Solar storms aren’t harmful to life on earth, but a strong one could wreak havoc on an electrical grid. That’s why the researchers created their map, to give power grid operators a better idea of where they should upgrade their systems to make them more resilient.
The data consists of solar storm measurements from 24 geomagnetic observatories across the North American continent taken for the last 31 years. Since the electrical conductivity of the ground in a particular area has a significant affect on the strength of a solar storm, they also took measurements from 1,079 magnetotelluric sites.
When combining all that with data on the power grids themselves, they were able to model how much each grid would be affected by a 100-year solar storm, or one that has a 1 percent chance of occurring each year. The map isn’t complete yet — it’s still missing data on some of the southern portion of the continental U.S. — but once its complete hopefully grid operators will have a much better idea of where to focus their efforts on shoring up the grid to prevent major outages.
