As the solar maximum comes nearer, scientists expect more solar flares that could strike Earth. Together with the geomagnetic storm, a solar flare belongs to a class called space weather and is characterized by large explosions from the Sun that emit intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation.
Its intensity determines what classification a solar flare could belong to, such as A-, B-, C-, and M-classes. However, according to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the most powerful are X-class solar flares that can be visible with their bright flashes in a specific region of the Sun that could shine for a few minutes.
Causes of Solar Flare
The Sun is a magnetically tangled mess formed by electrically charged gasses that creates electrical currents that work as a magnetic dynamo, NASA says.
Moreover, NASA Space Place reveals that these magnetic fields twist, tangle, and rearrange due to the tumultuous nature of the gases that form them. This is known as solar activity, which may lead to solar flares from the surface and emit massive amounts of electromagnetic radiation similar to the energy in radio waves, microwaves, X-rays, gamma rays, as well as visible light.
Scientists can forecast when a solar flare will occur based on the number of sunspots or dark regions on the Sun's surface. Sunspots are darker, colder areas of the solar surface with extremely powerful magnetic fields.
The NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center explains that solar activity follows an approximately 11-year cycle with the peak of sunspot activity corresponding with solar maximum and a sunspot hiatus coinciding with solar minimum. That means solar flares are unlikely to occur during periods of low solar activity when there are no sunspots.
How Solar Flares Affect Earth
As the solar maximum of the solar cycle 25 nears, solar activity is also increasing. As per SpaceWeatherLive.com, the solar maximum is expected in 2025 with records showing the most recent 24 hours of solar X-ray data from the primary GOES-16 satellite and displaying such activity in useful graphs, along with the percentage chance of different types of solar flares, to find out if there is a solar flare today and to keep up with the latest space weather findings.
Flares of many varieties have different impacts on Earth, satellites, and even astronauts, Space.com reported. Fortunately, A and B-class solar flares are the most common and also the weakest of the solar flare classes. They are too weak to have any major impact on the planet while SpaceWeatherLive.com says that C-flares are similarly rather faint, having little or no influence on Earth.
But things start to become interesting with the two major kinds of flares. M- and X-classes can cause coronal mass ejections, which are enormous releases of plasma and the sun's magnetic field.
They have the potential to disturb the Earth's magnetosphere and cause solar storms, which might cause auroras to appear closer to the equator than under calm conditions, like what happened in Quebec, Canada in 1989.
More so, solar flares can also result in either minor or extensive radio blackouts on the side of Earth facing the Sun. SpaceWeatherLive reports that solar flares usually affect High Frequency (HF) radio communications, as well as Very High Frequency (VHF) and sometimes higher frequencies. The severity of the blackouts could depend on the intensity of solar flares.
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