Geomagnetic storm, not a HAARP experiment, created dazzling, worldwide northern lights display

A rare, powerful geomagnetic storm over the weekend resulted in the northern lights being visible more widely than normal.

But some social media users said the brilliant light show of green, blue, pink and purple that many people unexpectedly observed was anything but natural. It was the result, they said, of an experiment from the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, commonly known as HAARP. 

"Did y’all enjoy the fabricated light show? Stop giving them so much credit. This was NOT the Aurora Borealis," a May 11 Facebook post’s caption said. 

The post, and multiple social media posts like it, said the light display resulted from a HAARP experiment that was scheduled from May 8 to May 10. But spokespeople for HAARP and for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center said those claims are baseless.

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HAARP is a research site in Gakona, Alaska, that the U.S. military created in the 1990s; the University of Alaska, Fairbanks has managed it since 2015. Researchers from around the U.S. use the site to study the ionosphere, an upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere, using a high-frequency radio transmitter. Perhaps because of its government origin, HAARP has been the subject of numerous baseless claims PolitiFact has debunked that say the weather is being manipulated.

HAARP’s scientific campaign earlier this month had nothing to do with the aurora borealis, spokesperson Becky Lindsey said in an email to PolitiFact.

"The experiment studied mechanisms for the detection of orbiting space debris," Lindsey said. 

Orbiting space debris includes human-made objects, such as old spacecraft or satellite parts. There’s about 9,000 metric tons of debris orbiting Earth, NASA said.

"This experiment is in no way linked to the solar storm or high auroral activity seen around the globe." Lindsey said.

The aurora activity seen around the globe was triggered by a strong geomagnetic storm produced by the sun, Lindsey said, and was predicted well in advance by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

HAARP can create an artificial aurora — one was visible up to 300 miles from its Alaska site after a November 2023 experiment. But the energy HAARP creates is not strong enough to produce the optical display seen during a natural aurora, its website says.

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The northern lights — also known as the aurora borealis — are caused when electrons and protons collide with gases in Earth’s atmosphere, yielding colorful flashes of light that appear to shimmer in the night sky.

There is a similar phenomenon, the aurora australis, in the Southern Hemisphere.

The northern lights are typically seen closer to the north pole, but were visible as far south as Mexico and Hawaii in recent days, said Bryan Brasher, a project manager at the NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center.

Brasher also said many people being able to see the lights in unexpected places resulted from a rare, but perfectly natural, event, a powerful geomagnetic storm.

The Prediction Center on May 9 issued a rare G4 geomagnetic storm watch and on May 10 said in an X post that extreme G5 conditions reached Earth, the first time that’s happened since 2003.

Geomagnetic storms are ranked on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most powerful.

Brasher described the extreme geomagnetic storm as a "series of coronal mass ejections — billions of tons of plasma — traveling at millions of miles an hour, colliding with Earth's magnetosphere," Brasher said.

Brasher said there are dozens of magnetometer stations that measure fluctuations in Earth's magnetic field, and these fluctuations were measured worldwide because of the storm.

A "localized radio transmitter energizing a small part of the ionosphere over Alaska is not going to have a global effect," Brasher said.

Brasher said scientists had the data and imagery to say what caused the solar storm and could determine it was going to hit us and when. They issued several warnings before the event, as severe solar storms can disrupt communications, navigation systems, power grids and radio and satellite operations.

A Facebook post claimed that May’s widely seen aurora borealis was caused by a HAARP experiment conducted May 8 to May 10. The HAARP experiment, however, was to find ways to detect orbital debris in space and was not related to the worldwide auroral display, which a powerful geomagnetic storm caused. HAARP can create an artificial aurora, but the energy it creates is not strong enough to produce the display seen during a natural aurora.

We rate the claim False.