RNZ<\/a><\/p>\nThese events, also known as space weather, do not pose a physical threat to human health.<\/p>\n
But with society increasingly dependent on technology, an otherwise harmless burst of radiation from the sun could easily disrupt business as usual, taking out the power grids and GPS.<\/p>\n
New Zealand monitors alerts from the Unites States agency National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) regarding solar activity.<\/p>\n
Early Tuesday morning, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Centre (SWPC) posted on X: “An S4 severe solar radiation storm is now in progress – this is the largest solar radiation storm in over 20 years. The last time S4 levels were observed was in October, 2003.<\/p>\n
But, it noted: “Potential effects are mainly limited to space launch, aviation, and satellite operations.”<\/p>\n
The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) told RNZ the coronal mass ejection arrived in Aotearoa about 8.30am on Tuesday, “and it is not expected to cause significant impacts for NZ”.<\/p>\n
The agency had activated its Space Weather Science Advisory Panel, which had considered international space weather monitoring and forecasting agencies, as well as current information from the NZ-based monitoring network.<\/p>\n
“On current conditions, the panel advises this event is not concerning for NZ and no significant impacts are expected. NEMA and Transpower will continue to monitor the situation.”<\/p>\n
A Transpower spokesperson told RNZ it was keeping an eye on the storm, but the threshold had not yet been met to make changes to the grid.<\/p>\n
Large solar storms could send unwanted currents through the long electricity circuits which Transpower managed. When they reached transformers in stations or large hydroelectric dams, they could cause extensive damage.\u202f<\/p>\n
“We have been closely monitoring the solar storm since the coronal mass ejection lifted off the sun on Sunday,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
“It arrived at 8.40am this morning resulting in geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) in our electricity transmission network, but these are within limits where mitigation actions are not needed.”<\/p>\n
There was a contingency plan in place to switch out circuits to mitigate effects if needed, but there would be no impact on consumer electricity supply even if this was necessary.<\/p>\n
The threat of disruption caused by solar storms has become increasingly understood by local agencies, and a number of them have plans in place. Nema simulated a G5 event in the Beehive bunker in November last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A solar storm is being monitored by the National Emergency Management Agency and national power grid owners Transpower,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-241648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}