This year marks the peak of the Sun's 11-year solar weather cycle, and the star appears to be asleep on the job: what usually marks a period of violent outbursts is turning out to be a season so quiet that some are calling it the weakest solar maximum of the last 100 years.
Key to increased solar activity are sunspots, which are believed to be the result of interplay between the Sun's plasma and its magnetic field. These darker, cooler areas on the star's surface are the source of massive surges of charged particles often sent hurtling toward the Earth's surface, damaging satellites and causing radio blackouts.
Solar maxima result when, about every 11 years, the Sun goes through a cycle of first increasing and then decreasing number of sunspots; however, this year, the number of sunspots has left astronomers wanting.
"It's the smallest maximum we've seen in the Space Age," David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., told reporters in a teleconference, according to Space.com.
In fact, 2013 has been so quiet that some scientists began to wonder as early as March if perhaps forecasters had missed the mark. However, solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center believes the answer lies elsewhere.
"This is solar maximum," he said in a NASA press release. "But it looks different from what we expected because it is double peaked."
By "double peaked" Pesnell means the Sun is engaging in a mini-cycle that lasts about two years in which solar activity goes up, dips and then resumes, as was the case for the solar maxima of 1989 and 2001.
As evidence, he points to the fact that sunspot counts jumped in 2011 and then dipped in 2012. Should everything go according to plan, Pesnell expects them to rebound again in 2013.
"I am comfortable in saying that another peak will happen in 2013 and possibly last into 2014," he said.