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Loading contentHow the Sun's weather is made and how it reaches the Earth — the solar cycle and its storms, and their impacts on satellites, navigation, aviation, astronauts, and power grids — and the operational forecasting that watches for it. Built on documented effects and real forecasting services; nothing is fabricated.
The roughly eleven-year rise and fall of the Sun's activity, traced by the number of sunspots from solar minimum to solar maximum and back. Its underlying magnetic cycle takes about twenty-two years, as the Sun's polarity flips and returns. Activity — flares, CMEs, and storms — peaks near solar maximum.
Geomagnetic storms drive currents in the ground that flow into long transmission lines — geomagnetically induced currents — which can saturate and damage transformers and, in severe cases, cause regional blackouts. The 1989 Québec blackout is the classic example.
Spacecraft are exposed to the full force of space weather: energetic particles charge their surfaces and interiors and flip bits in their electronics, while geomagnetic storms heat and expand the upper atmosphere, increasing drag and pulling low-orbit satellites down faster.
The operational space-weather arm of the European Space Agency's Space Safety programme, delivering forecasts, warnings, and data products — on solar activity, the near-Earth environment, and the ionosphere — to European operators of satellites, power grids, aviation, and navigation. The European counterpart to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center.