In the last 100 years the Sun's magnetic field has changed significantly

According to Dr. Mike Lockwood from Rutherford Appleton National Laboratories in California, who has studied the Sun's activity for the last hundred years, since 1901 the overall magnetic field of the Sun has increased with 230%. The relevance to Earth and all life is not often well understood by scientists.

Graph from Lockwood's report:

The sunspot activity showed peaks in this last cycle, never recorded before in history. Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics division at NASA said "Obviously, the sun is Earth's life blood," said. "To mitigate possible public safety issues, it is vital that we better understand extreme space weather events caused by the sun's activity." In addition, nobody wants to spread panic in an already unstable global socio-economic climate.

The Sun is beginning another 11-year cycle of activity, NASA said

About every 11 years the Sun flip's its magnetic poles, which doesn't go by completely unnoticed by us here on Earth. However, with the magnetic field being so high currently, the upcoming polar shift in 2012 will certainly have its impact on the Earth and will lead to intense unfavorable climate changes and events.
Jimmy Raeder, researcher at NASA explains: "We're entering Solar Cycle 24. For reasons not fully understood, CMEs in even-numbered solar cycles (like 24) tend to hit Earth with a leading edge that is magnetized north. Such a CME (coronal mass ejection) should open a breach and load the magnetosphere with plasma just before the storm gets underway. It's the perfect sequence for a really big event."

Cyclic representation of the Sun's activity:

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