NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center posted an update to their graphs today.
They show the largest gains in solar cycle 24 tracking metrics I’ve seen yet.
See graphs below:
Update on solar cycle 24
- Sunday, June 21, 2026
NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center posted an update to their graphs today.
They show the largest gains in solar cycle 24 tracking metrics I’ve seen yet.
See graphs below:
Leif – Thanks for great link – everything conveniently presented all in one place.
Geoff Sharp says:
April 8, 2011 at 8:46 am
Historically you well know that Wolf did not adopt the Waldmeier method of counting that introduces a very large step in the historical record.
What nonsense, Wolf couldn’t adopt what he didn’t know about.
The step is easily corrected for by increasing all the old values by some 20%. I’ve suggested that to SIDC [as well as getting rid of the silly 0.6]. We’ll see how that pans out. FYI, we are having a workshop in September at Sunspot, NM [there is such a place] with all the relevant participants [SIDC, NOAA, etc] to figure out what to do about the mess.
Your insistence to bluff and blunder
I just tell you the facts. Accept them or not. Your loss if you don’t.
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 8, 2011 at 8:35 am
Even if I could, people would still cherry pick what they like, supporting whatever agenda they have.
There is not much to cherry pick, they both show a low cycle. But interestingly the H&S method using 117 extra observers not available to Wolf that shows a slow start followed by a sudden ram up which then failed and shrank to nothing….
No, the Waldmeier factor means that all old values must be increased by 20% before being compared to modern data. ‘Accepted’
Who cares where the adjustment happens, but glad to see you admit the adjustment needs to happen. The current counting method differs by a large margin compared to how Wolf counted and reconstructed.
@E.M.Smith
I live in SW Florida, (Naples, Florida 1/2 mile from Vanderbilt Beach on the Gulf of Mexico.)
I like to feed the birds & wildlife and have a 4 inch deep bird bath in my back yard.
In the winter of 2006, my bird bath had a skim of ice on it each morning for a solid week. Our front yard had frost on it for at least 2 weeks straight.
In the winter of 2007, my yard was covered in frost many days only 1/2 miles inland, and my bird bath had the same skim of ice on it each morning. Plastic cups of water left on my driveway froze solid.
In the winter of 2008, my 4 inch deep bird bath froze over solidly about an inch deep.
It was too cold to walk the dog in bare feet. Other nights the bird bath would skim over with ice as it did the previous 2 winters.
In the winter of 2009, it snowed in Marco Island, (trace,) and it snowed in southern Naples, (trace.) My 4 inch deep bird bath froze solid each for 4 straight nights.
When it “warmed” up a bit, my bird bath slowly melted. It had solid ice in it for a total of 8 days.
In the winter of 2010, all of the SW Florida tomato crop was hit with hard freezes just to the East of I-75. Most of our winter tomato crop was wiped out. Local Burger King’s and McDonald’s posted “We apologize for the inconvenience, but – Yes, we have No Tomatoes,” signs in their drive thru lanes.
This winter, I took steps to protect the birds visiting my back yard.
After careful analysis of Anthony Watts’ site location maps for Official Temperature Recording sites, I moved my bird bath onto a black top asphalt slab into direct sunlight. Since my air conditioning is turned off in winter months, I placed my bird bath is next to our outdoor fire pit which we have been burning almost every night over the last several winters. So, thankfully, my birds can take advantage of artificial and man made heat sources just like NOAA does at their thermometer sites. Of course, putting a landing strip in my back yard is out of the question, (the EPA has determined I am not allowed to disturb the fragile and delicate Eco-system that is my back yard. I hope the EPA isn’t watching when I take a pee back there….)
My birds are doing fine and very thankful for man made warming in my back yard.
So thank you Anthony, you are saving endangered wildlife threatened by extreme cold in SW Florida.
Tom Rowan says:
What a disappointment. Science used to by mankind’s best friend. Now “science” is used as a club to beat hot air taxes from burned out taxpayers.
Its more like waking up from a cosy dream… so much was an illusion… some still believe in to infinity and beyond… while others are falling back down to earth… re-entry is bumpy… crash landing is a nightmare… there are only two certainties: death and taxes 🙁
Tom Rowan says:
I thought the 21st Century was gonna be a cool century to live in.
