Here comes the Sun

Abstract

One after another, the solar storms keep coming our way, courtesy of the current Solar Maximum, a period of heightened solar activity that could last for several years and is part of the Sun's approximate 11‐year cycle.For example, the U.S. Space Environment Center (SEC) in Boulder, Colorado—which is already ramped up for increased activity due to the “solar max”—issued a July 11 space weather advisory about the occurrence of strong solar flares producing moderate‐tostrong radio blackouts. SEC, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),also forecast a minor radiation storm for later that day in the wake of the flares, and a geomagnetic storm from the associated coronal mass ejection (CME) affecting Earth a few days later. While the CME from that alert was en route on the solar wind, a sunspot group on July 14 produced the largest observed solar radiation storm since 1989, ranking as a strong S3 on NOAA's space weather scales (See Eos, July 18, 2000), according to SEC.