He keeps an eye on solar flares. This keeps him awake at night.

In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a warning of a possible solar storm. A giant cluster of spots on the sun flared and ejected material heading straight for Earth.

Hours later, the watch was replaced by a warning: a storm rated G4 — on a “G” scale of 1 to 5 — was approaching. That weekend, solar activity was even stronger, creating auroras that stunned people as far south as Arizona. Behind the scenes, space weather scientists worked around the clock to ensure that the chances of catastrophic effects, such as widespread power outages or communications disruptions, were kept to a minimum.

A lack of data can make predicting solar storms difficult, according to Mike Bettwy, a meteorologist and operations chief at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. The agency is trying to change that: On Tuesday, SpaceX will launch the agency’s GOES-U spacecraft, the latest in a family of satellites designed to track the sun’s impact on our atmosphere, especially as it approaches a peak in its activity cycle.

Mr. Bettwy spoke with The New York Times about what goes into predicting space weather and the challenge of trying to understand an often unpredictable sun. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How does the space weather system work?

Our Boulder office is one of many regional watch centers worldwide. There are others in Sweden, the United Kingdom and Australia. We work together by comparing and sharing our prediction models, which are all slightly different.

Just like weather on Earth, storm watches go out first and a warning is given when we have more confidence in what is to come. Warnings go out when the weather has actually been observed.

We work regularly with NASA’s Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office, which does a lot of computer modeling of the Sun. And we alert NASA’s Space Radiation Analysis Group when there is potential radiation exposure for astronauts on the International Space Station.

We also talk every day with the North America Electric Reliability Corporation, which keeps the electric grid up and running, about what’s coming next. They then inform their own subsidiaries across the country and Canada.

What instruments are used to monitor solar activity?

The Solar Ultraviolet Imager, which is on the GOES-16 satellite, is what we use most. It monitors temperatures on the surface of the sun and shows us the evolution of sunspots and their surroundings.

Two other important satellites are NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer and our Deep Space Climate Observatory. These are about a million miles from Earth. That sounds far, but there are actually 93 million miles between us and the sun, and the plasma streaming from them is traveling at high speeds. By the time it gets to these satellites, we really only have an hour or less to know that something is coming our way.

There is also a system of magnetometers, sensors that detect changes in the sun’s magnetic field, spread around the world.

How can the prediction system be improved?

More satellites would be incredibly useful. Ideally – and this will never happen, because it is not financially feasible – we would have a satellite between the Earth and the sun every million kilometers. With more satellites we could see how solar material evolves and changes as it approaches us.

The new GOES-U satellite will have a coronagraph to take images of the Sun and give us higher resolution data to help with forecasting.

Work is also underway on better space weather models. There is a lot of data on terrestrial weather. We’re just absolutely spoiled for choice with tons of observations. We just don’t have that with space weather. It’s hard to make tough decisions with only one or two key pieces of information.

We are also working on changing our watch, alert and warning system. At this time we do not have the ability to release a G5 watch. When we release a G4 watch, it technically means G4 or higher. And with alerts, we can only release a maximum of a G3.

We are working with our international partners to review this. Not only will it give us the ability to communicate more accurately, but it will also be easier for people without a technical background to understand what we are talking about.

Isn’t it frightening to know that we are at the mercy of the whims of an unpredictable sun?

It can be daunting. But over the last few decades, we have learned how to live with the sun. We have learned its power and what it can do. Most agencies have taken appropriate precautions to deal with it.

If you get a really bad storm, there’s always the possibility that the impact will be greater than we planned. And that’s the part that keeps us awake at night. We want to make sure that even in the worst case everything will be fine.

What is the worst case scenario?

The Carrington Event of 1859 is like the granddaddy of events when it comes to space weather. It was the most intense geomagnetic storm ever recorded, with widespread impact on communications around the world.

We live in a different world now. Technology has come a long way since then. So that’s what we’re trying to prepare for. If we have another Carrington event, we want our infrastructure – the electricity grid, satellites, aviation and the internet – to remain largely functional.

What should we expect as the Sun approaches its maximum activity?

The sun is definitely entering its more active phase. A few days after the last solar storm, we had one of the strongest flares we have seen since 2005. It came from the same sunspot cluster, just before it turned away from the west side of the sun.

But we don’t know when solar maximum will happen until after it has happened. The general consensus is that it will happen between late 2024 and early 2026. The chances of more G4 events in the next few years are quite high. G5 activity is a bit more uncertain, but the chance of seeing it again is possible.

You can prepare for space weather the same way you prepare for thunderstorms or tornado season. Have emergency kits on hand. Be prepared for power outages and interruptions.

I worked at NASA during the Halloween storm of 2003, and my biggest takeaway was that it could have been worse. Now, more than twenty years later, our overall preparedness is even greater. So even if we were to have a more significant event than what we saw in early May, I think the impact would be fairly minimal.