THE CARRINGTON-PLUS SOLAR STORM
PROTON RAIN
When the Sun rains charged particles on Earth
Robert M. Dorans
DOOMSDAY CLOCK
How close are we to catastrophe?
12
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
85 SEC.
to midnight (January 2026)
A Carrington-class solar storm could push us closer to midnight than any threat in history.
WHAT MOVES THE HANDS
The four catastrophes the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists weighs each year
☢
NUCLEAR RISK
Arms-race expansion, the Ukraine war's escalation pathways, and the collapse of arms-control treaties keep nuclear catastrophe a single decision away.
🌡
CLIMATE CHANGE
Record temperatures, accelerating extreme weather, and a clean-energy transition still too slow to meet Paris targets push the planet toward irreversible tipping points.
⚕
BIOLOGICAL THREATS
Emerging pathogens like H5N1, proliferating high-containment labs, and AI-enabled bioweapon design raise the odds of the next pandemic — or worse.
⚙
DISRUPTIVE TECH
Military AI, autonomous weapons, disinformation at scale, and the weaponisation of space compound every other threat on this list.
What is a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME)?
The engine behind extreme space weather
The Sun regularly ejects massive clouds of magnetised plasma — Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).
Key facts:
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
NASA image of a coronal mass ejection
Major Solar Storms in Recorded History
Intensity measured by Dst (Disturbance Storm Time) index
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
UNDERSTANDING Dst (nT)
Dst index measures geomagnetic storm intensity in nanoteslas. More negative = stronger storm.
Moderate −50 to −100 Severe −250 to −400
Intense −100 to −250 Extreme below −400
Carrington 1859 ≈ −1,600 nT (off scale)
Understanding Storm Scales
How NOAA, NASA and forecasters classify solar activity
X
Solar Flare Class
A · B · C · M · X (logarithmic)
X-class is the most intense. X1 = baseline; X10, X20+ are extreme. Light reaches Earth in 8 min — radio blackouts begin immediately.
R
Radio Blackouts
R1 Minor → R5 Extreme
Driven by X-ray flux from flares. Disrupts HF radio (aviation, maritime, military) on the Sun-facing side of Earth.
S
Solar Radiation Storms
S1 Minor → S5 Extreme
Energetic protons reach Earth in minutes to hours. Threatens astronauts, polar flights, and satellite electronics.
G
Geomagnetic Storms
G1 Minor → G5 Extreme
CMEs hit Earth's magnetic field 1–3 days later. G5 = grid voltage damage, satellite drag, aurora to low latitudes.
Flare classes measure light · Storm scales measure impact at Earth · Source: NOAA SWPC
1859 · Carrington Event
Date: 1–2 September 1859 | Intensity: Dst ≈ −1,600 nT (estimated)
AFFECTED SYSTEMS
Global telegraph network
IMPACT
Telegraph lines sparked and caught fire; some operators received shocks. Auroras visible as far south as the Caribbean and Hawaii. Currents flowed in telegraph wires even after batteries were disconnected.
WHY IT MATTERS
Pre-electric grid era — damage was limited to telegraph infrastructure. A repeat today would strike a deeply interconnected, electronic world.
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
1921 · New York Railroad Storm
Date: 13–15 May 1921 | Intensity: Dst ≈ −907 nT
AFFECTED SYSTEMS
Railway signalling, telegraph, undersea cables
IMPACT
Fires in Central New York railroad's control tower; signal and switching systems failed across the U.S. East Coast. Transatlantic cable communications disrupted for hours. Auroras seen in Samoa and Mexico.
WHY IT MATTERS
Showed how rapidly even early electrical infrastructure could fail — a preview of grid-era vulnerability.
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
1989 · Quebec Blackout
Date: 13 March 1989 | Intensity: Dst ≈ −589 nT
AFFECTED SYSTEMS
Hydro-Québec power grid; satellites; HF radio
IMPACT
Entire Quebec grid collapsed in 90 seconds, leaving 6 million people without power for 9+ hours. Transformers damaged in New Jersey. Auroras visible to Texas and Cuba. Several satellites lost attitude control.
WHY IT MATTERS
First modern demonstration that a geomagnetic storm can take down a continental power grid — driver of today's space-weather forecasting.
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
2003 · Halloween Storms
Date: 19 October – 7 November 2003 | Intensity: Dst ≈ −353 nT
AFFECTED SYSTEMS
Power grids, satellites, GPS, aviation
IMPACT
Swedish grid blackout; transformer damaged in South Africa. Multiple satellites lost or degraded (incl. ADEOS-II, SOHO temporarily offline). Polar flights re-routed; GPS errors. Astronauts on ISS sheltered.
WHY IT MATTERS
Confirmed cascading risk across modern infrastructure — power, space assets, navigation, and aviation hit simultaneously.
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
2024 · GANNON STORM
10–13 May 2024 | Dst ≈ −412 nT | First G5 storm in 21 years
AFFECTED SYSTEMS
• GPS-guided agriculture (US Midwest)�• Starlink constellation drag spike�• Power grid voltage anomalies�• HF radio blackouts�• Satellite operations
IMPACT
• John Deere tractors offline mid-planting�• ~5,000 Starlink sats forced into thrust�• Aurora visible to Florida & Mexico�• Multiple G5 conditions sustained�• No major grid failures reported
WHY IT MATTERS
• First G5 since 2003 Halloween storms�• Exposed dependency on GNSS in farming�• Showed satellite-density risks�• Modern grids held — but margins narrow�• Preview of solar maximum hazards
Modern reminder · Solar Cycle 25 · Source: NOAA SWPC, NASA
Major Solar Storms of the Past 5,000 Years
Reconstructed from ¹⁴C in tree rings and ¹⁰Be in ice cores · Miyake events dwarf modern storms
7176 BCE
Largest known
Cosmogenic isotope spike;�likely far stronger than Carrington
5410 BCE
Extreme event
Detected in ¹⁴C tree-ring records�across multiple continents
660 BCE
Iron-age storm
Sharp ¹⁴C spike confirmed�in Greenland and Antarctic ice
774 CE
Miyake event
Discovered in 2012 in Japanese�cedar tree rings — defining case
993 CE
Miyake event
Second confirmed Miyake event;�used to date Viking settlements
1859 CE
Carrington
First storm recorded directly;�smaller than the Miyake events
Miyake events estimated 10–100× stronger than Carrington · Sources: Miyake et al. 2012, 2013; Brehm et al. 2021
Proton Rain Through the Ages
Solar proton events written into tree rings and ice cores · most struck with no one to witness them
664 BCE
Assyrian era
Last confirmed extreme event before 1859. Dated only in 2025 from a ¹⁴C spike in tree rings — no human record survives.
