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Northern lights enliven the night sky in September 2022 in Bettles, Alaska.
© Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post
The sun is reaching the peak of its activity cycle - this will be noticeable in different ways.
The sun's resolution for 2024 is here: let's go.
Solar flares, solar surface eruptions and sunspots are expected to multiply and intensify later this year as our yellow star enters its most active phase in two decades.
For people on Earth, this could lead to even more beautiful dancing northern lights far and wide, but also to power outages and satellite disruption.
“Activity levels are higher than they have been in about 20 years, since about 2003,” says Mark Miesch, a member of the solar modeling team at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center.
If the Sun repeats its 2003 behavior, Earth could be in for a treat, but also some problems.
The Halloween storms of 2003 brought dazzling green, red and purple auroras to California, Texas, Florida and even Australia.
They have also disrupted more than half of all spacecraft in Earth orbit, irreparably damaged a satellite and caused communications problems for airlines and research groups in Antarctica.
The Sun's magnetic activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle
A suddenly hectic sun may sound worrying, but the sun's magnetic activity naturally fluctuates in 11-year periods called the solar cycle.
Nearly halfway through the current solar cycle, the Sun is expected to reach its peak activity between January and October 2024, but activity will likely remain high until 2025 or perhaps 2026, according to Space Weather Prediction Center models.
And the upcoming peak should be a decent result compared to the last cycles.
The run-up to this “solar maximum” is already stronger than scientists thought, sending impressive amounts of solar energy and particles to Earth in 2023, leading to rare aurora sightings in Arizona.
It has already produced more eye-catching solar flares and eruptions than the last solar maximum in 2014.
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Still, scientists predict that peak activity will likely be below or around average intensity compared to the long-term average - but it will still be exciting.
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“We're going to see some interesting things in the next year or years,” says Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
“We'll probably see fireworks, whether it'll be like Halloween [2003], I don't know.
We should be prepared.”
How do we know when the sun reaches its peak activity?
The solar maximum becomes clear when it is exceeded and activity decreases.
But observing past solar cycles helps scientists understand what they need to pay attention to quantitatively in advance.
One way to track waxing and waning activity is to count the number of temporary dark spots on the Sun's surface, called sunspots.
Sunspots form “active regions” on the Sun that are often the source of large explosive bursts of energy known as solar storms.
More sunspots generally mean higher solar activity.
“Sunspots are related to the magnetic activity on the sun,” says Miesch, who also conducts research at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
More specifically, they are places where magnetic fields from inside the Sun (where they are generated) pass through the surface into the atmosphere.
“We have known for about 150 years that the number of spots on the sun's surface increases and decreases over a period of about 11 years,” says Miesch.
During this 11-year period, the Sun's north and south poles swap places to reverse its magnetic field.
At the beginning of the 11-year solar cycle, the number of sunspots and magnetic activity are at their lowest, which is called the solar minimum.
In the middle of the cycle, the solar maximum, activity increases and eventually falls back to the minimum.
The Sun is currently in its 25th solar cycle since observations in the 1700s.
The current solar maximum is expected to be below average
Over the past 24 solar cycles, the average number of sunspots at solar maximum was 179 sunspots in the peak month, Miesch said.
(The last solar maximum in April 2014 only reached about 114 sunspots, making this solar cycle the weakest in a century).
For the current solar maximum, 135 to 174 sunspots are predicted in the peak month, which is slightly below average, according to Miesch, who was involved in modeling the current solar cycle and its path.
However, some consider this to be an underestimate.
McIntosh and his colleagues predicted a maximum sunspot number within the average range in their models, which are independent of NOAA.
He said the NOAA forecast "closes in on the average sunspot number" when the error bars are taken into account.
The peak is expected to occur in October 2024, Miesch said, but solar activity and sunspot numbers will remain elevated at least until mid-2025, according to NOAA's January models.
But predicting the sun's behavior can be trickier than a Houdini number.
“We understand a lot of things about the Sun, but predicting when the maximum will be reached still has some margin of error,” said Rachael Filwett, a space physicist at Montana State University who does not work on solar cycle predictions was involved.
But don't worry: Even if this solar maximum ends slightly below average or arrives later, that doesn't mean it will be boring.
Will we see a big storm?
Sky watchers got a taste of the sun's busyness in 2023, when solar storms made rare auroras visible at lower latitudes than usual and disrupted radio signals.
Other recent solar activity has even disrupted smaller communications satellites from space.
Solar storms, called geomagnetic storms because they collide with Earth's magnetic field, are rated on a scale from G1 (mild) to G5 (extreme).
At least one geomagnetic storm last year was classified as G4, the strongest storm to hit Earth in years.
The question for this solar maximum is: Will we see a G5 storm?
The dramatic Halloween storms of 2003, which emerged from a past solar maximum, were classified as G5.
“The most important thing is the complexity of the [active] regions that are emerging.
It’s not about the number of spots,” McIntosh said.
If 2023's strong geomagnetic storms are any indication, McIntosh says it's looking "pretty good" that there will be more big storms.
Large solar storms are more likely to occur in the waning phase
It's hard to say when a big storm will happen.
Statistically, McIntosh says it's normal for G4 and G5 events to occur when the sun is past its solar maximum.
Some of the largest storms to ever hit Earth occurred during the waning phase of the cycle.
“Earth tends to experience more direct impacts as the solar maximum comes to an end because there are more sunspots at lower latitudes that are closer to Earth,” said Delores Knipp, a space physicist at the University of Colorado at Boulder .
The sunspots in the waning phase can also be more complex, says Knipp.
When the sun enters a solar minimum, sunspots migrate from mid-latitudes to lower latitudes.
Some research suggests that this migration may lead to overlap between the two hemispheres and to more magnetically complex flares on the Sun.
That's good news for aurora hunters because the chance of seeing a major storm continues for a year or two even after solar maximum - whether it occurs in 2024 or later.
Aside from the Northern Lights, the solar maximum will also provide unique opportunities for the upcoming total solar eclipse on April 8th.
According to scientists, during the total solar eclipse, the Sun will have many more streams of particles from its outermost atmosphere (the corona) that eclipse observers may be able to see.
“During the solar eclipse in April we will see a much, much more sophisticated corona,” said Miesch.
This article is part of Hidden Planet, a column that explores wondrous, unexpected and unusual scientific findings about our planet and beyond.
About the author
Kasha Patel
writes the weekly Hidden Planet column, covering scientific topics surrounding Earth, from our inner core to space storms headed toward our planet.
She also reports on weather, climate and environmental issues.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on January 14, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.