C2 solar flare, SC25 slowly ramping up?

Saturday, 15 August 2020 17:16 UTC

...or has there? We did had a C1.5 solar flare on 8 August and high latitude sky watchers which aren't plagued by the midnight sun had the chance to see aurora on a couple of days at the end of July as we managed to reach active geomagnetic conditions (Kp4). On the 4th and 5th of August we actually also managed to reach active geomagnetic conditions due to a coronal hole solar wind stream. Not that bad I guess when you take into account that we are near solar minimum. Or should we say... when you think we have just passed solar minimum? Yes, the question that is on everyone's lips... have we passed solar minimum and if so when was solar minimum? We are seeing more and more sunspot regions belonging to the new Solar Cycle 25 but does that mean we have passed solar minimum and we just have to wait for the important people to tell us that this is indeed the case?

Enter the Solar-Terrestrial Centre of Excellence (STCE). The STCE is a collaborative network of the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, the Royal Observatory of Belgium and the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium and they issue a weekly newsletter which often contains interesting space weather news and facts. This week they talk among other things about solar minimum and how this solar minimum stacks up to previous solar minima. Their most interesting conclusions are that solar minimum likely took place at the end of 2019 and that this solar minimum is similar to the solar minima that preceded 12, 15 and 24 which turned out to be fairly low activity solar cycles. So yes, more and more evidence suggest that we have passed solar minimum and we are seeing the rise of Solar Cycle 25 at the moment but at the same time this solar minimum could signal that Solar Cycle 25 is going to be a fairly low activity cycle. Time will tell if this is correct but it is great to see our Sun slowly waking up!

The full article by the STCE can be found by following this link.