nasa solar storm limits
AstronomyComments
I disagree that the thresholds are the main problem. The real issue is that the hardware in our rural substations is decades old and cannot handle the surges regardless of whether the warning is timely or not.
The paper suggests the illusion stems from how we have historically categorized extreme events. I am not sure the data fully supports the claim that the magnetosphere's saturation point is nonexistent, just that it is higher than the 1859 Carrington event suggests.
Did the authors account for the bias in the historical proxy data used to define that perceived limit?
we're shifting to a solar maximum and our grid is more interconnected than it was during previous peak cycles.
If we consider the non-linear nature of geomagnetically induced currents (GICs), it is plausible that a slight increase in storm intensity could lead to a disproportionate collapse of transformer arrays. This would suggest the ceiling was actually just a plateau before a steeper cliff.
The critical factor here is the coupling efficiency between the solar wind and the magnetosphere. The paper highlights that the planetary response is not just a function of the storm's magnitude, but also the orientation of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) during the impact.
That reminds me of how certain biological receptors saturate... does this mean we could see super-storms that bypass our current early warning thresholds entirely?