Weather as a factor in Operations

[AdamG]

Planet Earth is alive. Deep beneath its skin, its life blood — rivers of molten iron — pulse around its core. And this mobile iron is what generates the magnetic field that causes auroras — and keeps us alive. But, according to the science journal Nature, something strange is going on deep down below. It’s causing the magnetic North Pole to ‘skitter’ away from Canada, towards Siberia.

“The magnetic pole is moving so quickly that it has forced the world’s geomagnetism experts into a rare move,” Nature reports.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/s...38836c6097be9d

[AdamG]

In the next breath,

The polar vortex is making big changes for the new year. Around January 1, this whirling blob of cold air, which sits 10 to 30 miles above the surface of the North Pole, broke apart into at least two “sister” vortices. Disruptions like this can cause a ripple effect leading to chilly weather further south, and meteorologists say there’s potential for a spell of wintry weather to hit the northeastern U.S. and western Europe toward the end of the month.

https://www.popsci.com/polar-vortex-fractured

[AdamG]

Now imagine some devious little Hank Scorpio timing an EMP burst for a less-than-anticipated Solar storm, that leaves everyone scratching their collective heads while picking up the pieces.

It's happened before, and it could happen again.

Roughly 2,700 years ago, an unusually powerful solar storm swept past the Earth, scientists announced in a new study. Though it had little to no impact on people in that long ago, pre-industrial and pre-technological world, such an event today would cause widespread power outages along with potentially disastrous communication and navigation failures.

The solar storm in 660 B.C. was about 10 times stronger than any known event in the past 70 years, study lead author Raimund Muscheler said.

A solar storm of that strength would be "a threat to modern society in terms of communication and navigation systems, space technologies and commercial aircraft operations,” the study says.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...go/3140290002/