Evidence of a Cycle 25 sunspot found
In our previous post: Solar activity crashes – the Sun looks like a cueball,
Our resident solar physicist, Dr. Leif Svalgaard commented and provided a link to something reported by his colleagues, something that likely would not have been possible without the fantastic solar observations of NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observeratory (SDO). He said:
Cycle 25 has already begun
http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/~tohban/wiki/index.php/A_Sunspot_from_Cycle_25_for_sure
It looks to me that SC25 will be a bit stronger than SC24, so probably no Grand Minimum this time
http://www.leif.org/research/Prediction-of-SC25.pdf
http://www.leif.org/research/comparative-study-solar-prediction.pdf
(ignore the 2014 in the top line – it is just a place holder).
It seems a small sunspot has been observed, that has the opposite polarity of cycle 24 sunspots.
From the first link at Berkeley, Tomek Mrozek and Hugh Hudson write:
This brief Nugget simply announces that YES, we really have seen Cycle 25 [sunspot activity]. An earlier Nugget hinted at this, but it was not so clear a case as presented by today’s new tiny sunspot. Why is this interesting? It’s because spots appearing this early in a cycle – even before a minimum is well established – are quite rare. We could speculate that solar minimum may arrive early and/or may be brief, more evidence regarding the seemingly stochastic component of the development of the solar magnetic cycle.
The Cycle 25 Sunspot
At the time of writing, NOAA has not identified this new sunspot with an official active-region number, and so there could be some things to quibble about. But the magnetic polarity of the region unmistakeably identifies it as a piece of the new cycle, because it reverses the polarity expected for Cycle 24 regions.
Figure 1 here shows the new spot as of this date (10-April-2018). It is marginally detectable but definitely there in relatively crude 1024×1025 .gif versions of the beautiful data from the SDO space observatory.
Figure 1: File images from the HMI instrument on SDO: left, the continuum intensity; right, the telltale magnetic field. From the latter one can see black polarity to the right (“preceding”, as the Sun rotates). This is the opposite of that shown, for example, by the exceedingly tiny region at about -5 degrees.
It requires a bit of patience to see the spot; refer to the location of the magnetic features and perhaps dither the window on your browser screen. The icon for this Nugget on the parent page here has a slightly better view derived from a 4096×4096 image.
Conclusion
This sunspot has been tabulated in the excellent SOLEN page of Jan Alvestad. The Nugget-writers here thank him for his thorough monitoring of solar activity, and also thank Leif Svalgaard for paying close attention as well.
Robert Zimmerman, in our previous story, noted this:
If the solar minimum has actually arrived now, this would make this cycle only ten years long, one of the shortest solar cycles on record. More important, it is a weak cycle. In the past, all short cycles were active cycles. This is the first time we have seen a short and weak cycle since scientists began tracking the solar cycle in the 1700s, following the last grand minimum in the 1600s when there were almost no sunspots.
We’ll be watching for “official confirmation”, but if Dr. Svalgaard says Cycle25 has happened, it is almost certain to be true. Now comes the waiting to find out if Cycle 25 is going to be a strong or weak cycle.
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P.S. to my 1:54am: the article title certainly should not have said that Cycle 24 is one of the shortest ever, as this is unknown at this time, but perhaps the title was chosen provocatively to stir some of the arguments seen above? If it turns out to be 10.3 years, as per a guess of mine above, then it will have been the equal 5th shortest of the last 15 cycles. Incidentally, it’s been a long time (Cycle 10 1856.0-1867.2 in fact) since we had a cycle more than 10.7 years but less than 11.6 years in length.
Rich.
Leif, per my question on another article in regard to climate versus weather, and the cycles of same, I’m posting this question because the weather seems to be getting stranger every year in the Upper Midwest. Where we seldom had floods, now they are happening almost every year.
What we would normally have by mid-April is warming weather, some rain, and growing plants. In some areas to the south of me, planting season is well under way, and per the Farm Bureau report last week, just slightly ahead of the usual ‘seeds in the ground’, but hard winter wheat is behind because of the weather. Instead, we’re having a recall of winter.
