NASA wrong forecast about solar energy, Earth knows which 'road' to avoid?

Leading experts at NASA predict that from 2021, solar energy will enter the new 25th cycle very gently, but the reality is quite the opposite.

In the new cycle, the Sun has continuously produced more sunspots and spewed more solar winds, flares towards Earth. Most of the world's space weather scientists are scratching their heads, saying, "We still know very little about our Sun."

The sun continuously creates many sunspots and spews lots of solar wind

According to Space.com, at that time there was a physicist who became a "black horse" in the field of space weather forecasting. His model of the Sun's behavior seems to have gotten it right.

Cycle 24, officially ended in December 2019. This is one of the weakest solar cycles on record. Each solar cycle lasts for 11 years.

When a team of experts from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) put together an estimate of the Sun's activity for the next 25th cycle, they predicted that this new cycle the Sun will also weaken.

At the same time, however, another prediction was made. A team led by Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist and deputy director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), predicts exactly the opposite: a possible 25 solar cycle among the strong cycles that will be recorded by history.

"We reviewed more than 140 years of data on the Sun's magnetic field activity and its relationship to the number of sunspots, and discovered a pattern that shapes the cycle," McIntosh told Space.com. How big or small the upcoming sunspot will be. Based on that, we make a scientific prediction that the energy amplitude of the 25th period could be twice the amplitude of the 24th period."

The team published their predictions in the journal Solar Physics in November 2020.

Since then, while experts at NOAA and NASA have baffled by the false prediction, Mr. McIntosh and his colleagues have watched the Sun behave exactly as they predicted.

For example, while NOAA and NASA predict only 27 sunspots by December 2021, the Sun has produced 67.

In May 2022, instead of 37 sunspots as predicted by NOAA and NASA, there were 97 sunspots. Intense solar activity also causes geomagnetic storms on Earth, wreaking havoc on orbiting satellites and causing stunning displays of auroras.

Tzu-Wei Fang, space scientist at NOAA, agrees that the official forecast of the Sun's 25th period is inaccurate. She also acknowledges that scientists' current understanding of the factors that drive solar activity is rather limited.

"We don't know what is driving this intense solar activity," Ms. Fang told Space.com. However, she cautions that it is too early to draw conclusions about the current solar cycle.