The Sun has had a wild few days, and the ramifications of its tantrums are lashing Earth from across the chasm of space.
The Sun produced an intense X-class flare on August 7 that resulted in radio outages across North America.
A combined “cannibal” coronal mass ejection (CME) that erupted on August 5th, according to space weather forecasts, was also expected to strike our atmosphere briefly. Forecasters now believe it may have completely missed, while it very likely could still cause a late-arriving solar storm.
As the Sun intensifies in the next months, heading toward the apex of its 11-year activity cycle, which is anticipated to occur in July 2025, we could expect to witness more of this type of solar behavior.
Over the past 18 months, the Sun has steadily spat out daily eruptions, but they are increasingly intensifying. Every X-class solar flare—the strongest category we have—was observed in June and July.
In addition, we nearly daily observed M-class flares in July, which are the second-most potent flares.
We have already witnessed two X-class flares and two M-class flares in August, and on August 5, in addition to an X1.63 flare, we also witnessed two M-class flares and nine weaker C-class flares.
Undoubtedly, we live in fascinating solar times.
The sunspot region that released the X1.5-class flare that resulted in radio blackouts on August 7 was located right on the edge of the solar disk and was just about to rotate out of sight.
Nevertheless, it was powerful enough to cause a radio blackout throughout the Pacific and on the North American continent.
Radio blackouts may have happened during the 5 August flare, which likewise came from the disk’s edge, but they have not yet been officially recorded. Coronal mass ejections, which occur when massive amounts of material, on the order of billions of tons, are propelled out of the Sun and into the Solar System, were present along with the 5 August flare.
A cannibal CME is what the Sun released on August 5. This occurs when two eruptions happen very quickly after one another, with the second eruption moving faster than the first and absorbing and overtaking it to create a stronger wave of plasma and magnetic fields that travels through the Solar System.
This eruption is predicted to strike Earth with only a passing glance because it came from the Sun’s edge. However, even a glancing hit from a cannibal CME is anticipated to create a quite significant geomagnetic storm. The temporary but large disturbance in the magnetic field of the Earth is the result of an energy exchange with the solar material that is approaching.
You probably won’t notice anything in your daily life because Earth is effectively shielded from the full brunt by the magnetic field. But at night, we might be in for a treat: the flood of particles is anticipated to produce a breathtaking aurora show over Alaska, Canada, and the far northern sections of the US.