Right now, there is snow falling outside my house. I have photos as usual. I realize it is weather, not climate but are these events, including a blizzard rather distant to the north and west of me, indicative of possible long-term changes in the weather cycles?
Your feedback is appreciated a lot .
indicative of possible long-term changes in the weather cycles?
The weather/climate is likely changing. It does that all the time, and that differently in different regions. There is not much [if anything] we can do about this. The main thing we can do for ourselves is to be adaptable and not depend too much on specific crops tuned to narrow climate regimes. Shovel snow when you have to. Enjoy good weather when it happens [easy for me to say, living in California].
When the global circulation has a little bit more energy the planetary waves cause what we notice as somewhat more droughts and flooding, severe storms and seasonal delays, more blizzards in the shifted storm tracks. It’s an imbalance (according to human expectations). The planetary waves form and sustain regional climates and they shift and grow and shrink with the changing energy content.
Where is the little bit of excess energy coming from? The Sun, intergalactic, extra-galactic, the big planets and resulting resonances, the oceans, human activity, vulcanism?
A chaotic system can easily fluctuate a little bit with being driven by any particular cause.
without being driven…
“Over the past decade, the rate is 8 x 10^21 Joules per year, or 2.5 x 10^14 Joules per second. The yield of the Hiroshima atomic bomb was 6.3 x 10^13 Joules, hence the rate of global heat accumulation is equivalent to about 4 Hiroshima bomb detonations per second. That’s nearly 2 billion atomic bomb detonations worth of heat accumulating in the Earth’s climate system since 1998.
The data used in Nuccitelli et al. (2012) are now available for download so you can check it out for yourself.”
What me worry? It won’t get really bad for about 100 years (by then we might be able to reverse the trends with technology).
I wonder if this event even happened? There are many false positives found when scanning objects as candidates for the asteroid catalogue and to my eye the video of the object could easily be a spoof. The powers that be really do seem to enjoy scaring the bejesus out of us ordinary folk.
I am a bit late in the discussion… However! I was the first to say to our friend Leif that cycle 25 has started! I put correspondence with him in my article that was published on April 2:
http://gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Research%20Papers/View/7246
Also Jan Alvestad can confirm that I was already convinced in early March that cycle 25 was imminent.
Another proof: On March 21 I published on the Suggestions page of Talbloke:
On March 21 I wrote this here on the suggestion page of Talbloke:
Start sunspot cycle 25
Almost all the researchers think cycle 25 will start late 2019… However, I checked the solar flux data in comparison with the start of sunspot cycles… Conclusion: Cycle 25 can start any moment… Can anyone check my findings? Greatly appreciated
Lowest solar flux monthly mean strength at or in the 6 months preceding the start of each cycle
Cycle Observed flux Adjusted flux Absolute flux Start Cycle
Date Strength Date Strength Date Strength Date
19 1954/ 05 65.4 1954/ 01 63.6 1954/ 01 57.2 1954/04
20 1964/ 07 67.0 1964/ 07 69.2 1964/ 07 62.3 1964/10
21 1976/ 07 67.6 1976/ 02 68.9 1976/ 02 62.0 1976/03
22 1986/ 06 67.6 1986/ 09 69.5 1986/ 09 62.5 1986/09
23 1996/10 69.2 1996/10 68.8 1996/10 61.9 1996/09
24 2008/06 65.7 2008/12 66.9 2008/12 60.2 2018/12
25 2018/ 01 67.8 2018/01 61.0
Comparison between the lowest solar flux values at each cycle (Penticton data). Source: Monthly mean 10.7cm radio flux values (sfu): Penticton, B.C., Canada.
My paper will be published shortly (I hope, just sended it) on GSJournal
Start Sunspot Cycle 25:
March 2018
Abstract
Almost all researchers think that cycle 25 will start late 2019. However, while analyzing the lowest 10.7cm solar flux values, we find an imminent start for cycle 25 around March-April 2018. This is also confirmed with an algorithm that calculates a negative strength from the Sun’s polar fields during November 2017–March 2018. This publication was delayed by 3 weeks because of bad measurements from the polar fields!
