The Earth has been hit by a massive eruption from the Sun – which could cause problems for infrastructure but also lead to stunning northern lights on New Year’s Eve.
A large blast of energy from the solar surface, known as a coronal mass ejection or CME, left the Sun on Sunday. It arrived on Tuesday, potentially in time to lead to the northern lights being visible at relatively southerly latitudes.
The first “shock” from the CME arrived on Tuesday afternoon, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA.
It said that there was the potential for both effects on infrastructure but also that the activity could lead to visible northern lights. In the UK, there could be “visible aurora across Scotland, Northern Ireland and parts of northern England dependant on cloud cover”, the country’s Met Office said, while the spectacle could be seen as far south as Maine and the upper Midwest in the US, according to its officials.
Any sectors that could be affected by the space weather – which includes agriculture, where farmers can see strange behaviour from tractors that rely on critical communications systems, for instance – have been notified “to take any necessary actions to mitigate possible impacts”, NOAA said.
The New Year’s Eve events are actually the result of a flurry of activity on the weekend of 28-29 December that saw various parts of the Sun become active and unstable. A number of flares were released during that period, and a number of CMEs were associated with it, though only two of them were expected to actually arrive at Earth.
