Canada to study how solar storms impact power grids, banks, satellites

Solar storms may sound like a piece of science fiction, butit's a threat Canada is taking more seriously.

The most powerful one wasrecorded on Earth 158 years ago.

Catalogued inhistory as the Carrington eventnamed after English astronomer Richard Carringtonthe 1859storm caused telegraph lines to go haywire, with reports of some stationsbursting into flames.

More recently,it was discoveredthat the sun unleashed two of the most powerful solar flares since 2006 just two weeks ago, disrupting radio and GPS signals on the day side of the Earth and lighting up the night skies with auroras.

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Sowhat could happen if a massive solar storm were to erupttoday?

Canadian scientistslike PierreLangloispaint a scene of mass power failures, fuel shortages, limited water supply and a collapse in GPS andcommunication systems.

As program lead for space utilization development at the Canadian Space Agency, Langlois is part of a team looking to understandhow space weather couldimpactthe country's infrastructure.

First-of-its-kind study

The agency is hiring a contractor to perform afirst-of-its-kind study in Canada to assess how its most critical systems, like electrical grids, could be affected by space weather, according to a request for proposals (RFP) posted on the government's tenders page.

"I like to compare the risk of space weather to your risk of death," explained Langlois.

"So it's easy for you to say, 'Well, I've never died before so I don't think the risk is very high, but you know it's going to happen. So for space weather, it's like earthquakes in Canada, it doesn't happen very oftenit doesn'tmean it can't happen."

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Langlois said the decision to explore the impactofspace weatherwas borne out of a recommendation from the United Nations earlier this year.

In 2013, the United Kingdom releaseda similar study and in 2015, the United States unveiled a space weather strategy, according to the RFP.

The study has a budget of $300,000 and will take 15 months.

Risk to banks, hospitals to be assessed

The agency wants risk assessments done on the impactspace weathercould have on a variety of infrastructure systems from road and railway transportationto satellite- based services such as navigation,telecommunication, and military efforts,as well as on government services, banks and hospitals.

Part of the contractor's job will be gathering sensitive information from industry, such as satellite operators, on how space weather affectsthem currently, Langlois explained.

"This is the first step to understand, to put numbers on the risk of space weather, but we have been studying space weather for many years now,"adding that work is already underway at Natural Resources Canada to determine the probability of a solar storm happening.

The request also asks the contractor include estimates on the cost of "space weather disturbance," as well as mitigation strategies.

Findings will be used to develop a new space weather program, it states.

According to Natural Resources Canada, ours is one of the countries most affected by space weather given its proximity to the north magnetic pole.