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From Northumberland’s coast to the Scottish Highlands, the Northern Lights have been dazzling the UK once again – ribbons of red and green flickering above Amble, Aberdeen, and even parts of Yorkshire. Clear skies and heightened solar activity combined to create one of the most striking auroral displays in recent years.
The phenomenon, caused by coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the Sun, occurs when charged particles collide with Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere. These same disturbances that enchant skywatchers also serve as a reminder to risk professionals: beautiful though they are, they signal the arrival of geomagnetic storms capable of wreaking havoc on modern infrastructure.
According to the UK Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre, the Sun is currently in an active phase, and further displays may be visible across northern England and Scotland over the coming nights.
The last time the world faced a truly extreme solar event was the Carrington Event of 1859, when telegraph wires reportedly caught fire. In today’s electrified, interconnected economy, a storm of that magnitude could disable satellites, disrupt GPS navigation, and trigger long-duration power failures.
Lloyd’s of London has modelled comparable scenarios and warned that a major geomagnetic disturbance could cause global economic losses of up to £1.9 trillion over five years, primarily through power-grid damage and extended business interruption.
“The insurance industry is well equipped to help businesses prepare for future solar storms,” Lloyd’s noted in a recent Futureset analysis. “As an industry we should be prepared for a range of possible solar-storm scenarios and draw on our wealth of risk experience.”
Unlike windstorms or floods, solar storms leave no visible trail. The damage begins invisibly, when geomagnetically induced currents surge through power lines and transformers. These currents can destroy components that take a year or more to replace.
In an insurance context, such events could generate contingent business-interruption losses on a massive scale: even companies far from the physical fault could be paralysed if their power, data, or telecoms suppliers fail.
Yet most property and cyber policies contain exclusions for “electrical disturbance” or “power failure” unless originating on the insured premises – leaving a coverage grey zone around what’s colloquially called space weather.
“There is no model to understand the type of losses that could be likely,” BMS Group has cautioned, though firms like Verisk have begun tracking coronal mass ejections and other solar hazards.
Some carriers are experimenting with parametric products, designed to trigger payouts when geomagnetic indices exceed a set threshold. Gallagher Specialty has warned that “the heightened solar activity… could leave the insurance industry facing a barrage of disruptive claims.”
The UK National Risk Register already lists severe space weather as a top-tier natural hazard, alongside pandemic and cyber risk. Government agencies and grid operators continue to strengthen resilience measures, but analysts note that infrastructure remains vulnerable to long-duration power loss and satellite disruption.
For now, Britain’s lights remain on – and the northern night sky glows with photogenic brilliance rather than peril. But as the Solar Cycle 25 peaks through 2026, both astronomers and actuaries will be watching closely.
The same forces that painted Northumberland’s skies green this week could, in a stronger storm, test the limits of the world’s energy systems — and the insurance industry’s ability to price the unseeable.
In September 1859, British astronomer Richard Carrington recorded an intense solar flare – an eruption that would later bear his name. Hours later, Earth’s magnetic field was struck by a vast coronal mass ejection, triggering auroras visible as far south as the Caribbean and setting telegraph wires ablaze across Europe and North America.
The “Carrington Event” remains the most powerful geomagnetic storm on record. In today’s hyperconnected world, a storm of comparable strength could cripple satellites, disrupt GPS and radio communications, and knock out sections of the global power grid.
Lloyd’s of London modelling suggests that a similar event today could inflict global losses approaching £1.9 trillion, largely through prolonged outages and supply-chain paralysis.
For insurers, it remains the defining reference point for solar-storm exposure – proof that one extraordinary burst of solar energy could illuminate the skies and simultaneously darken the modern economy.
A solar flare is a sudden, intense burst of radiation from the Sun’s surface, created when powerful magnetic fields around sunspots twist, snap, and reconnect.
This process releases enormous amounts of energy – equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs detonating at once – across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to X-rays.
Flares often accompany coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which hurl charged particles into space. When these particles reach Earth, they interact with our magnetic field and upper atmosphere, creating spectacular auroras – and sometimes geomagnetic storms that can disrupt satellites, communications, and power grids.
Solar flares are most common near the solar maximum, the peak of the Sun’s 11-year activity cycle. Scientists monitor them using satellites such as NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory to provide early warnings of potential space-weather impacts.