Solar storm in 2013 could trigger giant power outage – or not
Alarmist news reports earlier this year warned that solar storms coming in 2012 will cripple electric power, GPS equipment and communications systems for months, creating an electronic apocalypse not dreamt of since the days of pre-Y2k hysteria.
Those reports then spread throughout a blogosphere already saturated with hype about the Hollywood disaster flick 2012.
The truth is more complicated.
Solar storms bombard the Earth’s magnetic field with bursts of radiation, which can in turn disrupt the power grid and satellites. In fact, “the great geomagnetic storm of March 1989″ zapped northeastern Canada’s Hydro-Quebec power grid, leaving millions of people without electricity for up to nine hours, according to a National Academy of Sciences report.
So data center managers need to keep an eye on space weather, just as they keep an eye on terrestrial weather. Check out the National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Center at .
See Solar storm in 2013 could trigger giant power outage — or not, by Mitch Betts for Computerworld.
Tags: National Academy of Sciences, power outages, solar storms, Space Weather Prediction Center, sunspots
