{"id":11946,"date":"2024-11-25T06:40:03","date_gmt":"2024-11-24T17:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=11946"},"modified":"2024-11-25T06:40:03","modified_gmt":"2024-11-24T17:40:03","slug":"parts-of-power-system-could-be-out-for-36-hours-in-event-of-extreme-solar-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=11946","title":{"rendered":"Parts of power system could be out for 36 hours in event of extreme solar storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

The emergency response agency is preparing for power and communications outages in the event of an extreme solar storm.<\/p>\n

New Zealand’s National Emergency Response Agency has released an interim response plan for space weather in August, and said it planned to update that in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

Space weather refers to events beyond Earth’s atmosphere. The primary source is the sun, with disturbances coming in the form of solar flares, coronal mass ejections and magnetic storms.<\/p>\n

Scientists from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the international Solar Cycle Prediction Panel announced in mid-October that the 11-yearly peak in the sun’s activity known as the solar maximum was well under way, which increased the chance of solar flares.<\/p>\n

While the flares do not pose a direct risk to human health,\u00a0they can mess with electricity production, communication and navigation equipment<\/a>\u00a0crucial to society.<\/p>\n

NEMA’s interim response plan said extreme space weather was a “low probability event”, but had “the potential for far reaching, and potentially catastrophic consequences” and “may disrupt, damage, or cause the loss of critical infrastructure”.<\/p>\n

The interim plan was designed to guide the response in the event the country loses power, satellite communications, GPS, radio and telecommunication systems.<\/p>\n

It does not cover longer-term effects, such as health impacts or corrosion of fuel pipelines, re-entry of space debris resulting from space weather, or malicious threats.<\/p>\n

The minister for emergency management and recovery (currently Mark Mitchell) would be the lead minister, tasked with keeping Cabinet informed of developments and deciding whether to declare a State of National Emergency.<\/p>\n

NEMA would be tasked with receiving international alerts for imminent space weather events, coordinating public messaging, and using alternative communication methods if the solar storm took out the usual channels.<\/p>\n

The country would enter alert mode when NEMA received a notification of anything at or higher than a level three geomagnetic storm, a level four solar storm, or a level four radio blackout, and the plan would be activated when a significant space weather event was “imminent and [the] geographic location has been confirmed”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The emergency response agency is preparing for power and communications outages in the event of an extreme solar storm. New Zealand’s National Emergency Response Agency has released an interim response plan for space weather in August, and said it planned to update that in the coming weeks. Space weather refers to events beyond Earth’s atmosphere. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11948,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11946\/revisions\/11948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}