Delores Knipp was interviewed by the Washington Post for a new article on the sun entering its most active period in two decades.
Knipp, a research professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, is an expert on solar wind-geospace coupling and space weather and has written extensively about historic solar storms.
Solar flares and sunspots naturally vary throughout the sun's 11-year solar cycle, but the period between January and October of this year is predicted to be particularly active. It could lead to visually spectacular aurora borealis and potentially disruptive or even damaging solar radiation to satellites.
Knipp is not the only Boulder researcher featured in the piece. The Washington Post also interviewed scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, which are both headquartered in Boulder.