Nasa has come up with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model that can forecast where on Earth an impending solar storm can strike. The scientists said that the new AI system can provide “30 minutes of advance warning”.
According to the researchers from the American space agency’s Goddard Space Center, the AI model analyse the Nasa satellite data to provide the alarm on dangerous space weather
The warning may provide just enough time for countries to prevent severe impacts of these storms on power grids and other critical infrastructure, according to the new study published recently in the journal Space Weather.
Solar storms happen as the Sun produces a burst of electrically charged plasma in what is called a coronal mass ejection.
These charged particles create so-called geomagnetic storms that may cause blackouts and technological malfunctions of instruments on Earth as they interfere with the protective magnetic field around the planet.
These storms vary from mild to extreme. The effects of the storms may disrupt a technologically dependent world.
The scientists warned of the risk of a devastating solar storm as we are heading to the next “solar maximum” – a peak in the Sun’s 11-year activity cycle.
To prevent this, the Nasa scientists developed this AI model so that links between solar wind measurements from previous Sun missions and geomagnetic disturbances observed at ground stations across Earth can be identified.
The model named DAGGER developed by the scientists can quickly and accurately predict geomagnetic disturbances worldwide, “30 minutes before they occur,” researchers said.
When they tested the model against two geomagnetic storms that happened in August 2011 and March 2015, it was able to “quickly and accurately” forecast the storm’s impacts around the world.
The new prediction system is the first to combine swift analysis of AI, with real measurements from space and across Earth to generate frequently updated predictions.
Scientists believe the early warning provided by the system can help take action to protect infrastructure from an impending solar storm, such as temporarily taking sensitive systems offline or moving satellites to different orbits.
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