Enhanced solar wind, Coronal hole faces Earth

Wednesday, 2 March 2016 17:06 UTC

Enhanced solar wind, Coronal hole faces Earth

We are currently feeling the effects of a coronal hole solar wind stream. The solar wind speed increased to almost 500km/s with a fluctuating north-south (Bz) direction of the IMF. Well worth keeping an eye on the solar wind data in the hours ahead as we could see enhanced auroral activity if the Bz decides to turn southward.

Coronal hole faces Earth

Meanwhile looking at our nearest star we see that she's really taking a nap. Solar activity is very low (B-class activity only) and none of the sunspot regions on the Earth-facing solar disk are complex enough for M or X-class activity. Even C-class solar flares are unlikely at this time.

Our only hope for enhanced auroral displays are the coronal hole solar wind streams at the moment and lucky us, we have yet another (albeit minor) coronal hole facing Earth right now. Solar wind flowing from this coronal hole could arrive at Earth in about two to three days from now but geomagnetic storming is not expected from this solar wind stream.

Any mentioned solar flare in this article has a scaling factor applied by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the reported solar flares are 42% smaller than for the science quality data. The scaling factor has been removed from our archived solar flare data to reflect the true physical units.

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