774 CE
Largest known
The strongest Miyake event in 14,500 years. Proton flux roughly an order of magnitude above Carrington. Would brick modern electronics.
993 CE
Twin spike
Second great Miyake event. Recorded in both Greenland and Antarctic ice as a ¹⁰Be spike — confirming a global, solar origin.
1204 CE
Sub-extreme SPE
Red aurora over Kyoto recorded by the poet Fujiwara no Teika — “red lights in the northern sky.” Tree rings confirm a proton burst.
1859 CE
The Carrington Event
Our benchmark — and the only great storm with both eyewitnesses and instruments. The night the telegraph ran on aurora alone.
July 2012
The near-miss
A Carrington-class CME crossed Earth’s orbit and was caught by STEREO-A. It missed us by about nine days. Pure timing.
Sources: Panyushkina et al. 2025 (U. Arizona, tree-ring ¹⁴C); Miyahara et al. 2026 (OIST); Miyake et al. 2012 · dated via ¹⁴C and ¹⁰Be isotopes
The 1859 Carrington Event
The benchmark for extreme solar storms
−1,600 nT
Dst Index
(storm intensity)
17 hrs
Earth transit
time
~$10T
Estimated modern
damage cost
What happened in 1859:
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
CARRINGTON PLUS
The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
What would happen if the largest recorded solar storm struck today — and what can we do about it?
Public Awareness Briefing
Stage 1: The X-Ray & UV Burst
The first wave — arriving at the speed of light
~8 min
Travel time to Earth
(at the speed of light)
Dayside
Hemisphere affected
(the sunlit half)
HF Radio
First system to fail
(shortwave blackout)
What the burst does:
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
Relativistic Protons — Speed, Duration & Impact
Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs) accelerated to near light-speed by flares and CME shocks
TIMING
Onset within minutes
• Travel at 30–80% the speed of light�• Reach Earth in 10–60 minutes — faster than the CME plasma itself�• First detected as a Ground Level Enhancement (GLE) at neutron monitors�• Almost no useful warning time — light from the flare arrives only minutes earlier
DURATION
Hours to several days
• Peak flux typically 1–6 hours after onset�• Elevated radiation persists 1–3 days as slower particles continue arriving�• Largest events (Aug 1972, Oct 1989, Oct 2003) lasted 24–72 hours above safety thresholds�• Tail can extend for a week at lower intensity
IMPACT
Biological & technological
• Acute radiation dose risk for astronauts beyond LEO; ISS crew must shelter�• Polar and high-latitude flights diverted — passengers and crew exposed�• Single-event upsets in satellite electronics; permanent damage to solar arrays�• Polar Cap Absorption disrupts HF radio and GPS at high latitudes
GLE = Ground Level Enhancement · Detected by neutron monitors worldwide · Source: NOAA SWPC, NASA HSO
How an Extreme Storm Affects Earth
From space physics to ground-level consequences
The physical chain reaction:
1.
CME strikes Earth's magnetosphere, compressing it on the dayside
2.
Rapid magnetic field changes induce electric currents in the ground
3.
Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GICs) flow through power lines, pipelines, and cables
4.
GICs saturate transformer cores → overheating → permanent failure
5.
High-voltage transformers take months to manufacture — no quick replacement
6.
Satellite drag increases; low-orbit spacecraft may re-enter atmosphere
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
Infrastructure at Risk
A Carrington-Plus storm would affect every sector simultaneously
PG
Power Grid
GIC-induced transformer failure; blackouts lasting weeks to years
RF
Communications
HF radio blackout; satellite uplinks disrupted; internet infrastructure at risk
GP
GPS & Navigation
Ionospheric disturbance degrades precision; aviation and shipping affected
PL
Pipelines
Accelerated corrosion from induced currents in buried metallic infrastructure
AV
Aviation
Polar route radiation exposure; navigation disruption; HF comms loss
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
Storm
⚡
Power Grid
📡
HF Radio
🛰
GPS/GNSS
⛽
Pipelines
$
Finance
✈
Aviation
The Power Grid: The Critical Vulnerability
Why a transformer shortage could define the recovery
Why transformers matter:
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
Reading the Ground Beneath the Grid
The damage depends not just on the storm — but on the rock under your feet
A new map of the hidden hazard:
Source: Kelbert et al., Reviews of Geophysics (2026) · US Magnetotelluric Array · CfA / USGS / NOAA
Public Awareness Briefing
22.79 V/km
Ground field measured in Maine during the 1989 storm
~4,000 V
Driven across a typical 200-km transmission line
1 V/km = industry threat threshold
Maine in 1989 ran 20× over the line.