Comparison between the lowest solar flux values at each cycle. As you can see, the values for the adjusted flux differ less than 4 months from the start of a new sunspot cycle. The adjusted flux for January 2018 is lower than cycles 21, 22, 23 and 24. In January 1954 the adjusted flux was lower than the observed fluxes from February, March and April, which had its minimum in May 1954, 1 month after the start of cycle 19. We have a similar situation in January 2018 with a lower adjusted flux (67.8) then the observed in February and March and only 1.2 percent above the adjusted from the start of the last cycle. In March 2018 the adjusted flux was even a bit lower than in January (67.6). Therefore cycle 25 should start March-April 2018. Source: Monthly mean 10.7cm radio flux values (sfu): Penticton, B.C., Canada.
On March 31, 2018 Jan Alvestad wrote this on his website:
New region 12703 [S09E61] rotated into view on March 29 and was numbered the next day by SWPC. The region decayed slowly but managed to produce a few flares.
Spotted regions not numbered (or interpreted differently) by SWPC:
New region S5930 [N09E48] emerged with a tiny spot.
Both active regions are reversed polarity. Given the recent very weak cycle 24 activity, there is reason to speculate that we may already be entering cycle 25.
Both active regions are reversed polarity. Given the recent very weak cycle 24 activity, there is reason to speculate that we may already be entering cycle 25
We need to get the semantics right. The first SC25 spots have been here since August of 2017 so SC25 started back then, but overlaps with SC24 which is still going on. As far as the effect of solar activity is concerned [and that is what is of interest to inhabitants of the 3rd rock from the sun] we must add the two cycles and see where the sum becomes minimum. That has still not happened, but may be earlier than the 2020-2021 time frame as as long cycle 24 would suggest. Time will tell [soon].
I disagree with Leif. Please read my article with link on April 16 10 am. In it you will see that there is a very strong argument the low of sunspot cycle 24-25 will be in March-April 2018. NOT 2020!
NOT 2020!
Didn’t say that, in fact I said: “may be earlier than the 2020-2021 time”.
We will now shortly… If you would be so kind to update the polar fields (you are way late, maybe because the discussions here?)… then I can calculate if cycle 25 has started. I know you don’t agree with that theory… But hey, I do my best…
If you would be so kind to update the polar fields (you are way late
The polar fields on the WSO website is a 30-day average so will always lag behind real time. In addition, we usually wait another couple of weeks to be sure that there are no outliers [caused by fleeting clouds or bad seeing], so we normally a month behind. On the other hand the HMI polar fields are updated every week on Mondays http://jsoc.stanford.edu/data/hmi/polarfield/ and don’t have a problems with clouds etc.
Also be away that WSO polar fields were wrong Dec. 2016-May 2017
http://www.leif.org/research/WSO-Problem.pdf
http://www.leif.org/research/WSO-Mean-Field-Correction.pdf
The data has recently been corrected, so you better download the latest version.
sunspotlover: as a lover of sunspots, I would suppose that you study the butterfly diagrams carefully. To my eye at least, there is no way that the current evolution of that diagram will lead to a minimum coinciding with this month. However, I suppose I should do you the justice of looking at your article – well that’s part of this evening sorted…
Rich.
Here are the latest polar fields:
http://www.leif.org/research/WSO-Polar-Fields-2018-4-16.gif
Dashed lines show predicted evolution.
You mentioned earlier that you recalibrated the polar fields… However, this was very badly done. I explained in my article why:
http://gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Research%20Papers/View/7246
A fault of nearly 50 percent with the SOLIS data!
Off course you are going to say I am not good at math… But before making a comment… ask your friends at SOLIS what they think…
However, this was very badly done
Well, Patrick, the measurements are what they are, and the correction of the bad data is well understood, so I am afraid you will have to accept this.
http://www.leif.org/research/AGU-2017-Fall-SH51C-2497.pdf
As Leif stated we shall soon see. My best guess is towards the end of this year, and I formed that opinion back in early 2014 in my own odd manner. I also stated the same back around 5 months ago that October of this year was a likely prospect. That is based on my understanding (such as it is) of the Pacific Northwest theoretical cyclical flood pattern.
