The detection of an unexpected increase in solar activity is raising concerns among scientists and policymakers, due to the potential impact on power grids, satellite navigation systems and global communications.
Recent NASA research warns that the Sun has entered a phase of increased intensity since 2008, raising the risk of geomagnetic storms capable of disrupting critical infrastructure across the planet.
Is the Sun Slowly Waking Up?
By: Gabriel E. Levy B.
For decades, the scientific community observed a downward trend in solar activity.
Since the 1980s, solar cycles showed fewer sunspots, fewer flares, less solar wind.
It was thought that we would enter a prolonged period of “solar minimum”, a kind of cosmic lethargy.
However, as Jamie Jasinski, a NASA researcher and lead author of the study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, warned, “the Sun is slowly waking up,” and that awakening is generating shock waves that could be felt here on Earth, not just figuratively.
The figures confirm this: the speed of the solar wind has increased by 6%, density by 26%, temperature by 29% and the strength of the magnetic field by 31% since 2008.
This dataset, analyzed by Jasinski together with his colleague Marco Velli, points to a radical change of course in solar activity.
Moreover, Solar Cycle 25, which began in 2020, shows an intensity that unsettled the scientific community.
Far from entering a period of calm, the Sun is generating X-class flares with record frequency and sunspots that have not been seen for more than two decades.
A latent threat over our heads
In September 2025, geomagnetic storms reached levels of G3, considered “strong” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scale.
These storms, triggered by coronal mass ejections (CMEs), interfere with the Earth’s magnetic field and can have devastating effects on the technological systems that support modern life.
As already happened in May 2024, an intense geomagnetic storm caused losses of more than 500 million dollars, by damaging electrical and satellite infrastructure.
That same event produced auroras visible to latitudes where they had never been recorded before, from Texas to northern Italy.
These visual effects are just the friendly face of a phenomenon that can be profoundly disruptive.
Astrophysicist Daniel N. Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, has been warning about this threat for years. In a study cited by the Space Weather Journal, he warned: “A solar storm of the magnitude of the Carrington event of 1859 would cause an unprecedented global catastrophe today.”
Back then, the telegraph network collapsed. Today, the impact would reach from digital banking to air navigation systems and global logistics.
“A whim of space weather”
The Sun goes through cycles of approximately 11 years, with phases of minimum and maximum activity.
These cycles have been recorded since the 17th century, when Galileo first observed sunspots.
However, in recent years, the indicators of the current Solar Cycle 25 belied the optimistic projections of several models.
Experts believed that the Sun would repeat a low intensity similar to that of the previous cycle (Cycle 24), but the events told another story.
“The current solar cycle is outpacing all the conservative predictions we made,” said Doug Biesecker, a physicist at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
The accelerated accumulation of sunspots, the growth of the magnetic field and the increase in solar activity suggest that we have not yet reached the maximum peak of the cycle, expected in 2025 or even 2026.
In this context, technological systems become vulnerable.
Physicist Peter Riley, author of an influential paper in Space Weather, estimated that there is a 12% chance of a solar superstorm occurring in the next ten years.
“The risks are underestimated because the frequency of extreme events is low, but the consequences would be disproportionately large,” Riley wrote.
This disconnect between the frequency and magnitude of potential damage is what makes space weather so unsettling.
Solar energy does not only come in the form of light and heat.
Charged particles and magnetic fields carried by the solar wind interact with the Earth’s magnetosphere, causing an electrical and energetic response that, under certain conditions, can overload transformers, fry satellites or leave entire regions of the planet without communication.
“The Carrington event was just the beginning”
Space weather historians often look to the past to measure the future.
In 1859, an intense solar storm known as the Carrington Event caused electrical discharges in telegraph lines and aurora borealis that lit up the skies as far as Colombia.
But what would happen if a similar event impacted the Earth today?
In 1989, a much smaller storm knocked out power to six million people in Quebec, Canada.
In 2003, the so-called “Halloween Storm” damaged satellites, forced flight diversions and affected power grids in Sweden.
The worrying thing is that all these events occurred in less intense solar cycles than the current one.
In May 2024, a G4-class storm partially affected the power grid in the northeastern United States and caused intermittent failures in GPS systems in Eastern Europe.
A confidential report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, leaked by The Intercept, noted that “telecommunications infrastructure lacks sufficient redundancies in the event of severe space weather.”
Even commercial satellite operators, such as SpaceX, suffered mass losses: More than 40 Starlink satellites were rendered unusable by a CME that compressed the upper atmosphere and increased orbital drag.
These examples demonstrate that the effects of space weather are not a remote possibility or a science fiction argument.
They are a tangible, current phenomenon, and with economic, social and strategic impacts.
In conclusion
The Sun, that source of life and energy, became a critical variable for global technological security. Its recent “awakening,” rigorously documented by NASA, threatens to destabilize modern infrastructure that depends on constant connectivity and uninterrupted electricity.
Science anticipates the risk, but societies do not yet realize the cost of ignoring it.
References
- Jasinski, J. M., & Velli, M. (2025). Reversal of Long-Term Trends in Solar Wind Parameters. The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
- Riley, P. (2012). On the probability of occurrence of extreme space weather events. Space Weather.
- Baker, D. N. et al. (2013). A major solar eruptive event in July 2012: Defining extreme space weather scenarios. Space Weather.
- Biesecker, D. (2024). NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center.
- Space Weather Journal. (2023). Risk and Resilience in Space Weather Infrastructure.
