Earth hit by geomagnetic storm
On February 5, a geomagnetic storm began on Earth, as predicted by scientists, TASS reported, citing the Russian Institute of Applied Geophysics.
According to the Institute, the disturbance level of Earth’s magnetic field reached G1 on a five-point scale, where G5 is “extremely strong” and G1 is “weak.”
However, experts from the Solar Astronomy Laboratory of the Russian Academy of Sciences warned that within 24 hours the storm could intensify to G2–G3, TASS writes.
“The storms do not have a sharply defined single cause and are a general reaction of Earth’s magnetosphere to the extremely high solar activity observed since the beginning of the month. The trigger was the arrival, on the evening of February 4, of the edge of a plasma cloud ejected into space on February 2 during the largest X8.1-class flare in the past 1.5 years,” the laboratory’s statement noted.
Earlier, on February 4, 15 solar flares were recorded, including one of the highest class (X).
