KSA monitors spots on the surface of the sun from its sky
Four groups of sunspots were discovered on the sun’s surface at the same time on Sunday morning, the second time this has happened since July.
Eng. Majed Abu Zahira, President of the Astronomical Society in Jeddah, acknowledged that the sudden proliferation of sunspots is an indication of the intensity of the new solar cycle 25, as well as the exit from the previous cycle’s very deep minimum condition.
Previous scientific estimates predicted a peak in 2025, but such distributions support the hypothesis that the solar cycle’s maximum activity might happen as soon as a year.
He added: The new solar cycle began in the second half of the year 2020, and over the past months, it has been observed that the activity on the sun has steadily increased.
There is a belief that it will break the weakness of the solar activity observed during the past four cycles, and if current trends continue, it could reach a peak in 2024.
Sunspot monitoring
Now, in the remainder of this year 2021 and the next year 2022, monitoring will continue to progressively increase the number of sunspots, and it will be known whether Solar Cycle 25 will follow the forecasts or do something completely different, according to Abu Zahra. The science of predicting the solar cycle is still in its infancy. There is a great deal of ambiguity.
He went on to say: Predicting the activity of the solar cycle gives an approximate idea of the frequency of space weather storms of all kinds in the coming years.
