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 Centre.

“The flare itself was nothing spectacular, but it sent off a very fast coronal mass ejection travelling 4 million miles per hour (6.4 million kph),” he said.

A rush of radiation in the form of solar protons has already begun bombarding the Earth and is likely to continue through until the end of the week.

The radiation storm is the largest of its kind since 2005 but still ranks only a three on the scale of one to five, enough to be considered “strong” but not “severe,” Mr Biesecker said.

For instance, the storm could spell disruptions to airline flights, oil operations, Arctic exploration and space satellites.

“It’s the people who need GPS (global positioning system) accuracy of centimetres who have to worry, not people who want to know if you’re going to turn the car 30 metres ahead.”

The volcano has remained active and the ash plume from the original eruption has travelled across the southern Atlantic Oceans and under Africa to stretch into the Indian Ocean. Volcanic ash is affecting the areas of responsibility of three Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres: Buenos Aires, Toulouse and Darwin.

It halted coal production at the Cliffs Natural Resources mine in Alabama.

The second-biggest US nuclear power plant, the Browns Ferry facility in Alabama, may be down for weeks after its power was knocked out and the plant automatically shut, avoiding a nuclear disaster, officials said.

In Tuscaloosa, the twisters, including one that was 1.6-kilometres wide, cut a path of destruction, reducing houses to rubble, flipping cars and knocking out utilities.

Of the more than 150 tornadoes that rampaged from west to east across the south this week, the National Weather Service confirmed the one that struck Smithville in Mississippi’s Monroe County on Wednesday was a rare EF-5 tornado, with winds reaching 328km per hour.

This is the highest rating on the Enhanced Fujita scale that measures tornado intensity.

A sunspot is an area of highly organized magnetic activity on the surface of the sun. The new 11-year cycle, is expected to build gradually, with the number of sunspots and solar storms reaching a maximum by 2012, though devastating storms can occur at any time.

The eruption blasts a torrent of charged plasma particles, called a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), towards Earth at about 900 kilometres per second,.

A direct hit from a CME could trigger a huge geomagnetic storm as incoming particles bounce off the Earth’s geomagnetic field, where it can bring down power grids, disrupt critical radio communications, and threaten astronauts with harmful radiation. Storms can also knock out commercial communications satellites and swamp Global Positioning System signals. Routine activities such as talking on a cell phone or getting money from an ATM machine could suddenly halt over a large part of the globe.

“Our growing dependence on highly sophisticated, space-based technologies means we are far more vulnerable to space weather today than in the past,”

On March 13th, 1989 a huge solar induced magnetic storm played havoc with the ionosphere, and the earth’s magnetic field. This storm, the second largest storm experienced in 50 years, totally shut down Hydro-Quebec, the power grid servicing Canada’s Quebec province.

In the United Kingdom the Royal Air Force took over a major role of collecting weather data during WW11and in early 1941 established a small number of meteorological reconnaissance units that grew at its peak to eighteen squadrons with over 750 personnel. The task of gathering vital meteorological information was the first step in forecasting the weather so that allied generals could undertake military actions with increased confidence and minimum risk. The weather conditions encountered on many of the flights were very hostile and operations called for exceptional qualities of dedication and courage by the crews. Reconnaissance sorties were both flown deep into enemy territory and over the surrounding seas and hostile waters of the Atlantic Ocean.  By the end of the war 16,000 sorties had been flown and 52 aircraft failed to return.

The Handley Page Halifax bomber was the aircraft mainly used and equipped with scientific metrological equipment for observing the weather. Often the pilot had to ascend to fly at 500mbar atmospheric pressure. This was almost the maximum height for the Halifax and if cloud tops such as those of cumulonimbus were high and thick, a bumpy flight followed with oxygen masks worn by crew. Another hazard encountered at this height was the strength of the winds associated with the Polar Front jet stream.  Very little was known about jet streams in 1940’s and it was this phenomena encountered by the American Air force pilots when high level  bombing of Japan who found they could save on fuel by taking advantage of the Jet stream. A common feature of our jumbo jet passenger planes today. The Japanese also became aware of the advantages of the jet stream and used it to create alarm and dependency among the USA population by dropping incendiary bombs on American soil from balloons carried on a jet stream.

The fire and disaster management agency said 54,386 people, nearly half of them over 65, were taken to hospital with heatstroke between May 31 and September 12 – 1,824 of them in a critical condition.

The agency said 170 people were confirmed dead shortly after arriving at hospital, and more were believed to have died later.

Japan has experienced its hottest summer since 1898, when records began, according to the meteorological agency.

In August the mercury often soared above 35 degrees Celsius in many areas of the country.

The average temperature nationwide between June and August was 1.64 degrees hotter than normal for the period, forecasters said.

The previous record margin, set in 1994, was 1.36 degrees.

The new ice island, which broke off on Thursday, will enter a remote place called the Nares Strait, about 1,000 kilometres south of the North Pole between Greenland and Canada.

Professor of ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware, Andreas Muenchow, said he had expected an ice chunk to break off from the Petermann Glacier, one of the two largest remaining ones in Greenland, because it had been growing in size for seven or eight years. But he did not expect it to be so large.

“The freshwater stored in this ice island could keep the Delaware or Hudson Rivers flowing for more than two years,” Professor Muenchow said.

“It could also keep all US public tap water flowing for 120 days.”

He said it was hard to judge whether the event occurred due to global warming because records on the sea water around the glacier have only been kept since 2003.