2024 is shaping up to be a busy year for solar news, but what can we expect in 2025?
In April, millions of people in North America can see a total solar eclipse. This was followed in May by the largest geomagnetic storm in 20 consecutive years. coronal mass ejection (coronal mass ejection) brings widespread northern and southern lights to lower latitudes. This allowed millions of people around the world to see the aurora for the first time.
In October, high-intensity solar activity once again triggered a strong geomagnetic storm on the earth, and low-latitude auroras once again appeared widely. After this incident, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced in a joint press release that we have officially entered the solar maximum period current period solar cycle — Solar cycle 25.
Understand the solar cycle
Solar activity rises and falls periodically during the 11-year solar cycle. Each cycle begins and ends with periods of low solar activity, with peaks in between. Periods of low activity and high activity are called solar minimum and solar maximum, respectively.
By historical definition, Solar Cycle 1 occurred between 1755 and 1766, sunThe current cycle is in the 25th solar cycle. However, the specific solar maximum is defined as the highest month after 13 months of smoothing. sunspot number.
Smoothed sunspot values, represented by the purple line below (from NOAA’s Solar Cycle Progress website), unlike the black curve showing monthly sunspot measurements. Because the smoothed values are calculated as a 13-month rolling average, the latest data is six months behind the current date. Therefore, a specific solar maximum cannot be confirmed until several months (perhaps a year) after it occurs. Because of this, and because it’s impossible to know how many sunspots the next month will bring, we won’t know exactly when the solar maximum occurs until several months (perhaps a year) later.
What we do know is that the peak of solar cycle 25 has exceeded the peak of solar cycle 24 in 2014. peak value.
What will happen in 2025?
In 2024, the sun will bring us a total of eclipse and spread widely aurora. Unfortunately, there won’t be any total solar eclipses in 2025, but there will be partial solar eclipses in March and September, visible in parts of North America, Europe and New Zealand. However, as solar activity continues to increase, there may be more opportunities for auroras.
Even if peak solar maximum has passed (it may have, but we don’t know yet), 2025 will still be in the midst of a longer period of increased solar activity near solar maximum. While the exact level of solar activity cannot be predicted, sunspot numbers are expected to be high, as well as the likelihood of large solar flares and Earth-directed coronal mass ejections (CMEs) being higher. In 2024, an extreme G5 magnetic storm occurred in May, followed by a strong G4 storm in October. Another strong geomagnetic storm (G4 or above) is likely in 2025.
Historically, large solar flares and geomagnetic storms have been more common in the waning phases that follow solar maximums. For example, Solar Cycle 24 had its largest solar flares (X13.3 and X11.9) in 2017, three years after reaching its maximum in 2014. flare One of the events of Solar Cycle 25 is the X9.0 event on October 3, 2024.
ESA’s Solar Orbiter has observed larger flares on the far side of the Sun, but the October 3 event remains the strongest ever detected by Earth-based instruments. Given the current intensity of Solar Cycle 25, more intense flares are likely to occur before the cycle ends.
Related: Aurora activity has just begun. That’s why the best of the Northern Lights is yet to come.
Impact of solar activity
While the 2024 solar event will bring spectacular auroras, it also has its drawbacks. An October briefing from NASA and NOAA showed that extreme geomagnetic storms in May disrupted satellite navigation systems and caused $500 million in losses to U.S. agriculture, which relies heavily on automation. Additionally, although no major outages occurred, the incident strained the global power grid.
An extreme geomagnetic storm in 2003 caused damage to my country’s power grid Sweden and South Africa. As solar activity intensifies into 2025, industries that rely on satellites and power grids remain highly alert to potential solar impacts.