Severe solar storm hits South Africa
South Africa experienced a G4/Severe geomagnetic storm on Friday morning, the South Africa National Space Agency (Sansa) has reported.
This comes after it warned that an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME) was expected to impact the planet late on Thursday, 10 October 2024.
Sansa said the source of the CME was an X1.8 solar flare that occurred on 9 October.
It explained that solar flares are measured in five categories: A, B, C, M, and X — with X being the strongest.
Sansa said global navigation satellite systems like GPS and high-frequency communications were impacted.
“The Sun has been very active over the past two weeks with two significant solar flares observed on Wednesday, 9 October 2024 — an X1.8 flare from sunspot AR3848 and an X1.4 flare from sunspot AR3843,” it said.
These latest flares come less than a week after a strong geomagnetic storm hit South Africa.
Last weekend, Sansa issued a warning about a potentially severe storm where there was also a small chance of the Southern Lights reappearing over South African skies.
South Africans had a rare glimpse of the Aurora Australis or Southern Lights on 10 May this year during the “Mother’s Day Storm”.
Sansa said it recorded the strongest Earth-facing solar flare it had seen in seven years last Thursday, measuring X9.05.
In line with global forecasts, Sansa expected a minimum G3/Strong geomagnetic storm to hit South Africa that weekend.
However, geomagnetic conditions remained at normal levels throughout Saturday and Sunday.
The storm only hit on Monday and Tuesday, 7–8 October. It was classified G3/Strong.
G3/Strong geomagnetic storms could cause some impact to local power grids and increased drag on low-Earth-orbit satellites like SpaceX’s Starlink.
“The reasons for this delayed storm arrival will be the subject of global research studies,” Sansa stated.
Sansa released the following charts showing the arrival of the G4/Severe geomagnetic storm on Friday.
In a forecast issued on Friday morning, Sansa said solar activity was moderate and that no other Earth-directed CMEs were observed in the past 24 hours.
It said there were several smaller C- and M-class flares, which would have few noticeable consequences even if they were Earth-directed.
“There are seven sunspot regions on the visible solar disk with simple to complex magnetic configurations,” said Sansa.
“There are a few filaments on the visible solar disk that showed slight movement and will be monitored for any lift-offs.”
It said there was a low to moderate probability for further X-class solar flares and that the solar wind speed is anticipated to remain at strong levels due to CME influences.
The Sun is heading toward an 11-year peak in activity called solar maximum.
Live Science reports that the number of geomagnetic storms and auroras could surge further over the next few months.
This is because Earth’s magnetic field became more closely aligned with the solar wind around the equinox, which occurred on 22 September.
The alignment means there is a higher chance of a CME hitting the Earth’s magnetosphere, causing a geomagnetic storm.
More than 40 X-class solar flares have been observed in 2024, whereas there were only 36 X-class events during the previous nine years.