Cascade of Consequences
How disruption compounds over time
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
When the Lights Went Out — New York City, July 1977
25 hours without power · 9 million people · A case study in societal breakdown
1,616
stores looted
1,037
fires set
3,776
arrests
$300M
damage (1977)
INITIAL HOURS
9:36 PM, July 13
• Lightning strikes knock out transmission lines�• Con Edison grid collapses in cascading failures�• Subways stop mid-tunnel — thousands trapped�• Air traffic at LaGuardia and JFK halts�• Hospitals switch to generators; some fail
BREAKDOWN
Overnight
• Looting erupts in Brooklyn, Bronx, Harlem�• Police overwhelmed — only ~25% on duty�• Whole blocks set ablaze; fire crews ambushed�• Stores stripped: appliances, cars, jewelry�• 1,000+ buildings damaged or destroyed
AFTERMATH
Day after & beyond
• Power restored progressively over 25 hours�• National Guard deployed to restore order�• $300M in property losses; insurance crisis�• Sharpened debate on urban poverty and policing�• Catalyst for NYC's 1980s emergency reforms
A 25-hour outage in one city — a CME-scale event could mean weeks across whole regions · Source: NYC archives, FBI 1977
Basis of my next book - Chicago
WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT AT HOME
Immediate medical risks when power and refrigeration fail
⚕
HOME DIALYSIS
550K+
Americans on dialysis
Home hemodialysis machines need ~3 kW and continuous water purification. A multi-day outage forces patients to crowded emergency centers — or skip treatment. Missed sessions cause fluid overload, hyperkalemia, and cardiac arrest within 48–72 hours.
❄
INSULIN COLD CHAIN
8.4M
Insulin-dependent in U.S.
Insulin must stay at 36–46°F (2–8°C). Once a fridge fails, vials degrade in hours at room temp and lose potency in days. Pharmacies, hospitals, and home supplies spoil simultaneously — and resupply depends on the same broken grid.
🫁
OXYGEN CONCENTRATORS
1.5M+
On home oxygen therapy
Concentrators draw 300–600W continuously. Backup tanks last 4–8 hours. After that, COPD and pulmonary fibrosis patients face hypoxia, respiratory failure, and death. Same risk applies to home ventilators and CPAP-dependent patients.
WHEN THE WATER STOPS RUNNING
Disease risks from sewage plant failures and water contamination
THE FAILURE CHAIN
1
Grid Fails
Treatment plants lose pumps, aerators, and UV disinfection. Backup generators last hours, not days.
2
Pressure Drops
Municipal water mains depressurize. Backflow draws contaminated groundwater into pipes serving homes.
3
Sewage Overflows
Lift stations stop. Raw sewage backs up into streets, basements, and surface waters.
4
Contamination Spreads
Pathogens enter drinking supply, food prep surfaces, and floodwater that people walk through.
DISEASES THAT FOLLOW
Cholera & Typhoid
Fecal-oral spread via drinking water. Severe dehydration; lethal within hours without IV fluids that hospitals can't provide.
Hepatitis A & E
Liver infection from contaminated water. Hepatitis E carries 20% mortality in pregnant women.
Cryptosporidium & Giardia
Resist standard chlorination. Cause prolonged diarrhea; deadly for immunocompromised and children.
Leptospirosis
Bacteria in floodwater from rodent urine. Skin contact alone causes liver and kidney failure.
Nuclear Power Plants in an Extreme Solar Storm
The reactor itself is shielded — the problem is what happens around it when the grid collapses
GRID COLLAPSE
Minutes
Geomagnetically induced currents damage high-voltage transformers; offsite power lost
SCRAM
Minutes
Reactor auto-scrams (control rods inserted); fission halts but decay heat continues
DIESEL BACKUP
Hours – days
Emergency generators run cooling pumps; typically only 7 days of fuel onsite
FUEL CRISIS
Days – weeks
If grid and fuel resupply fail, station blackout → Fukushima-style risk
VULNERABILITIES
• Offsite power loss is the single greatest reactor safety threat�• Spent fuel pools also need active cooling — risk extends 5+ years after shutdown�• Onsite diesel fuel reserves typically only 7 days�• Re-energising a damaged grid can take months: transformers have long lead times�• Multiple regional reactors could lose power simultaneously
PROTECTIONS & PRECEDENTS
• Reactor containment is hardened against EMP and radiation�• Multiple redundant diesel generators (post-Fukushima upgrades)�• Some plants now have portable "FLEX" pumps that can run for weeks�• 1989 Quebec storm: Pickering & Bruce stayed safe through grid collapse�• NRC requires solar-storm response plans for every US reactor
The reactor doesn't fail from the storm — it fails from prolonged loss of cooling · Source: NRC, IAEA, EPRI
When Cooling Fails — Reactor Cores & Spent-Fuel Ponds
Decay heat does not stop when fission stops — water must keep moving for years
REACTOR CORE
0–1 hr
Decay heat ~6% of full power; backup pumps cool the core
1–8 hr
If pumps stop, water in core begins to boil; pressure rises
8–24 hr
Water level falls; fuel rods uncover; cladding heats past 1,200°C
1–3 days
Zirconium-steam reaction releases hydrogen — explosion risk
3+ days
Core melts through reactor vessel — full meltdown
Precedent: Fukushima Daiichi (2011) — flooding stopped pumps; cores 1, 2, 3 melted within 3 days
SPENT-FUEL PONDS
Days
Pool water heats slowly — typical 8–10 m of water above rods
1–2 wks
Water boils off; level drops at ~5 cm per hour without makeup
3–6 wks
Rods exposed if pool is uncovered; zirconium can self-ignite in air
Months
Zirconium fire releases cesium-137 — far more than reactor core would
Aftermath
Uncontained: no concrete dome over most fuel ponds
Hidden risk: ponds hold 5–10× more radioactive material than the reactor itself — and most are outside containment
Reactor: meltdown in days · Spent-fuel pond: catastrophic in weeks but releases more · Sources: NRC, IAEA, NAS (2016 Report)
KESSLER SYNDROME
Cascading satellite collisions in low Earth orbit
Proposed by NASA's Donald Kessler & Burton Cour-Palais (1978): once orbital debris reaches critical density, collisions cascade — each impact spawns thousands of new fragments — until certain orbits become unusable.
