How the solar storms that cause the Northern Lights can wreak havoc on Earth

Witnessing a dazzling display of the Northern Lights with vivid sheets of colour dancing across the night sky is a real treat for those lucky enough to be in the right place at just the right time.

But the charged particles hurled into space by our tempestuous Sun – the particles that create the aurora borealis – can also unleash very rare but extremely disruptive events here on Earth.

Electricity supplies, satellites and air travel can all be affected by the most violent solar storms.

Recently 6,000 planes were grounded by Airbus, requiring a software update after one of their planes experienced a “sudden drop in altitude” in October thought to be caused by interference from intense solar radiation.

This kind of disruption is something that scientists and governments are actively researching and planning for.

The UK government publishes The National Risk Register – a list of serious hazards that could affect the country at some point in the future.

It catalogues the sorts of nightmare scenarios that give politicians sleepless nights.

Alongside risks such as nuclear incidents, terrorist attacks and outbreaks of disease sits the threat of severe space weather.

Much of the planning for a severe space weather is based on the Carrington Event of 1859, the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history.

This created rapid variations in the Earth’s magnetic field that caused electricity to be generated in long wires.

Telegraph operators suffered electric shocks, pylons were seen to spark and some conversations between operators could carry on while batteries were disconnected.

All this happened a long time ago, but with today’s advanced technologies the effects of a similar event would be far more disruptive.

Satellites can be badly affected. Strong solar storms can cause the Earth’s atmosphere to expand out into space, which creates more drag for satellites. This can cause them to slow down enough for some to deorbit and fall back to Earth.

This is not just a theoretical risk – in February 2022 a solar storm led to the loss of 38 satellites.

Orbital changes of satellites also increase the risk of collision and space weather can also play havoc with sensitive electronics on board, causing malfunctions.

Radio communications can be badly impacted with GPS systems lost or disrupted for many days – so your car sat-nav could stop working, creating gridlock in cities.

Without GPS a plane’s ability to operate safely would be compromised – meaning air travel would be big casualty too.

Space weather has already been blamed for affecting aviation electronics.

On 30 October 2025 a JetBlue Airlines Airbus A320 plane flying between Cancun (Mexico) and Newark (USA) suddenly and unexpectedly lost altitude, resulting in injuries to some passengers.

The plane diverted to Florida with 15 passengers taken to hospital for treatment.

Airbus investigated this incident and found that space weather had corrupted data in an elevator aileron computer which sends commands to the plane’s flaps. In this case it caused the plane to unexpectedly pitch down.

An Emergency Airworthiness Directive (EAD) was issued, grounding more than 6,000 planes until a software update was installed or computers upgraded.

As bad as this incident was, it could have been catastrophic.

The EAD states that “in the worst-case scenario an uncommanded elevator movement may result in exceeding the aircraft’s structural capability”.

Electricity grids can also fail, causing power cuts.

In March 1989 the Canadian province of Quebec was hit by a power cut caused by space weather with millions left without power and heat for nine hours.

In July 2012 a Carrington-class event narrowly missed hitting the planet.

The sun rotates once every 25 days and by good luck the active area of the sun was not pointing straight at earth – so this dangerous space weather was flung harmlessly beyond Earth and out into space.

And it is even possible that we could see something bigger.

Researchers have discovered evidence in tree ring data from fossilised wood that suggests we could get events perhaps ten times larger than the Carrington event.

Miyake events, named after the scientist who discovered them, could pose a threat to modern society on a scale that is hard to comprehend. With the last one identified around a thousand years ago, you could argue it’s just a matter of time.