Heat records spark solar flare misinformation online
- Published on July 17, 2026 at 21:55
- 3 min read
- By AFP USA
Thousands of excess deaths have been recorded due to intense summer heat, leading several social media posts -- including some generated with artificial intelligence -- to claim the heatwaves were manufactured by a space phenomenon known as solar flares. However, scientists said solar flares do not impact Earth's surface temperatures and that heatwaves are instead worsened by carbon emissions.
"Everyone needs to be alarmed. This is not a heatwave," says a June 28, 2026 post on X.
The post's lengthy text unfurled a series of conspiratorial causes supposedly responsible for the record temperatures scorching Europe and North America. The same claims appeared almost verbatim on other platforms, sometimes while labeled as "AI content."
"When they want a 'heatwave,' they simply focus the beams over a target area," the text says, before repeatedly referencing intense bursts of energy that emanate from the Sun and are known as "solar flares" (archived here).
"The result is the apocalyptic heat we were all feeling. It's a directed energy weapon using the sky itself as the heating element."
Another post, a June 30 Facebook reel, alleged that a "solar storm triggered Europe's deadliest heatwave."
"The news calls it a heatwave, they blame it on climate change... What if part of the explanation is happening 93 million miles away?" a robotic voiceover asks, referencing the Earth's distance from the Sun (archived here).
AFP has repeatedly debunked conspiratorial narratives that falsely claimed man-made technologies such as HAARP or 5G could manufacture heatwaves.
Scientists said that the posts about solar flares are similarly misinformed; solar flares do not interact with Earth's surface temperatures.
Real space event
NASA describes solar flares as intense bursts of radiation, or light, on the Sun's surface (archived here).
The Sun "has a magnetic field, like Earth's, but wildly stronger and messier," said Sarah Frazier, communications manager for heliophysics and planetary science at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (archived here).
"Near sunspots, those magnetic field lines get twisted and stretched like rubber bands being wound tighter and tighter. When they suddenly snap into a new shape, all that stored-up energy explodes outward as a burst of light," she said in a July 13 email to AFP.
"That explosion is a solar flare."
The phenomenon may heat up the very top of our atmosphere, solar astrophysicist Ryan French said in a July 15 email, but it cannot reach Earth's surface (archived here).
"Individual solar flares cannot influence temperatures here at Earth," French told AFP, adding that the last flares of note occurred on July 4 and June 30.
"Even these events were not particularly noteworthy, clocking in as the 10th and 11th strongest solar flares of 2026 so far."
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says on its website that because the Earth's magnetic field reflects the energy from most solar flares back into space, it has no measurable influence on surface temperature (archived here).
Real heat, worsened by humans
Temperature records were rewritten across Europe in June 2026. In July, heatwaves struck the United States and Canada, with historic records set around each country's national holiday celebrations.
The weather mechanisms driving them are real and have "always caused heatwaves in Europe and the US," Paul Loikith, a Portland State University climate scientist, told AFP in a July 2 email (archived here).
They are also intensified by fossil fuels. Scientists have known for decades that climate change is altering the frequency and intensity of several types of extreme weather events, including heatwaves.
The extreme heat episodes were predicted by standard weather forecast models, invalidating online claims of last-minute geoengineered manipulation, environmental scientist Michael Mann previously told AFP (archived here).
Scientists from the World Weather Attribution group -- which works on observing the direct influence of climate change on specific extreme weather events -- have already reported that heat episodes on both continents this season would have been "virtually impossible" to achieve without human emissions (archived here and here).
AFP has debunked other misinformation about heatwaves and how human emissions influence them.
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