Urgent warning over intense solar storms strong enough to cripple the world's internet for WEEKS - as NASA confirms we've hit the explosive peak in the sun's 11-year cycle

Every 11 years, our sun becomes a chaotic sphere that shoots out huge bursts of energy towards Earth – a period known as the 'solar maximum'. 

These energy bursts are responsible for the stunning Northern Light displays we've been treated to in recent months. 

However, they can also disrupt internet and GPS satellites orbiting Earth - with blackouts for weeks.

Unfortunately, scientists have confirmed that solar maximum has officially arrived, and it could continue for the next 12 months. 

So while opportunities to see the aurora will ramp up, so will the chance of a global internet blackout. 

In a teleconference this, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel confirmed that the sun has reached its solar maximum period, which could continue for the next year. 

'During solar maximum, the number of sunspots, and therefore, the amount of solar activity, increases,' said Jamie Favors, director of NASA's space weather programme.

'This increase in activity provides an exciting opportunity to learn about our closest star, but also causes real effects at Earth and throughout our solar system.' 

However, when exactly during this solar maximum activity on the sun will peak is yet to be known.  

Elsayed Talaat, director of space weather operations at NOAA, added: 'While the sun has reached the solar maximum period, the month that solar activity peaks on the sun will not be identified for months or years.' 

It's not just essential light and warmth that Earth receives from the sun, which is an average of 93 million miles away.  

Our star is a huge ball of electrically-charged hot gas that moves, generating a powerful magnetic field, officially known as the dipole field. 

This dipole field – which stretches from one pole of the sun to the other much like Earth's – goes through a cycle, called the solar cycle. 

Roughly every 11 years or so, the sun's magnetic field completely flips, meaning the north and south poles switch places. 

At the beginning of the solar cycle (just after the flip), the sun's surface has the fewest black spots on its surface, known as 'sunspots'. 

The middle of the solar cycle is the solar maximum, when the sun has the most sunspots. 

And it's during this solar maximum when the most violent space weather is expected, commonly known as solar storms. 

Fortunately, solar storms aren't dangerous to humans. 

Howeer, they can impact satellites in orbit as well as power grids on Earth. 

'The chances of these solar storms increases when the number of sunspots are high,' Dr Dibyendu Nandi, a physicist from the IISER Kolkata Center of Excellence in Space Sciences in India, told MailOnline. 

'The most intense storms can sometimes result in catastrophic orbital decay of low Earth orbiting satellites and disrupt satellite based services such as communications and navigational networks.

'They can also induce strong disturbances in the geomagnetic field tripping electric power grids located in high latitude regions. 

'Of course, they also create beautiful auroras so we can expect 2024 to be a good year for aurora hunters.' 

A 2021 study published by a University of California Irvine scientist found the internet could be crippled for weeks in the wake of a severe solar storm. 

This is due to vulnerabilities in the world's massive network of submarine communications cables.

The electromagnetic fluctuations caused by intense solar storms cannot directly harm the fibre optic cables that make up the backbone of the internet.

However, they do have the potential to take out the signal boosters dotted along undersea cables that are necessary to maintain connections over large distances.

The study predicted the likelihood of solar storm capable of causing catastrophic disruption occurring in the next 10 years is between 1.6–12 per cent. 

In 1859, a massive solar storm known as the Carrington event sent a powerful solar ejection toward Earth, disrupting communications on the ground. 

If such an event were to happen in today's world, the effects would be catastrophic on our communications systems. 

Lesser storms hit in 1921 and 1989 – the latter of which notably knocked out the power grid ran by Hydro-Québec, causing a nine-hour blackout in the northeast of Canada.

Scientists will not be able to determine the exact peak of this solar maximum period for many months because it’s only identifiable after they’ve tracked a consistent decline in solar activity after that peak. 

However, scientists have identified that the last two years on the sun have been part of this active phase of the solar cycle, due to the consistently high number of sunspots during this period. 

Scientists anticipate that the maximum phase will last another year or so before the sun enters the declining phase, which leads back to 'solar minimum' – at the start of the solar cycle when the sun has the fewest sunspots.