It has been reported again that Nasa are stating that we better get it all sorted - we are in for a rough time of it from the sun over the next couple of years.

Nasa is telling us to prepare for a once in a generation storm which could result in widespread blackouts and leave us without critical communication signals for considerable periods of time.

The overheating of national power grids, mass disruption of air travel and the complete shut down of electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites are just some of the consequences of the sun reaching its solar maximum cycle over the next couple of years. There is debate over when this will be exactly (why?) but most agree it to be around 2012.

Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division, explains what it's all about in a press release on June 4th 2010: < http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/04jun_swef/ >

"The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms. The intersection of these two issues is what we're getting together to discuss."

The National Academy of Sciences framed the problem two years ago in a landmark report entitled "Severe Space Weather Events—Societal and Economic Impacts." It noted how people of the 21st-century rely on high-tech systems for the basics of daily life. Smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity. A century-class solar storm, the Academy warned, could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.

Here is another article on the topic from Uk Publisher The Telegraph. It comes with a certain amount of research behind it, and uses and expands on the same article released by Nasa on June 4th 2010.
Copy and paste people < http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tomchivers/100008500/nasas-2013-solar-flare-warning-how-much-do-we-need-to-worry/ >

And from another article published by the Examiner:
< http://www.examiner.com/x-2912-Seattle-Exopolitics-Examiner~y2009m4d1-2012-may-bring-the-perfect-storm--solar-flares-systems-collapse >

Mainstream scientific concern about 2012 has grown since a recent National Research Council report funded by NASA and issued by the National Academy of Sciences, entitled “Severe Space Weather Events: Understanding Economic and Societal Impact” which details the potential devastation of 2012 solar storms on the current planetary energy grid and because of the inter-linkages of a cybernetic society, on our entire human civilization.  

According to New Scientist, science’s concern is a repetition of the 8-day 1859 “Carrington event,” a large solar flare accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME) that flung billions of tons of solar plasma onto the earth’s magnetosphere and disrupted Victorian-era magnetometers and the world telegraph system.

The New Scientist states, “The report outlines the worst case scenario for the US. The ‘perfect storm’ is most likely on a spring or autumn night in a year of heightened solar activity - something like 2012.  Around the equinoxes, the orientation of the Earth's field to the sun makes us particularly vulnerable to a plasma strike.”

The next solar maximum is expected to occur in 2012. New Scientist reports that Mike Hapgood, head of the European Space Agency's space weather team states,  "We're in the equivalent of an idyllic summer's day. The sun is quiet and benign, the quietest it has been for 100 years," "but it could turn the other way."

The modern electrical high-power grid magnifies the impact of solar flares.  Since the grid is linked into major aspects of modern society, the effects of another Carrington event would be devastating.  The National Academy of Sciences report states:  “A severe space weather event in the US could induce ground currents that would knock out 300 key transformers within about 90 seconds, cutting off the power for more than 130 million people.”  The New Scientist states: “According to the NAS report, the impact of what it terms a "severe geomagnetic storm scenario" could be as high as $2 trillion. And that's just the first year after the storm. The NAS puts the recovery time at four to 10 years. It is questionable whether the US would ever bounce back.”

Old Nasa Archives.

From the Nasa Site Archives is this really interesting article from 2006 discussing the solar maximum, sun spot activity and the impact this would have today on our electronic world.

This week researchers announced that a storm is coming--the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one," she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.

That was a solar maximum. The Space Age was just beginning: Sputnik was launched in Oct. 1957 and Explorer 1 (the first US satellite) in Jan. 1958. In 1958 you couldn't tell that a solar storm was underway by looking at the bars on your cell phone; cell phones didn't exist. Even so, people knew something big was happening when Northern Lights were sighted three times in Mexico. A similar maximum now would be noticed by its effect on cell phones, GPS, weather satellites and many other modern technologies.

Do take a look at this article for yourself, it goes in depth about the solar energy cycles, and how the energy of the sun works in regard to swallowing up magnetic fields and converting them into solar storms.:
< http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/10mar_stormwarning/ >

Here is another link to an even older article from June 2000 that is also very relevant to this conversation:
< http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast07jun_1m/ >