Our planet has been affected by solar storms
Randy Mann.
JAKE PARRISH/Press
Earlier this year, I wrote an article stating that our sun was in the middle of a stronger “maxima” cycle. During these events, there are increased number of sunspots, or solar storms, on the sun. The magnetic poles will usually flip during these cycle changes as the North Pole becomes the South Pole and vice-versa. The last solar cycle, which was number 24, began in late 2008 and ended in late 2019. We’re now in Solar Cycle 25, which is the 25th cycle since 1755 when extensive observations of the sun began.
During the late 2000s through the 2010s, sunspot activity was very low. There were long stretches when there were no sunspots reported. In fact, during 2008-09, NASA reported that the sun was in a “deep solar minimum” as there were no sunspots for 266 days in 2008.
Within the last year, the number of sunspots has been the highest in more than a decade. Daily sunspot numbers over the last several weeks have ranged from 90 to 140. However, there have been days earlier this year when sunspots topped 200. June was a very active month as the average was over 160 sunspots per day. The highest was June 22 with 240 sunspots.
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