Inclement weather on the Sun’s surface could affect infrastructure on Earth and in space, scientists are predicting, as our host star approaches its

There's a severe solar storm coming. Here's how scientists are preparing

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2024-05-10 17:00:20

Inclement weather on the Sun’s surface could affect infrastructure on Earth and in space, scientists are predicting, as our host star approaches its solar maximum.

NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center issued a severe (G4) geomagnetic storm watch this week , the first since January 2005. Five Earth-directed coronal mass ejections (CMEs) have so far been observed and are expected to arrive on our planet today and over the weekend. Several strong solar flares were observed and associated with a large sunspot on the Sun’s surface , about 16 times as wide as Earth.

The Sun’s solar cycle is an 11-year period in which the star’s magnetic field flips back and forth; this flipping causes sunspots on the star’s surface, where its magnetic field lines are particularly strong, making them venues for dynamic, violent solar events like flares and CMEs. These events spew particles that, when directed at Earth, can disrupt radio communication, the power grid, and cause beautiful aurora as the particles interact with Earth’s atmosphere.

The oversized sunspot is “perhaps the most complex we’ve seen this cycle,” but the storm activity from it is “nothing that can’t be handled, as far as we understand it,” according Shawn Dahl, a space weather forecaster at SWPC, who spoke in a press conference today. “The key point here is that critical infrastructure operators have been notified and that the activity is not over.”