With that as a base, I correctly predicted in early 2014 that the sunspot count would drop close to bottom in late 2016, and the ENSO regions would be in La NIna conditions. So I hit a trifecta when in the winter of 2016/17 relentless rains struck the PNW, and Northern California.. Not bad for an amateur.
By the way, the next such exceptional winter should hit in in the winter of 2026/27. That will also be predictive of the state of the Sun and the ENSO regions ten years from now. I hope that I make it that far. I want to find out.
goldminor – “By the way, the next such exceptional winter should hit in in the winter of 2026/27.”
Not exceptional until 2026… I think most every winter in the Eastern US will be interesting, with the wind barrier of pre-2011 seasons weakened so much. Warmer on average with even more cold records and snow depth records being broken?
But you could be better at this than me, because El Nino interferes with the 300 mb height pattern.
Since winters in Alaska, the Western US and the Eastern US are like mirrored opposites, if the Southwestern US has a cold and wet winter again like 2011, I’ll gladly be wrong. Those coincidental collisions in the steering flow, which killed most palm trees here in 2011, have become rarer with the elongated Rossby waves.
@ur momisugly mir …unique would be more to the point versus better, from my perspective. I can only work off of the good works of you folks. Without that toe hold of knowing 3 fragments of the past (floods in Northern California) back in mid 2008 when I started following this story, I doubt that I would have ever had anything to add to this conversation. Interesting, no?
Also, I moved up to Trinity County in April of 2011. A friend let me stay on a property of his. What amazed me was that for the entire month of May 2011 temps never rose above 50 F. I was camped in a north faced cold spot which had much to do with why temps stayed so low on the property, but the rest of that was just a cold year.
Also by exceptional, I mean another heavy heavy rain/snow winter such as the one which almost destroyed the Feather River Dam at Oroville. That is the cyclical part of my theory.
Also mir, consider what this would mean, if I am correct with my premise. This would be an additional method for forecasting solar phenomenon, and the ENSO regions. Think of what that would mean for the science.
remember that the Sun is “a messy place”.
Fun to observe though. Nothing like a good challenge to keep one’s interest high. More time as in the next several years will aid in bringing greater resolution to my thoughts, or perhaps in putting an end to my speculative thoughts. Certain things need to take place for my viewpoint to stay on track. If it works though, it will be great ammunition for scientists to build upon in the future.
@ur momisugly Isvalgaard …the flood pattern does change its pattern. Maybe that is a clue which I should give greater weight to. Think about that. Solar cycles also change the length between the cycle so it would make complete sense that the flood pattern follows the change in the length of the solar cycle. Never quite looked at it that way before.
that the flood pattern follows the change in the length of the solar cycle
I don’t think that has been demonstrated.
Here are some of the heavy rain/snow winters, 2016/17/big, 1996/97/very big, 1984/85/medium and not so wide spread, the mid 1970s/none, 1964/65/very big, 1955/56/big, 1946/47/moderate. I will look further back, and let you know what that shows. I don’t have that info at the tip of my fingers.
One other thing, those all strike in a La Nina year.
Since California and the Eastern US are about a wavelength apart, this allows unusual weather to attack California when the Eastern US is in the news – under active weather. The available energy is just in those two locations. But California is a smaller target.
As the Rossby waves have been elongated longitudinally, this curious pattern has become more likely.
That would be California and the Pacific Northwest. These storms strike all or some large portion of the coast from around San Francisco into Southern Canada. For example, the very big 1964/65 winter included the entire coast as described above. In 1996/97, the storm hit from a bit south of SF up to central Oregon. The mid 1980s storm was similar in range, but not as strong. The 1955/56 big storm included the entire coast. These storms then move east across the nation bringing flooding to different parts of the nation along the way.
sunspotlover, OK I did due diligence and looked at your article. It was kind of you to leave salient correspondence in the Appendix. Here is a comment, by Jan Alvestad, with which I most agree:
“You can’t rely solely on the polar fields to predict the start of a new cycle. When we approach minimum there will be approximately as many new and old cycle spots. We are not close to that. The 90 day solar flux at 1 AU should drop to 67.0. We are currently at 68.8 slowly decreasing. So I would think we are still several months away from the minimum, but it could happen this year, which is earlier than most people expect.”
