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SUBJECT: Coronal Mass Expected to Produce Intense Geomagnetic Activity

RISK FACTOR: 4

RISK FACTOR EXPLANATION: Information Only

IMPACT: May cause disruption or outages of telecommunications

SUMMARY: A major solar event is expected to impact the Earth's magnetic
field tomorrow at midday. A cloud of high-energy particles has been
ejected from the sun's surface and is heading toward Earth at nearly a
million miles per hour. It is expected to disrupt the Earth's magnetic
field, with resultant disruptions in telecommunications that transmit
via radio waves.

PLATFORMS AFFECTED: Miscellaneous,Physical

Hardware:

Operating Systems:

Applications:

BACKGROUND: At approximately 3:00 PM on October 22, 2003, a coronal mass
ejection (CME) from Sunspot 484 erupted on the sun. In the past,
geomagnetic storms such as these have created voltage surges in electric
power grids, disrupted radio communications and navigation systems, and
negatively impacted satellite operations.

Most recently, Sunspot 484 emitted a solar flare on October 19, 2003,
that temporarily disabled high frequency radio communications over the
continental United States for more than two hours, greatly impairing
airline and marine communications.

Larry Combs, a forecaster with the NOAA Space Environment Center’s Space
Weather Operations, said that this region has developed rapidly over the
last three to four days. "It’s somewhat unusual to have this much
activity when we’re approximately three-and-a-half years past solar
maximum," he said. "In fact, just last week, solar activity was very low
with an almost spotless sun." Solar cycles of high and low activity
repeat about every eleven years, and the sun has been moving towards
solar minimum for the past three years.

A second region of the sun is also active and could create more powerful
eruptions during the next two weeks.