Fire In the Sky – A Look Back at the Carrington Event

By Visio Roughton

In late August of 1859, Earth was struck by the most powerful solar flare in recorded history, the effects of which peaked on September 1st and 2nd of that same year. The aroura that lit up the night sky following the solar flare was so bright that some even feared the red glow resulted from a large, out-of-control fire. Known today as the Carrington Event, this massive geomagnetic storm produced enough electric energy that it caused telegraph wires to spark and allowed them to run without the use of an external electricity source. What some thought to be the end of the world was, in actuality, a spectacular solar event of great magnitude. 

What Caused the Carrington Event?

From time to time, the sun will release bursts of gases and energy into space. Solar flares, as they are called, are considerably strong discharges of electromagnetic radiation that burst from the sun’s atmosphere. 

Another type of high-energy eruption that the sun produces is called a coronal mass ejection (or CME). CMEs are large clouds of magnetically charged plasma that are ejected from the Sun and hurtled into space at millions of miles per hour. While CMEs are related and often associated with solar flares, they are, in fact, different events. 

It is important to note that not every CME is dangerous to Earth. The Sun is constantly releasing these bursts of energy, and most of these emissions are either too weak to cause serious disruptions to Earth or do not come in direct contact with our planet.

However, if a particularly large or powerful CME is released from the sun, and Earth happens to be in its direct path, it will lead to extreme effects for the planet. A powerful CME coming in contact with Earth would result in a significantly powerful geomagnetic storm. Geomagnetic storms are essentially a temporary disturbance of Earth’s atmosphere field caused by the interaction of the energy from the CME and Earth’s magnetic field. 

It is this collision of the multiple energies that leads to the glowing auroras that fill the night sky, but when strong enough, these solar storms can disrupt the Earth’s electromagnetic field enough that technology, especially machines reliant on electricity, are subsequently impacted. This is because solar flares with the same energy levels as the ones that hit Earth during the Carrington Event have enough power to generate electric currents that could overload power grids, disrupt communication systems, and even damage satellites in orbit. 

The CME that hit Earth during the Carrington Event was a very rare occurrence and one of the most extreme examples of this phenomenon known to us, as it was also notably the strongest event of its kind to be recorded in modern history.

The Sky On Fire

The first of two massive solar storms hit Earth on August 28th, and the surges of electricity that followed essentially fried many of the Telegram lines in North America. It was so powerful that the Earth’s magnetic field essentially buckled under the pressure of the incoming solar energy, which in turn triggered an array of disruptions across the planet.

Telegraph systems were some of the most advanced technology of the time, and by 1859, they had become widely used across Europe and North America as they facilitated quick, long-distance communication. Thus, it was a concern when telegraph lines began to spark and fail due to the sudden increase in electrical power. Some telegraph operators reported receiving burns or electric shocks when they tried to send telegrams, while others claimed that they could send messages even with their batteries disconnected from the machines. This ladder effect was due purely to the electrical currents induced by the storm. At the same time, the skies were set alight with red, a red glow from the geomagnetic storm caused by the CME. 

While this natural phenomenon is typically only visible from the earth’s poles, during the Carrington Event, the aurora was visible as far south as Colombia and the southern regions of China. In the northeastern United States, it was reported that the skies were so illuminated by the aurora that people could easily read their newspapers at midnight. 

The sky was so bright, in fact, that there were many instances where workers began work early, unaware that it was still late at night. In Abbeville, South Carolina, during one such occurrence, the sky was so bright that brick masons working on a construction site woke up and began to lay bricks until they realized that it was still in the early hours of the morning. After this revelation, they promptly returned to bed. 

On September 1st, 1859, three days after the first CME had struck Earth, Richard Carrington, an amateur English astronomer, was looking at the Sun through his telescope when he noticed something unusual: the surface of the sun was speckled with a collection of dark spots. Almost immediately after, he witnessed two eruptions of light burst from the sunspots. What he had just witnessed was one of the largest solar flares ever to be recorded. Following the solar flare, a CME of unprecedented strength was sent toward Earth. 

Typically, it takes many days for a CME to reach Earth, but the one on September 1st arrived in only 17 hours. 

Carrington and another British astronomer, Richard Hodgson, are the researchers largely responsible for deducing that the worldwide phenomenon was caused by solar flares.

Implications for Our Future

In 1859, the world ran predominantly on steam and coal, and the telegram was one of the biggest technological marvels of the time. Contrastly, our society today is almost entirely reliant on electricity, the internet, and computers to function, all of these are vital to how things from flights to money transactions run. This digital infrastructure that so many entities —from businesses to the average, everyday person— rely on would be significantly threatened and affected should another solar event to the caliber of the Carrington Event occur. 

A joint study done by researchers at Lloyd’s of London and the Atmospheric and Environmental Research in 2013 estimated that the electrical outages resulting from a Carrington-level event could potentially result in losses of $600 billion to $2.6 trillion USD (8.16 billion to $774 billion to $4.55 trillion USD in February of 2025) money for the US alone. 

The geomagnetic storm could induce powerful electrical currents with enough wattage to explode transformers and destroy internet functionality while also overloading electrical cables and established power grids. In 1989, for example, a geomagnetic storm with far less energy than the Carrington event hit Earth, knocked out Quebec’s power grid and left the city without power for nine hours. Such a powerful surge of energy could potentially displace and disrupt satellites, leading to issues with travel navigation, and it could, in theory, ground planes for prolonged periods. It would also spell trouble for the internet, as damaged satellites would cause interference with the internet’s ability to function. 

With satellites and electricity compromised, global banking systems could freeze, and the hindrance to all forms of communication would make it harder for emergency services to struggle to coordinate responses. The internet would also suffer greatly in such an event.

Despite the intimidating potential outcomes of a Carrington-level event, it is also important to note that governments and researchers have actively taken steps to reinforce electrical grids and find strategies that could help prevent widespread damage in such an event. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), an agency run by the United Nations focused on global telecommunications, is one such entity working alongside governments to establish plans of action to follow if such an event were to happen. 

A study published on Feb 29th, 2024, in the journal Space Weather found that events with the same power and impact as the Carrington event likely only occur every 100-1,000 years.