Earth will face years of prolonged magnetic storms: the storm will be caused by holes in the Sun.
Tonight the Sun had an unexpectedly powerful M-type flare, followed by a series of weaker C-class flares (remember: flares are divided into A, B, C, M, and X classes (the highest) in terms of X-ray power).
Should we expect magnetic storms to come? - said Maria Avonina, head of the Center for Space Weather Forecasts at the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Waves of the Russian Academy of Sciences, on "KP" radio.
In the coming years - during the phase of the decrease in solar activity - the main disturbance of the interplanetary state and of the Earth's magnetosphere will not be mass emissions caused by flares, but fast streams of solar wind from coronal holes. They also disturb the magnetosphere and cause magnetic storms. Such storms are less intense than storms caused by solar mass ejection. But at the same time longer in time. Therefore, in the next two years, if we expect magnetic storms, they will be of low intensity (class G3 out of five possible).