CME passage, G1 geomagnetic storm

Saturday, 11 May 2019 12:51 UTC

CME passage, G1 geomagnetic storm

The minor G1 geomagnetic storm was reached earlier today at 02:20 UTC. This is caused by a coronal mass ejection passage that brings a persistent southward pointing magnetic field with it. This coronal mass ejection that we are seeing at Earth right now is likely the coronal mass ejection that we posted about on 8 May.

A shock in the solar wind was detected yesterday by DSCOVR around 17 UTC which signaled the imminent arrival of the coronal mass ejection. The coronal mass ejection didn't look very strong at first but the north-south direction of the interplanetary magnetic field (Bz) quickly turned mostly southward resulting in minor G1 geomagnetic storm conditions during the European night hours. The solar wind speed remains low at 350km/s but the north-south direction of the IMF (Bz) remains southwards now near -10nT which means more aurora at high latitudes remain possible in the hours ahead.

Any mentioned solar flare in this article has a scaling factor applied by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the reported solar flares are 42% smaller than for the science quality data. The scaling factor has been removed from our archived solar flare data to reflect the true physical units.

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