(ORDO NEWS) — The Sun continues its rampant behavior with flares and coronal mass ejections almost every day since mid-January.
This means that the inevitable has happened: some of these eruptions have occurred in the general direction of the Earth, which means that geomagnetic storms are waiting for us.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Forecasting Center and the British Met Office have issued advisories for weak to moderate geomagnetic storms over the next couple of days.
This does not mean that we have nothing to worry about; in fact, over the past couple of days, we have already been hit by weak to moderate geomagnetic storms reaching G1 and G2 on the five-level solar storm scale.
This level indicates a possible deterioration in the quality of high-frequency radio signals at high latitudes, and corrective action may be required for the satellites due to the change in impedance. There may be fluctuations in the power grid and some disturbances in the activity of migratory animals.
We can also see a burst of both the northern and southern lights.
Solar storms are fairly common space weather whenever our Sun becomes more active. As a result of flares, solar winds cause disturbances in the magnetic field of the Earth and the upper atmosphere.
The Sun’s corona, the outermost region of its atmosphere, is erupting, blasting plasma and magnetic fields into space. If the flare is directed towards the Earth, the collision of the solar ejecta with the Earth’s magnetic field can cause a geomagnetic storm.
According to the Space Weather aurora forecast, March 14 and 15 have maximum levels of Kp 6 and Kp 5, respectively, according to the ten-point Kp index of geomagnetic activity. This means a high probability of bright, dynamic auroras.
Solar maximum should occur around July 2025. It can be difficult to predict how active any particular cycle will be, but there is reason to believe that we may be entering the strongest cycle recorded to date.
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