(WQOW) – We changed seasons on Earth Tuesday, but our star is also about to change seasons. These seasons on the sun are called solar cycles.

The Stormtracker 18 Weather Team is very familiar with weather. It’s the state of our atmosphere in terms of what we feel and experience every day. That involves things like temperature, precipitation, wind and pressure.

Space weather, however, is a little bit out of our world of expertise, so Chief Meteorologist Matt Schaefer talked with a solar physicist, Dr. Lisa Upton.

She works for Space Systems Research Corporation and is the co-chair of the Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel.

“There’s sun spots, solar flares, coronal mass ejection – all features that occur on the sun, and these all have intense magnetic fields that store lots of energy,” Upton said. “If we track these occurrences of these features over a long period of time, we find that their appearance is cyclic, going from periods of very little activity here at solar minimum ramping up to times of lots of solar activity at solar maximum before declining again, and this is the 11-year solar cycle.”

While Earth cycles are called seasons and indicate changing weather, these cycles on the sun don’t have anything to do with weather on Earth, and do not have any effect on climate or climate change. Simply put, they track the changing intensities of solar activity.

So onto this new season, or cycle, Dr. Upton said, “We’re at the low point at a period where there’s very little solar activity, and as the solar cycle progresses we’ll enter a phase of increasing activity where activity will continue to rise, eventually reaching solar maximum, near 2025.”

The first 24 solar cycles have taken us from when scientists started tracking them in 1755 to now when we’re about to enter cycle 25.

Upton also does not expect there to be a lot of impacts on Earth but does warn that any major solar storms could knock out power grids or communications.

“Sometimes geomagnetic storms can cause disruptions in communication satellites so you might experience more dropped calls than normal,” Upton said

To monitor these space storms, there is an agency called the Space Weather Prediction Center that monitors what’s going on with the sun in order to protect critical infrastructure.

Upton added that satellites and power grids are not affected by most of the solar activity. “A lot of what’s going on is occurring outside of the protective barrier of the earth’s magnetic field. We certainly have protections in place,” she said.

For the few storms that are strong enough to affect satellites and power grids, among other similar things, as long as these industries know that activity is ramping up, they are able to weather the solar storms.

The few solar storms that do make it to Earth have the ability to do more damage than they used to simply because we rely on these technologies more than ever.

The good news is the most recent cycle that’s coming to an end was the fourth weakest in history, and the prognosis for the next cycle that will last for the next nine to 13 years is good, too. Dr. Upton anticipates that “solar cycle 25 will be another fairly weak cycle.”

Space weather isn’t just viewed as a threat, however, and there are a few cool things we can expect to see over the next few years.

“The earth has a magnetic field. It kind of acts like our shield, so as these extreme, these high energy particles impact, hit the earth, they are redirected by the earth’s magnetic field up and to the poles. Then they are driven down into the polar regions. As they enter the atmosphere they are heated and it causes them to light up, producing the spectacular phenomenon known as aurora,” Upton said.

In addition to the increase in northern lights over the next five years or so, Upton said it may make our next solar eclipse even more special.

“This last solar eclipse was at a time period of very little activity, and so there wasn’t a whole lot of activity going on in the sun at that time, so hopefully as we move into solar maximum leading up to that solar eclipse we’ll have a little bit more activity to see on the sun for that eclipse,” Upton said.

While a major solar storm could affect power grids and cell phone reception among other things, NASA, NOAA and other agencies are working on protections against this. Plus, we have some cool things to look forward to.