9,500+
Active satellites in orbit (2025)
36,000
Tracked debris fragments >10 cm
1.2M
Objects between 1–10 cm
140M+
Fragments smaller than 1 cm
Already happening
Starlink satellites executed 144,404 collision-avoidance maneuvers in the first half of 2025 — a warning every couple of minutes, day and night, 3× the prior six months.
Past the threshold
LeoLabs identifies three altitude bands — 775, 840, and 975 km — where debris density has already crossed the Kessler threshold and collision risk is scaling fast.
THE SOLAR STORM TRIGGER
How a Carrington-class event could light the Kessler fuse
Solar storm hits
GPS & ground links fail
No avoidance commands
Cascading collisions
CRASH Clock — June 2025
2.8
DAYS
to a catastrophic collision after total loss of maneuver control
The window has collapsed
• 2018 (pre-megaconstellation): ~121 days of grace after a loss of control.
• June 2025: under 3 days. A 43× compression of safety margin in seven years.
• 24-hour control blackout ≈ 30% chance of a major collision — enough to ignite the cascade.
A single Carrington-class storm could blind ground stations long enough to lose LEO for generations.
AN INDISTINGUISHABLE RE-ENTRY
A decaying satellite burns in like an incoming warhead
Hypersonic descent
Plasma & IR bloom
Radar track appears
Origin ambiguous
Warning time to decide
~7 min
from detection to predicted impact
— no time to confirm intent
Why early-warning radar can't tell them apart
• Both enter at hypersonic speed on a steep ballistic arc.
• Both shed a glowing plasma trail and a bright infrared plume.
• Both paint the same fast, descending blip — radar reads trajectory, not intent.
A storm-induced wave of uncontrolled re-entries could read as an incoming salvo — turning space debris into a nuclear false alarm.
The Economic Scale of Impact
Estimates for a Carrington-class event today
$10T+
Estimated US economic
impact (Lloyd's of London)
20–40M
People without power
in worst-case scenario
1–2 yrs
Estimated grid recovery
time in affected regions
Comparative context:
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
Early Warning: Our First Line of Defence
Current monitoring capabilities and their limits
DSCOVR Satellite
L1 Lagrange Point
~15–60 min warning before CME impact; measures solar wind speed & magnetic field
ACE Satellite
L1 Lagrange Point
Backup to DSCOVR; both are aging — replacements urgently needed
NOAA SWPC
Boulder, Colorado
Issues geomagnetic storm watches, warnings and alerts on the Kp scale (G1–G5)
ESA Space Weather
European centres
Coordinates international monitoring; solar telescopes watch for solar flares/CMEs
SDO / SOHO
Earth orbit / L1
Image the Sun continuously — crucial for spotting CME source regions before launch
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
Building Resilience: Layers of Preparedness
No single solution — protection requires a layered approach
Space Weather Monitoring
Upgrade L1 sentinels; earlier CME forecasting from solar observations; international data sharing.
Grid Hardening
GIC blocking devices on transformers; pre-positioned spare transformer stockpiles; Faraday-shielded substations.
Emergency Protocols
Pre-emptive controlled load shedding when a CME is detected; Black Start restoration plans; inter-agency exercises.
Public Preparedness
72-hour emergency kits; community resilience hubs; public awareness of space weather alerts (NOAA G-scale).
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
What Can You Do?
Individual and community preparedness
01
Follow NOAA Space Weather Alerts
Download the NOAA Space Weather app or bookmark spaceweather.gov. G4–G5 storms warrant immediate action.
02
Build a 72-Hour Emergency Kit
Water, food, medications, torch, battery radio, cash, phone charger. Assume power, internet and ATMs may fail.
03
Know Your Community Plan
Ask your local council or emergency authority about space weather in their disaster preparedness plans.
04
Protect Critical Electronics
Consider a Faraday cage or surge protection for essential devices. Disconnect from the grid during a G5 alert.
05
Advocate for Grid Investment
Support policy that funds transformer stockpiles, GIC blockers, and upgraded space weather monitoring.
06
Stay Informed
Extreme space weather is a legitimate, quantifiable risk — studied by NASA, NOAA, ESA, and the insurance sector.
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
CME Impact on New Zealand — Gisborne District CDEM Briefing
From Sun to Aotearoa · The four-stage chain of a CME striking New Zealand
MOST LIKELY IMPACTS IN NEW ZEALAND
POWER GRID
• GICs damage HV transformers�• North Island substations may be switched off pre-emptively�• Outages "could last for some time" (NEMA)�• 2001 storm damaged a Dunedin transformer
GPS & GNSS
• GPS unusable for up to 3 days�• Self-driving tractors halted�• Surveying, marine, aviation navigation affected�• GNSS-based emergency services degraded
AVIATION
• Polar/long-haul routes diverted�• HF radio blackouts on Pacific routes�• Extreme event: global aviation grounded for days�• Crew/passenger radiation dose elevated
COMMS & DAILY LIFE
• Mobile/internet service intermittent�• Card payments, EFTPOS, ATMs offline�• Water and fuel pumping disrupted�• Be ready for several days without power
Source: NEMA NZ Space Weather Response Plan (2024) · Gisborne District CDEM Group · Solar Tsunamis Endeavour Programme (Univ. of Otago)
ERUPTION
T = 0
CME launches from�Sun at 1,000–3,000 km/s
TRANSIT
12 hrs – 3 days
Plasma cloud crosses�150M km to Earth; L1 sats detect
IMPACT
+15–60 min after L1
Magnetosphere compressed,�currents induced in NZ grid
CONSEQUENCE
Hours – days
Power, GPS, comms,�aviation disrupted nationally
How Our Sun's Storms Compare to Other Stars
Kepler & TESS have observed superflares 100–10,000× stronger than anything from our Sun
FLARE ENERGY (log scale)
Our Sun (typical X-class)
10³¹ erg · once a month at solar max
Carrington 1859 (estimated)
10³² erg · roughly 1 in 150 yrs
M-dwarf flare stars
10³²–10³³ erg · frequent (Proxima Centauri)
Sun-like G-dwarfs (Kepler)
10³⁴–10³⁵ erg · superflare candidates
Young K/G stars
10³⁵–10³⁶ erg · 100–1,000× Carrington
T Tauri & active young stars
10³⁶–10³⁸ erg · 10,000× Carrington
WHAT THIS MEANS
Our Sun is relatively quiet
Most Sun-like stars in Kepler data flare more violently and more often
Superflares are possible
Even Sun-like (G-type) stars produce 10³⁴⁺ erg flares — 100× Carrington
Statistical risk
Kepler suggests Sun-like stars host a superflare every few thousand years
Sources: Maehara et al. 2012 (Nature) · Notsu et al. 2019 · Kepler/TESS mission data · NASA Astrophysics
Earth's Magnetosphere — Our Invisible Shield
A teardrop-shaped magnetic cavity that deflects most of the solar wind around the planet
Solar wind
Bow shock
Magnetopause
Earth
Magnetotail →
Compressed on the sun-facing side · Stretched into a tail downwind
HOW IT PROTECTS US
Deflects the solar wind
The continuous stream of charged particles is diverted around the planet at the bow shock, ~90,000 km upstream.
