Airline Diverts Flights As Solar Storm Hits

US airline Delta has diverted flights on routes across the polar regions as radiation from a massive solar storm batters the Earth's atmosphere.

The radiation storm has caused dramatic displays of the aurora borealis (the Northern lights) but there are also fears it could disrupt communications, damage satellites and cause power grid outages at northern latitudes.

Atlanta-based Delta said it had altered the course of some flights between Detroit and Asia to avoid communications problems from the storm.

Airline spokesman Anthony Black said. "We are undergoing a series of solar bursts in the sky that are impacting the northern side of the world.

"It can impact your ability to communicate," he said. "So, basically, the polar routes are being flown further south than normal."

The event started late on Sunday with a moderate-sized solar flare that erupted near the centre of the Sun, said Doug Biesecker, a physicist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Prediction Center.

"The flare itself was nothing spectacular, but it sent off a very fast coronal mass ejection travelling four million miles per hour," he said.

A coronal mass ejection releases huge amounts of electromagnetic radiation and matter, causing a geomagnetic storm as it hits Earth. 

Astronomer Dr David Whitehouse told Paste BN the storm, which is now considered the largest since 2003, could cause some disruption to radio communications, but people need not be concerned.

"This was a big solar storm, the biggest one for years and that will affect satellites; it will cause some satellite computers to reboot, it will cause some communications difficulties in northern latitudes, but it's not big enough to cause problems to sat-nav and things like that.

"There are problems from solar storms but you need bigger ones than this to worry most people."

Spectacular sightings of the Northern lights were reported across the north of Britain, as far south as Northumberland, after the solar flare on Sunday.

The auroras - which are usually only spotted over Norway, Iceland and other places further north - could be visible in Scotland and the North of England again on Wednesday if the skies are clear, according to astronomers.