Dr Tamitha Skov, a space weather physicist, warned of a potential solar flare, saying: “No big Earth-directed storms yet, but we’re on high alert. Several sunspot clusters are in Earth-view right now. At least two are big-flare players, but none have launched anything significant.”
Dr Skov also said that certain solar winds may result in beautiful aurora being displayed over the skies in various parts of the world, including UK.
She added: “It looks like the pocket of fast solar wind from the small coronal hole is over-performing! We should enjoy a bit of aurora over the next few hours at least.
“What a great holiday gift for those in the UK, Iceland and possibly East Coast of Canada, if these conditions last.”
These so-called coronal holes are regions in the Sun’s corona (upper atmosphere) where the plasma is considerably cooler and less dense than the surrounding areas.
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Furthermore, satellite degradation is degraded and low-frequency radio signals can be blocked for hours at a time.
The SWPC said: “During storms, the currents in the ionosphere, as well as the energetic particles that precipitate into the ionosphere add energy in the form of heat that can increase the density and distribution of density in the upper atmosphere, causing extra drag on satellites in low-earth orbit.
“The local heating also creates strong horizontal variations in the ionospheric density that can modify the path of radio signals and create errors in the positioning information provided by GPS.
“While the storms create beautiful aurora, they also can disrupt navigation systems such as the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and create harmful geomagnetic induced currents (GICs) in the power grid and pipelines.”
Solar flares have a tendency to strongly influence the local space weather in the vicinity of the Earth.
They can produce streams of highly energetic particles in the solar wind known as solar particle events that can impact the Earth’s magnetosphere and even present radiation hazards to spacecraft and astronauts.