Magazine Feature Article Draft B: Space Weather-The Final Frontier

    Weather or Not you think this sounds a tad...non-existent..., that’s what it is and that’s what it’s called. 

    (It’s also what this article is about.)

    Space Weather is quite different from Earth-based meteorology; it’s the study of events beyond our atmosphere that, ironically, are monitored in case they do happen to have an effect within the realm of our atmosphere. Focuses vary from asteroids/meteors to solar flares, sunspots, geomagnetic storms, and radiation. It’s incredibly rare that anything considered Space Weather would be dangerous to us, since the sun’s behavior at about 93 million miles away isn’t often strong enough to even cause minor radio blackouts, and asteroids less likely become meteors that aren’t that common (in our area) and, much more often, are small to begin with. 

    Although Space Weather events often lack a threat to us, which we owe greatly to the protection of the Earth’s magnetic field, it’s worth predicting the signal interference and auroras they can cause.  

The solar wind is caused by the sun’s extremely high temperature at its corona (outer layer), which heats particles that subsequently escape the sun’s gravity as solar wind. In areas near and at the sun’s poles with colder temperatures, the solar wind is higher, with the inverse for its equatorial origins, causing the Earth-bound solar wind speed to vary based on the rotation and position of the Earth and the sun. 

    When the sun decides to emit a burst of plasmaic energy, called a (C.)oronal (M.)ass (E.)jection, the solar wind sees it fit to torment the Earth as it has for the past 4.5 billion years, proceeding to hurl the mass of now-gaseous plasma into our planet’s magnetic field/shield. If it weren’t for 1 billion years of massive amounts of liquid iron solidifying within the Earth arousing other liquid iron to create electric currents, our magnetic field would not exist. (Well it might, but we don’t know (as of now) how the Earth did it before 1 billion years ago.) 

    Thanks to and at the expense of the unlikely sentient Maggie Field, we can enjoy beautiful meteor showers rather than un-diverted, massive rocks crashing down from the vicious heavens, and beautiful auroras in Alberta instead of the relentless radiation tormenting other planets. 

    And that’s not all the sun throws at everything else that’s not it. When colder sunspots form on the sun’s surface from inhibited convection by magnetic anomalies, the release of that magnetic energy sends a radiation-filled solar flare into space, which can come with CMEs. When a CME hits the Earth, geomagnetic storms can create auroras upon the positively/negatively charged particles hitting our magnetic field and then being deflected towards the Earth’s poles. Depending on their intensity, they can also cause power surges and electrical equipment damage, with the most severe incidents occurring about 4 times in every 11-year cycle. When a solar flare pays a visit, satellites and people in space are significantly more at risk of radiation exposure’s degrading effects, which are at their most severe in longer intervals than an 11-year cycle. X-ray and extreme ultraviolet radiation from solar flares also causes radio blackouts/interference relatively frequently. 

    So yes, Space Weather does exist, as does its relevance to our lives. However, it’s definitely not as much a reason to panic as Earth’s meteorological phenomena and expected global warming can be. Though if you ever decide to traverse space...be careful, ok? 

 

Author: Cameron C. 

Sources: Space.com, news.mit.edu, swpc.noaa.gov, spaceweather.com