banking systems, climate-related natural disasters, or the security risks if a nation’s power grid and satellite network goes offline.
In short, a Carrington-level solar storm could have a very high impact, affecting numerous actors across multiple — indeed, across literally all — sectors. The Earth is struck by CMEs and solar storms all the time, but the nightmare scenario of a “solar megastorm” is far from impossible. In a February 2012 article in the American Geophysical Union journal Space Weather, physicist Pete Riley calculated the probability of a Carrington-level solar storm in the subsequent decade. His conclusion was surprisingly high: 12%.
In addition to the severity of the risk, it is unclear whether policymakers and private-sector actors are prepared to react quickly in the event of a massive solar storm. The world would only have 12–15 hours to prepare for the oncoming tsunami of solar plasma, and governments have only started exploring the potential impacts of space weather events over the last decade.
That is not to say that there have been no attempts to prepare for “the big one.” Following the 1989 CME, Hydro-Québec took several steps to modify its physical infrastructure and its operational procedures in the event of a solar storm. In November 2015, the European Space Agency announced the development of a warning network for extreme space weather. In October 2016, the Obama White House published an executive order to coordinate a disaster response plan among federal agencies. In short, both public and private actors are starting to recognize this risk and beginning to build resilience against it — but only for mid-range CMEs. Large scale interventions — like stockpiling backup transformers or even creating a “magnetic shield” between the Earth and the sun — have yet to materialize.
There is no telling when the next major solar eruption will happen — and no predicting if the Earth will be in its path when it does. The only thing we can do is prepare for this unlikely — but potentially devastating — event.
Bruce Cinnamon is a 2nd year Masters student at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy interested in the risk management strategies including climate change mitigation, counterterrorism, and adaptation to disruptive technologies.
