According to NOAA's lead forecaster Bob Rutledge, "This is the first time we will get short-term forecasts of what the changes at the surface of the Earth will be. We can tell a power-grid customer not only that it will be a bad day, but give them some heads-up on what exactly they will be facing."

To design this new model, NOAA had to combine three older models scientists developed in the past. The most important among the three focuses on the Earth's inner magnetosphere and describes how charged particles from the sun flow as they approach our planet's poles. The agency plans to continue refining this model further with the help of future studies. One of its goals is to determine whether the geology of the sites where power grids are built affects solar storms' intensity. While it took twenty years for NOAA to conjure up this model, we have access to newer technology these days, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory. If everything goes well, we might not have to wait that long for an even better one.

[Image credit: NOAA/Nature]