Solar flares, which are sudden and intense bursts of energy from the Sun’s magnetic field, happen regularly.

Understanding how they impact Earth’s atmosphere is important as very powerful flares can cause inaccuracies in GPS systems and in extreme cases can cause total radio blackouts, where all signal is lost.

The Queen’s researchers have been analysing a powerful solar flare that occurred in 2012, and for the first time, they found that pulsations within the flare and Earth’s atmosphere were pulsing in sync.

Aisling O’Hare, a PhD student in the School of Mathematics and Physics, led the study. She explains: “Using a space based satellite, we detected rhythmic pulses from the sun every 90 seconds. We also analysed the changes in the density of Earth’s atmosphere using a network of GPS satellites and ground-based receivers during this time and found that it responded with its own pulses just 30 seconds after the pulses were detected from the sun.

“This is important as we’ve been able to show, for the very first time, that the sun’s flare pulsations and Earth’s atmosphere were pulsing in sync during a solar flare.”

Aisling is a member of an International Space Science Institute team exploring Earth-Sun interactions and has travelled across the globe studying the dynamics of solar activity.

She adds: “We are currently in solar maximum – the sun’s most active part of its 11-year cycle, so flares are happening almost every day, and this study sheds new light on how deeply their effects are felt on Earth. It has been fascinating leading the study as we’ve been able to reveal just how sensitive our atmosphere is to the solar flares.

“It’s important for us to understand the impact of solar flares on earth as it could have knock on effects on radio communication, satellite orbits and GPS accuracy.”

Through the research, scientists now know that the pulsations in the atmosphere occur very quickly after those in the flare, showing that the atmosphere responds rapidly. So if there was a big flare, any serious impacts may happen only 30 seconds after the flare.

Aisling was supervised by Dr Ryan Milligan from Queen’s. He says: "This work really shows just how sensitive our atmosphere is to subtle variations in solar radiation, although what drives these pulsations during solar flares in the first place still remains unknown.

“Aisling’s work goes a long way towards understanding the Sun-Earth relationship by studying them as an interconnected system, and not just looking at either body in isolation.”

The research has been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics. 

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