Traps energetic particles
Van Allen radiation belts capture protons & electrons that would otherwise reach the surface.
Funnels storms to the poles
During CMEs, particles spiral down field lines to the polar regions — producing aurora instead of damage.
Powered by Earth's core
Generated by the convecting molten-iron outer core — a self-sustaining geodynamo.
Sunward boundary: ~10 Earth radii · Tail extends past Moon's orbit · Source: NASA Heliophysics, ESA Cluster
Weak Spots, Anomalies & a Drifting Magnetic North
The shield isn't uniform — it's weakening in places and the poles are on the move
SOUTH ATLANTIC ANOMALY
Brazil → southern Africa
• Field strength up to 30% weaker�• Radiation reaches lower altitude�• Satellites experience single-event upsets here�• Region growing & splitting in two
POLAR CUSPS
Magnetic north & south poles
• Field lines funnel directly to surface�• Solar particles flow in freely�• Auroras concentrate here�• GPS and HF radio degrade most
WEAKENING DIPOLE
Global
• ~9% loss in field strength since 1840�• Decline accelerating in recent decades�• May signal an approaching excursion�• Last full reversal: ~780,000 yrs ago
MAGNETIC NORTH IS DRIFTING
1831
Canadian Arctic
discovered
1900
Canadian Arctic
~10 km/yr
1990
Approaching pole
~15 km/yr
2020
Crossed into Russian sector
~55 km/yr
Today
Siberian Arctic
~50 km/yr
Drift accelerated 5× in the past century — forcing emergency updates to the World Magnetic Model (used by aviation, GPS, and military navigation).
Sources: NOAA NCEI · BGS · ESA Swarm mission · World Magnetic Model 2025
The question is not
if — but when.
The science is clear. The risk is quantified. The solutions exist.
What remains is the will — at every level — to prepare.
spaceweather.gov · swpc.noaa.gov · esa.int/space-weather
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat — Public Awareness Briefing
Key Sources & Further Reading
For the curious and the concerned
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Centre
www.swpc.noaa.gov
Real-time alerts, storm scale, and public forecasts
Lloyd's of London (2013)
Lloyd's Emerging Risk Report
Solar Storm Risk to the North American Electric Grid — economic impact modelling
National Academy of Sciences (2008)
Severe Space Weather Events
Understanding societal and economic impacts — foundational policy document
NASA Goddard CCMC
ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov
Community Coordinated Modelling Centre — CME forecasting research
ESA Space Weather Service
swe.ssa.esa.int
European monitoring, coordination, and public outreach
Oughton et al. (2017)
Space Weather Journal
Quantifying the daily economic impact of extreme space weather scenarios
Carrington Plus: The Extreme Solar Storm Threat
Public Awareness Briefing
TALK SCRIPT 1 / 6 — Hook & Overview
WORD-FOR-WORD SPEAKER SCRIPT · ~60 min, paced to the deck. '/' = breath; [..] = stage direction.��ACT I — THE HOOK��SLIDE 1 — Proton Rain (cover) [0:00–1:30]�Good evening. Thank you for coming out. I want to start with a small scene. It's the night of the 2nd of September, 1859. Two telegraph operators — one in Boston, one in Portland, Maine — are trying to send messages to each other. And they can't get a clean signal, because the wires are surging with current they didn't put there. So they do something that sounds impossible. They disconnect their batteries entirely. They unplug their own power. And the line keeps working. They hold a full conversation over wires that have no power source except the sky itself.�The sky was powering the telegraph. That is not a metaphor. The aurora overhead was driving a current strong enough to run a continental communication network with the batteries switched off.�[pause] That night has a name — the Carrington Event — and for the next hour I want to convince you of one simple, uncomfortable idea: the Sun can reach down out of the sky and run our infrastructure on its own terms. And it has done it before. This talk is called 'Proton Rain,' because that is, almost literally, what falls on us when the Sun is angry.��SLIDE 2 — The Doomsday Clock (85 seconds) [1:30–3:00]�A word about why I'm framing this with risk and not just wonder. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists keeps a famous 'Doomsday Clock' — how close we think we are to a self-inflicted catastrophe. Right now it sits at well under two minutes to midnight. Space weather is not on that clock. But a severe solar storm belongs in the same conversation — not because the Sun is trying to hurt us, but because we have wired our entire civilisation in a way that is exquisitely sensitive to it, and we've done that in just the last hundred and fifty years. A blink, in solar terms.��SLIDE 3 — Four ways the Sun reaches us [3:00–6:00]�There are really four ways solar activity touches us. One — light and radio: a flare floods the day-side of Earth with X-rays and UV within eight minutes, blacking out HF radio and degrading GPS almost instantly. Two — radiation: storms of high-energy protons — our 'proton rain' — that threaten astronauts, force airliners off polar routes, and leave a chemical fingerprint we can read in tree rings. Three — the slow giant: the coronal mass ejection, billions of tonnes of magnetised plasma that takes a day or three to arrive but does the real structural damage to power grids. Four — the cascade: what happens to water, hospitals, satellites and fuel once the grid is down. Most of tonight lives in three and four.
