The earth was engulfed by a geomagnetic storm

Since the beginning of this year, flashes of varying intensity and coronal mass ejections have been occurring on the Sun almost daily. One of the flashes (it was assigned Class C) occurred on March 11 near the sunspot AR2962. Usually flashes of this class are not considered strong and do not lead to serious disturbances, but this time the process lasted almost 12 hours.

In this regard, a moderate geomagnetic storm is expected in the coming hours (Kp—index - 6), auroras may appear in the northern regions of Russia.

Another flash in the already known AR2965 spot occurred on March 14 at 11:40 Moscow time, it was assigned the M2 class. Being aimed directly at the Ground, it caused a slight outage of shortwave radio communications over Africa and Eastern Europe; the affected frequencies were mostly below 15 MHz. However, according to scientists, no significant coronal mass ejection was recorded.

All these events signal an increase in the activity of the twenty-fifth solar cycle, which began in December 2019. According to forecasts, the solar maximum will come in 2-3 years, bringing with it even stronger storms. If you have never seen the Northern lights before, then get ready - soon more and more opportunities will appear for this.