Solar Activity Could Result in Communication Interruptions and Aurora Display

If you weren't able to catch the late October display of northern lights that were reportedly seen as far south in the U.S. as Mississippi, don't worry -- you may get another chance. Increase solar activity that is already being seen and is expected to continue for the next couple of weeks could mean interruptions in communications as well as more chances to see aurora displays in the night sky.

A large sunspot known as AR1339 will begin facing our planet for the next several days as the Earth travels around the sun, and while it unleashed a large solar flare and a coronal mass ejection (CME) around November 3 that resulted in only minor disruption and no spectacular nighttime displays, activity from the sunspot may increase over the next couple of weeks.

If a CME is released in the direction of the Earth, the cloud of charges particles would result in displays of aurora or northern lights, as witnessed in late October. The down side is that CME's also cause disruption in communications, which can wreak havoc on our technology-dependent society.

This massive sunspot is nearly 50,000 miles long and 25,000 miles across, putting it on the list of one of the largest sunspots observed over the past several years. If the scale of the sunspot doesn't sound large, compare that to the size of our little planet known as Earth, which is only 8,000 miles wide.

Solar flares are classified as A, B, C, M or X, with M and X class flares being the highest or most extreme classifications. An X class flare is 10 times greater than an M class flare. Within these classifications, flares are rated with a linear scale number between 1 and 9. An M5 solar flare is twice as powerful as an M4 flare.

With this current round of sunspot activity, AR1339 has produced a CME that was observed on November 2 and measured M4. Two more flares measuring M1 and M2 were reported on November 4 by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The SWPC reported that additional M-class flares could erupt from AR1339 over the coming days.