Spotless sun, G2 watch active

Saturday, 4 June 2016 15:15 UTC

Spotless sun, G2 watch active

Our sun is spotless today. The NOAA SWPC reports that there are no numbered sunspot regions on the earth-facing side of the solar disk and that means our sun is devoid of sunspots for the first time since 18 July 2014. As a result, solar activity is at very low levels and the last registered solar flare took place three days ago!

Moderate G2 geomagntic storm watch

A moderate G2 geomagnetic storm watch is in effect for later tonight and tomorrow as the NOAA SWPC expects a coronal hole solar wind stream to arrive and cause enhanced geomagnetic conditions up to a Kp of 6.

This solar wind stream comes from the exact same coronal hole that caused a strong G3 geomagnetic storm on 6 May. The solar wind stream has yet to arrive but we do not expect the same kind activity as last month as this coronal hole shrunk quite a bit. Even G2 conditions might be a bit too optimistic but we of course encourage you to keep an eye on the solar wind data to see how this event is going to unfold.

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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