![\"Curtains](\"https:\/\/assets.science.nasa.gov\/dynamicimage\/assets\/science\/hpd\/space-weather\/Aurora%20from%20Larimore%20North%20Dakota%204-24-23_courtesy%20Elan%20Azriel.jpg?w=2048&h=1153&%23038;fit=clip&%23038;crop=faces%2Cfocalpoint\")
<\/a><\/figure>Why Was This Storm So Intense?<\/strong><\/h3>\nA\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0published in the Astrophysical Journal on March 31 suggests the CME\u2019s orientation relative to Earth likely caused the April 2023 storm to become surprisingly strong.<\/p>\nThe researchers gathered observations from five heliophysics spacecraft across the inner solar system to study the CME in detail as it emerged from the Sun and traveled to Earth.<\/p>\n
They noticed\u00a0a\u00a0large coronal hole near the\u00a0CME\u2019s birthplace. Coronal holes are areas where the\u00a0solar wind<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a stream of particles flowing from the Sun \u2014 floods outward at higher than normal speeds.<\/p>\n\u201cThe fast solar wind coming from this coronal hole acted like an air current, nudging the CME away from its original straight-line path and pushing it closer to Earth\u2019s orbital plane,\u201d said\u00a0the paper\u2019s lead author, Evangelos Paouris of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. \u201cIn addition to this deflection, the CME also rotated slightly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paouris says this turned the CME\u2019s magnetic fields opposite to Earth\u2019s magnetic field and held them there \u2014 allowing more of the Sun\u2019s energy to pour into Earth\u2019s environment and intensifying the storm.<\/p>\n
\n\n\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/assets.science.nasa.gov\/dynamicimage\/assets\/science\/missions\/sdo\/SDO_AIA_20230421_183705_2048_0193.jpg?w=2048&h=2048&%23038;fit=clip&%23038;crop=faces%2Cfocalpoint\")
<\/a><\/figure>\nThe strength of the April 2023 geomagnetic storm was a surprise in part because the coronal mass ejection (CME) that produced it followed a relatively weak solar flare, seen as the bright area to the lower right of center in this extreme ultraviolet image of the Sun from NASA\u2019s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The CMEs that produce severe geomagnetic storms are typically preceded by stronger flares. However, a team of scientists think fast solar wind from a coronal hole (the dark area below the flare in this image) helped rotate the CME and made it more potent when it struck Earth.<\/div>\nNASA\/SDO<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nCool Thermosphere<\/strong><\/h3>\nMeanwhile, NASA\u2019s\u00a0GOLD<\/a>\u00a0(Global-scale Observations of Limb and Disk) mission revealed another unexpected consequence of the April 2023 storm\u00a0at Earth.<\/p>\nBefore, during, and after the storm, GOLD studied the temperature in the middle thermosphere, a part of Earth\u2019s upper atmosphere about 85 to 120 miles overhead. During the storm, temperatures increased throughout GOLD\u2019s wide field of view over the Americas. But surprisingly, after the storm, temperatures dropped about 90 to 198 degrees Fahrenheit lower than they were before the storm (from about 980 to 1,070 degrees Fahrenheit before the storm to 870 to 980 degrees Fahrenheit afterward).<\/p>\n
\u201cOur measurement is the first to show widespread cooling in the middle thermosphere after a strong storm,\u201d said Xuguang Cai of the University of Colorado, Boulder, lead author of a\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0about GOLD\u2019s observations published in the journal JGR Space Physics on April 15, 2025.<\/p>\nThe thermosphere\u2019s temperature is important, because it affects how much drag Earth-orbiting satellites and space debris experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the thermosphere cools, it contracts and becomes less dense at satellite altitudes, reducing drag,\u201d Cai said. \u201cThis can cause satellites and space debris to stay in orbit longer than expected, increasing the risk of collisions. Understanding how geomagnetic storms and solar activity affect Earth\u2019s upper atmosphere helps protect technologies we all rely on \u2014 like GPS, satellites, and radio communications.\u201d<\/p>\n
Predicting When Storms Strike<\/strong><\/h3>\nTo predict when a CME will trigger a geomagnetic storm, or be \u201cgeoeffective,\u201d some scientists are combining observations with machine learning. A\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0published last November in the journal Solar Physics describes one such approach called GeoCME.<\/p>\nMachine learning is a type of artificial intelligence in which a computer algorithm learns from data to identify patterns, then uses those patterns to make decisions or predictions.<\/p>\n
Scientists trained GeoCME by giving it images from the NASA\/ESA (European Space Agency)\u00a0SOHO<\/a>\u00a0(Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft of different CMEs that reached Earth along with SOHO images of the Sun before, during, and after each CME. They then told the model whether each CME produced a geomagnetic storm.<\/p>\nThen, when it was given images from three different science instruments on SOHO, the model\u2019s predictions were highly accurate. Out of 21 geoeffective CMEs, the model correctly predicted all 21 of them; of 7 non-geoeffective ones, it correctly predicted 5 of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe algorithm shows promise,\u201d said heliophysicist Jack Ireland of NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who was not involved in the study. \u201cUnderstanding if a CME will be geoeffective or not can help us protect infrastructure in space and technological systems on Earth. This paper shows machine learning approaches to predicting geoeffective CMEs are feasible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\n\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/assets.science.nasa.gov\/content\/dam\/science\/missions\/soho\/SOHO_C3_2023-04-21_cme.gif?w=512&h=512&%23038;fit=clip&%23038;crop=faces%2Cfocalpoint\")
