Dear friend,
As the sun brought a stifling heat to London last week, there was another stark reminder of the dangers posed by the great plasma ball in the sky.
A story from NASA reminded us that it has been two years since we narrowly missed a solar 'superstorm' – a scary sequence of events that starts with an exploding sunspot sending out a blast of X-rays and UV radiation, along with a stream of charged particles that can damage satellites and a cloud of magnetised plasma that would disable pretty much anything that relies on electricity.
No surprise that such a scenario has been adopted for a movie starring Nicholas Cage.
It is a risk that the insurance sector is wise to. Catastrophic solar weather regularly crops up in lists of extreme risks, but it is worth revisiting some of the research:
- Space weather activity follows an 11-year cycle
- We are currently in a peak period of activity that runs from 2012 to 2015
- A general increase in solar storms has been observed since 1865
- At the same time, the strength of the Earth's geomagnetic field, which helps protect against solar storms, has been gradually weakening
- Between 2006 and 2010 there has been the lowest level of space weather activity for nearly 100 years
- One study has estimated that there is a 12% chance that a severe storm will hit within the next 10 years.
Does that make you think we are a little underprepared?
On a more optimistic note, various agencies produce space weather forecasts and we will have some warning before the most-damaging element of a solar storm – the magnetised plasma cloud – reaches us, as it take at least a day to travel from the sun. Start planning your mitigation strategy now…
Christopher Cundy
Contributing Editor, InsuranceERM
Source links
Allianz
Lloyd's
Channels:Risk management
