Solar storm frenzy of May 2024 was strong enough to affect the deep sea

[Judi Lynn]

News
By Stefanie Waldek published 19 hours ago

Subsea compasses deep underwater recorded disturbances in Earth's magnetic field.


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Northern lights above the ocean. (Image credit: tolstnev)

There might be total darkness in the depths of the sea, but the sun still impacts the abyss. During this month's solar storms — you know, the ones that resulted in the aurora lighting up half of the planet on May 10 — Ocean Networks Canada's (ONC) deep-sea observatories recorded disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field.

The ONC observatories are located from the Arctic to the Antarctic and have more than 12,000 sensors recording data — that includes compasses used to measure ocean currents. Concurrent with this month's explosive solar activity, the compasses recorded significant anomalies — dramatic shifts in the earth's magnetic field. One compass at the NEPTUNE observatory near Vancouver Island changed direction between +30 and -30 degrees.

This wasn't the first time the team had seen solar-influenced anomalies in underwater compass readings. In late March, while performing standard quality control checks, ONC scientific data specialist Alex Slonimer noticed the same magnetic field fluctuations in the data, albeit on a smaller scale.

"I looked into whether it was potentially an earthquake, but that didn't make a lot of sense because the changes in the data were lasting for too long and concurrently at different locations," Slonimer said in a statement. "Then, I looked into whether it was a solar flare as the sun has been active recently."

More:
https://www.space.com/solar-storm-effects-reach-deep-sea

[Blues Heron]

1. I wonder if any of the anomalies would have been strong enough to trip the breakers on the Dali

Those ships have miles of wire and are made of solid steel.

[DBoon]

2. Scientific American: A Solar Storm Detonated U.S. Navy Mines During the Vietnam War

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-solar-storm-detonated-u-s-navy-mines-during-the-vietnam-war/

... And somehow, amid all that drama, space weather researchers had largely ignored another consequence of the storm: “the sudden detonation of a ‘large number’ of US Navy… sea mines [that had been] dropped into the coastal waters of North Vietnam only three months earlier.”

Pilots flying over the area spotted about two dozen explosions in a minefield in just a 30-second period, the researchers wrote.

Naval researchers investigated, and they ultimately concluded the blasts were the result of the solar storm triggering magnetic sensors in the mines that had been primed to detect passing metal ships.