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This is an archive of AGU's GeoSpace blog through 1 July 2020. New content about AGU research can be found on Eos and the AGU newsroom.

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12 November 2018

Powerful solar storm likely detonated mines during Vietnam War

A strong solar storm in 1972 caused widespread disturbances to satellites and spacecraft, and may have led to the detonation of mines during the Vietnam War, according to new research showing the event may have been a more devastating solar storm than previously thought. In a new study, researchers pieced together data and historical records related to the solar activity of 1972 to better understand the nature of the solar storm. In the process, they uncovered an incident where sea mines off the coast of Vietnam were detonated by the solar event.

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18 October 2018

Sounds of a Solar Storm

High school students listening to audio tracks of NOAA satellite data have identified the sounds of solar storms buffeting Earth’s magnetic field. The results of a UK-led citizen science project suggest that the approach of converting physical data into sound signals could help NOAA and other scientists make sense of massive amounts of data from satellites and other instruments.

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30 May 2018

Increasing heat drives off clouds that dampen California wildfires

Increasing summer temperatures brought on by a combination of intensifying urbanization and warming climate are driving off once common low-lying morning clouds that shade many southern coastal areas of California, leading to increased risk of wildfires.

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9 June 2015

New Tool Could Track Space Weather 24 Hours Before Reaching Earth

Our sun is a volatile star: explosions of light, energy and solar materials regularly dot its surface. Sometimes an eruption is so large it hurls magnetized material into space, sending out clouds that can pass by Earth’s own magnetic fields, where the interactions can affect electronics on satellites, GPS communications or even utility grids on the ground.

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12 December 2013

What to expect when the sun’s ejecting: forecasting space weather from coronal mass ejections

When whorls of plasma clouds erupt away from the sun in events known as coronal mass ejections, the portions that reach Earth can create terrestrial spectacles. These sun storms fuel stunning auroras in the night sky, but they can also foul up communication networks and Global Positioning Systems. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a method to better forecast these storms before they hit Earth.

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5 March 2012

Space weather explosions detected on Venus

Scientists have found clear evidence on Venus for a type of space weather quite common at Earth, called a hot flow anomaly, an explosion that deflects solar wind.

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16 August 2011

A quieter sun won’t make up for global warming

The Sun seems to be taking a bit of a rest. In recent years, scientists have detected fewer sunspots on the star’s surface, and many expect that number to drop further in coming decades — possibly echoing the Maunder Minimum, a period of low solar activity that happened centuries ago. But a decrease in the number of sunspots would not have much of a cooling effect on Earth over the next century, according to new research accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters.

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13 December 2010

X-ray vision: Space weather and the Solar Dynamics Observatory

In February, NASA launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), an Earth-orbiting spacecraft, dedicated to investigating the Sun and it’s effect on Earth and space weather. At this AGU meeting, teams are presenting some of the observatory’s early findings.

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AGU’s “Exploration Station” and the science of light

It’s Monday morning, and people are darting in and out of Moscone West and South, clutching poster tubes and drinking coffees as they rush off to early science sessions to discuss everything from Fourier transform spectroscopy to fluid enrichment in the mantle wedge of subduction zones. But what many may not know is that science presentations began a day earlier at AGU’s Exploration Station, an outreach event where families explore science through hands-on activities.

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12 December 2010

A myriad of colors from the Sun

If you passed through Moscone South around lunchtime Sunday after registering for Fall Meeting and heard the dulcet strains of They Might Be Giants: “The Sun is a mass of incandescent gas/A gigantic nuclear furnace/Where hydrogen is built into helium/At a temperature of millions of degrees…” you weren’t flashing back to the 1990s. You were actually hearing snippets of a public lecture that marked the kick-off of AGU’s science sessions.

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