NJIT Researchers are Boosting Early Detection of Solar Storms With AI-Powered Forecasting
New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) researchers are harnessing Artificial Intelligence (AI) for unprecedented insights into conditions in the Sun’s lower atmosphere that are driving some of the Solar System’s most powerful explosions, capable of disrupting critical infrastructure on Earth. The team is developing AI-powered space weather forecasting capabilities that could offer Solar researchers a new window into the complex magnetic processes in regions of the Sun's atmosphere that trigger such eruptions, and to this point, have rarely been observed. According to the researchers, the new AI-powered forecasting system could boost early-warning detection of these eruptive events on Earth by days, while offering vital insights to the space weather science community as activity on our nearest star ramps up over the course of the current 11-year Solar cycle, which began in 2019. (Content Credit: Jesse Jenkins, NJIT) (Image Credit: NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, Solar Dynamics Observatory - SDO)
NJIT Researchers are Boosting Early Detection of Solar Storms With AI-Powered Forecasting
New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) researchers are developing new ways to predict when the powerful magnetic energy from Solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) will reach Earth, threatening critical infrastructure.
“With better forecasting, we can protect satellite networks and power grids by putting them into safe modes, including shutting off vulnerable equipment,” explained Haimin Wang, director of NJIT’s Institute for Space Weather Sciences and a distinguished physics professor. “We can also keep humans in space out of harm’s way.”
In work funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), physicists and computer scientists are developing AI-powered space weather forecasting capabilities that could yield insights into the complex magnetic processes in regions of the Sun’s atmosphere that trigger such eruptions, and to this point, have rarely been observed. The new system, called SolarDM, could boost early-warning detection of these eruptions by days.
The NJIT team is leveraging AI to generate synthetic vector magnetograms — computer-generated images of magnetic field dynamics in atmospheric layers below the Corona, the Chromosphere, and the Photosphere — to shed light on the precursors to Solar eruptions.
The system will be trained using simulations of the Sun’s magnetic field and observational data from NSF’s Synoptic Optical Long-term Investigations of the Sun (SOLIS), one of the world’s most advanced solar telescopes for long-term monitoring of the sun, currently stationed at NJIT’s Big Bear Solar Observatory. In addition, data from NASA’s missions will augment the training set.
With a new $5 million grant from NASA, NJIT’s Institute for Space Weather Sciences is launching a research center that will expand prediction capabilities across a broader platform. The new AI-Powered Solar Eruption Center of Excellence in Research and Education (SEC) will partner with NASA, New York University (NYU), and IBM to further advance AI and machine learning tools for improving the predictability of powerful eruptions at their onset.
“We want to ensure that models not only make accurate predictions but also provide insights aligned with fundamental physical principles,” said Bo Shen, SEC associate director and assistant professor of engineering at NJIT.
The center will build a long-term dataset of activity from the Sun over several 11-year Solar cycles, giving researchers deeper insights into precursors of flares and CMEs and aiding them in developing probabilistic forecasts of these events.
The Carrington Event of 1859 - A Case Study of What Could Go Wrong
An 1859 solar storm known as the "Carrington Event" was named after astronomer Richard Carrington, who observed the solar flare that caused a great deal of the havoc. The solar flare electrified transmission cables, set fires in telegraph offices, and produced Northern Lights so bright that people could read newspapers by their red and green glow. Geomagnetic activity triggered by the explosion electrified telegraph lines, shocking technicians and setting their telegraph papers on fire. Northern Lights spread as far south as Cuba and Hawaii. Auroras over the Rocky Mountains were so bright that the glow woke campers who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning. Best estimates rank the Carrington Event as 50% or more stronger than the super-storm of May 1921.
A NASA-funded report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause $1 to $2 Trillion in damages to society's high-tech infrastructure and require four to ten years for complete recovery.
The problem begins with the electric power grid. "Electric power is modern society's cornerstone technology on which virtually all other infrastructures and services depend," the report notes. Yet it is particularly vulnerable to bad space weather. Ground currents induced during geomagnetic storms can actually melt the copper windings of transformers at the heart of many power distribution systems. Sprawling power lines act like antennas, picking up the currents and spreading the problem over a wide area. The most famous geomagnetic power outage happened during a space storm in March 1989 when six million people in Quebec lost power for 9 hours.
"A contemporary repetition of the Carrington Event would cause... extensive social and economic disruptions," the report warns. Power outages would be accompanied by radio blackouts and satellite malfunctions; telecommunications, GPS navigation, banking and finance, and transportation would all be affected. Some problems would correct themselves with the fading of the storm: radio and GPS transmissions could come back online fairly quickly. Other problems would be lasting: a burnt-out multi-ton transformer, for instance, can take weeks or months to repair.
According to the report, power grids may be more vulnerable than ever. The problem is interconnectedness. In recent years, utilities have joined grids together to allow long-distance transmission of low-cost power to areas of sudden demand. On a hot summer day in California, for instance, people in Los Angeles might be running their air conditioners on power routed from Oregon. It makes economic sense, but not necessarily geomagnetic sense. Interconnectedness makes the system susceptible to wide-ranging "cascade failures."
For more information:
https://www.astromart.com/news/show/this-is-the-sun-having-a-blast
https://www.astromart.com/news/show/new-solar-cycle-beginning-to-ramp-up
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