The National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Centre has issued a “severe geomagnetic storm watch,” the first such watch issued in nearly 20 years. The biggest solar storm in two decades could wipe out GPS satellites and power grids today, space weather forecasters have warned. According to the SWPC, this marks the first watch issued by the department since January 2005. The watch comes after multiple earth-directed coronal mass ejections were observed by forecasters this week.
The last G4 storm hit Earth in March, and the last G5 storm hit in October 2003, causing power outages in Sweden, according to SWPC. CME’s are “large expulsions of plasma and magnetised particles from the Sun’s corona,” according to the SWPC. Those ejections can expand in size as they approach Earth, and can cause geomagnetic storms when they arrive. In a geomagnetic storm, the particles ejected by the sun cause disturbances in Earth’s magnetosphere.
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