Strong eruptions from the sun have the potential to harm astronauts and cutting-edge technology both on Earth and in space. Galileo Galilei discovered sunspots with his telescope at the beginning of the 17th century. It was discovered in the 19th century that sunspots have a regular occurrence and typically last for 11 years.

More than 80 observatories throughout the world now routinely monitor sunspots, and researchers have amassed sunspot data for more than 400 years, making it the oldest scientific experiment in human history.

Sunspots are visible signs of strong magnetic fields that have come up through the surface of the sun from its center. The magnetic tubes that carry solar matter come out of one sunspot, make a big loop, and then go back into the sun’s surface through another sunspot. The majority of sunspots occur in pairs, and like a magnet, their polarity is always opposing. These loops store free magnetic energy, which can then be rapidly released, for instance in the form of a flare or plasma ejection.

A solar flare has the ability to produce 100,000 times more energy in a few minutes than all of the power plants on Earth do in a year. Within eight minutes, the flare’s light reaches Earth, where it is absorbed by the planet’s thick atmosphere, safeguarding life below.

However, this has a cost; radio communication and GPS can break down. For instance, a solar flare caused planes to vanish from radars in Sweden in November 2015. Airlines are also obliged to cancel flights over the poles when the sun is in a stormy mood because radio communication is disrupted by storms.

Usually, right after a flare, clouds of plasma are shot out of the sun’s corona and into space. Large, billion-ton magnetic plasma bubbles known as coronal mass ejections rapidly spread out from the sun and can collide with Earth in a couple of days if their orbits coincide. The sun uses a geomagnetic storm and the aurora borealis to communicate its mood to Earth.

A new solar cycle (number 25) is already rising, and we can observe how more and more sunspots are developing on the sun. More sunspots mean more solar storms, flares, and coronal mass ejections. As part of Elon Musk’s Starlink internet project, SpaceX just sent 49 satellites into space. Unfortunately, the majority of the CubeSats were lost and failed to reach the intended orbit. The solar storm that triggered this breakdown cost more than $50 million USD. 

“Thus predictions of solar activity are extremely important for planning satellite launches, long-term space missions, prediction of radiation exposures on airplane flights, and many other space weather applications to live in harmony with a stormy mood of the sun,” according to lead author Tatiana Podladchikova.

In a recent study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, the authors came up with a new way to predict how strong the 11-year solar cycle will be. The researchers demonstrated that the maximum rate of sunspot growth during the ascending phase of a solar cycle serves as a reliable indicator of the solar cycle’s amplitude. Using the newly released catalog of Hemispheric Sunspot Numbers, the researchers demonstrated that solar cycle amplitude forecasts are more accurate when the history of solar activity is studied separately for the two hemispheres of the sun.

“The solar magnetic field is the driver of the 11-year solar cycle and of energetic eruptions from our sun. We have learned from our study,” adds Astrid Veronig, a professor at the University of Graz and the director of the Kanzelhöhe Observatory for Solar and Environmental Research, is a co-author of the study, “that we can obtain more accurate predictions of solar activity when using hemispheric sunspot data, which capture the asymmetric and out-of-phase behavior of the solar magnetic field evolution in the north and the south solar hemispheres. “

“This study allows us to accurately determine the evolution of the solar cycle well ahead of time and prepare ourselves in case of an extreme space weather event,” adds Shantanu Jain, a Ph.D. student at Skoltech and one of the study’s co-authors, emphasizing the relevance of their new research on solar cycle forecasts in practice. 

“This study allows us to accurately determine the evolution of the solar cycle well ahead of time and prepare ourselves in case of an extreme space weather event,” adds Shantanu Jain, a Ph.D. student at Skoltech and one of the study’s co-authors, emphasizing the relevance of their new research on solar cycle forecasts in practice. 

“With rising dependence on technology in the 21st century,” according to the co-author, “an extreme space weather event can disrupt our daily life as it can damage the power grids, and communications lines and affect the internet causing massive economic losses. However effective and accurate space weather prediction techniques can help us to prevent such scenarios.”

The findings of the current study support the critical need for ongoing data collecting on the sun’s hemispheres and independent research into them. 

“Also worth noting that our method can be used in real-time, we can predict the cycle amplitude continuously over the development of the ascending phase of a solar cycle and update the prediction when the latest value of the growth rate is larger than the previous one. With currently available data, we predict that the lower estimate of the amplitude of the current solar cycle (no. 25) will be 110±26, which is comparable with the previous 11-year solar cycle (no. 24),” Olga Sutyrina, a study co-author and MSc graduate from Skoltech who is now pursuing a career as a research scientist at Schlumberger, says.

“Such mid-term predictions can only rest on long past data series retracing the actual evolution of the solar cycle during centuries. Specifically, this work,” adds Frédéric Clette, co-author of the paper and director of the SILSO World Data Center, “took advantage of the newly re-calibrated sunspot number from WDC-SILSO, combined with hemispheric information retrieved from the Greenwich photographic catalog. This data combination produced an even richer statistical base for building this new prediction technique.”

Tatiana Podladchikova concludes, “And whatever storms may rage, we wish everyone good weather in space.”

Source: DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202243509

Image Credit: Getty

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