SOHO has given us a better picture of the activity of the Sun than any Earth-based telescope ever could. The corona is a region of plasma, super-heated to many millions of degrees. It is also the source of the solar winds and destructive solar flares, which commonly play havoc with the satellites around Earth. Compared with the corona, these tornadoes appear to occur mainly in quiet regions, close to the sun's surface, where the star's magnetic field prevents much material from escaping. It is unclear exactly how important these tornadoes are to our understanding of our solar system's central star.
Astronomers are especially keen to predict destructive solar storms.
They are the massive outbursts of the sun's super-heated plasma gases. They've been blamed for damaging satellites orbiting around the Earth and have even been linked to power-outages in Canada and Sweden ten years ago. If we understand the little things going on in the Sun's churning surface, maybe we'll be better able to predict the Sun's destructive outbursts. But many astronomers at NASA have described the discovery of solar tornadoes as merely an interesting curiosity. And the more items we add to the catalogue, the more we understand what's happening in the Sun.