The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center has updated their monthly graph set and it is becoming even more clear that we are past solar max, and that solar max has been a dud. “The slump” continues not only in sunspot activity, but also other metrics. And, tellingly, Dr. David Hathaway has now aligned his once…
Sunspot count is virtually unchanged from last month : It seems possible that we’ve seen the double peak, and it will be downhill after this.
Guest essay by David Archibald Recently, a number of newspaper articles spoke of the potential of cycle 25 to be “Weakest Solar Cycle In Almost 200 Years”. “We’re in a new age of solar physics,” said David Hathaway of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Here is a collection of solar measurements that…
It is looking more and more like a double sunspot peak for solar cycle 24. Sunspot count is down again: A similar drop occurred in radio flux.
The data from SWPC is in, and it is lethargic at best. Sunspot numbers took a hit, down to about 42, a delta of ~50 lower compared to the red prediction line. 10.7 cm solar radio flux took a similar hit:
Note: See also the 1997 regime change in global climate data by the same method, here I’m happy to report that something I recognized and reported back in 2008 related to solar data has been independently confirmed by another source, and was a surprise when it showed up in my inbox two days ago. Readers…
The sunspot number for February from SIDC is down again, to 33.1 Here’s the source of that data: http://sidc.oma.be/DATA/monthssn.dat So far, cycle 24 is significantly lower in SSN number that the last three cycles, in addition to having a delayed start. While the delta of the drop in Feb 2012 is not unusual by itself,…
Guest post by David Archibald Solar Cycle 24 is now three years old and predictions of the date of solar maximum have settled upon mid-2013. For example, Jan Janssens has produced this graph predicting the month of maximum in mid-2013, which is 54 months after the Solar Cycle 23/24 minimum in December 2008: For those…
Guest post by David Archibald Dr Svalgaard has an interesting annotation on his chart of solar parameters – “Welcome to solar max”: Graphic source: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png Could it be? It seems that Solar Cycle 24 had only just begun, with solar minimum only two and a half years ago in December 2008. The first place to…
Guest Posting by Ira Glickstein Santa brought us a new Sunspot prediction to be added to NASA’s incredibly high series of at least five ill-fated predictions starting in 2006. NASA’s latest peak Sunspot Number for Solar Cycle #24 (SC24) is down 60% from their original, but it still seems a bit too high, judging by…