2024 was a busy year for solar news, but what can we expect from 2025?
In April, a total solar eclipse was visible to millions in North America. This was followed in May by the largest geomagnetic storm for twenty years caused by successive coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that brought widespread northern and southern lights to low latitudes. This gave millions around the world their first view of the aurora.
In October, high levels of solar activity once again triggered a strong geomagnetic storm at Earth, offering another widespread display of low-latitude aurora. Following this event, NASA and NOAA announced in a joint press release that we are officially in the solar maximum period of the current solar cycle — Solar Cycle 25.
Understanding solar cycles
Solar activity rises and falls periodically over an 11-year solar cycle. Each cycle begins and ends during periods of low solar activity, with a peak of solar activity in the middle. The periods of low and high activity are called solar minimum and solar maximum respectively.
By historical definition, Solar Cycle 1 occurred between 1755 and 1766, placing the sun‘s current cycle in Solar Cycle 25. As of the end of 2024, we are firmly within the solar maximum period. However, the specific solar maximum is defined as the month with the highest 13-month smoothed sunspot number.
The smoothed sunspot value, represented as the purple line on the plot below (from NOAA’s Solar Cycle Progression website), differs from the black curve showing monthly sunspot measurements. Because the smoothed value is calculated as a 13-month rolling average, the latest data lags six months behind the current date. Thus, the specific solar maximum won’t be confirmed until many months — possibly a year — after it occurs. Because of this, and because it is impossible to know what sunspot numbers the next month will bring, we will not know when the specific solar maximum occurred until many months (perhaps a year) after.
What we do know is that Solar Cycle 25’s peak has already surpassed that of Solar Cycle 24, which peaked in 2014. This makes recent months the most active solar period since 2002, near the peak of Solar Cycle 23.
What’s ahead in 2025?
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