Boulder – The sun – quiet today – will turn stormy in 2012 but probably not too stormy, federal researchers in Boulder forecast Wednesday.
It’s not likely to be a terribly stormy “solar maximum,” said University of Colorado physicist Dan Baker.
Still, because more and more people rely on navigation and communication satellites, the effects of even a less-active-than- normal season could be felt more widely than ever.
“We do a lot up there … but the sun doesn’t care about us,” said Joseph Kunches, chief of space weather operations with the Space Environment Center in Boulder.
Sunspots blister across the surface of the sun in cycles of roughly 11 years, and with those sunspots come violent solar storms, which can irradiate airline passengers, as well as disrupt navigation and communication satellites and power transmission lines.
The last solar storm cycle peaked in 2000, and that year caused about $100 million in satellite disruptions, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
That solar maximum peaked at a sunspot count of about 120, researchers said.
Wednesday’s prediction by the Space Environment Center, the nation’s space weather forecaster, is for a sunspot count that peaks in 2012 at either 140 or 90 in a cycle that starts sometime next year.
The average sunspot count during solar maximum is 115.
The new prediction is designed to help communications experts, airlines and others understand how solar storms might affect their services several years into the future, said the center’s Douglas Biesecker.
Biesecker chaired the 12- member international panel that developed the forecast. The group split down the middle in predicting a slightly quiet versus slightly active season, he said.
The difference results from the variations in computer and mathematical models that scientists are using to forecast the sun’s behavior, Biesecker said. He expected the forecast to be revised at least annually.
For the most part, the operators of satellites and power grids – and those who rely on those services – fear big storms that are most common during solar maximum, Biesecker said.
An active sun, however, can blast away from Earth other types of damaging radiation, including cosmic radiation, he said.
Staff writer Katy Human can be reached at 303-954-1910 or khuman@denverpost.com.