<\/a><\/figure>\nThe white cloud expanding outward in this image sequence is a coronal mass ejection (CME) that erupted from the Sun on April 21, 2023. Two days later, the CME struck Earth and produced a surprisingly strong geomagnetic storm. The images in this sequence are from a coronagraph on the NASA\/ESA (European Space Agency) SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft. The coronagraph uses a disk to cover the Sun and reveal fainter details around it. The Sun\u2019s location and size are indicated by a small white circle. The planet Jupiter appears as a bright dot on the far right.<\/div>\nNASA\/ESA\/SOHO<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nEarlier Warnings<\/strong><\/h3>\nDuring a severe geomagnetic storm in May 2024 \u2014\u00a0the strongest to rattle Earth in over 20 years<\/a> \u2014\u00a0NASA\u2019s\u00a0STEREO<\/a>\u00a0(Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) measured the magnetic field structure of CMEs as they passed by.<\/p>\nWhen a CME headed for Earth hits a spacecraft first, that spacecraft can often measure the CME and its magnetic field directly, helping scientists determine how strong the geomagnetic storm will be at Earth. Typically, the first spacecraft to get hit are one million miles from Earth toward the Sun at a place called Lagrange Point 1 (L1), giving us only 10 to 60 minutes advanced warning.<\/p>\n
By chance, during the May 2024 storm, when several CMEs erupted from the Sun and merged on their way to Earth, NASA\u2019s STEREO-A spacecraft happened to be between us and the Sun, about 4 million miles closer to the Sun than L1.<\/p>\n
A\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0published March 17, 2025, in the journal Space Weather reports that if STEREO-A had served as a CME sentinel, it could have provided an accurate prediction of the resulting storm\u2019s strength 2 hours and 34 minutes earlier than a spacecraft could at L1.<\/p>\nAccording to the paper\u2019s lead author, Eva Weiler of the Austrian Space Weather Office in Graz, \u201cNo other Earth-directed superstorm has ever been observed by a spacecraft positioned closer to the Sun than L1.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\n\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/assets.science.nasa.gov\/dynamicimage\/assets\/science\/hpd\/05-lagrange-points-715x574.png?w=715&h=574&%23038;fit=clip&%23038;crop=faces%2Cfocalpoint\")
<\/a><\/figure>\nEarth\u2019s Lagrange points are places in space where the gravitational pull between the Sun and Earth balance, making them relatively stable locations to put spacecraft.<\/div>\nNASA<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nBy Vanessa Thomas<\/a><\/em>
NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center<\/a>, Greenbelt, Md.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An unexpectedly strong solar storm rocked our planet on April 23, 2023, sparking auroras as far south as southern Texas in the U.S. and taking the world by surprise.\u00a0 Two days earlier, the Sun blasted a coronal mass ejection (CME) \u2014 a cloud of energetic particles, magnetic fields, and solar material \u2014 toward Earth.\u00a0Space scientists [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15614,16658,15766,15877,17290,16344,17291],"tags":[12280],"class_list":["post-245041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-goddard-space-flight-center","category-gold-global-scale-observations-of-the-limb-and-disk","category-heliophysics","category-heliophysics-division","category-soho-solar-and-heliospheric-observatory","category-space-weather","category-stereo-solar-terrestrial-relations-observatory","tag-the-sun"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=245041"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245083,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245041\/revisions\/245083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=245041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=245041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=245041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The researchers gathered observations from five heliophysics spacecraft across the inner solar system to study the CME in detail as it emerged from the Sun and traveled to Earth.<\/p>\n
They noticed\u00a0a\u00a0large coronal hole near the\u00a0CME\u2019s birthplace. Coronal holes are areas where the\u00a0solar wind<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a stream of particles flowing from the Sun \u2014 floods outward at higher than normal speeds.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fast solar wind coming from this coronal hole acted like an air current, nudging the CME away from its original straight-line path and pushing it closer to Earth\u2019s orbital plane,\u201d said\u00a0the paper\u2019s lead author, Evangelos Paouris of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. \u201cIn addition to this deflection, the CME also rotated slightly.\u201d<\/p>\n Paouris says this turned the CME\u2019s magnetic fields opposite to Earth\u2019s magnetic field and held them there \u2014 allowing more of the Sun\u2019s energy to pour into Earth\u2019s environment and intensifying the storm.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, NASA\u2019s\u00a0GOLD<\/a>\u00a0(Global-scale Observations of Limb and Disk) mission revealed another unexpected consequence of the April 2023 storm\u00a0at Earth.<\/p>\n Before, during, and after the storm, GOLD studied the temperature in the middle thermosphere, a part of Earth\u2019s upper atmosphere about 85 to 120 miles overhead. During the storm, temperatures increased throughout GOLD\u2019s wide field of view over the Americas. But surprisingly, after the storm, temperatures dropped about 90 to 198 degrees Fahrenheit lower than they were before the storm (from about 980 to 1,070 degrees Fahrenheit before the storm to 870 to 980 degrees Fahrenheit afterward).