The sun cries the moon whispers a quiet storm

That means it doesnвЂ™t neatly connect to EarthвЂ™s magnetic field, which is also aligned northward - the field lines tend to repel each other, typically leading to calm space weather conditions. On that August day in 2014, the region of the SunвЂ™s magnetic field around Earth happened to be aligned northward.

The SunвЂ™s magnetic field has a wavy pattern as it stretches out into the solar system, meaning it can be aligned northward or southward depending on where Earth sits in it.

In space, though, that convective energy comes from above - thanks to the magnetic fields of the Earth and Sun interacting and shearing across one another. On Earth, that convective process occurs from below: heat from warm ocean waters drives evaporation and rising air, dumping energy into the atmosphere that gets focused by inrushing wind. Like their atmospheric counterparts, this space storm was instigated by an area of low pressure that gave rise to rapid convection. The moniker вЂњspace hurricaneвЂќ isnвЂ™t just a catchy nickname - the physics of how it formed are actually analogous to how вЂњnormalвЂќ hurricanes gather and focus energy in the lower atmosphere. вЂњUntil now, it was uncertain that space plasma hurricanes even existed, so to prove this with such a striking observation is incredible,вЂќ said co-author Mike Lockwood of the University of Reading in a press release. But it was only recently uncovered in archival data by a team led by researchers at Shandong University in China. The phenomenon was captured in real-time by U.S. The solar wind was calm and slack, and the orientation of the SunвЂ™s magnetic field was stable, not conducive to producing much space weather.Д«ut then, hundreds of miles above the North Pole, the ionosphere suddenly whipped itself into a fury, spawning a massive space hurricane some 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) wide - a cyclone of plasma swirling above Earth for eight hours. The morning of Augwas a quiet one in EarthвЂ™s ionosphere.

The sun cries the moon whispers a quiet storm