Sol is finally waking up

Let’s hope he does get out of the wrong side of the bed.

The current sunspot count and 10.7 cm radio flux have increased in the latest NOAA SWPC graphs, shown below. but curiously, the Ap magnetic index remains low.

Current solar status:

Geomagnetic conditions:

From Spaceweather.com : X-FLARE: March 9th ended with a powerful solar flare. Earth-orbiting satellites detected an X1.5-class explosion from behemoth sunspot 1166 around 2323 UT. A movie from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory shows a bright flash of UV radiation plus some material being hurled away from the blast site:

Movie formats: 4 MB gif, 1.2 MB iPad, 0.3 MB iPhone

A first look at coronagraph images from NASA’s STEREO-B spacecraft suggests that the explosion did propel a coronal mass ejection (CME) toward Earth. This conclusion is preliminary, however, so check back later for updates.

After four years without any X-flares, the sun has produced two of the powerful blasts in less than one month: Feb. 15th and March 9th. This continues the recent trend of increasing solar activity, and shows that Solar Cycle 24 is heating up. NOAA forecasters estimate a 5% chance of more X-flares during the next 24 hours.

Here’s sunspot group 1166 visible in this SDO image:

Here’s the X-ray flux, the flare was just barely and x-class:

Here’s the latest monthly data from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC):

Note that the Ap Index did not show similar gains.

As always, complete solar coverage at WUWT’s solar reference page

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