<\/p>\n \u201cOur measurement is the first to show widespread cooling in the middle thermosphere after a strong storm,\u201d said Xuguang Cai of the University of Colorado, Boulder, lead author of a\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0about GOLD\u2019s observations published in the journal JGR Space Physics on April 15, 2025.<\/p>\n The thermosphere\u2019s temperature is important, because it affects how much drag Earth-orbiting satellites and space debris experience.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the thermosphere cools, it contracts and becomes less dense at satellite altitudes, reducing drag,\u201d Cai said. \u201cThis can cause satellites and space debris to stay in orbit longer than expected, increasing the risk of collisions. Understanding how geomagnetic storms and solar activity affect Earth\u2019s upper atmosphere helps protect technologies we all rely on \u2014 like GPS, satellites, and radio communications.\u201d<\/p>\n To predict when a CME will trigger a geomagnetic storm, or be \u201cgeoeffective,\u201d some scientists are combining observations with machine learning. A\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0published last November in the journal Solar Physics describes one such approach called GeoCME.<\/p>\n Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence in which a computer algorithm learns from data to identify patterns, then uses those patterns to make decisions or predictions.<\/p>\n Scientists trained GeoCME by giving it images from the NASA\/ESA (European Space Agency)\u00a0SOHO<\/a>\u00a0(Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft of different CMEs that reached Earth along with SOHO images of the Sun before, during, and after each CME. They then told the model whether each CME produced a geomagnetic storm.<\/p>\n Then, when it was given images from three different science instruments on SOHO, the model\u2019s predictions were highly accurate. Out of 21 geoeffective CMEs, the model correctly predicted all 21 of them; of 7 non-geoeffective ones, it correctly predicted 5 of them.<\/p>\n \u201cThe algorithm shows promise,\u201d said heliophysicist Jack Ireland of NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who was not involved in the study. \u201cUnderstanding if a CME will be geoeffective or not can help us protect infrastructure in space and technological systems on Earth. This paper shows machine learning approaches to predicting geoeffective CMEs are feasible.\u201d<\/p>\n During a severe geomagnetic storm in May 2024 \u2014\u00a0the strongest to rattle Earth in over 20 years<\/a> \u2014\u00a0NASA\u2019s\u00a0STEREO<\/a>\u00a0(Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) measured the magnetic field structure of CMEs as they passed by.<\/p>\n When a CME headed for Earth hits a spacecraft first, that spacecraft can often measure the CME and its magnetic field directly, helping scientists determine how strong the geomagnetic storm will be at Earth. Typically, the first spacecraft to get hit are one million miles from Earth toward the Sun at a place called Lagrange Point 1 (L1), giving us only 10 to 60 minutes advanced warning.<\/p>\n By chance, during the May 2024 storm, when several CMEs erupted from the Sun and merged on their way to Earth, NASA\u2019s STEREO-A spacecraft happened to be between us and the Sun, about 4 million miles closer to the Sun than L1.<\/p>\n A\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0published March 17, 2025, in the journal Space Weather reports that if STEREO-A had served as a CME sentinel, it could have provided an accurate prediction of the resulting storm\u2019s strength 2 hours and 34 minutes earlier than a spacecraft could at L1.<\/p>\n According to the paper\u2019s lead author, Eva Weiler of the Austrian Space Weather Office in Graz, \u201cNo other Earth-directed superstorm has ever been observed by a spacecraft positioned closer to the Sun than L1.\u201d<\/p>\n By Vanessa Thomas<\/a><\/em> An unexpectedly strong solar storm rocked our planet on April 23, 2023, sparking auroras as far south as southern Texas in the U.S. and taking the world by surprise.\u00a0 Two days earlier, the Sun blasted a coronal mass ejection (CME) \u2014 a cloud of energetic particles, magnetic fields, and solar material \u2014 toward Earth.\u00a0Space scientists [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15614,16658,15766,15877,17290,16344,17291],"tags":[12280],"class_list":["post-245041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-goddard-space-flight-center","category-gold-global-scale-observations-of-the-limb-and-disk","category-heliophysics","category-heliophysics-division","category-soho-solar-and-heliospheric-observatory","category-space-weather","category-stereo-solar-terrestrial-relations-observatory","tag-the-sun"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=245041"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245083,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245041\/revisions\/245083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=245041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=245041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=245041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/figure>Cool Thermosphere<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Predicting When Storms Strike<\/strong><\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/figure>Earlier Warnings<\/strong><\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/figure>
NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center<\/a>, Greenbelt, Md.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"