Perhaps a different kind of cool than you expected?
I used to be one of this site’s worst critics of Dr Svalgaard. Only God and the Mods know how many of my vitriolic jabs @ur momisugly Dr Svalgaard hit the memory hole.
After several years of following Lief’s postings on sunspots and cycles, I have come to appreciate his presentations. His posts are always entertaining, grounded in science, and cause many tongues to wag here at WUWT. Dr Svalgaard’s posts generate more visits and traffic to this website than most of the blowhards visiting this site in their underwear. Of the millions of hits on this fine website, Dr Svalgaard’s contribution to these ongoing “hits” cannot be discounted.
Anthony personally scolded me once on these fine pages when I posted some rabid comments about Dr Svalgaard. I can’t remember what Anthony said exactly….(cause I rarely listen to anybody,) But Anthony’s rebuke began something like this:
“Dr Svalgaard is a well respected solar scientist with decades of research into solar cycles and solar research….. ”
And so he is.
SIDC’s non-smoothed number for March is 56.3. Since I plot non-smoothed numbers, with a bit of luck by time of the SC24 max, SSN may hit 80, as the formula extrapolated this value as far back as 2003 (published Jan 2004), see red curve in:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC7.htm
It may be right, it may be wrong, no wobble or change here, that privilege belongs to the solar scientists Dr.s Hathaway, Dikati and rest of the expert opinion.
Pamela Gray says:
April 8, 2011 at 7:29 am
Your writing style puts a grin on my face. Thanks.
These are sun specs not spots
“Let us hope that no one here is foolish enough to think that SSN is the proper metric when measuring all the stuff spewing from our sun collectively referred to as solar output. And let us hope that no one here is foolish enough to think planet Earth, cloaked in her thick atmospheric soup, is a sensitive female prone to faints and illness at the slightest mood change in her big celestial lover.
It is Earth herself, who faints and swoons to her own inner storms, and leaves her inhabitants to fend for themselves. If she pauses to consider her man at all, it is only when her winds are quiet enough to warm up her backside for a while. Typical of a female to press her chilly cheeks against a warm love lover” ~ Pamela Gray
This is why Pam is one of our favs…(okay, I’ll come clean, I really think Pam writes like a princess poet. I have the restraining orders to prove it! 😉
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 8, 2011 at 8:58 am
FYI, we are having a workshop in September at Sunspot, NM [there is such a place] with all the relevant participants [SIDC, NOAA, etc] to figure out what to do about the mess.
Are mere mortals allowed to be there? What about scientists from other disciplines? I’d love to be there, using nothing but my BS Detector as claim after claim went flying around the room. (not necessarily to validate a claim, per se, but to judge whether it’s valid scientific methodology…I don’t need a degree in solar physics to ferret that out.)
There needs to be a session where a moderator starts with writing one thing on the board, that we KNOW everyone will agree on, even if it’s as simple as 1 + 0 = 1. From there, another “fact” is written on the board, (“This dataset is complete”,”This dataset is incomplete, but we can apply this accepted methodology to it” etc), building up, until we get disagreement. Then move that to the side, forcing everyone to focus more on the agreements. Once we’re bored with that, it *should* be possible for everyone to agree that the DISagreement issues are purely differences in “hunches,” no matter how much science is behind them.
But if people still disagree on the SCIENCE, we’re in trouble, and that will be forced to the forefront as well….WIN-WIN, baby!
I merely wish to say, “Thank you Leif”, so I will…
Thank you Leif.
Bruckner8 says:
April 8, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Are mere mortals allowed to be there?
The attendence is limited to 15 people [by the logistics of the place], so, sorry, no space.
to judge whether it’s valid scientific methodology
I think we are perfectly capable of that ourselves, oterwise yours trule will see to it.
But if people still disagree on the SCIENCE, we’re in trouble
This is more about the methodology, leaving the application of it [the science] aside.
Geoff Sharp says:
April 8, 2011 at 9:03 am
they both show a low cycle.
They show that we don’t know SC5 very well.
but glad to see you admit the adjustment needs to happen. The current counting method differs by a large margin compared to how Wolf counted and reconstructed.
