Sunspots are set to become more frequent. Scientists predict the current solar activity to reach its peak between 2023 and 2028.
Just like monsoon, hurricane, cyclone seasons and other weather patterns on Earth, a solar ‘hurricane season’ is about to begin 93 million miles away from Earth. The sunspot activity during solar storms on the sun’s surface is set to increase. This is likely to result in more coronal mass ejections (CMEs) heading towards Earth.
Solar storm is one of the more popular science terms in common lingo in 2021. These are storms originating on the surface of the sun. Linked to these solar storms, sunspots are a temporary phenomenon where spots on the sun’s surface appear darker. The sunspots are cooler than their surrounding but have stronger magnetic fields which eventually get entangled and burst. Erupting sunspots eject blasts of energy that sometimes can be in Earth’s direction. Sunspots appear small due to the sun’s massive size by some can be up to 10 times larger than Earth.
During solar storms, most solar flares and CMEs are ejected from sunspots or a region of sunspots. Such flares hitting Earth can cause potentially significant disruptions. This can impact the reliability of some technologies crucial to our daily functioning on Earth.
As per experts, the last three to four years witnessed a period of solar minimum, which means the least number of sunspots. But that is set to change.
What is sun's hurricane season?
There are seasons when increased activity is recorded on the sun's surface. During these times, the frequency of sunspot appearance and eruption on the sun’s surface increases.
Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the body that keeps a tab on space weather around the clock, monitor such sunspots and predict seasons of heightened solar activity with the help of Earth- and satellite-based sensors. Bill Murtagh, a scientist at the SWPC explains the phenomenon, “The sun has negative and positive polarity, just like Earth. During this 11-year period, it does a reversal of the polarity. So negative becomes positive and positive becomes negative. During the middle of that process and transition, that's when those sunspots emerge. So we go through a process when we are in the middle of this transition we get lots of sunspots and lots of space weather.”
With the active season for sunspots set to begin, the scientist said that the current solar activity will reach its peak between 2023 and 2028.
Disruptions possible due to solar activity
Solar eruptions can vary in magnitude. While the bigger ones can reach Earth in as less as 16 hours, the slowest flares can take several days.
Energy in the form of solar flares and CMEs hurtled from the sun towards Earth can cause some significant disruptions like solar flare radio blackouts and solar radiation storms that can be dangerous for satellites and astronauts. Radiation storms can impact planes flying in polar regions which can force airlines to re-route flights. Geomagnetic storms caused by the flares can also disrupt power grids in some regions.
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 "Explainer: What is Sun’s ‘hurricane season’ that is set to begin soon?")
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