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
The sun goes through cycles of activity – what you might hear being called “solar minima” and “solar maxima” – where the frequency of sunspots, solar flares, prominences, and coronal mass ejections increase. This happens about every eleven years. I’m not sure why this peak is so much more energetic than the ones in 2012-2013.
Edit: As some other commenters below have mentioned, the timing of the sun’s CMEs matter a lot more than the intensity, because the earth still has to intersect with the path of the ‘plasma burp’ for us to get an aurora event like this.
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