So, I think you are going to turn out to be wrong, by quite some way, both because of the butterfly diagram and because of Alvestad’s comment. But I’m grateful to you for one thing, which is a confirmation in your tables that raw solar flux has to be corrected for solar distance, greatest in July.
Personally, after a weak cycle like this I would love to see a looong vastly spotless progression to minimum. But I don’t always get what I want, and none of us can tell the Sun what to do!
Regards,
Rich.
In the above link you can find that I calculated a start for sunspot cycle 25 for March-April 2018. I have 3 markers for that event! One is now in review. Therefore I had to delete several theories of mine. But…
there is one important one remaining the whole sunspot theory. You can find it here:
http://gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Research%20Papers-Astrophysics/Download/7224
Remark: Leif couldn’t find a fault nor all the big journals like The Astrophysical Journal… Off course they refused to publish…
Sure it’s not just a laggard SC23 spot? 😉
Dr. Svalgaard, what do you think of the controversial hypothesis that claims the Sun is not internally powered via hydrogen-helium fusion, but instead is externally driven via a plasma stream ?
what do you think of the controversial hypothesis that claims the Sun is not internally powered via hydrogen-helium fusion, but instead is externally driven via a plasma stream
I think it is complete nonsense on several grounds:
1) We can directly measure the neutrino flux from the solar core generated by the fusion and it matches what such fusion should produce.
2) We can measure the temperature and pressure in the solar core [helioseismology] and they increase as we go down. Externally powered should heat the outer layers more.
3) We can look at other stars, and we see that their structure and evolution [e.g. as supernovae that produce the very elements the EU proponents consist of] match what we compute from the fusion processes.
4) The Earth is presumable also embedded in such a plasma stream so we should be heated too [and we are not] and comets should instantly vaporize.
5) There is no mechanism known to produce such plasma streams
6) and more and more, but the EU idea is absurd on its face, so why bother?
Leif is again wrong… He forgot to tell that he read my theory and couldn’t find a fault, like all the big journals… In short: The Sun is powered by the Interplanetary Magnetic Field = same as polar fields.
That is the reason why I was able to say that the polar fields were doing strange things in February-March… a precursor for the start of cycle 25… So once this is confirmed, Leif will have to admit my theory makes sence…
http://gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Research%20Papers-Astrophysics/Download/7224
He forgot to tell that he read my theory and couldn’t find a fault, like all the big journals
It is not even wrong.
sunspotlover – Is the IMF producing the eruptions of each polarity (sunspots)? How much energy is required from so far away? Is it coming from the orbiting planets as they pass eachother?
My theory was on GSJOURNAL untill a few weeks ago. However, it is now under decision at a well known mathematical-physics journal. They are not on the official international astronomy circuit… But everybody knows they only accept manuscripts that are right…
To go further… I can calculate every relevant sunspot (but not yet where they will appear, still to be solved). So I already know May will become busy…
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.05081.pdf
“The latest measurements made in mid 2017 indicate that the magnitude of the a6-coefficient has probably reached its minimum; therefore, the next solar minimum can be expected by the end of 2018 or in the beginning of 2019.”
making SC24 10 years short.
Hmmm, Leif, that is indeed what their abstract says. But if you eyeball their Figure 2.c, which graphs a6, it is easy to imagine that 2017.5 lines up, comparatively with Cycle 23, with about 2005.0, which is nearly 4 years before minimum. Now, I’m sure that eyeballing isn’t the best thing to do, but it is generally a good first test. I don’t think there can be much confidence that the centre of the minimum for a6 occurred at 2017.5. It is also hard to believe that they place the turning point for a6 at 2007.3 (=2008.9-1.6) in Cycle 23 when you look at that graph, and therefore their -1.6 year lag has some doubt (unless I’m missing some subtlety).
We are now at 2018.3 – do you have any access to the latest a6 values which might help to settle this point?
Rich.
