The sun has sent more than a dozen powerful streams of electrified particles toward Earth over the past 24 hours, triggering radio blackout warnings.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a warning on Wednesday indicating a 65 percent chance that radios, air communications and satellite operations could be disrupted this week.
The agency reported power outages in parts of the Pacific and other regions on Wednesday morning.
NASA told DailyMail.com that Earth can also expect more solar flares in the coming weeks.
NASA captured a powerful flare exploding from the lower right corner of the sun’s surface on Tuesday. The strongest flares came from sunspot AR3738, a huge, dark region of strong magnetic fields on the sun’s surface.
Solar flares are explosions of electromagnetic radiation that originate from sunspots. There are currently at least 12 active sunspots on the side of the sun that faces the Earth.
When solar flares erupt, radiation is blasted away from the sun’s surface at the speed of light.
Depending on where the radiation bursts, it can bounce back towards Earth.
The energy flows are categorized into lettered groups based on their magnitude. X is the most powerful, followed by M, C and B the weakest.
Only X and M flares are strong enough to affect Earth and cause communications problems.
Upon arrival, it creates an electrical charge in the upper atmosphere, which can lead to radio interference.
“This is when you see the most sunspots and they’re getting bigger,” Dean Pesnell, project scientist at NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, told DailyMail.com.
But “as AR3738 fades from view, the sun could drop significantly for a few days to a week,” Pesnell said.
Even after activity tapers off this week, the sun will remain at its maximum until 2025.
This means we’re likely to see more sunspots forming, growing and emitting solar flares this year.
In recent days, scientists have mapped radio blackouts around the world caused by a period of intense solar activity.
The agency reported power outages in parts of the Pacific and other regions on Wednesday morning
In the past 24 hours alone, the Sun has produced 14 solar flares.
The strongest solar flares came from sunspot AR3738, a large, dark region of strong magnetic fields on the sun’s surface.
This sunspot begins to rotate out of Earth’s view, but disappears with a bang.
On Tuesday at 9:26 a.m. ET, sunspot AR3738 emitted an X-flare, the strongest class of solar flares.
Tuesday’s X-flare caused severe radio interference, especially over the Atlantic Ocean, but also across much of Africa, Europe and parts of North and South America.
The Sun’s activity remained high after that X-flare, with a series of weaker M-flares and C-flares.
These M-flares have caused minor radio interference over the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii and northern India.
And chances are there will be more to come.
According to experts at the US Department of Defense, the chance of M-flares in the next 24 hours is 70 percent and the chance of X-flares is 25 percent. EarthSky.org.
This increased activity is a result of solar maximum, the part of the Sun’s 11-year cycle when solar activity is highest.