TALK SCRIPT 2 / 6 — Science of the Sun
ACT II — THE SCIENCE OF THE SUN��SLIDE 4 — What a CME actually is [6:00–9:00]�Let me introduce the villain of the piece — the coronal mass ejection. A confession from my own field: when you look up on a clear day, the Sun looks like a fixed, bright, unchanging disc. It is nothing of the sort. I've spent more than a decade studying it, and the Sun is a churning ball of plasma — hot, ionised gas, about seventy per cent hydrogen — and because it's ionised, it's electrically conductive. It is, in effect, a giant electromagnetic machine, wrapped in magnetic fields that twist and tangle as it turns. Every so often one of those tangled structures snaps and releases — and the Sun flings a piece of its own atmosphere into space. That's a CME. If one is aimed at us, it slams into Earth's magnetic field and squeezes it, and that squeezing induces currents in the ground and in everything long and metal we've built. Hold that mechanism in your head — everything downstream tonight flows from it.��SLIDE 5 — A CME leaving the Sun [9:00–10:30]�This is what one actually looks like — real imagery of an eruption. The disc of the Sun is blocked out so we can see the faint corona. That bright expanding cloud is the ejection. Notice the scale: the Earth would be a single pixel. What you're watching is a structure many times the size of our planet, leaving at a speed that in the worst case crosses the whole distance to Earth — a hundred and fifty million kilometres — in well under a day.��SLIDE 6 — Measuring storm strength: the Dst index [10:30–15:00]�We need one number to compare storms — the Dst index. It measures how much a storm depresses Earth's magnetic field, in nanotesla; more negative means more violent. A quiet day is near zero. A serious storm reaches minus two or three hundred. The 1989 storm that took down Quebec was about minus five hundred and eighty-nine. The Carrington Event is estimated near minus sixteen hundred — roughly three times Quebec.�[the physics, briefly] The Sun doesn't spin like a solid ball. Its equator goes round in about twenty-five days; the poles take closer to thirty-five — differential rotation. The faster equator drags the magnetic field lines and winds them around the Sun like thread on a spindle: the Omega effect. Meanwhile hot plasma boils up from below — convection — and as those rising columns twist they kink the field and push loops up through the surface: the Alpha effect. Where loops break the surface, you get sunspots. Wind the field tighter over about eleven years and you go from a calm, orderly Sun to one that looks, magnetically, like tangled spaghetti. That's solar maximum — when eruptions come thick and fast. The whole rhythm is the eleven-year solar cycle, which means this hazard is partly predictable: we know, broadly, when the Sun will be dangerous.
TALK SCRIPT 3 / 6 — A History of Violence
ACT III — A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE��SLIDE 7 — 1859, The Carrington Event [15:00–18:00]�On the morning of 1 September, an English amateur astronomer, Richard Carrington, was sketching sunspots from his observatory in Surrey when two brilliant points of white light erupted from a spot group. It lasted about five minutes. He was — without knowing it — the first human to see a solar flare. What he couldn't see was the CME behind it, which crossed to Earth in seventeen and a half hours, a journey that normally takes days. The auroras were seen almost to the equator, near Panama. Gold miners in the Rockies got up to cook breakfast, thinking it was dawn. People in the north-east US could read newsprint by the glow at midnight. And on the telegraph network — sparks, shocks, paper catching fire, and two operators running their line on the auroral current alone.��SLIDE 8 — 1921, The Railway Storm [18:00–19:30]�Smaller than Carrington, but it struck a world that had begun to electrify. In New York it set fire to a telephone exchange and disrupted railway signalling. The lesson: the more wires we string up, the more surface area we offer the Sun.��SLIDE 9 — 1989, Quebec goes dark [19:30–22:00]�March 1989. Induced currents surged into the Hydro-Quebec grid and the entire provincial system collapsed — not over hours, in ninety-two seconds. Six million people lost power, in a Canadian winter, for nine hours. Remember the numbers: Quebec was minus five-eighty-nine; Carrington was three times stronger. The worst modern grid failure on record is the small version.��SLIDE 10 — 2003, The Halloween Storms [22:00–23:30]�Smaller than Carrington, but instructive. They knocked out twelve transformers in South Africa — a magnetic latitude everyone assumed was safe. Sweden lost power for about an hour; aircraft were rerouted. 'Safe latitude' is not as safe as the textbooks said.��SLIDE 11 — 2024, The Gannon Storm [23:30–25:00]�The strongest in two decades — a G5, top of the scale. Many of you saw the aurora, photographed from Puerto Rico to right across New Zealand. It was beautiful and mostly harmless to the grid — and that's the trap. It was a reminder, not the bill.��SLIDE 12 — Reading the danger: the scales [25:00–26:30]�Flares are graded A, B, C, M, X — each letter ten times the last, X the most powerful. Radio blackouts run R1–R5; geomagnetic storms G1–G5. When you hear 'G5' or 'X-class' on the news, that's your cue to pay attention.��SLIDE 13 — Miyake events: 5,000 years of storms [26:30–29:00]�How do we know about storms from before instruments? When proton rain hits the atmosphere it makes radioactive carbon-14; trees lock a spike of it into that year's ring. A tree ring is a dated radiation detector. Fusa Miyake realised this in 2012 — these giants now carry her name. Count the tree-ring spikes and matching beryllium-10 in polar ice and we find six monsters in fourteen and a half thousand years. Several were far larger than Carrington. Carrington is not the ceiling — it's roughly the floor of 'very bad.'��SLIDE 14 — ★ NEW · Proton Rain Through the Ages [29:00–32:00]�664 BCE — the last confirmed extreme event before 1859, dated only in 2025 from a tree-ring spike; the trees recorded it, no human did. 774 CE — the largest known in fourteen thousand years, ~10x Carrington; today it would brick electronics outright. 993 CE — shows up in ice at BOTH poles, proving it was global and solar. 1204 CE — a Japanese court poet, Fujiwara no Teika, wrote of 'red lights in the northern sky' over Kyoto, far too far south for aurora unless the storm is enormous; 800 years later the matching proton spike turned up in buried trees. The poet and the tree ring agree. 1859 — Carrington, our Rosetta Stone. 2012 — a Carrington-class CME crossed Earth's orbit and missed us by about nine days. A week earlier and I'd be giving this talk by candlelight.
