I do not understand all the language you use, such as SSN’s, but I now want to investigate this further.

Thanks for the info.

I agree. It’s a bit like changing your bet during a horse race right up to a few metres before the finish line.

Our hi profile experts have proved that they know as much about the sun as Bart Simpson. Looking back at history patern even us dummies can say that the next few cycles will have low amplitudes. To say that SC24 “will be a big one” is inconsistent with the 100 year cycle.

After all, didn’t they start making such “predictions” more than a year ago. Could be an interesting presentation. Another option might be to create a powerpoint or other “slideshow” that only shows a few “predictions” at at time. Thanks!

I just happened across this old press release from NASA and Hathaway and got a belly-laugh.

The first line says it all: Dec. 21, 2006: Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one. Then he goes on to predict a cycle of 160 +/- 25 sunspot peak.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/21dec_cycle24.htm

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Thanks Matt for the link — I was looking for Hathaway’s paper ! But Hathaway based his prediction concept on prior peaks, my concept is based on the shape of the prior minimums. So I did some more study, looking at some much more detailed shapes of my selected minimums that I was able to find on the Sunspot Plotter at spaceweather.com.

I’ve tentatively concluded that the best match for the shape of the current minimum, when compared to the shapes of my seven previously selected minimums, is for the minimum of 1879, and this has now led me to pridict a max averaged peak amplitude for Cycle 24 of less than 65.

Try it yourself — go to the Sunspot Plotter, insert 2009 and print out the graph. Then, one after another, insert the dates from my selected list of minimums (corrected as follows: 1755, 1798, 1810, 1823, 1879, 1889, and 1901). Compare the left half of each graph with the 2009 graph and see which one fits best.

Bob

The first line says it all: Dec. 21, 2006: Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one. Then he goes on to predict a cycle of 160 +/- 25 sunspot peak.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/21dec_cycle24.htm

Thanks for the explication. Actually 12/08 looks like the earliest date we can now give the prize.

The slowly forming bottom shape of sunspot cycle 23 (observing the May 8 NOAA/SWPC ISES chart) appears to have a somewhat hyperbolic shape (as though approaching zero asymptotically) rather than the usual, more parabolic shape that may be resumed after cycle 24 begins.

Using an enlarged version of a famous sunspot graph, I examined seven similarly shaped minimums from about 1750 to 1902, and the results are tabulated below:

Following the slowly forming minimums that I identified approximately by date in Table A, the succeeding sunspot maximums were unusually low, as scaled approximately from the chart, and they are identified in Table B:

Table A Table B
________ _______

1755 < 85
1797 < 50
1810 < 50
1822 < 70
1878 < 60
1890 < 85
1902 < 60

I am a novice with this stuff, but based on the bottoming shape of cycle 23, I believe the next max will be less than 85, perhaps even 50. I also noticed that minimums exhibiting sharper bottoms appeared to be followed by much higher maximums.

I would invite comments, or a more exacting examination of this concept by anyone having better data than I was able to derive from my crude chart measurements.

Bob Paglee, P.E. (Ret.)

At first glance, it looks like about 13 lookups through the archives is all it should take to round out the data for Nov 1, 2008 through today. One of the upsides of so very few spots in the last six months!

But you welcome to play with the data behind the graph:
http//www.leif.org/research/Cycle%2024%20-%20count%20of%20new%20and%20old.xls

What I’m hoping to find somewhere is a list of sunspot groups, with the day they appeared, and whether they were SC23 or SC24. I can do the tabulation from there to provide a contrast with the type of observation offered before (which was creating the distinct impression that it would be almost all SC24 spots from then forward).

Page 4 and 7 of
http://www.leif.org/research/Most%20Recent%20IMF,%20SW,%20and%20Solar%20Data.pdf

—

I’d like to update this with a compare-and-contrast between the beginning of November, 2008 and now.

Does anyone know of a handy resource which breaks out the sunspot groups + spots by date and (most importantly) identifies for each whether it was a SC23 or a SC24 group?

“E.M.Smith (21:50:49) : …(The Old Farmers Almanac, for example) … but with TOFA being rather spooky in their accuracy months in advance.”

Bingo!

I think two years ago their forecast wasn’t that great, so they called in help for last year and the result was accurate, at least for the parts of the country I was paying attention to. Their help was Joe D’Aleo, and he relied on the cool PDO. So, impressive results, but no surprise. They are calling for a couple decades of cooling. The only surprise is that they printed that part.

See http://www.almanac.com/timeline/ for an article from Joe, probably the most scientific item ever printed in the OFA.