The Sun has catapulted out fast solar winds from the outermost part of its atmosphere.These have raised the threat of solar storms striking earth.

The biggest storms come as a result of a coronal mass ejection (CME), a huge bubble of plasma shot out from the Sun. These contain billions of tons of fast-moving solar particles as well as the magnetic field that binds them.

And Dr Tamitha Skov, a space weather physicist, warned that fast solar winds bumped up warnings of a G2 level solar storm heading towards the Earth’s “strike zone”.

She said: “We are in the middle of that fast solar wind from that coronal hole that’s rotatedin towards the Earth’s strike zone.”.

Dr Skov said there is a solar storm that “could be a glancing blow around the 20th”.

In fact, Spaceweather.com’s “big flare update” said that powerful solar flare erupted out the sun today.

US Space Weather Center (SWPC) ranks solar storms on a scale of "G1 Minor", the least intense, all the way up to "G5 Extreme".