Written by Amira Shehata
Saturday, 08 April 2023 01:00 AM
When it comes to weather, forecasting is the key to preventing disasters, and this also applies to space weather, as a new computer model has been trained that works with artificial intelligence DAGGER is specifically called for accurately predicting when and where solar storms will hit Earth, giving us time to prepare infrastructure that might be affected, such as the power grid.
According to Space, every minute of every day, the sun releases energy in the form of the solar wind, a constantly flowing stream of charged particles.
Our star also occasionally emits powerful short-duration bursts of radiation known as solar flares and spews out huge clouds of solar plasma in eruptions called coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
CMEs that strike Earth interact with our planet’s magnetic field, sometimes resulting in powerful geomagnetic storms.
While these storms increase the strength of the aurora displays on our planet, they can also have negative effects, potentially causing power outages, satellite failures, and communications outages.
That’s where DAGGER comes in. Frontier Development Lab, a public-private partnership, studies NASA data to find links between solar activity and destructive magnetic activity through a process called deep learning.
DAGGER’s developers say a geomagnetic disturbance can currently be expected up to 30 minutes before an event.
DAGGER may be coming at just the right time as the sun moves toward solar maximum, the peak of its 11-year activity cycle, so advanced warnings of solar storms will be especially useful now and in the near future.
