We spent a few crazy days with the Sun orbiting Earth as the effects of tantrums hurled us through space. On August 7, the Sun released a powerful X-class flare that caused a radio blackout over North America. Space weather forecasts also predicted that the combined “cannibalistic” coronal mass ejection (CME), which erupted a few days ago on August 5, would hit our atmosphere hard. While it may still produce a late solar storm, forecasters now suspect it may have missed it entirely.

We can expect this solar behavior to intensify in the coming months as the sun approaches the zenith of its 11-year activity cycle, which is predicted to occur in July 2025.

The sun has been making continuous daily eruptions for over 18 months, but it’s definitely accumulating. June and July saw X-class flares, the strongest classification of solar flares we have. What’s more, we recorded an M-class flash almost every day in July – the second strongest flash.

We’re not even past the middle of August, and we’ve already seen two X-class and one M-class flares every day; On August 5, we saw two M-class flares and 9 less powerful C-class flares, in addition to the X1.63 flare.

The X1.5 flare that dimmed the radio on August 7 was unleashed by a sunspot region at the very edge of the solar disk that was about to spin out of sight.

But it hit Earth with such force that the continent of North America and the Pacific Ocean were radio interrupted. The August 5 flare also occurred from the edge of the disk; Although they have occurred, no radio outages have yet been reported. However, the August 5 flare was accompanied by coronal mass ejections as large amounts of material, on the order of billions of tons, were ejected from the Sun into the Solar System.

What the Sun emits on August 5 is known as the cannibalistic CME. This is when two eruptions occur in relatively rapid succession; and the second burst, moving faster than the first, catches and closes the previous one, resulting in a stronger wave of plasma and magnetic fields propagating throughout the solar system.

The impact of this eruption on Earth is expected to be sharp, as the eruption emanates from the edge of the Sun. But from a cannibalistic CME, even a glass shock can be expected to produce a sufficiently powerful geomagnetic storm. This is a temporary but highly significant disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field caused by energy exchange with incoming solar material.

In fact, the magnetic field does a pretty good job of shielding the Earth from the main shock, so you’re unlikely to notice much in your daily life. But at night we can be in for a feast: The stream of particles interacting with Earth’s atmosphere is expected to make a spectacular aurora spectacle in Alaska, Canada, and the northernmost regions of the United States. And keep an eye on space weather forecasts. If the sun continues to act this way, we may have a very good night’s sleep in the near future. Source