Never mind what the Mayan calendar says about the end of the 13th baktun cycle on December 21, 2012.
There’s a very real cosmic event to look out for in 2012, although it’s not nearly as sexy as the end of the world: solar storms.
Though they’ll hardly qualify as apocalyptic events, they do pose a potential threat to Canada’s power grids, communications satellites and pipelines, according to Canada’s Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness (OCIPEP).
“If you’re going to make a disaster movie out of it, it’s just not going to be a very good disaster movie,” said Jaymie Matthews, a professor of astrophysics at the University of British Columbia. “Solar flares represent zero threat to life on Earth. But we live in an age where our technology is sensitive to this.”
According to a 2002 OCIPEP threat analysis, “Geomagnetic storms, although infrequent, have the potential to severely impair critical infrastructure.”
Stars and planets create their own magnetic fields, and like magnets, they have negative and positive poles. Every 11 years, the sun’s polarities reverse. A full reversal cycle occurs every 22 years.
These flips typically create solar storms in the form of flares and “coronal mass ejections” of electrically charged particles. Matthews said the activity is expected to increase throughout 2012 and likely peak in 2013.
Solar pole reversals have been happening since the dawn of mankind, but did not start having an impact on society until the advent of electricity and the telegraph.
When solar winds blow charged particles into the Earth’s magnetic field, it can cause a geomagnetic disturbance here.
“It turns the ground into a giant battery, and what you have is a voltage difference across tens of kilometres,” Matthews said. “The electric power grids are now planted inside a battery. It can overload the system.”
Solar storms often result in nothing more than a brilliant light show: the Northern Lights. But NASA scientists are warning that 2012 could be particularly severe, based on the fact that the sun is in a period of unusually low activity – a calm before a storm similar to one preceding 1859, which was the worst solar tempest on record.
The 1859 event, categorized as a K-9 event on a 0 to 9 scale, was so severe, telegraph offices reportedly caught fire.
A K-9 solar storm in 2012 could have some serious economic impacts, both NASA and the OCIPEP warn, because North America’s grid is so interconnected.
BC Hydro’s grid connects with other utilities as far south as California, and NASA warns that a K-9 magnitude solar storm could trigger an “avalanche of blackouts.”
The result: everything from power grids to communications satellites and banking networks could be shut down.
Pipelines are also vulnerable, according to the OCIPEP, although the damage is more cumulative: increased geomagnetism can corrode metal pipes.
One of the most severe geomagnetic events in the 20th century happened in Canada. On March 13,1989, six million people in Quebec went without power for nine hours after a severe geomagnetic storm overwhelmed Hydro Quebec’s power grid. The province ended up spending nearly $2 billion to install new capacitors.
Quebec is believed to be more vulnerable than other regions because of its location in the Canadian Shield, where rock formations prevent currents from passing through the Earth.
Because the last major solar storm occurred before widespread cellphone use, it’s unclear what the potential impact on cellphone providers might be.
Telus (TSX-T) does not have a plan specific to solar storms, said company spokesman Chris Gerritsen. But he added that it has contingency plans to cope with even worse events than solar storms.”
The biggest impact on telecommunications might be from power outages, if the power grid is overloaded.
When solar flares or coronal ejections occur, they can be detected by solar weather stations. BC Hydro and other utilities will have up to 48 hours notice of an impending solar wind. But there is no way of knowing what area of the Earth will be affected, if at all.
If B.C. is unlucky enough to be affected by a geomagnetic event, there’s not much that can be done about it, except to ensure that all equipment, like capacitors, within the power grid is operating.
Capacitors store electricity and can prevent power systems from being overloaded when there’s an energy surge.
Series capacitors can help block currents caused by geomagnetic storms to help lower the probability of equipment damage or cascading outages.
“We do have redundancy built into our power system,” Martin Huang, vice-president of grid operations for BC Hydro. “We in general could handle disturbances without losing supply to the customer. We’re very confident that we could manage it.” •
