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Jet winds and Sun flares up trouble on Everest
17:37 p.m. EDT Oct 24, 2003
We published this story already Wednesday, but as it created such a buzz in the world news today (USA Today, CNN, AP and 360 stories on Google news up until this hour), here it is again:
October 22, 2003.
Several Himalaya expeditions including the Berg Everest team have severe difficulties with their data communications since yesterday.
In the past three days, two strong centers of dynamic activity have emerged on the sun. The largest is a sunspot cluster roughly 10 times larger than Earth which has already produced a major flare. The NOAA predicts the region will grow and produce additional substantial flare activity. The second not yet visible active region resulted in two powerful eruptions yesterday. The NOAA states, “These eruptions may herald the arrival of a volatile active center with the potential to impact various Earth systems.”
In a Special Advisory Bulletin issued yesterday, the NOAA related:
“Further major eruptions are possible from these active regions as they rotate across the face of the sun over the next two weeks. Agencies impacted by solar flare radio blackouts, geomagnetic storms, and solar radiation storms may experience disruptions over this two-week period. These include satellite and other spacecraft operations, power systems, HF communications, and navigation systems.”
The charged particles emitted from solar activity of this sort can produce a type of “electrical shock” to susceptible systems, temporarily disabling certain functions.
Since yesterday, both Wally Berg’s Everest team and Adventure Consultants’s Ama Dablam team, led by Luiz Benitez, have been experiencing trouble sending data via satellite. At this time, there’s no trouble with voice capability, only data. Wally and Luiz report that even though their Thuraya phones indicate full satellite reception, data connections continually fail after only 15 – 30 seconds. Thus, they’ve been able to send in their latest dispatches. When asked about the trouble, Thuraya told ExplorersWeb that there is “absolutely no problem whatsoever”… but the fact is, expeditions cannot send or receive data and Thuraya’s Web site has also been down all morning.
Updates have also been lacking from the 16 rowing teams out on the Atlantic Ocean. The teams took off from the Canary Islands on Sunday, and have not yet updated their logs. Only two teams have reported in since, both Contact 2.0 teams (out of three). They both do voice dispatches and have reported the same data connection problems with their Iridium satellite phones as the Himalaya expeditions experience with their Thuraya's.
In the meantime, expect dispatch updates in the form of audio files until the situation improves.
Archive image of solar activity courtesy of NOAA.gov
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