Earth’s weakening magnetic field, space weather and the impacts on everyday life
Geophysicists say Earth’s weakening magnetic field, coupled with conditions in space, could impact everyday life. The changes have the potential to cause power outages, GPS disruptions and extreme weather events here on Earth. However, much remains unknown about the fluctuations that have been happening for millennia.
NASA scientists are monitoring the ongoing weakening of our planet’s magnetic field. The agency’s efforts are looking at the role the Earth’s inner movement plays, the activity of solar winds, and how all of that impacts life on the ground, as well as space equipment, including satellites, computer glitches, data loss, and physical damage.
Weakened areas of the magnetic field can also contribute to physical effects on astronauts. They include increased exposure to radiation and visual problems.
Stefan Burns, a geophysicist and space weather forecaster, explained to Straight Arrow News how the sun’s high-speed particles, along with reduced strength in the planet’s magnetic field, can impact the planet.
What is space weather, and how does it impact Earth?
“Space weather has been affecting our planet since the beginning of time,” Burns said. “The sun is a very big energy influence within the solar system, and we’re only now coming to more of a scientific understanding of how that influences our day-to-day.”
The weather of the cosmos can cause blackouts and major technological problems for satellites and systems that rely on orbital equipment, including GPS.
Space weather and the activities of the sun can also play games with what Burns calls “terrestrial physics.”
“For example, it could relate to our weather, and it seems to have a strengthening effect on any severe weather outbreak, for example, like tornadoes or hail or thunderstorms,” Burns said.
How Earth’s magnetic field could impact cloud formation
We already know things like auroras seen on Earth are influenced by the interaction between the sun and Earth’s magnetic field. Now, according to Burns, that interaction is also being looked at as a factor in cloud formation.
“There’s a lot of evidence that they are connected,” Burns said. “There’s some new research coming out that suggests that these cosmic particles could actually create that ionized channel that, within a thunderstorm, allows for that lightning strike to suddenly occur.”
What are the impacts of such a connection? Burns says that it has yet to be examined.
What does Earth’s magnetic field do, and how is it generated?
While all the impacts of space weather and a weakening magnetic field remain to be fully understood, we do know that Earth’s magnetic field acts as a protective shield for the atmosphere and the planet’s surface.
As Dr. William Brown, a geophysicist at the British Geological Survey, told Straight Arrow News, the field protects life here “from all the crazy stuff the sun throws at us.”
Brown explained that the magnetic field is generated by what is known as the geodynamo.
“So a dynamo, specifically, is something that can generate itself, so it’s self-sustaining,” Brown said. ”It’s actually kind of a loop, a feedback loop, where the change in the magnetic field generates electrical currents, and the change in the electrical currents generates more magnetic fields, and it feeds back and reinforces itself and is stable, but it’s being generated by all that kind of movement of fluid going on inside the Earth.”
“The Earth isn’t literally a giant solid magnet,” Brown added. “It’s a kind of active process, and that’s the thing that makes Earth’s magnetic field particularly interesting.”
Earth’s magnetic field’s role in everyday life
Beyond protecting life from the sun’s radiation, our magnetic field also plays a role in everyday life.
“We use the magnetic field to navigate in your smartphone, in your GPS system that you have, in your car, or any other thing,” Brown said. “The magnetic field tells you your position … tells you which way you’re facing, like a compass would. So that orientation information is really important as part of navigation. It’s the two bits that you need for navigation, where you are and where you are facing. If you only have one of those, you’re only kind of halfway there.”
South Atlantic Anomaly
Geophysicists are monitoring a relatively new development known as the South Atlantic Anomaly. This is a point in the Southern Hemisphere where the magnetic field is significantly weaker than in other regions, impacting satellite operations through data losses. Engineers are still working on solutions to minimize these effects. However, Brown says global safeguards are still a challenge as the magnetic field lines are ever-changing.
NASA is monitoring the unusually weak magnetic field over South America, which appears to be separating into two different cells, according to scientists with the agency. The agency says weakness in the magnetic field allows charged particles and cosmic matter to flow more freely, thereby impacting sensitive equipment on satellites and spacecraft in low orbit.
Brown said this is why it’s vital to continue studying the magnetic field and its changes. These efforts can help minimize technological hiccups when equipment crosses into regions of weaker magnetic strength.
“When you’re designing a satellite. You design it knowing that if it’s flying through that region, you need to protect it with shielding a little bit more. You need to think about what instruments you’ve got on or how sensitive they are, and build that into the design,” Brown said.
Known changes to Earth’s magnetic field
The fluctuating nature of Earth’s magnetic field sees more than just things like the South Atlantic Anomaly. According to Brown, it is subject to notable changes every 7,000 years or so, including what are known as “reversals” and “excursions.” The last time an excursion happened was roughly 41,000 years ago.
”You’ve got things called reversals, which are Earth’s magnetic field. So we think of it having a north and a south pole. And when they change location, and they stay there, that’s a reversal,” Brown said. “When they move a long way, but they go back, that’s an excursion.”
Why do those matter?
According to Brown, when the last major event happened, the magnetic field plunged to about 10% of its strength.
Brown said that’s where things get murky, with impacts on the lives of Homo sapiens during that time relatively unknown. Some scientists have speculated that an excursion event played a role in the extinction of Neanderthals. Brown isn’t quick to make that connection.
“There have been hundreds of magnetic reversals throughout the last few 100 million years that have been documented in the geological record quite well,” he told Straight Arrow News. “And they don’t coincide with major extinction events or climate changes or any of those kinds of big geological events.”
Should people be concerned?
When asked if modern-day humans should worry about a reversal, Brown said, “I sleep well as a geophysicist.”
But that doesn’t mean there’s no risk.
“I would say the thing that would be most concerning, probably, for humans in the modern day, is that we’ve never had a reversal when we have all the technology that we rely on now,” he added. “So one of the things that happens when you have a major solar storm, for example, so that’s when the sun throws a bit of its atmosphere out in space, and it hits the Earth’s magnetic field that can have a lot of impact on things like power grids, infrastructure, really large-scale stuff across continents, across countries.”
Brown pointed to a geomagnetic storm that caused a nine-hour blackout in Canada in the late 1980s. The event was a result of severe solar storms on March 13, 1989, causing major disruptions and affecting the local economy.
Burns says that despite concerns about a weakening magnetic field, the Earth’s magnetic field remains fundamentally very strong.
Brown says changes to the magnetic field can take hundreds or thousands of years, meaning a reversal or excursion won’t happen within a current human’s lifetime.
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
