I live in Upstate NY, I can recall maybe once or twice in my entire lifetime hearing about being able to see the aurora and now it seems to be happening at least every few months, lately..
This seems like a significant increase over a very short period of time.. why is this happening?
In: Planetary Science
You are probably familiar with terms like El Nino and La Nina. Those are Earth-weather cycles that drive periods of more or less precipitation, adjusts the jet stream, impacts ocean temps and cyclone/hurricane cycles, etc. from year to year.
El Nino and La Nina cycle in sequences over something like 5 to 7 years.
The sun also has long-term weather cycles (for lack of a better word). The cycle relevant to your question works in cycles of 10-12 years, with 11 years being the most common/cited.
In quiet parts of the cycle there are few sunspots and very little outburst from the sun, in the busy part of the cycle there are loads of sunspots and flares. The sunspots/flares part of the cycle are what cause interaction with the Earth’s magnetosphere, and aurora are one of the consequences of those Sun-Earth interactions.
This particular cycle is *very* active compared to the last few, and we have a news environment that is interested in the topic and phone/camera tech is developed to a point where random people can capture an image of even a low-grade light show even if not something like you see in National Geographic; phones were not quite there yet that last active phase *and* the last active phase was not nearly as active as the current one.
Taken together, we have a phase that is more active than the last few cycles, a news environment more interested in the topic, and technology that allows an average person to participate in an active way (whereas before we were only passive observers).
Edit: the sun is forecast to be in its current active phase through mid-2025 or perhaps early 2026 depending; it should then start sloping off to a quiet phase, with the quietest stage of the cycle being in roughly 2029-2031 and then things will start picking up leading to the next “peak activity” phase sometime in the mid/late 2030s.
edit: it’s interesting to look back through history and track phases, there are some half-decent records going back to about the 1600s and occasionally oral or written stories/records dating back hundreds or sometimes thousands of years; though obviously the older they are the more abstract and mystical the accounts tend to be since the authors were less likely to know what was going on but they still wanted to record that *something* was happening. Whatsmore, scientists are starting to figure out ways to track particularly active cycles back through time based on unstable isotopes trapped in ocean sediments, tree rings, etc. and tracking changes in those isotope ratios from one ring or layer to the next.
Here is one from an ancient Chinese astronomical observation: [Evidence of Earliest Aurora Found in Ancient Chinese Texts | Smithsonian (smithsonianmag.com)](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/evidence-of-earliest-candidate-aurora-found-in-ancient-chinese-texts-180979979/#:~:text=Scientists%20found%20evidence%20for%20the,is%20unknown%20the%20Independent%20reports.)
And here is a 15 minute video about how scientists are starting to untangle major events in the geological record: [https://youtu.be/MbcUEyQ1fEo?si=vgTahHnljQnpAWV4](https://youtu.be/MbcUEyQ1fEo?si=vgTahHnljQnpAWV4)
edit 2: the Chinese record is mentioned in that article along with several others, but the article doesn’t go into much depth. The researchers wrote their conclusions in a paper you may find more interesting, here: [A candidate auroral report in the Bamboo Annals, indicating a possible extreme space weather event in the early 10th century BCE – ScienceDirect](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0273117722000229)
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