ALBAWABA – The NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center has issued geomagnetic storm watches as a massive outflow of plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun known as a "coronal mass ejection" or CME approached Earth in a “severe G4” level, which is expected to affect GPS and radio infrastructure, as well as cause a show of northern lights over the northern hemisphere.
High-frequency radio signals, such as those made by airplanes attempting to contact far-off traffic control towers, may be disrupted by the storm.
However, according to the center forecaster Jonathan Lash, the vast majority of commercial planes can rely on satellite communication as a backup, adding that that satellite operators might have problems monitoring their crafts. He also warned that power grids would experience some "induced current" in their lines, but nothing that they couldn't manage,
One bright spot for skywatchers, particularly those at higher latitudes, according to Lash, is that clear night skies during geomagnetic storms provide a great chance to see the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, lighting up the sky above, which might be spectacular across the Northern Hemisphere during geomagnetic storms like this one.
The magnetic field of the sun alternates every 11 years, causing the north and south poles to swap locations. Throughout this process, solar activity varies; at this point, it is almost at its solar maximum, or highest level of activity, when Geomagnetic storms may occur a few times a year, according to Lash, while there might be a few-year intervals between storms during solar minimum.