Admit? I’m the one pushing this for years. Wolf’s method is inferior to the Wolfer count and irrelevant for any data before 1849 [when Wolf started]. When Wolfs [all pre-Waldmeier] [and H&S] are corrected [adjusted upwards] we have a consistent sunspot number series. In addition SIDC should correct their data 2001-2010 upwards by the 12.5% they have been undercounting. It may be that [because of my needling them] that their undercounting is coming to an end. We shall see. In any event, a return to Wolf’s method would be a huge step backwards, and would have no meaning for any data that Wolf did not observe himself, e.g. before 1849.. We have [eh, most of us, at least] learned a bit about how to count in a meaningful way since then.
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 7, 2011 at 10:39 pm
rbateman says:
April 7, 2011 at 8:58 pm
Ok, let’s compare SC23 and SC24 from their start dates
note the sharp increase in SSN near the end of 1997, similar to the recent jump.
I’m going to wager that the SC24 SSN slope is 2/5th of the SC23 SSN slope… for now.
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 8, 2011 at 8:14 am
Did you have a chance to note the apparent Field of View of these scopes?
How about chromatic aberrations? You would have needed to point them terrestrially and observe things such as leaves on a tree.
rbateman says:
April 8, 2011 at 4:51 pm
Did you have a chance to note the apparent Field of View of these scopes?
The field of view is less than the Sun’s disk, so one has to scan the disk for spots.
How about chromatic aberrations? You would have needed to point them terrestrially and observe things such as leaves on a tree.
The optics is superb [come from Fraunhofer’s factory]. No aberrations. Did look at things on the ground. Perfectly sharp.
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 8, 2011 at 5:03 pm
Scopes like that give the first impression of being razor sharp, but you have to put them through the paces. The edges of green leaves and the moon, bright stars are what makes the chromatics stand out. And as we get older, it gets harder to see the chromatics.
Did you try them out projecting spots?
I don’t see any fast reductions in cloud production happening for several years. Especially with Kamchatka and the ring of fire volcanoes belching plumes like they are/were.
rbateman says:
April 8, 2011 at 8:11 pm
Scopes like that give the first impression of being razor sharp, but you have to put them through the paces.
A dozen observers have put them through the paces over the past 150+ years.
The edges of green leaves and the moon, bright stars are what makes the chromatics stand out. And as we get older, it gets harder to see the chromatics.
The optics is among the finest possible. Fraunhofer made the finest achromatic optics. http://www.u.arizona.edu/~kennelly/finaldraft.htm
“Within ten years he was producing the world’s finest achromatic lenses and prisms”
from http://www.nextag.com/Spectrum-of-Belief-Joseph-1228969908/specs-html
Did you try them out projecting spots?
No, as the projection method was never used for counting spots, only direct visual observation. The handheld small telescope does not lend itself to projection [it not on a mounting].
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 8, 2011 at 11:35 pm
I see you mention the handheld is now 37mm aperture instead of 40mm. This cuts down the resolving power even further towards a min sunspot width of about 2500 km’s.
Did you find out if Locarno measures the magnification at the viewing lens or at the projected drawing?
I keep this particular irony in my museum’s Hall of Mirrors. Fraunhofer’s own work could not be reproduced, and was looked down upon by the scientific establishment as artisanal. Yet the images….
==============
Geoff Sharp said
April 9, 2011 at 1:01 am
I see you mention the handheld is now 37mm aperture instead of 40mm. This cuts down the resolving power even further towards a min sunspot width of about 2500 km’s.
The real limit is set by seeing not by the size of the telescope. In any event, using the handheld automatically excludes the pores and small spots that Wolf neglected to count using the 80mm telescope. He multiplied the count by 1.5, which then must be multiplied by 1/0.6 to be comparable to Wolfer’s count, for a total of 1.5/0.6=2.5.
Did you find out if Locarno measures the magnification at the viewing lens or at the projected drawing?
No, as it is irrelevant: the size of the projected drawing [25cm] is what counts.
Ah, Sunspots are like age spots, who cares?
Now when an old man farts that’s a smelly event. How bad does your 10.7cm flux smell??