Sol and NOAA predictions have a gap.
Here are some other graphs. The Ap magnetic index is up at least, but radio flux lags just like the spot count.
Source: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/
Since NOAA uses this on every press release, I suppose I should put it here.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the oceans to surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.
h/t to WUWT reader Stephan who says in comments:
OT but D Archibald right on track for SSN 40. The rest as usual way off.
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You need to post the numbers predicted from last year and the year beofre when these brainiacs were predicting a solar cycle to beat all other solar cycles, I guess we know how that worked out:
http://covertress.blogspot.com/2010/01/sunspot-cycle-24-prediction-update.html
Sorry, wrong link in above post. I meant to link this:
http://www.physorg.com/news86010302.html
How did that 150 sunspot # work out?
And that is with NOAA counting every single little speck they can find with the most powerful telescopes. To compare apples to apples in looking at historic sunspot numbers go to The Layman’s Sunspot Count
Is the relationship between sun spot number and radio flux really constant?
If we are lucky, cycle 24 max sunspot number will reach 50 !
Wait and see …
I don’t think they have ever claimed to have a good model for variations in the sun spot cycle.
“It turns out that none of our models were totally correct,” says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA’s lead representative on the panel. “The sun is behaving in an unexpected and very interesting way.”
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/29may_noaaprediction/
This is interesting too although not as current:
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100126/full/463414a.html
Has someone bothered to see how close the correlation is between the height of the Thermosphere and SSN, F10 and AP indices?—I would have posted this on the “Film at 11” but that appears to have decayed into a playground spat.
NOAA predictions since 2007 have been even further off the mark. NOAA and most forecasters totally blew the predictions of cycle 24. They simply keep updating their graph – and only keep a very few of past graphs online for public viewing. In 2007, NOAA predicted we would be at 60 to 105 average sunspots per day by now, July 2010. Instead we are at 15. NOAA does little more than move the whole red line graph to the right every few months. It would be a modest project for someone to overlay the previous predictions with the current one and the actuals. Here is the url for two of the older graphs.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/index.html
John Servais
Going back a bit further in time, this web page has NOAA’s April ’07 and May ’09 predictions. Interesting how the predictions keep shrinking to fit the data.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/index.html
Oh dear. Cycle 24 is not looking good for radio propagation. One can hope that things will begin to pick up soon.
It’s possible that we already reached the maximum of cycle 24. During the last solar minimum they were not seeing those microspots that are now being counted as cycle 24. Maybe there was a small or a series of small maxima but were not able to count the spots. Maybe a solar minimum is a series of small cycles. Let’s see if we will start to see a series of microspots in the southern hemisphere.
Now you did it. I expect to see about 10 sun spots tomorrow with a sun spot count of 100.
We could save a lot of money if we hired an octopus.
When the sun really is weak like in the graphs, can anybody tell me why it is warm like hell? http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
Also noted in passing, the GCR counts are still above the maximum of the last minimum sunspot cycle per http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/
I know a bunch of people (not us of course) laugh out loud at Archibald, but if this cycle comes in at 40-50, he’s going to make a whole bunch of people with letters at the end of their name (Ph.D) look like retards…
Mike says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:07 am
“I don’t think they have ever claimed to have a good model for variations in the sun spot cycle.
“It turns out that none of our models were totally correct,” says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center,”
Mike, the quote says none totally correct! That’s a pretty strong claim that they have very good models.
Anthony,
There is so much short term variation in the NOAA sunspot number vs time graph that you showed, that the NOAA/SWPC shown could still be right. We will see.
John
REPLY: Perhaps, but this gap between predictions and reality at NOAA has been going on about three years now. -Anthony
Somewhat OT depending on your take on Sun activity and weather: The Intelliweather map on the sidebar shows by colours the relative N. Am temp:
http://www.intelliweather.net/imagery/intelliweather/tempcity_nat_640x480.jpg
Note that Atlanta is a deep orange (hot) at 77F and Moosonee in Northern Ontario is cool at 72F WUWT?
Casper says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:05 am
Is the relationship between sun spot number and radio flux really constant?
It used to be, but is no longer:
http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Microwaves-at-23-24-Minimum.pdf
ShrNfr says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:32 am
Also noted in passing, the GCR counts are still above the maximum of the last minimum sunspot cycle per http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/
the flux is always higher for minima between odd and even cycles [23 to 24], than between even and odd cycles [22 to 23], so this has no particular significance.
Isn’t it time to update the goalpost animation again?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/ssn_predict_nasa.gif?w=512&h=384
Seems the forecast is drifting further and further away from reality.
Time to re-evaluate the detail of how the solar ‘dynamo’ operates and how external factors influence it. It is interesting that the N – S polar field is weak and, with few sun spots, so is the toroidal field. I wonder what external factors influence these solar mechanisms?
Meh, it’s the Cheshire Sun and we shall see what its grin means.
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The sun is obviously wrong, and needs to get with the program.
I believe Clilverd forecast a maximum SSN for SC 24 of 35. This was the lowest forecast I have seen.