Since it appears that you have been giving more than passing attention to my formula
Pseudo-science should be beaten down whenever it rears its ugly head.

so not many SS would occur, and they may be hardly visible (LP).
The L-P effect [if it occurs] does not mean that the magnetic field is gone, so will have very little effect on the dynamo.

Of course, I know they do. I did say I am not competing for the for the Astronomy’s award of the year. I would prefer, if instead of stating obvious you might speculate about the L-P effect.
Since it appears that you have been giving more than passing attention to my formula (I am flattered ! ), you may have noticed that actually it does cross zero, but for such short time that actual SC25 would be insignificant (appearance of a long minimum), the Sun going early into SC26 which of course has same polarity as SC24.
Alternatively, if next set of PF is 50% lower (as the current is) than SC25 might be about 30-35, so not many SS would occur, and they may be hardly visible (LP). In such circumstances, whatever induces Hale cycle changeover may be so week and unable to completely flip the dynamo (complete process usually takes a year +), so hey presto we may not have polarity change.

How is your comparison between observed and calculated times of solar maxima coming? You formula predicts a constant cycle length of 10.81 [except every century or so, when your polar fields do not reverse].

Experts do not agree, but you may find some answers here:
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/ links solar current, and solar subcycle

Why does the sun have a roughly eleven year cycle (suspiciously like our largest planet’s orbital period)? Why does it flip polarity every 22yrs (suspiciously like the conjunction period of our two largest planets)? I think there is a lot we don’t understand about our planetary system, and the magnetic relationships between the sun and all of our planets…the tidal forces, etc..certainly worth investigating and working on, whether professionally or as an amateur.

100 years from now, people will be looking back and laughing at our ignorance in our understanding of the Sun, Lief, the solar system…the blue planet for that matter.

Humbling I would think…the little that we know…keep the ideas rolling!

Ed

Seems like a lot of hard work. If we had a stack of SOHO images, all we need is a program that stores the date, then counts how many pixels have a red value higher than 240 (isolates space background) and also have a green value of >70. This gives us the sunspot area by date which can then be graphed. Further work could be done to analyze the darkness of the spot by factoring in the green and blue values.

Not to worry too much, Geoff.
For SOHO 1024×1024 MDI Continuum Images:
Open in AIP4Win
Get Red Channel
Check Statistics of whole image
Subtract Std. Dev. from Median
Crop image
Clip Min to Median-StdDev + 1=0
Use Histogram
Check Min & Max
Bar will have pixel count
Divide into Hemispherical for image computed by –
(X @ Y=512 on right limb – X @ Y=512 on left limb)/2 * (same) * pi
Matches San Fernando Observatory Hemispherical within 10%
Using Leif’s suggestion (Hem. Area * 0.27 ^ 0.775)
03/26/2008 comes out to 498 10E-6 Hemi. / 45 ssn
06/23/2009 comes out to 19 10E-6 Hemi /8 ssn (SIDC=7)
It’s a pain, have to be very careful all the way, but it seems to work.
The Green channel by the same method makes a Hemi. 2 x larger.

Geoff Sharp (22:59:28) :
I dont think this would be hard to do.
—————————–
Then do it, no need to wait.

I was hoping someone with programming skills, like you, might put their hand up.

It is done for you here:
http://www.solarcycle24.com/

- Do you mean that the NOAA counts are focused on groups, even if the one or two spots of these groups are possibly hardly visible whereas SIDC is focused on spots? Then, if the spots are hardly visible, SIDC notices nothing at all? (In June, SIDC didn’t notice the spots of NOAA numbers 1020 and 1021.)
Something like that, yes. But the process is not transparent enough to know for sure what they do.

Apart from that, I ascertain that during the past 12 months, the number of spotless days remains high (data SIDC). From July 2008 to June 2009, I count 291 spotless days, i.e. 79.7 %. I conclude that during several months, solar activity will remain low.
Try to plot the number of spotless days per month and see what it tells you. Solar activity will remain ‘low’ for years to come. Just how ‘low’ is the question.

Then do it, no need to wait.