- A new study by the Imperial College London has shown how CMEs could be more extreme than previously thought when two events follow each other.
- CMEs can be catastrophic, causing power blackouts that would disable anything plugged into a socket and damage transformers that could take years to repair. Accurate monitoring and predictions are, therefore, essential to minimizing damage.
- When they reach Earth, these solar storms trigger amazing auroral displays and disrupt power grids, satellites, and communications.
- Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun’s corona.
- They can eject billions of tons of coronal material and carry an embedded magnetic field (frozen in flux) stronger than the background solar wind interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) strength.