Context:

• Recently a group of researchers from Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, have, for the first time, figured out the conditions under which certain types of solar storms can flow towards the earth and affect its atmosphere.

What is Solar Storms:

• Solar storms are violent events on the sun which can temporarily distort the earth’s magnetosphere – the region around the earth which is influenced by its magnetic field.

Causes of solar storms:

Such solar storms have two causes:

Coronal Mass Ejections (CME):

• CMEs are huge explosions of charged particles extending beyond the sun’s corona or outer layer and can be visibly observed. CMEs can be detected by a coronagraph when they are ejected from the Sun.

Corotating Interaction Regions (CIR):

• Charged particles are being spewed continually out of the sun’s corona, forming the solar wind.
• Some parts of these winds move faster than others.
• Since they contain charged particles in a plasma state, these different regions physically interact with each other to form wavelike disturbances called CIRs that emanate from the sun and spiral outwards.
• CIRs are generated in the interplanetary medium and there are no visual signatures for CIRs. They are called “corotating” interaction regions as they rotate along with the sun, attached to it at one end.

Source:TH & Wiki