As carbon dioxide continues to rise in Earth’s upper atmosphere, the way solar storms interact with it may shift dramatically.
New modeling suggests that future geomagnetic storms will occur in a colder, thinner atmosphere, causing a sharper spike in density despite the overall reduction. This change could increase satellite drag and disrupt critical services like GPS and communications.
Rising CO₂ in the Upper Atmosphere Could Alter Storm Impacts
Scientists have found that rising levels of carbon dioxide high in Earth’s atmosphere will alter how geomagnetic storms affect the planet. The discovery carries significant consequences for the thousands of satellites that circle Earth, according to new research led by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR).
Geomagnetic storms occur when bursts of charged particles from the Sun collide with Earth’s atmosphere. These solar events are becoming a greater concern for a society that relies heavily on technology. When storms strike, they temporarily make the upper atmosphere denser. This added density increases drag on satellites, affecting their speed, orbital height, and lifespan.
Using advanced computer modeling, the research team determined that during future storms the upper atmosphere will not become as dense as it does today during storms of the same intensity. The reason is that the background density will already be lower, so the overall peak will not climb as high as it does in present-day conditions.
Why Future Storms May Feel More Severe
However, the relative magnitude of the density increase — the rise from baseline to peak during a multiday storm — will be greater with future storms.
“The way that energy from the Sun affects the atmosphere will change in the future because the background density of the atmosphere is different and that creates a different response,” said NSF NCAR scientist Nicholas Pedatella, the lead author. “For the satellite industry, this is an especially important question because of the need to design satellites for specific atmospheric conditions.”
The study, a collaboration with Japan’s Kyushu University, was published in Geophysical Research Letters.
A Colder, Thinner Sky: How CO₂ Changes Upper Atmosphere
Earth’s upper atmosphere has become increasingly important in recent decades because of society’s dependence on advanced navigation systems, online data transmission, national security applications, and other technologies that rely on satellite operations.
Unlike the lower atmosphere, which warms with emissions of carbon dioxide, the upper atmosphere becomes colder. This has to do with the varying impacts of carbon dioxide: instead of absorbing and reemitting heat to nearby molecules in the relatively dense air near Earth’s surface, carbon dioxide reemits the heat out into space at high altitudes where the air is much thinner.
Modeling the Future of Geomagnetic Storms
Previous studies have estimated the extent to which increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will lead to a decrease in the upper atmosphere’s neutral density, or its concentration of non-ionized particles such as oxygen and nitrogen. But Pedatella and his colleagues posed a somewhat different question: how will future atmospheric density change during powerful geomagnetic storms?
The researchers homed in on the geomagnetic superstorm of May 10-11, 2024, when a series of powerful solar disturbances known as coronal mass ejections buffeted Earth’s atmosphere. They analyzed how the atmosphere would have responded to the same storm in 2016 and in three future years that will each occur around the minimum of the 11-year solar cycle (2040, 2061, and 2084).
To perform the analysis, they turned to an NSF NCAR-based modeling system, the Community Earth System Model Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model with thermosphere-ionosphere eXtension, that simulates the entire atmosphere from Earth’s surface to the upper thermosphere, 500-700 kilometers (about 310-435 miles) above the surface. This enables scientists to determine how changes in the lower atmosphere, such as higher concentrations of greenhouse gases, can affect remote regions of the atmosphere far aloft.
Sharper Spikes, Lower Density: What Simulations Reveal
They ran the simulations on the Derecho supercomputer at the NSF NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center.
The researchers found that, later this century, various regions of the upper atmosphere will be 20-50% less dense at the peak of a storm comparable to the one that occurred last year, assuming significantly higher carbon dioxide levels. However, compared with the atmosphere’s density just before and after the storm, the relative change in density will be greater. Whereas such a storm now more than doubles the density at its peak, it may nearly triple it in the future. This is because the same storm will have a proportionately larger impact on a less dense atmosphere.
Pedatella said more research is needed to better understand how space weather will change, including studying different types of geomagnetic storms and whether their impacts will vary at various times in the 11-year solar cycle, when the atmosphere’s density changes.
Understanding Space Weather in a Changing Climate
“We now have the capability with our models to explore the very complex interconnections between the lower and upper atmosphere,” he said. “It’s critical to know how these changes will occur because they have profound ramifications for our atmosphere.”
Reference: “Impact of Increasing Greenhouse Gases on the Ionosphere and Thermosphere Response to a May 2024-Like Geomagnetic Superstorm” by Nicholas M. Pedatella, Huixin Liu, Han-Li Liu, Adam Herrington and Joseph McInerney, 14 June 2025, Geophysical Research Letters.
DOI: 10.1029/2025GL116445
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2 Comments
A Colder, Thinner Sky: How CO₂ Changes Upper Atmosphere.
VERY GOOD.
Please ask researchers to think deeply:
What is the physical essence of temperature change?
An entire generation has been severely misled, poisoned and fooled by so-called peer-reviewed publications. In today’s physics, the so-called peer-reviewed journals—including Physical Review Letters, Nature, Science, and others—stubbornly insist on and promote the following:
1. Even though θ and τ particles exhibit differences in experiments, physics can claim they are the same particle. This is science.
2. Even though topological vortices and antivortices have identical structures and opposite rotational directions, physics can define their structures and directions as entirely different. This is science.
3. Even though two sets of cobalt-60 rotate in opposite directions and experiments reveal asymmetry, physics can still define them as mirror images of each other. This is science.
4. Even though vortex structures are ubiquitous—from cosmic accretion disks to particle spins—physics must insist that vortex structures do not exist and require verification. Only the particles that like God, Demonic, or Angelic are the most fundamental structures of the universe. This is science.
5. Even though everything occupies space and maintains its existence in time, physics must still debate and insist on whether space exists and whether time is a figment of the human mind. This is science.
6. Even though space, with its non-stick, incompressible, and isotropic characteristics, provides a solid foundation for the development of physics, physics must still insist that the ideal fluid properties of space do not exist. This is science.
And so on.
The so-called peer-reviewed journals—including Physical Review Letters, Nature, Science, and others openly define differences as sameness, sameness as differences, existence as nonexistence, and nonexistence as existence—all while deceiving and fooling the public with so-called “impact factors (IF),” never knowing what shame is.
The universe is not a God, nor is it merely Particles. Moreover, it is not Algebra, Formulas, or Fractions. The universe is the superposition, deflection, entanglement, and locking of spacetime vortex geometries, the interaction and balance of topological vortices and their fractal structures. Topological invariants are the identical intrinsic properties between two isomorphic topological spaces. Different civilizations may create distinct mathematical codes or tools to describe the universality and specificity of these topological invariants under different physical laws.
Topology provides stability blueprints, but specific physics (spatial features, gravitational collapse, fluid viscosity, quantum measurement) dictates vortex generation, evolution, and decay. If researchers are interested in this, please visit https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/1916783850291466914, https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/1933484562941457487 and https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/1925124100134790589.
“As carbon dioxide continues to rise in Earth’s upper atmosphere, the way solar storms interact with it MAY shift dramatically.”
When reading science articles, I’m a lot more comfortable with and accepting of numeric probabilities with associated margins of error than I am with ambiguous lawyer words like “may” or “could.” “Could” only means that it is not impossible. It tells us little about the probability other than suggesting that the probability is low.