Global Times.
Global Times Comprehensive Report] Many places in China have recently reported a rare scene of photographing the aurora. According to scientists, this rare beauty was brought about by geomagnetic storms triggered by solar eruptions. Since 2024 is still the peak of solar activity, it means that there is still a possibility of seeing the aurora in the north of our country this winter.
On December 1, a brilliant aurora appeared in the Mohe River in the Daxing'an Mountains of Heilongjiang Province.
According to the geomagnetic storm warning forecast issued by the National Space Weather Monitoring and Warning Center of the China Meteorological Administration, the monitoring data of Fengyun-3E satellite, Xihe and SOHO satellites show that the coronal mass ejection process broke out in an active area on the southwest side of the Sun on November 27, resulting in geomagnetic storms on November 30, December 1 and December 2. According to reports, as the most typical solar eruption activity, a coronal mass ejection process can throw hundreds of millions of tons of solar material away from the surface of the sun at a high speed of hundreds of kilometers per second, not only the kinetic energy of the huge mass and speed convergence, they also carry the sun's strong magnetic field energy, once it hits the earth, it will cause a change in the direction and size of the geomagnetic field, that is, a geomagnetic storm. Geomagnetic storms are divided into 5 levels from G1 to G5, from weak to strongest, and this G3 geomagnetic storm is of moderate to strong level. Geomagnetic storms will have a certain impact on modern society, such as the space station may be dragged by the atmosphere, the orbital altitude may decrease, the error of satellite navigation equipment will increase, and aviation flight will face the double risk of deterioration of communication environment and radiation across the polar region. In extreme cases, geomagnetic storms can also have a direct impact on global radio communications. For example, a geomagnetic storm in March 1989 paralyzed the power supply network in Quebec, Canada, and the communication satellites of the United States and Japan were abnormal, causing great interference in global radio communication signals. Last year, the US company "Starlink" also crashed in the atmosphere due to geomagnetic storms that caused the orbital altitude of several satellites to be insufficient.
But geomagnetic storms can also bring rare beauty to the aurora. According to reports, under the action of the earth's magnetic field, high-energy charged particles from the sun will rush to the high latitudes, ionizing the molecules or atoms in the upper atmosphere near the north and south poles of the earth, thereby exciteing light, which is especially brilliant and dazzling at night, which is the phenomenon of red or green auroras. On December 1, the red aurora was observed in Mohe and Jiamusi in Heilongjiang, and even photography enthusiasts in Huairou in Beijing photographed the aurora. Han Dayang, an engineer at the Space Weather Technology R&D Office of the National Satellite Meteorological Center, said that the green aurora is more difficult for China to see, because it takes a strong enough solar storm to bombard the atmosphere of about 100 kilometers and then produce the green aurora. (Xie Zhao).