The HAARP research facility in Alaska is behind recent appearances of the Northern Lights.
Not true. The Northern Lights were caused by a severe geomagnetic storm produced by the sun and not by research carried out by HAARP.
After the Northern Lights appeared in many parts of the UK again last week, false claims began to recirculate on social media that the displays were actually caused by the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) research facility in Alaska.
But as we’ve explained before, although HAARP can produce faint, artificial aurora, usually not bright enough to see, directly above its transmitter, the Northern Lights are caused by the electromagnetic connection between the sun and earth, and not by HAARP.
One reel on Facebook, shared more than 6,900 times, is captioned: “The ‘air glow’ Haarp project is a real thing. #northernlights #auroraborealis #haarp #truth #staywoke #woke #wakeup”. It includes a picture of the Northern Lights, with a meme of the actor Leonardo DiCaprio laughing in the background and the overlaid text: “when they turn on HAARP and everyone thinks they’ve seen the northern lights”.
Other posts on Facebook claimed: “That's not the northern lights you're seeing. That is the post effects of HAARP after a major weather modification operation.”
While HAARP has previously successfully run experiments that produce artificial “airglow”, an FAQ on its website stresses that the energy the facility generates is not strong enough to produce the optical display seen during a natural aurora.
Full Fact has previously corroborated this with other scientists, including Dr Ciaran Beggan at the British Geological Society, who explained “it is simply not feasible to generate that amount of energy on the ground and transmit it into [the] atmosphere in order to cover a large fraction of the northern hemisphere”.
Dr Darren Baskill, lecturer in physics and astronomy at the University of Sussex, also highlighted the huge amount of energy required to generate the displays across the globe needs “a far greater amount of power” than is available “to the small HAARP project”.
Jim Wild, Professor of Space Physics in the Physics Department at Lancaster University, also explained that the displays of the Northern Lights observed on 10 and 11 October 2024 “were caused by a strong geomagnetic storm, which in turn was triggered by the arrival of an eruption of solar material launched towards Earth a couple of days earlier”.
He said that the recent storm was “broadly comparable” to the one in May, and that storms are more common “around the peak in the Sun’s 11-year cycle of activity, the next of which is expected in 2024 or 2025”, which is why we are seeing seeing the Northern Lights more often in the UK.
We’ve written about HAARP before and how it isn’t responsible for hurricanes or peculiar clouds. Other false claims that have previously spread about the facility include that it caused natural disasters after being “tested on” specific countries. People have been making similarly false claims for over a decade.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because HAARP did not cause the Northern Lights recently witnessed in many parts of the world.
Full Fact fights for good, reliable information in the media, online, and in politics.
Bad information ruins lives. It promotes hate, damages people’s health, and hurts democracy. You deserve better.