How A Solar Eruption Increased The Chaos Of Hurricane Irma
The Hurricane Irma coincided with bad “space weather.” During its rage, the Sun fired of a gigantic solar eruption towards the Earth. That only worsened the already bad situation.
A hurricane’s photo from space
Source: Public Domain via Pixnio.com
Irma was the fourth hurricane of the 2017’s Atlantic hurricane season. It stroke in September and is considered to be one of the worst hurricanes ever. Over 7 million people had to be evacuated because of it. The speed of the wind exceeded 250 km/h and the waves were up to 8 meter tall. Hurricane Irma took 134 lives and caused damages for over 63 billion dollars. But it wasn’t just our mother Earth who was angry at that time. The Sun was also raging.
On 6th September, when Irma was closing on the Virgin Islands our Sun fired of a gigantic solar flare directly at Earth. This eruption’s category was X9.3 and it severely disrupted our radio communications. This only complicated to already bad situation as the ability to easily communication and coordinate rescue operations is key to saving both human lives and property. Solar flares bring us many spectacular events. Like the pretty and harmless events like aurora borealis. But intense solar flares can also effect our orbital satellites, including navigational and communication satellites plus they can even block radio waves from passing through the atmosphere.
Sadly, for the moment we cannot do much to prevent events like these. We just have to hope that the next large solar flare will not coincide with another natural disaster.
Sources:
- https://www.space.com/41330-solar-flare-interference-hurricane-irma.html
- https://news.agu.org/press-release/solar-flares-disrupted-radio-communications-during-september-2017-atlantic-hurricane-relief-effort/
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