Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.12.2012, Qupperneq 6

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2012
Iceland | Weather
You’ve bathed in the murky waters
of the Blue Lagoon, you’ve circled
the Golden Circle and now you’d
like to see the sky come alive with
dancing green and red lights. Well,
you’re not alone. A recent survey
conducted for the Iceland Tourist
Board found that 16.1% of tourists
who visited the country thought
the aurora borealis were the most
memorable part of their trip.
With support from the Ministry of
Industry and Promote Iceland, the
Icelandic Meteorological Office has
begun forecasting the appearance
and visibility of these northern lights,
which will more than likely assist you
in your planning.
“There are a lot of particles, protons
and electrons, coming at very high
speeds from the sun,” says Dr. Þórður
Arason, a geophysicist at the Met Of-
fice, of the aurora. “The magnetic field
of the earth is bombarded by these par-
ticles.” The particles, brought to earth
by solar storms, interact with oxygen
and nitrogen in the atmosphere, and
electrons are drawn to the north and
south poles. As this happens certain
elements are illuminated—oxygen
creates a great glow and nitrogen cre-
ates blue and purplish-red colours. In
addition to measuring cloud cover and
darkness (the presences of the moon)
the Met Office’s forecasts predict the
strength of the storms originating
off the face of the sun, also known as
space weather.
Yes, space weather
On March 13, 1989, the residents of
Quebec, Canada, lost electricity for
nine hours when the province’s power
grid shut down. A few months later
Toronto’s stock market screeched to a
halt for three hours when their com-
puter system crashed. In both cases,
scientists blamed solar storms.
Due to instances such as these, pre-
dicting the frequency and intensity of
these storms is done for practical pur-
poses. “Most of this monitoring is not
for measuring northern lights or an
interest in predicting them,” Þórður
says. “It’s because these things can
inf luence power grids, satellites and
all kinds of instruments.” The Met Of-
fice, which doesn’t have the equipment
necessary to create their own space
weather predictions, uses reports cre-
ated by the National Oceanic and At-
mospheric Association, a US Federal
Agency.
The Met Office uses a scale of zero
to nine to rank the intensity of aurora
displays based on these predictions,
with one being “quiet,” two being
“low,” and three being “moderate.”
The scale, however, does not accurate-
ly describe what goes on in the sky. A
note on the Met Office website states
that “even grade 2 (low activity) can be
beautiful and grade 3 (moderate) can
be dazzling.”
Over the course of the monitor-
ing, Þórður notes that there have been
northern lights displays on nights
with low readings, “but stronger read-
ings would give more colourful, vivid
and dancing northern lights.”
The most valuable and most ac-
curate information the Met Office
provides is the amount of cloud cover
over Iceland. “About thirty percent of
the time we have a cloud cover of half
cloudy or less,” Þórður says. “Seventy
percent of the nights are damaged by
the clouds.”
Myth busting
Cloudiness and brightness are the big-
gest disruptors of any northern lights
display. The middle of winter may be
the darkest time of the year in Ice-
land, but according to Þórður, north-
ern lights displays actually occur with
greater frequency around the spring
and fall equinoxes in March and Sep-
tember, respectively.
However, the oddest misconcep-
tion, as well as the most hotly con-
tested one, is whether or not the north-
ern lights make sounds. “It seems to
be quite common that people think
they can hear noise from the aurora,”
Þórður says. “The aurora are formed
a hundred kilometres or higher
above ground, and the air is so thin
up there that it cannot create sound
waves. Sound is not transmitted at that
height.” If sound could be transmitted
from that level, he added, the electrons
would make a faint hissing sound.
Unanimous agreement on the na-
ture of the northern lights evades the
scientific community and the actual
audibility of the aurora is still up for
debate. While most scientists would
agree that the aurora are a soundless
wonder, Unto Laine, a researcher at
Aalto University in Finland, recorded
this July a clapping sound in an area
of high aurora activity, believed to be
caused by the same particles causing
the display in the sky.
Most northern lights misconcep-
tions centre on when and where it’s
best to see them. While some intuitive
knowledge on the subject is accurate
(it’s easier to see the aurora away from
light pollution) there’s a tendency to
mistake coincidence for scientific fact.
“There are a lot of people who kind
of ‘know’ intuitively that you need to
have cold to see them,” Þórður says. “I
have often heard from people that you
need to have a certain temperature in
order to see the northern lights, which
is wrong.” If not for the constant pres-
ence of the sun during the summer
months, it would be possible to see the
lights in July.
As Þórður says “There is always
something going on here in Iceland, if
you can see through the clouds and it’s
dark, just wait.”
“
About thirty percent of
the time we have a cloud
cover of half cloudy or
less. Seventy percent of the
nights are damaged by the
clouds.
„
“
I have often heard from
people that you need to
have a certain tempera-
ture in order to see the
northern lights, which is
wrong
„
Seeing The Light
How do you predict a spontaneous natural phenomenon?
Words by Arit John. Photos by Natsha Nandabhiwat
The Iceland Met Office’s Northern Lights predictions can be
seen at http://en.vedur.is/weather/forecasts/aurora/
Approximately every 11 years, the
length of one solar cycle, the num-
ber of sunspots on the outer layer of
the sun reaches a maximum. With
the maximum comes increased
magnetic variation and more active
space weather. The power outage
and computer system crash that hit
Canada both occurred during the
solar maximum of 1989. And while
it could spell bad news for satel-
lites, the good news for aurora fans
is that 2013 is expected to bring a
higher frequency of northern lights.
1. One suggested that fires
surrounded oceans of a flat
earth and the lights were
flames reflected on the sky.

2. Another theory held that
glaciers absorbed power
and began to glow.
3. The third, and closest, belief
was that the sun projected
its beams into the night sky.
1995
0
50
100
150
200
2000 2005 2010 2015
2013
2020
Taking It To The Max
The Northern Lights outlook
for 2013 is stellar
Three Early Theories
From the thirteenth
century Norwegian text
‘Kongespeilet’