Everyone can make small talk about the weather, whether it has been too wet, too dry, too windy, too hot, too cold or too something else.
But what about space weather?
While it seems irrelevant, space weather and solar activity should be a topic of conversation since it can disrupt technology used in agriculture, said Rebecca Bishop, the principal scientist at the Aerospace Corporation.
Bishop said space weather is that which occurs at higher altitudes, much like we have everyday weather close to the surface.
“The sun is also shooting out radiation and charged particles and as it hits the Earth's magnetic field, it can produce different effects,” said Bishop, speaking recently on Kansas State University’s weekday radio program, Agriculture Today. “The more disturbed the sun becomes, the more likely some of those effects will reach us and our technology systems.”
Bishop said coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are one type of solar activity where strong eruptions from the sun shoot charged particles (or ‘plasma’) that can take anywhere from 12 hours to a couple of days to reach Earth. Its effects depend on the time of day it hits and the orientation of the Earth’s magnetic field.
“The effects of space weather aren't always uniform globally,” Bishop said. “It really depends on what the magnetic field is doing at your location. That's why South America often sees a lot more severe space weather than the continental U.S., because they have a different magnetic field.”
With any weather event, agriculture is always impacted. Space weather specifically affects satellite equipment and transmitting technology.
“The way the global navigation system works is you have GPS satellites that are transmitting a radio frequency (to Earth),” Bishop said. “The ionosphere, which is a layer of charged particles that can affect radio frequency, can scatter, bend or reflect the signals. If the ionosphere is nice and smooth and uniform, the signals come right through without a problem. The moment there's any sort of turbulence or waves in the ionosphere, the signals don't get through the ionosphere and never reach GPS receivers on the ground or they're corrupted by the time they reach the ground.”
K-State precision agriculture economist Terry Griffin says when farmers have technological issues with GPS systems, space weather may be the cause.
“If something's not working, my first reaction is to unplug, plug it back in, restart it, call the dealer,” Griffin said. “But if it is from atmospheric scintillation where signals are scattered or reflected or prevented from coming through, what may help is just waiting it out.”
Source: k-state.edu
Photo Credit: freepik-upklyak
Categories: Kansas, General