Sun's active week: Two solar storms strike Earth this week

A Coronal Mass Ejection left the Sun, causing auroras across the northern latitudes. The storm could linger and affect radio communications as well as GPS communications.

Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun which can eject billions of tons of coronal material, traveling up to 6.7 million miles per hour.

When a strong CME is fired in our direction it is possible to see interference with radio signals and orbiting satellites.

The Sun entered its 25th solar cycle two years ago, initiating a period of increased activity including CMEs, sunspots, and solar flares.

According to models, NOAA was predicting that the solar storm was going to arrive on Sunday morning, but NASA modeled this mass ejection to arrive Sunday evening. Space weather is very complex, and science varies greatly as there are lots of variants and not many observations, as you can imagine.

Many times, we know that a storm is coming, but don’t know exactly when until it arrives. This kind of forecasting can be compared to when meteorologists forecast a tornado. We know that the ingredients are there, but the "exactly when" question is simply unknown.

There were some auroras observed in northern latitudes like in Norway on Sunday night into early Monday morning.

There was another solar storm spotted this morning, also directed right at Earth. The arriving flares will continue to grow and, according to Dr. Tamitha Skov, a space weather scientist, by the time the solar storm arrives on March 31, high-frequency radio communications and GPS reception could have issues at high latitudes.

This is not expected to be a big solar storm so a limited group of people will only notice some issues, like those amateur radio operators, drone operators, etc. It is still a very cool occurrence for many others that like to encounter beautiful auroras.

If you are lucky enough to see the Northern Lights, also known as the Aurora Borealis, tonight be sure to capture the event and send it our way via the image uploader!