Solar "superstorm" warning: One in 10 chance new blast will "black out" civilisation

“Super solar storms” could burn out power stations, cut water supplies, leave millions starving, and leave satellites dead in the skies - and there is a 12% chance of one hitting Earth in the next decade, scientists have warned.

With readings from sun-watching spacecraft showing a "near-miss" in 2012, scientists have begun to study an account of an event NASA believes may have been the strongest “super storm” to strike Earth, recorded by a Victorian astronomer.

Richard Carrington’s drawings of the sunspots he saw that day in 1859 started Man’s drive to understand - and build defences against - the power of solar storms, although the impact of Carrington's storm was minimal compared to what would happen now. The world was not criss-crossed by electrical grids and festooned with satellites for the storm to burn out of the skies.


                                                 [2012: World almost 'plunged into darkness']

Today, 155 years later, our satellites still provide little warning against ‘extreme’ eruptions. An in-development project could offfer, in theory, 20 minutes’ warning.

The storm Carrington witnessed - an eruption from a dark sunspot, where a blast of energetic particles was followed by an eruption of billions of tons of hot plasma - was the most powerful in half a millennia, NASA believed. Today, it would have devastated our advanced civilisation.

In 1859, there were no telephones and satellites, but the power of the storm devastated communicatoins - telegraph wires around the world burnt out, and some operators reported sheets of paper catching fire.

It was over rapidly, “"I hastily ran to call someone to witness the exhibition with me. On returning within 60 seconds, I was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled,” Carrington wrote.

In our wired world, the effects would be more serious - it would have been the worst natural disaster of all time, in terms of financial damage, with a cost in trillions, effects measured for years, and deaths uncountable.

Casualties would be low initially - astronauts on spacewalks, or outside shielded areas in the Space Station would die first - but the damage to power grids could take months to repair - causing water pumps to fail, and refrigerators to turn off.

What Carrington witnessed was an explosion from a dark sunspot on the sun’s surface (a cooler area) - there are usually up to 200 visible at any time. Carrington saw energy erupt from one dark spot: but that was merely an appetiser for what came next.

The real devastation comes later, when coronal mass ejections, billion-ton clouds of magnetized plasma fly through space towards Earth.  These  particles cause aurora - or Northern Lights - normally visible in northern areas such as Norway - which in the Carrington event were visible in Cuba and Hawaii, as particles pummelled the upper atmosphere.

Satellites would cease to work as the high-energy particles fried their circuitry. The knock-on effect would  disrupt payment systems, broadcasts and communications across the globe.

A 1989 flare in Quebec showed that even power grids could blow out, as power lines react to the electrical changes in the atmosphere.  According to NASA, the flare disrupted electric power transmission from the Hydro Québec power station, and also burnt out electricity substations.

Rebuilding these takes months. Remote areas would be without electricity, clean water and food - refrigerators would cease to work, and water pumps used to provide tap water.

Previous flares have disrupted GPS communication - and even burnt out the satellites built to measure them. Our understanding of what causes these blasts is still sketchy.

There is a 12 percent chance of a super solar storm the size of the Carrington event hitting Earth in the next 10 years, according to physicist Pete Riley, who published a paper in the journal Space Weather earlier this year on the topic.

"Initially, I was quite surprised that the odds were so high, but the statistics appear to be correct," said Riley. "It is a sobering figure."

Even more sobering is the defencces we employ - which are very few.

Most current methods rely on statistics, rather than detecting events. A Univerisity of Micihigan study which came out top in a competition to find the ‘next generation’ of sun-shield would only offer 20 minutes of protection - enough to turn off some satellites and power systems.

Even subsequent “shields” may not offfer much reassurance. A University of Michigan researcher hopes that a new system, based on observing sunspots, could offer more warning. “That would give a lead time of one to two days,” he said. “That would be a huge step up.”