{"id":564857,"date":"2024-10-11T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T10:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=564857"},"modified":"2024-10-11T12:06:19","modified_gmt":"2024-10-11T10:06:19","slug":"severe-solar-storm-hits-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wireless\/564857-severe-solar-storm-hits-south-africa.html","title":{"rendered":"Severe solar storm hits South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa experienced a G4\/Severe geomagnetic storm on Friday morning, the South Africa National Space Agency (Sansa) has reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sansa said the source of the CME was an X1.8 solar flare that occurred on 9 October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It explained that solar flares are measured in five categories: A, B, C, M, and X \u2014 with X being the strongest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sansa said global navigation satellite systems like GPS and high-frequency communications were impacted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The Sun has been very active over the past two weeks with two significant solar flares observed on Wednesday, 9 October 2024 \u2014 an X1.8 flare from sunspot AR3848 and an X1.4 flare from sunspot AR3843,” it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These latest flares come less than a week after a strong geomagnetic storm hit South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last weekend, Sansa issued a warning<\/a> about a potentially severe storm where there was also a small chance of the Southern Lights reappearing over South African skies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africans had a rare glimpse of the Aurora Australis<\/em> or Southern Lights on 10 May this year during the “Mother’s Day Storm”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sansa said it recorded the strongest Earth-facing solar flare it had seen in seven years last Thursday, measuring X9.05.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In line with global forecasts, Sansa expected a minimum G3\/Strong geomagnetic storm to hit South Africa that weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, geomagnetic conditions remained at normal levels throughout Saturday and Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The storm only hit on Monday and Tuesday, 7\u20138 October. It was classified G3\/Strong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

G3\/Strong geomagnetic storms could cause some impact to local power grids and increased drag on low-Earth-orbit satellites like SpaceX’s Starlink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The reasons for this delayed storm arrival will be the subject of global research studies,” Sansa stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sansa released the following charts showing the arrival of the G4\/Severe geomagnetic storm on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said there were several smaller C- and M-class flares, which would have few noticeable consequences even if they were Earth-directed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There are seven sunspot regions on the visible solar disk with simple to complex magnetic configurations,” said Sansa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There are a few filaments on the visible solar disk that showed slight movement and will be monitored for any lift-offs.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sun is heading toward an 11-year peak in activity called solar maximum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Live Science reports<\/a> that the number of geomagnetic storms and auroras could surge further over the next few months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is because Earth’s magnetic field became more closely aligned with the solar wind around the equinox, which occurred on 22 September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The alignment means there is a higher chance of a CME hitting the Earth’s magnetosphere, causing a geomagnetic storm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The South African National Space Agency reported that the country experienced a G4\/Severe geomagnetic storm on Friday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":564865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31750,13],"tags":[77888,76426,18759],"class_list":["post-564857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","category-wireless","tag-coronal-mass-ejection-cme","tag-geomagnetic-storm","tag-south-african-national-space-agency-sansa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564857"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564857"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":564886,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564857\/revisions\/564886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}