TALK SCRIPT 4 / 6 — Carrington-Plus, Today (I)
ACT IV — CARRINGTON-PLUS, TODAY��SLIDE 15 — Section divider: The Modern Stakes [32:00–32:30]�[let it breathe] So far, history. Now the part that keeps people like me up at night: what a storm of that size does to the world we have actually built. Everything from here is about us, not the Sun.��SLIDE 16 — The Carrington benchmark [32:30–34:00]�Our reference event in one frame: Dst around minus sixteen hundred, transit seventeen and a half hours — so very little warning — and an economic shadow in the trillions. One honesty note on the numbers you'll see: the widely-cited insurance estimate for ONE country, the US, runs up to 2.6 trillion dollars. The larger ten-trillion-plus figures are global, whole-economy estimates. Both are real; they count different things. Either way the unit is 'trillions.'��SLIDE 17 — Solar Energetic Particles: the proton rain [34:00–35:30]�In a major event the Sun accelerates protons to nearly the speed of light — up to nine-tenths of it. Earth's field deflects most, but in a severe storm some punch through near the poles. For astronauts and satellites that's a direct radiation hazard. On the ground the atmosphere shields us — but these are the very particles that make the carbon-14 we used to read 5,000 years of history. The danger and the dating are the same physics.��SLIDE 18 — The physical chain reaction [35:30–37:00]�The whole mechanism on one slide. Sun erupts. CME compresses Earth's field. The changing field induces electric fields in the ground. Those drive direct current through every long conductor — pipelines, railways, and above all high-voltage power lines. The lines deliver that current straight into transformers never designed for it. Six steps from a flash on the Sun to a substation on fire.��SLIDE 19 — What's at risk [37:00–38:00]�'The grid' isn't just lights. Hanging off it: water and sewage pumps, fuel pumping and refining, payments and banking, mobile and internet, refrigeration of food and medicine, heating and cooling, hospitals. The grid is the system that runs all the other systems.��SLIDE 20 — The power grid: the critical vulnerability [38:00–40:30]�The single weakest link: the extra-high-voltage transformer. Only ~2,000 of these giants in the US; each weighs 100–400 tonnes, each is effectively custom-built, and replacement runs from many months to well over a year — for ONE unit into a calm supply chain. Now picture a Carrington-class storm destroying dozens or hundreds at once, across several countries all ordering simultaneously. There is no stockpile for that. The storm lasts a day; the transformer shortage turns a blackout into a year.��SLIDE 21 — ★ NEW · Reading the Ground Beneath the Grid [40:30–43:00]�The freshest science in the talk — published 2026. The same storm can be twice as dangerous in one town as the next, because the rock beneath them conducts electricity differently. After 18 years and 1,800+ stations, a Harvard-Smithsonian team produced the first 3-D electrical map of the US, and went back to the 1989 storm: at a site in Maine the geoelectric field hit 22.79 volts per kilometre. The industry treats anything above 1 V/km as a threat — Maine ran twenty times over. Along a 200-km line that's ~4,000 volts of DC shoved into AC equipment. That's the number that cooks a transformer. The hopeful part: this map now feeds a real-time NOAA/USGS risk tool. As lead scientist Anna Kelbert puts it — 'prediction, not just detection, is the next frontier.'
TALK SCRIPT 5 / 6 — The Cascade & The Cost
ACT IV — CARRINGTON-PLUS, TODAY (continued)��SLIDE 22 — The cascade begins [43:00–44:00]�Once transformers go, the failure cascades — faster than most plans assume. Each system that fails knocks out the one that depended on it. No power means no pumping; no pumping means no water and no fuel; no fuel means the backup generators that were the plan run dry in days.��SLIDE 23 — A precedent: New York, 1977 [44:00–45:00]�A small, sobering precedent. New York City, July 1977 — a blackout of just twenty-five hours. One city, one day. It produced widespread looting and arson, thousands of arrests, hundreds of millions in damage. Now scale that to tens of millions of people for weeks to months. 1977 is not the worst case — it's the gentle preview.��SLIDE 24 — In the home: the medically vulnerable [45:00–46:00]�Bring it to a single household. Power-dependent medicine is everywhere and invisible: home dialysis, oxygen concentrators, refrigerated insulin, powered wheelchairs and ventilators. For these neighbours a long outage isn't inconvenience — it's a clock. This is why preparedness is a community act, not just a personal one.��SLIDE 25 — Water and sanitation [46:00–47:00]�Two systems we never think about, both electric. Clean water is pumped to your tap by electricity; sewage is pumped away by electricity. Lose power long enough and those two streams begin to cross — historically the exact condition for cholera and typhoid. A 21st-century space storm could hand us a 19th-century public-health crisis.��SLIDE 26 — Nuclear plants and the SCRAM problem [47:00–48:00]�Nuclear stations protect themselves — they automatically shut down, a SCRAM, if the grid disappears. That's the safe response. But a reactor that has shut down still needs power to pump cooling water for a long time after. Normally that's the grid; the backup is on-site diesel.��SLIDE 27 — Cooling and spent fuel [48:00–49:00]�Diesel runs out, and the fuel to refill it is delivered by pumps that need the very grid that's down. Spent-fuel pools need active cooling too. I'm not predicting catastrophe — these are among the best-defended facilities we have — but the dependency chain is real, and it again ends at: how fast can the grid come back.��SLIDE 28 — Above us: the Kessler problem [49:00–50:00]�A severe storm heats and puffs up the upper atmosphere, increasing drag on satellites and dropping them out of position — we lost dozens of Starlink satellites to a minor storm in 2022 this way. The fear is a chain reaction in orbit — Kessler syndrome — where one collision spawns debris that causes the next. A bad storm could be the trigger that blinds the satellites we'd rely on to coordinate recovery.��SLIDE 29 — Solar storm as Kessler trigger [50:00–50:30]�So the loop closes in an ugly way: the storm breaks things on the ground AND can blind us in orbit at the same time. It's the rare hazard that attacks the problem and the solution at once.��SLIDE 30 — The economic scale [50:30–52:00]�In 2013 Lloyd's of London modelled exactly this. Their finding: 20–40 million Americans lose power; for about two weeks at the low end to one or two years at the high end; at a cost up to 2.6 trillion dollars for that one country. The single factor deciding two weeks vs two years is how fast you replace transformers. The risk is not really the storm — it's the lead time.
