Space Weather's Connection to Solar Activity Technological systems in space and on the Earth's surface are subject to adverse effects from solar driven space weather effects. This has been emphasized by the large number of problems associated with the severe magnetic storms between 1989 and 1991 as the 11-year solar activity cycle peaked. We now may anticipate a few years of lower activity as we approach solar minimum. The cause of these disturbances is episodic energy and mass releases from the sun. Soft X-rays from a solar flare arrive within 10 minutes, creating ionization enhancements in the ionosphere.
Energetic protons can arrive anywhere from a few minutes after the soft X-rays to hours later.
Their arrival increases ionization in the polar ionosphere, increases the frequency of upsets in satellite electronics and begins solar panel degradation effects from the enhanced high energy fluxes. However, not all solar flares result in magnetic storms, and, even more significantly, not all storms can be associated with solar flares. CMEs are not easily detectable unless they occur on the limbs of the sun. CMEs that are ejected toward the Earth produce geomagnetic activity when the associated shock front arrives. Prediction of geomagnetic storms based on observation of events on the Sun only will have a high degree of error, since we presently can not accurately model the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field and the speed of the disturbance.