The sun sped up the cycle. Maximum activity may already be underway. What’s going on?

According to astronomers’ calculations, maximum solar activity should occur in 2025. But scientists have been saying for months that it will happen sooner. Scott McIntosh, a heliophysicist and deputy director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, that he believes the Sun has already reached its maximum. However, it may take many years before we can confirm this with certainty. First things first.

Maximum solar activity. The cycle runs faster than it should

The sun changes its activity within 11-year cycles. In each of them, solar activity increases for several years, reaching a maximum, and then decreases for several years until it reaches a minimum. During this time, the north and south magnetic poles change places. It is not clear what the reason for solar cycles is and why they last 11 years (about half of that time activity increases and the other half it decreases). However, scientists can calculate when subsequent periods of solar activity begin and end.

Currently, the Sun is in its 25th cycle, which (according to NASA and NOAA) began in December 2019. Theoretically, maximum solar activity should occur after approximately five and a half years, i.e. in 2025. . This is indicated by the record number of sunspots (which usually appear close to maximum), rapidly increasing activity causing a large number of magnetic storms, and the presence of solar phenomena that are unnatural for this period of the cycle. For example, the number of solar flares is increasing, during which the Sun throws a stream of energetic particles and electromagnetic waves into space. In 2022, five times as many C and M-class flares were recorded as in 2021, and since the beginning of 2023, more X-class flares have been recorded than in the entire previous year.

Maximum solar activity may have already begun. What does it mean?

Solar activity ceased in January, but top-class X solar flares came roaring back in February. One of the spots “spewed” three such flares in less than a day, including the most powerful flare in the last six years. This may indicate that the maximum solar activity of the 25th cycle has actually already begun.

“I think we’ve definitely entered that phase,” McIntosh wrote in an email to Live Science. As he explains, it is difficult to determine the beginning and end of solar maximum in real time, because we can only record the number and occurrence of sunspots. The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) usually reports the start of solar maximum only seven months after the number of sunspots begins to decline. So it may take years before the framework of the current solar cycle can be determined. The solar maximum itself will last for another year, maybe a little shorter, says McIntosh.

During this time, the number of sunspots will decline, but the number of powerful flares peaks just after solar maximum, which means we could be looking at several years of intense magnetic storms. These, in turn, create a real threat not only to artificial satellites in orbit and possibly astronauts in space stations, but also, among others, for power stations on Earth. It is believed that powerful magnetic storms like those of 1859 and 1989 would cause a global catastrophe today. Fortunately, smaller flares (or coronal mass ejections) end only with strong aurora borealis – we could observe such aurora borealis even in Poland, in March (and it was the strongest aurora in years) and April 2023.