SWPC Video Update 2 June 2026

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Hello everyone. This is Sean, the service coordinator at the Space Weather Prediction Center with another video update for you. Not that there's anything significant happening on this June 2nd around 10:30 in the morning, mountain time, but there's some interesting things that have happened that it's a good opportunity to explain to you about them. So, let's talk about that. Today, we have roughly 10 sunspot regions in the sun right now, but the one of primary interest is the one near center disc right now, region 4455.

[00:00:27]Normally that wouldn't be interesting because it almost looks unipolar, meaning it's one polarity or one sunspot. But you can see some sunspots out ahead of it that are rapidly forming. Why is that of note and interest? Because those are opposite polarities magnetically from the main sunspot group. How do we know that?

[00:00:44]Well, we use magnetic maps of the sun to help determine that. And here you can see that motion, right? These black fields forming out ahead of that white field. The black fields are negative polarity. The white is positive polarity. Almost looks like things coming up from deeper in the sun, right?

[00:01:01]Well, that's what it is. It's magnetic flux emergence rapidly happening out ahead. And being the opposite polarity that is creating some shear, some magnetic stresses, and that's been evident today because we've already seen an M1 class level solar flare, an R1 on our Noah space weather scale. Will that continue? Well, it's quite possible if this flux emergence continues as well, the magnetic complexity could grow and we could see this sunspot group evolve even more. We don't know if that'll happen yet, but we have increased our flare probability forecast because of this alone. So, that is the main thing right now of interest when it comes to sunspot groups. But that's not the only thing that's been happening on the sun of interest. So joining me today is Sarah House Seal, one of our space weather scientists, and she's going to talk to you about some of that other activity that we're looking at today.

[00:01:51]Sarah?

[00:01:51]>> Yeah, thank you. So like we talked about um there have been a few different eruptions that have occurred on the disc. Similar to what Sean said, nothing significant, just something we're kind of keeping an eye on for future activity, making sure that it wouldn't potentially have any impact on Earth. So first associated with active region 4455 there were two small very narrow CMEs that happened you see those eruptions there off to the north. We haven't found any notable evidence of these appearing in coronagraph imagery. So currently not expecting anything from these to impact Earth but we'll be keeping an eye on this region in the future. Uh following those is then a nice filament eruption off of the east limb here. So before it erupts you see that dark region which is that suspended plasma trapped within the magnetic field where sometimes these will just stay there. They won't do anything. You'll see them traverse the disc. Sometimes they will get reabsorbed into the sun or sometimes they will become unstable and they will erupt. And in this case that is what happened here.

[00:03:01]And you see that plasma erupt from the east limb creating a coronal mass ejection. We have found this one to appear in coronagraph imagery. We are modeling it, measuring it, trying to get an eye on. If we could see anything associated with it here at Earth at this time, we're not. We suspect that it will likely continue off in the eastward direction, but if anything were to occur, we would of course update the forecast for you guys.

[00:03:26]>> Thank you for that, Sarah. And that is why our forecast can suddenly change so much. It can go from relatively quiet to suddenly a major event happening because we don't always know what's going to happen. We can predict the probability of some things, but some things we just have to observe and if they happen, we adjust accordingly. So, if anything significant happens that we're not expecting, perhaps we'll do another update for you. But with that, that's all we have. If you still enjoy these video updates, please let us know and we'll keep doing them for you. With that, thank you very much.