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Second Night of Auroras Seen ‘Extreme’ Solar Storm

The Aurora Australis, also known as the Southern Lights, glow on the horizon over Punta Arenas, Chile, on May 10, 2024. (AFP)
The Aurora Australis, also known as the Southern Lights, glow on the horizon over Punta Arenas, Chile, on May 10, 2024. (AFP)
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Second Night of Auroras Seen ‘Extreme’ Solar Storm

The Aurora Australis, also known as the Southern Lights, glow on the horizon over Punta Arenas, Chile, on May 10, 2024. (AFP)
The Aurora Australis, also known as the Southern Lights, glow on the horizon over Punta Arenas, Chile, on May 10, 2024. (AFP)

Auroras lit up skies across swaths of the planet for the second night in a row on Saturday, after already dazzling Earthlings from the United States to Tasmania to the Bahamas the day before.

A powerful solar storm -- which could continue into Sunday -- has triggered spectacular celestial shows usually confined to the far northern reaches of the planet, hence their nickname of the "northern lights."

"I have the sensation of living through a historic night in France... It was really charged, with solar particles and emotions," Eric Lagadec, an astrophysicist at the Observatoire de Cote d'Azur, wrote on social media after the first night.

"Find good spots, away from the lights, with a clear view to the north!"

Late Saturday evening, pictures again started trickling onto social media as people in the United States reported sightings, though not as strong as Friday night's.

The first of several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) -- expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun -- came just after 1600 GMT Friday, according to the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC).

It was later upgraded to an "extreme" geomagnetic storm -- the first since the "Halloween Storms" of October 2003 that caused blackouts in Sweden and damaged power infrastructure in South Africa.

Aurora Borealis or the Northern Lights are seen in Vancouver, B.C., Saturday, May. 11, 2024. (The Canadian Press via AP)

Friday's storm was listed as hitting level five geomagnetic conditions -- the highest on the scale. Saturday saw G3 to G5 conditions, with G4 or higher conditions predicted Sunday and G3 conditions possible into Monday.

But no major disruptions to power or communications networks appear to have been reported this time around, despite initial worries from authorities.

There have only been "preliminary reports of power grid irregularities, degradation to high-frequency communications, GPS and possibly satellite navigation," the SWPC said.

Elon Musk, whose Starlink satellite internet operator has some 5,000 satellites in low Earth orbit, said his satellites were "under a lot of pressure, but holding up so far."

However, China's National Center for Space Weather issued a "red alert" Saturday morning, warning the storm will impact communications and navigation in most areas of the country, state news agency Xinhua reported.

Auroras were visible in the northern half of the country, according to media reports.

Worldwide excitement

Excitement over the phenomenon -- and otherworldly photos pink, green and purple night skies -- popped up across the world, from Mont Saint-Michel on the French coast to Payette, Idaho -- in the western United States -- to Australia's island state of Tasmania.

Aurora Australis lights in Oatlands, Tasmania, Australia, 11 May 2024 (issued 12 May 2024). (EPA)

Unlike solar flares, which travel at the speed of light and reach Earth in around eight minutes, CMEs travel at a more sedate pace, with officials putting the current average at 800 kilometers (500 miles) per second.

The CMEs emanated from a massive sunspot cluster that is 17 times wider than our planet.

People with eclipse glasses can also look for the sunspot cluster during the day.

The Sun is approaching the peak of an 11-year cycle that brings heightened activity.

NOAA's Brent Gordon encouraged the public to try to capture the night sky with phone cameras even if they couldn't see auroras with their naked eyes.

"You'd be amazed at what you see in that picture versus what you see with your eyes."

Spacecraft and pigeons

Fluctuating magnetic fields associated with geomagnetic storms induce currents in long wires, including power lines, which can potentially lead to blackouts. Long pipelines can also become electrified, leading to engineering problems.

Spacecraft are also at risk from high doses of radiation, although the atmosphere prevents this from reaching Earth.

NASA has a dedicated team looking into astronaut safety and can ask astronauts on the International Space Station to move to places within the outpost that are better shielded.

Even pigeons and other species that have internal biological compasses could be affected. Pigeon handlers have noted a reduction in birds coming home during geomagnetic storms, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The most powerful geomagnetic storm in recorded history, known as the Carrington Event after British astronomer Richard Carrington, occurred in September 1859.

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Varieties

Researchers Document Huge Drop in African Elephants in a Half Century

Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
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Researchers Document Huge Drop in African Elephants in a Half Century

Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo

African elephants are Earth's largest land animals, remarkable mammals that are very intelligent and highly social. They also are in peril. Fresh evidence of this comes in a study that documents alarming population declines at numerous sites across the continent over about a half century.

Researchers unveiled on Monday what they called the most comprehensive assessment of the status of the two African elephant species - the savanna elephant and forest elephant - using data on population surveys conducted at 475 sites in 37 countries from 1964 through 2016.

The savanna elephant populations fell by about 70% on average at the surveyed sites and the forest elephant populations dropped by about 90% on average at the surveyed sites, with poaching and habitat loss the main drivers. All told, there was a 77% population decrease on average at the various surveyed sites, spanning both species, Reuters reported.

Elephants vanished at some sites while their populations increased in other places thanks to conservation efforts.

"A lot of the lost populations won't come back, and many low-density populations face continued pressures. We likely will lose more populations going forward," said George Wittemyer, a Colorado State University professor of wildlife conservation and chair of the scientific board of the conservation group Save the Elephants, who helped lead the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Poaching typically involves people killing elephants for their tusks, which are sold illegally on an international black market driven mostly by ivory demand in China and other parts of Asia. Agricultural expansion is the top factor in habitat loss.

The forest elephant population is estimated to be about a third that of savanna elephants. Poaching has affected forest elephants disproportionately and has ravaged populations of both species in northern and eastern Africa.

"We have lost a number of elephant populations across many countries, but the northern Sahel region of Africa - for example in Mali, Chad and Nigeria - has been particularly hard hit. High pressure and limited protection have culminated in populations being extirpated," Wittemyer said.

But in southern Africa, elephant populations rose at 42% of the surveyed sites.

"We have seen real success in a number of places across Africa, but particularly in southern Africa, with strong growth in populations in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia. For populations showing positive trends, we have had active stewardship and management by the governments or outside groups that have taken on a management role," Wittemyer said.

The study did not track a continent-wide population tally because the various surveys employed different methodologies over different time frames to estimate local elephant population density, making a unified head count impossible. Instead, it assessed population trends at each of the surveyed sites.

A population estimate by conservationists conducted separately from this study put the two species combined at between 415,000 and 540,000 elephants as of 2016, the last year of the study period. It remains the most recent comprehensive continent-wide estimate.

"The loss of large mammals is a significant ecological issue for Africa and the planet," said conservation ecologist and study co-author Dave Balfour, a research associate in the Centre for African Conservation Ecology at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.

The world's third extant elephant species, the slightly smaller Asian elephant, faces its own population crisis, with similar factors at play as in Africa.

Of African elephants, Wittemyer said, "While the trends are not good, it is important to recognize the successes we have had and continue to have. Learning how and where we can be successful in conserving elephants is as important as recognizing the severity of the decline they have experienced."

Wittemyer added of these elephants: "Not only one of the most sentient and intelligent species we share the planet with, but also an incredibly important part of ecosystems in Africa that structures the balance between forest and grasslands, serves as a critical disperser of seeds, and is a species on which a multitude of other species depend on for survival."