TALK SCRIPT 6 / 7 — Defend, Localise & Close
SLIDE 31 — Early warning: DSCOVR & ACE at L1 [52:00–53:00]
Do we get warning? Some. We keep spacecraft — DSCOVR and ACE — parked ~1.5 million km sunward of Earth, at L1. A CME crosses them before it reaches us, giving operators perhaps 15–60 minutes to shed load and protect equipment. The catch: most of those sentinels are operating years past their planned lifetimes. Our warning system is old, and thin.
SLIDE 32 — Building resilience: the layers [53:00–54:30]
None of this is unsolvable. Better monitoring: replace ageing sentinels, forecast earlier from the Sun itself. Grid hardening: fit current-blocking devices to vulnerable transformers, pre-position spares, shield key substations. And the economics are almost embarrassing — Lloyd's put the cost of blocking capacitors on the 1,000 most vulnerable US transformers at ~100 million dollars. A hundred million to defend against a 2.6-trillion-dollar loss. After 1989 Canada spent over a billion hardening its grid. The protection is cheap; what's missing is the will to buy it before the storm, not after.
SLIDE 33 — What can you do? [54:30–55:30]
Two simple things. One — know where the warning comes from: bookmark spaceweather.gov or the NOAA app; when you hear 'G4' or 'G5,' that's real. Two — keep a basic 72-hour kit: water, non-perishable food, a battery or hand-crank radio, torches, medication, some cash. The same kit serves any disaster.
SLIDE 34 — Key sources & further reading [55:30–56:00]
Everything tonight is sourced here — NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center for live alerts, the Lloyd's 2013 report for the economics, and the 2026 magnetotelluric and tree-ring papers for the newest science.
SLIDE 35 — Bringing it home: Gisborne / Aotearoa [56:00–57:30]
Everything I've described is global, but the chain from Sun to Aotearoa is the same four stages: eruption, transit, impact, consequence. New Zealand is not exempt — the 2024 aurora over our own skies was the friendly proof. Locally this is a Civil Defence question, mapping onto the four R's — reduction, readiness, response, recovery. We add one more hazard to the planning we already do for quakes and floods.
SLIDE 36 — How our Sun compares: superflares [57:30–58:15]
Kepler and TESS have watched other Sun-like stars produce 'superflares' hundreds to thousands of times more energetic than ours. Our Sun is, thankfully, relatively well-behaved — but 'relatively' is doing a lot of work, and the Miyake events show even our calm star has a temper.
SLIDE 37 — Earth's magnetosphere: our shield [58:15–59:00]
We are not defenceless. Earth has a magnetic shield — the magnetosphere — a teardrop cavity that deflects the bulk of the solar wind around the planet, ~90,000 km upstream. Without it we'd have no atmosphere and no conversation. It's why a storm is a grid problem and not an extinction problem. (Close continues on next slide →)
TALK SCRIPT 7 / 7 — The Close + Q&A
SLIDE 38 — Weak spots and a drifting pole [59:00–59:45]
But the shield isn't uniform or static. There's a weak patch over the South Atlantic where satellites take extra radiation; the overall field has been weakening; and magnetic north is drifting fast across the Arctic. Not cause for panic — but the shield we count on is itself slowly changing.
SLIDE 39 — The question is not if, but when [59:45–61:00 · CLOSE]
[pause] The science is clear. The risk is quantified. The solutions exist, and they're cheap. The only thing missing is the will to act before the event rather than after. A Carrington-class storm is not a question of if — it's a question of when. The Sun has done this many times; we just happen to be the first generation that built a civilisation it can switch off. In 1859 the Sun powered the telegraph for one extraordinary night, and a couple of operators marvelled at it. Next time the Sun won't power our network — it will overpower it. Whether that's a hard week or a lost year is being decided right now, by choices we make before the storm ever leaves the Sun. Thank you. I'd love to take your questions.
APPENDIX — LIKELY Q&A
• In my lifetime? Return period ~150 yrs (100–250); ~1–10% per decade. 2012 already crossed our orbit and missed.
• Brick my phone? In your pocket, no — the atmosphere shields you. Risk is to satellites/unshielded electronics and grid-connected gear; the real hit is losing the network and the power to charge.
• Just turn the grid off? Partly — that's what the 15–60 min L1 warning buys. But you can't pre-emptively black out a continent for every alert, and the warning is short.
• Climate change link? None — unrelated drivers. What's rising is our vulnerability.
• Nuclear accident? Plants SCRAM safely; the real concern is sustained cooling if the grid stays down for weeks and diesel resupply fails — a dependency problem, not direct radiation.