Flares almost always occur at or near the peak of the 11-year cycle of solar activity. They occur at the most extreme warping and twisting of the sun's magnetic field. HERE to see a short movie of a recent, extremely energetic flare complex and the magnetic fields associated with it. With the advent of fine x-rays telescopes watching the sun in the last few years, we've been treated to many surprises like the CMEs. Most have self-contained magnetic fields that may, depending on the direction they're ejected, reach the earth and combine with its magnetic field, causing dramatic disturbances in our atmosphere.
CMEs appear and decouple from the sun, heading away into the solar wind, in a matter of hours.
The sunspot cycle averages about 11 years in length. At the beginning of a cycle, its minimum, sunspots and other signs of solar activity may be entirely absent. The corona appears smooth and symmetrical, not spiky as it is with an active sun. The magnetic field of the sun shows little if any of the twisting that will cause all its difficulties later on. As the months pass, the number of sunspots at any given time increases, and with each year those sunspots turn up closer and closer to the equator.