X-Class Flare near spot 786
The sun is in a “quiet” period of its cycle. However this year has been anything but quiet for the Sun proving the giant never sleeps. A massive X-Class solar flare is heading our way from sunspot region 786. Sunspots are important because they mark unstable and cool regions of the Sun, where magnetic forces are not likely to contain massive explosions. 786 is about to revolve to the far side of the sun, out of harms way for us.
A CME is the technical term for what occurs when the sun spews out massive amounts of particles and energy. When these outbursts hit the Earth’s magnetic feild we get a light show, and perhaps as many are speculating, freak weather occurances, volcanic explosions and earthquakes.
“The geomagnetic storm from this event will peak in approximately 65 hours, which would be sometime early Sunday morning.”
I have noticed that it takes a couple of days for our weather to noticably react to such a hit on the Earth, and it is interesting to see how our temperatures are flucating in England with sunspot activity. We could see a warm start to the week, after a cool weekend. This shows a pattern of hot weather being preceeded by cooler weather.
The Sun-Earth Connection is important when talking about Climate Change, what we don’t know is how much the Sun impacts on Climate Change and how much impact human activty has on Climate Change should be considered, but perhaps our focus should shift towards monitoring Sunspots and linking them to freak weather (and perhaps human behavoiur).
This happend 5 years ago almost to the date, during a not so quiet period of the sun.