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A study from Finland shows a connection between the northern lights and the weather on Earth. This is also reflected in the winter electricity bill.
Over many Finnish winters, scientist Timo Asikainen made an observation in his grandmother's old house that will be familiar to many: when it was cold, spending on electricity increased. However, it turns out that these cold spells and his electricity bills were affected by an unexpected source: the Northern Lights.
More than 90 million kilometers from Earth, the Sun constantly spits charged particles our way, sometimes triggering the ultimate celestial light spectacle - an aurora borealis, also known as the Northern and Southern Lights. Now, Finnish scientists have found that such strong geomagnetic activity across the country can lead to warmer weather and lower electricity consumption during the winter season.
In a new study, Asikainen and his doctoral student Veera Juntunen found that aurora activity changed electricity consumption in Finland by up to 14 percent. Very high geomagnetic activity led to a reduction in consumption of up to 600 gigawatt hours compared to average activity - equivalent to the monthly heating energy of about 330,000 Finnish households, according to Asikainen. “People never really thought that this kind of space weather effect could affect electricity consumption,” said Juntunen, a co-author of the study and a doctoral student at the University of Oulu.
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How northern lights affect winter temperatures
For the past decade, Asikainen, a researcher in the University of Oulu's Space Climate Group, and his colleagues have been researching how space weather can affect our planet's weather and climate. Space weather describes the space environment between the Sun and Earth, which is influenced by the Sun's electrically charged particles and can impact our technologies. But the new study is the first to show how this space weather can affect electricity consumption on Earth.
While the sun's ultraviolet radiation can influence Earth's temperatures, its stream of energetic particles can also influence other aspects of our weather system - including whether blasts of cold air will escape from the Arctic.
No one knows all the details yet, but Asikainen says the journey begins where our upper atmosphere meets space. Charged particles from the Sun directed at Earth can temporarily disrupt the magnetosphere surrounding our planet. Solar particles can travel along Earth's magnetic field lines into our upper atmosphere, where they excite molecules and release photons of light that we perceive as auroras.
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Northern lights over a house (symbolic image). ©Shannon Bileski/Imago
Particles that cause auroras can disrupt ozone
The falling particles that cause auroras release their energy high in the atmosphere, leading to the formation of molecules such as nitrogen oxides. These molecules stay in the dark polar atmosphere for a very long time in winter and can migrate very slowly - over a period of weeks to a month - into our stratosphere, where the ozone layer is located. Here the molecules can destroy the ozone, which helps regulate our planet's temperature.
Ozone absorbs the sun's ultraviolet radiation and the infrared radiation that rises from deeper layers of the atmosphere. Changes in ozone, says Asikainen, affect the temperature in the polar stratosphere. In the polar stratosphere, ozone depletion is accompanied by a cooling of the stratosphere and increases the swirling cold winds known as the polar vortex.
Residents of northern Europe and the United States know the polar vortex all too well, and there is another one in the southern hemisphere. The polar vortex in the stratosphere is a whirlpool of cold air that blows around the polar region in winter. A weaker polar vortex is wave-like and can bring Arctic storms to lower latitudes. A strong, tightly wound polar vortex keeps Arctic air at the pole.
Northern lights have an impact on electricity consumption
In the study, the team analyzed decades of geomagnetic activity to determine connections between auroras, winter temperatures and electricity consumption. They found that when geomagnetic activity decreased, the polar vortex weakened, causing extreme and severe winter weather in Finland about a month later. Conversely, high geomagnetic activity strengthened the polar vortex, causing it to remain more tightly coiled, which also led to warmer winter temperatures about a month later.
Northern lights over a remote fishing village on the island of Senja in Norway (symbolic image). © Westend61/Imago
The effects were only seen in winters when stratospheric winds over the equator blew in a specific direction. Using electricity consumption data from the 1990s to the present, they found that geomagnetic activity is highly correlated with energy consumption. The close connection was impressive for the authors and other experts.
“I was very surprised to see how good the correlation was between power consumption and the breakup of the polar vortex,” space scientist Tuija Pulkkinen, who was not involved in the study, said in an email. Since most people live and use energy in southern Finland, she found that the effects of the polar vortex are felt as far as the mid-latitudes.
Space weather affects the atmosphere and weather
Until now, it was assumed that our rapidly changing space weather has no influence on the atmosphere on time scales like seasonal weather. However, the new study shows that influences from space, including polar currents and precipitation of energetic particles, are important factors to consider when understanding Earth's weather and climate.
“This would suggest that we could use long-term predictions of space weather (or solar activity) to predict electrical energy needs, which would be very useful for the energy industry,” said Pulkkinen, a professor of space physics at the University of Michigan.
The authors agree that the results could help improve weather models and forecasts further in advance, as current weather forecasts are only reasonably reliable for weeks in advance. Six months in advance, Asikainen and his team correctly predicted the collapse of the polar vortex this winter season, using statistical models to measure geomagnetic activity and determine the likelihood of changes in the stratosphere.
“I hope that in the future there will be a model that can use these results to predict winter electricity consumption,” Juntunen said. “People who use electricity for heating would also benefit from this.”
About the author
Kasha Patel
writes the weekly Hidden Planet column, covering scientific topics surrounding Earth, from our inner core to space storms headed toward our planet. She also reports on weather, climate and environmental issues.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on March 23, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.