“A lot has changed”: NOAA rewrites the ranking of solar storms

A lot has changed in terms of space weather in the last 25 years.

Technology has improved, and scientists have gained insights into extreme space weather events following historic geomagnetic storms, such as the Halloween solar storm in October 2003 and the Gannon event in May 2024Looking to the future, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) are now looking for ways to better inform the public about space weather events that could impact Earth. For this reason, NOAA is asking the public for input on revising its space weather scales.

NOAA, in collaboration with the National Weather Service (NWS), has released a request asking organizations and the public to share information about what changes might help update the space weather scales. The goal is to facilitate the understanding of possible space weather conditions and their potential impacts on people in space and on Earth, as well as on various systems that have been affected in the past.

“The user base and needs have changed, the capabilities, the science and our understanding of the science – a lot of things have changed. And the standards for all practical purposes have not changed, although they must change,” Bill Murtagh, program coordinator of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), told Space.com in an interview.

NOAA's Space Weather Scales were launched in 1999 when space weather began to gain popularity with the introduction of new technologies to study weather in space. Spacecraft were equipped with various instruments to study the solar wind and also to keep an eye on solar activity.

“Space weather really started to develop into a science of interest across many sectors because we began to value it because with every new technology that was introduced and developed, there were also vulnerabilities to space weather,” Murtagh said.

NOAA's space weather scales were modeled after existing scales used to categorize meteorological events here on Earth. “We discussed here in the SWPC in 1997-1998 that we should have scales, but we wanted the scales to be understandable to the citizens of this country,” Murtagh explained.

“Everyone knows what a Category 5 hurricane or an EF-4 tornado is. So we basically designed our scales based on those scales, which go from one to five. That's what citizens can understand, with one being mild and five being extreme.”

Illustration of a coronal mass ejection impacting the Earth's atmosphere. (Image credit: Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Getty Images)

There are three different events that the scale are designed to explain the different types of environmental impacts and their severity. In addition, each scale provides details on how likely each event is to occur on average and the intensity associated with each level.

For geomagnetic storms, scale categories focus on impacts on spacecraft operations, power grids, and other terrestrial infrastructure.

a graphic with five different categories of space weather influences and a description for each category

NOAA's geomagnetic storm scale. (Image credit: NOAA/SWPC)

The effects of solar radiation include the biological effects on astronauts and passengers in aircraft, as well as the possible effects on satellites and other systems.

a graphic with five different categories of space weather influences and a description for each category

NOAA's solar radiation storm scale. (Image credit: NOAA/SWPC)

The third scale, radio outages, focuses on the impacts that space weather could have on radio frequency (RF) radio and navigation systems.

a graphic with five different categories of space weather influences and a description for each category

NOAA radio outage scale. (Image credit: NOAA/SWPC)

Murtagh explained that the scales were based on the three main groups of effects of solar flares.

“We've identified the three main areas, the three key elements of an eruption on the Sun. The first is the solar flare, the emissions, what we call the solar flare radio blackout (R). Soon after that, our high-energy particles come pouring in, the high-energy protons, and that's our S-scale radiation storm. And then the final piece, the large coronal mass ejection (CME),” Murtagh said.

“It reaches the Earth, affects the magnetic field and then we have a geomagnetic storm. That would be the G-scale.”

The aurora shines behind the International Space Station, with a docked Russian Soyuz spacecraft in the background. The moon is also visible as a bright light.

Geomagnetic storms contain charged solar particles that are guided by Earth's magnetic field over the poles, where they interact with the atmosphere and create brilliant auroras. (Image credit: Matthew Dominick/NASA/X)

Since the scales were developed, their user base has evolved from the knowledge-hungry general public to a variety of companies that have become more concerned with how space weather can specifically impact the communities and customers they serve.

For example, emergency organizations such as Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) began to ask the SWPC more specifically whether and how radio outages could affect satellite and cell phone communications, based on the wording in the Radio Outage Scale. Other examples included concerns about the different “radiation levels” that a solar storm might represent.

“We have the scale called solar radiation and the S4 level, which is called severe radiation. I have informed the public that the radiation environment in the air is going to increase to such an extent that we will call it a severe radiation storm; that is a cause for great concern,” Murtagh said.

Even airlines told NOAA they want to better understand what the scales mean for their passengers.

“Last year the major airlines were here and they all said, 'You have to change that, right?' We had severe turbulence, we had severe icing and we know what that means, but severe radiation? Are people going to get off the plane vomiting from radiation sickness, are they going to die? People just don't know and that's another problem we had to address: service,” Murtagh said.

Spacecraft operators are also interested in new space weather scales as more commercial companies rely on satellites for their services, said Kim Klockow McClain, senior social scientist at the National Weather Service (NWS).

“Think of all the Cubesat constellations; these things are being used as critical infrastructure in some places and will provide the internet in some developing countries. We're putting a lot of them into low Earth orbits in places that are very susceptible to some of these phenomena, some of which aren't really directly accounted for at scales like neutral density,” Klockow said in an interview with Space.com.

“We need to think about the decisions that people are making on the ground and go beyond just categorizing our hazards and really try to communicate something about the impacts. This is a challenge that affects all hazard areas,” Klockow added.

NOAA expects to complete its findings on the new space weather systems by the end of the year. The information will then be shared with various government agencies, including the White House, Department of Energy, Department of Transportation, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The results will guide NOAA and NWS teams in deciding what changes need to be made in the immediate and long term.

“We'll say option one is this, I think this is something we should do, and maybe with this change we can do it in six months. Option two, a very good idea, will take three years, and I recommend we pursue it. All of these discussions will take place, and I think we could make meaningful changes to the scales within a few months of 2025,” Murtagh said.

“I think we can make some small but significant changes to the scale. There's a lot we can do in the short term, but we'll have some obviously bigger efforts coming up in the next year or so as well.”

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