The current solar cycle is heating up, with the expected peak still one to three years away.
Solar Cycle 25 was expected to be weaker than average, but some scientists believe it may be among the most active since records began in the 1700s.
Sunspot and solar flare activity can disrupt Earth’s communications and electrical systems, will increase until it reaches a peak between 2023 and 2025.
Early indications are that we may be in for a wild ride in space weather in the coming years. As the sun approaches its next solar maximum, its surface becomes more unsettled with more sunspots, each with the potential to unleash solar flares and coronal mass ejections that can disrupt Earth’s communications and electrical systems.
During the 11-year solar cycle that astronomers have been tracking since the mid-1700s, the sun reaches its solar maximum or the peak of its most intense sunspot activity.
In 2013-2014, the previous solar maximum was very quiet, and scientists predicted another quiet peak for this cycle, known as Solar Cycle 25. Despite the fact that the next maximum is still a year or more away, this cycle is already exceeding expectations for activity and may be the most intense period on the sun since records began.
“The sun’s activity has rapidly increased, and even though we haven’t reached peak levels in this cycle, the sun’s activity is already exceeding predictions,” Nicola Fox, rector of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, wrote on the space agency’s Solar Cycle blog. “As we approach solar maximum in 2025, solar events will become more frequent, affecting our lives and technology on Earth as well as satellites and astronauts in space.”
Solar Cycle 25 was started in 2019 and will peak in sunspot activity between 2023 and 2025 before descending to a solar minimum about five years later, when the sun will likely be completely blank and devoid of sunspots for an extended period of time. The cycle then begins again.
Forecasters were divided about how Solar Cycle 25 would unfold at the start of this cycle.
NOAA and NASA’s official forecast for 2020 predicted a weaker-than-average cycle, similar to Cycle 24. However, not all of the experts agreed. A study led by Scott McIntosh of the National Center for Atmospheric Research was published in the journal Solar Physics around the same time.
Predicted that Solar Cycle 25 “could get a magnitude comparable to the top few since records began” in stark contrast to consensus forecasts,” according to McIntosh and colleagues.
Significant increases in sunspot and solar flare activity on the sun occurred during the first half of 2022, including some of the most powerful flares seen in several years. With the predicted maximum still a few years away, it appears that the McIntosh prediction of a more active solar cycle peak is coming true.
A new Russian study predicts that this cycle will be among the most active ever, with maximum activity occurring as early as late 2023.
The disagreement highlights how much more we still need to learn about the sun’s behavior.
In 2020, McIntosh stated, “Scientists have struggled to predict both the length and the strength of sunspot cycles because we lack a fundamental understanding of the mechanism that drives the cycle.”
Understanding how this cycle works could help cultivate that understanding, but it also threatens to disrupt our society on a never-before-seen scale.
If the upcoming solar maximum is truly historic, it will occur at a time when our presence in space and reliance on satellite communications has grown exponentially.
SpaceX reported earlier this year that a moderately strong geomagnetic storm destroyed a number of its Starlink satellites.
Previous solar maximums also wreaked havoc on the ground and the electrical grid, and little has been done in the last two decades to harden these systems or build in redundancies.
One possible silver lining, according to some scientists, is that if this solar maximum temporarily disables our electrical and communications systems, it will also produce spectacular auroral displays.
