Flares in solar cycle 23

C13,088

M1,436

X125

LargestX28.02003-11-04

X flares by year

Cycles compared

Cycle	Start	M	X	Largest
21	1976-03	2184	168	X13.0
22	1986-09	2022	153	X20.0
23	1996-08	1436	125	X28.0
24	2008-12	733	51	X14.6
25	2019-12	1980	102	X8.9

Top 20 flares

Date	Begin	Peak	Min	Class	Location	Region
2003-11-04	19:29	19:50	37	X28.0	S19W83	10486
2001-04-02	21:32	21:51	31	X20.0	–	9393
2003-10-28	09:51	11:10	93	X17.2	S16E08	10486
2005-09-07	17:17	17:40	46	X17.0	S11E77	10808
2001-04-15	13:19	13:50	36	X14.4	S20W85	9415
2003-10-29	20:37	20:49	24	X10.0	S15W02	10486
1997-11-06	11:49	11:55	12	X9.4	S18W63	8100
2006-12-05	10:18	10:35	27	X9.0	S07E68	10930
2003-11-02	17:03	17:25	36	X8.3	S14W56	10486
2005-01-20	06:36	07:01	50	X7.1	N14W61	10720
2006-12-06	18:29	18:47	31	X6.5	S05E64	10930
2001-12-13	14:20	14:30	15	X6.2	N16E09	9733
2005-09-09	19:13	20:04	83	X6.2	S12E67	10808
2000-07-14	10:03	10:24	40	X5.7	N22W07	9077
2001-04-06	19:10	19:21	21	X5.6	S21E31	9415
2003-10-23	08:19	08:35	30	X5.4	S21E88	10486
2005-09-08	20:52	21:06	25	X5.4	S12E75	10808
2001-08-25	16:23	16:45	41	X5.3	S17E34	9591
1998-08-18	22:10	22:19	18	X4.9	N33E87	8307
2002-07-23	00:18	00:35	29	X4.8	S13E72	10039

All times UTC. Until June 2017 classes are NOAA's reports of the time (GOES-15 and earlier included a 0.7 scaling factor); later classes come from calibrated GOES-16/18 data, so the same flare reads about 1.4× larger. Do not compare the two periods directly.

About this page

Cycle 23, which began in August 1996, has 14,649 C+ flares on record, 125 of them X-class.