<p>In the March 1989 geomagnetic storm, how much energy was transferred to Earth's magnetosphere?</p>

<p>Most of the articles I find talk about initial solar flare energy, but I have no reason to assume all of that energy reached the Earth.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-05-03T23:15:43.497Z
slightly related: [Which LEO satellite lost over 30 km of altitude in the geomagnetic storm of 13-14 March 1989?](https://space.stackexchange.com/q/26610/12102)
uhoh
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-05-04T18:56:14.697Z
If the articles you found specify energy per steradian (and it was more or less uniform), then it's easy to calculate the irradiance at Earth.   Neither particles nor photons in the flare are going to be deflected along the way.
Carl Witthoft
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-05-05T20:39:58.310Z
@CarlWitthoft unfortunately, they don't — my search results were mostly pop-science fluff (the few bits of real science were paywalled), and even the better of the results I saw only gave me the total energy of the flare which caused that storm, saying things like "while a normal flare would be 10^20 J, this was 10^25 J".
BenRW
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-08-31T16:33:22.040Z
As a real hand-wavy estimate from my memory of a random discussion at a workshop years ago, I seem to recall the net energy transferred to the magnetosphere during strong CME events was many orders of magnitude larger than the world energy consumption for a year.  Again, this was from years ago and my memory is not what it used to be, so _cum grano salis_.
honeste_vivere
<solar-storm>
How energetic was the March 1989 geomagnetic storm?
BenRW
# How energetic was the March 1989 geomagnetic storm?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-05-03)

In the March 1989 geomagnetic storm, how much energy was transferred to Earth's magnetosphere?

Most of the articles I find talk about initial solar flare energy, but I have no reason to assume all of that energy reached the Earth.

**Tags:** solar-storm

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: slightly related: [Which LEO satellite lost over 30 km of altitude in the geomagnetic storm of 13-14 March 1989?](https://space.stackexchange.com/q/26610/12102)  
> **username_2**: If the articles you found specify energy per steradian (and it was more or less uniform), then it's easy to calculate the irradiance at Earth.   Neither particles nor photons in the flare are going to be deflected along the way.  
> **username_0**: @username_2 unfortunately, they don't — my search results were mostly pop-science fluff (the few bits of real science were paywalled), and even the better of the results I saw only gave me the total energy of the flare which caused that storm, saying things like "while a normal flare would be 10^20 J, this was 10^25 J".  
> **username_3**: As a real hand-wavy estimate from my memory of a random discussion at a workshop years ago, I seem to recall the net energy transferred to the magnetosphere during strong CME events was many orders of magnitude larger than the world energy consumption for a year.  Again, this was from years ago and my memory is not what it used to be, so _cum grano salis_.  

---

## 0 answers

