Sun's Activity To Peak This Year, Scientists Say

Mike Wall, SPACE.com Published: Mar 26, 2013, 4:53 PM EDT From our partners

http://www.weather.com/news/science/space/solar-activity-will-peak-20130326

Massive Solar Eruption Captured by NASA

The sun should roar back to life sometime in 2013, producing its second activity peak in the last two years, scientists say.
(MORE: EXPLOSION from the Sun)
Our star has been surprisingly quiet since unleashing a flurry of flares and other eruptions toward the end of 2011. But this lull is likely the trough between two peaks that together constitute "solar maximum" for the sun's current 11-year activity cycle, researchers say.

NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory/Getty Images

The largest solar flare in 5 years leapt from the sun in early March 2012.

"If you look back in history, many of the previous solar cycles don't have one hump, one maximum, but in fact have two," solar physicist C. Alex Young, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said last week during a NASA webcast called "Solar MAX Storm Warning: Effects on the Solar System."
"That's what we think is going to happen," Young added. "So we've reached one of those humps, and we think that eventually activity will pick back up and we'll see another hump — a double-humped solar maximum."