'I rushed to the other side of the Limfjord to capture this mesmerising phenomenon!' 'This evening I have for the first time witnessed my first ever polar stratospheric clouds, which are so incredibly rare here in Denmark,' reports Ruslan Merzlyakov. This week's outbreak may be the best in decades. Solar flare alerts: SMS TextīEST DISPLAY OF PSCs IN DECADES: Here at, we've been covering polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) for almost 25 years. Any explosions today will probably be geoeffective two of the sunspots are directly facing Earth. NOAA forecasters peg the odds of an M-flare at 40%. At least three sunspots have unstable magnetic fields teetering on the edge of explosion: AR3519, AR3521, AR3529.

As the season progresses, these dots will multiply in number and shift in hue from blue to red as the brightness of the clouds intensifies.ĬHANCE OF FLARES TODAY: Don't be surprised if there is an M-class solar flare today. For the rest of the season, daily maps from NOAA 21 will be presented here:Įach dot is a detected cloud. An instrument onboard NOAA 21 ( OMPS LP) is able to detect NLCs (also known as 'polar mesospheric clouds' or PMCs). The first clouds were detected inside the Antarctic Circle on Dec. The southern season for NLCs is underway. Sky watchers inside the Arctic Circle should be alert for their intense colors | more data. 22, 2023, the Arctic stratosphere is warming but still cold enough for polar stratospheric clouds. NASA's MEERA-2 climate model predicts when the air up there is cold enough: Credit: SDO/AIAĬolorful Type II polar stratospheric clouds (PSC) form when the temperature in the stratosphere drops to a staggeringly low -85C.

There are no significant coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun.

Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Neutron counts from the University of Oulu's Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory show that cosmic rays reaching Earth are slowly declining-a result of the yin-yang relationship between the solar cycle and cosmic rays. Credit: SDO/HMIĬosmic Rays Solar Cycle 25 is intensifying, and this is reflected in the number of cosmic rays entering Earth's atmosphere. Sunspots AR3519, AR3521 and AR3529 have 'beta-gamma' magnetic fields that harbor energy for M-class solar flares.

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