Solar activity has reached its maximum phase and is expected to remain elevated for the next two to three years, a Russian solar physicist has confirmed.
“The Sun is now at the peak of its maximum activity. This means that the number of flares will likely remain at roughly the same level for another two to three years,” said Anton Reva, a senior research fellow at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Solar‑Terrestrial Physics.
High solar activity typically brings more frequent auroras but also increased risks for satellites and power grids.
Reva said periods of heightened or reduced flare activity are known as the solar maximum and solar minimum, but predicting the precise evolution of the current cycle remains difficult. “All models that attempt to forecast the solar cycle in detail perform poorly,” he said. “We can confidently say there is a certain periodicity, but physics cannot yet determine exactly when, down to the month, or what precise form the flare activity frequency will take.”
Solar flares are classified into five categories — A, B, C, M and X — based on X‑ray intensity, with each class representing a tenfold increase in power. Flares are often accompanied by coronal mass ejections, whose plasma clouds can trigger geomagnetic storms when they reach Earth.