Today, the global plot shows a STRONG PROTON FLUX. Notice how the Arctic is now colored in red. Our entire earth is being affected by these solar protons.
The 17 MHz range is now at 35 dB, so now you can compare earlier plots and see how the communication bands are being affected. A normal plot of solar protons would show the polar regions in black.
My husband, who is a licensed Ham Radio Operator, said that except for the noise generated by the Photons, the radio bands are singing as people chat from all locations around the world.
Oh, spaceweather.com gave a good explanation of this unusual solar radiation that is causing the core of the earth to heat up. They lay the blame squarely on Active Region (AR)1944. Please see the SOHO movie and other photos at spaceweather.com.
The X1-flare that hurled the CME toward Earth also accelerated a swarm of high-energy protons in our direction. ...
The "snow" in this movie is caused by solar protons striking the spacecraft's CCD camera. A veritable blizzard of speckles develops as the CME emerges into full view. Indeed, many of the protons are accelerated by shock waves at the forefront of the expanding cloud.
This ongoing radiation storm ranks S2 on NOAA storm scales. It is rich in "hard" protons with more than 100 MeV of energy, which accounts for the snowiness of the SOHO coronagraph images.
http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php ... &year=2013