From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson. This year has seen an increase in storms, but not all of those storms have been on Earth.
Shawn Dahl, the Service Coordinator at the Space Weather Prediction Center, says that geomagnetic storms have been running rampant in space and may be affecting agriculture …
DAHL … “Geomagnetic storms are results from the sun interacting with the earths magnetic barrier. And this usually happens when we have certain types of activity on the sun such as a coronal mass injection. These are explosive releases of solar material, billions of tons of it in fact, that contain charged particles and, more importantly, a very strong magnetic field that gets dragged along with it out into space. And when that reaches here on earth, that’s when the interactions can happen that disturb our magnetic environment to the point that we can get geomagnetic storms.”
Dahl shares some of the effects these storms have on agriculture in the U.S. and some insight into work they are doing to help mitigate their effects for farmers …
DAHL … “This causes currents of energy to build up on high-voltage transmission lines, which can overheat transformers if its not corrected or accounted for. And GPS. GPS accuracy goes out the window with some of the most extreme storms and, in some cases, be completely unusable.”
Listen tomorrow for more on how storms in space are impacting agriculture.