We are now at 2018.3 – do you have any access to the latest a6 values which might help to settle this point
No, we’ll just have to wait a bit. Their method is OK, but with enough uncertainty to not be compelling. But the Sun will soon tell us anyway.
Or not so soon…
Leif, I confess I didn’t see how they derived their -1.6 year lag for a6. Did you? With only 2 past cycles to look at it must be hard to get a good central estimate for that lag, let alone what the standard deviation of the lag would be. I don’t think that -3.0 can be ruled out for the mean, by my eyeballing, and for those lucky enough to be alive in 2050 it should have been pinned down better by then. Could be me – I’d still be less than 100. It’s fascinating to see how subtleties in the pulsating Sun can be brought to bear on this.
Rich.
It’s fascinating to see how subtleties in the pulsating Sun can be brought to bear on this
I think this is the true message of the article, regardless of any difference between eye-balling and analysis.
lsvalgaard
I’d like to thank you for your huge contribution
to this article, with your comments, I assume
from your left brain, while simultaneously
battling with that pesky Javier, I assume
using your right brain.
That was an amazing display of brainpower
for someone from California, where
it is well known that each year living
in California causes the loss of one IQ point.***
*** Source: the internet
it is well known that each year living in California causes the loss of one IQ point.
Two things:
1) if IQ is high enough to begin with, perhaps the loss is bearable 🙂
2) in any event, it is worth it…
Whether SC25 has started or not, (and there are justifiable questions regarding the position and polarity of the observed “SC25 spots” http://www.stce.be/news/422/welcome.html), the de Vries/Suess cycle points to a GSMinimum within the next 2-3 cycles. If length of the solar cycle is not important for determining the strength of SC25 spots (cycle 4 oddity) then length may be of no real consequence for predictions.
Sunspot magnetism has been weakening since mid 20thCentury observations. SC24 has been one of the weakest during this time. Even if SC25 does evolve sooner – sunspot magnetism may be insufficient to form strong active regions, resulting in another weak/weaker cycle with a low maximum. The outlook going forward is not for another GSMaximum – we’ve been lucky enough to live through the 20thCentury, we are not getting another.
According to Jan Alvestad, several reversed sunspots appeared the last days…
So it is highly likely that my theory about the start of cycle 25 is right!
From report April 24
New region S5954 [N19W16] emerged as a reversed polarities region.
Link to my theory published on April 2… BUT correspondence with leif from March 11 in which I stated cycle 25 is imminent
http://gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Research%20Papers-Astrophysics/Download/7246
Leif: You need to admit that i was the only one who got it right FAR before anyone else!
+ you need to get my theory approved…
Reversed polarity sunspots occur regularly [5% of all spots are so].
To qualify as a ‘new cycle’ spot it should be a high latitudes [say greater that 30 deg]
Here is what Jan says about SC25 spots:
http://www.solen.info/solar/cycle25_spots.html
And physical SC25 probably began in August of last year. The statistical minimum is an artificial construct that the Sun does not know about. A better way of determining a statistical minimum.would be when the smoothed sunspot numbers for the old cycle is equal tho the smoothed sunspot numbers for the new cycle, and we are clearly not there yet.
I know all of that… But I also wrote in my manuscript that something hugely unexpected could happen, because the polar fields didn’t behave like in the previous cycles… My guess…. the sunspots will start lower and will make everybody jittery. We will know in several weeks…
because the polar fields didn’t behave like in the previous cycles
Well, they actually do. Nothing special there. Just as we expected.
Ask Jan how many reversed polarities he has seen compared to old ones. i am sure it is way more than 5 percent this month…
You often see reversed patches, but without any spots, and the latest patch S5954 has no spots and is not a ‘region’.
Magnetically, SC25 began back in 2015, see slide 22 of http://www.leif.org/research/Prediction-of-Solar-Cycles.pdf
We will maybe know more at the end of April 25… According to my calculations a strong reversed sunspot could appear on the Sun…. But it could also be on the farside…
On this website you can see the latest image from noon April 25… No sunspot to see… We have to wait because it has to be late April 25… And the spot can take some more time to develop…
https://farside.nso.edu/