Time to start checking month by month how the solar cycle 24 to 25 transition is proceeding.
I was intrigued by the sudden drop in SS# after July 2019 and the disparity in predictions now. The April 2019 NOAA prediction says we are still a long way from seeing a rise in SS# – yet at www.sidc.be all predictions indicate rising SS# now. SIDC main page.
For updated monthly SS numbers Google – Table of Recent Solar Indices – NOAA
For monthly SS predictions Google – SWPC Predict – NOAA
My current chart I plan to update each month.
Puzzling indeed. The latest NOAA prediction is 9 December, and still shows sunspots predicted to continue falling for the next 3 years:
This is obviously very unlikely. The normal solar cycle is less than 11 years, and the last minimum was in late 2008-early 2009. There is virtually no chance the next minimum won’t turn up for more than 13 years; in fact, it should be right now, and the numbers bear this out – there has hardly been one spot in the last 5 months according to the Belgian data.
Looking at the NOAA numbers I wonder if there is some trick around the “Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Panel”. Are they only predicting sunspots in that cycle, and ignoring Solar Cycle 25 sunspots?
To clarify the above, for graphs of the overlaps of previous sunspot cycles, see:
www.leif.org/research/Active-Region-Count-now.png
and
i1.wp.com/solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly.gif
Now 45 days running without a single spot. But presumably cycle 24 is not dead yet. There is usually an overlap of a couple of years when small numbers of spots from both cycles are present.
The chart for the NOAA cycle 25 prediction update on 9 Dec 2019 is here –
www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/solar-cycle-25-forecast-update
I have not seen the predicted monthly data yet.
Thanks wazz. I guess the latest Cycle 25 prediction issued last week includes any remaining Cycle 24 sunspots. It’s changed a bit already from the April forecast, with the minimum now predicted for April 2020 plus or minus six months, i.e. between October 2019 to October 2020, whereas the SILSO home page here
www.sidc.be/silso/home
is still carrying the April forecast, which was for the minimum to occur between July 2019 and September 2020.
Both agencies seem to be rather slack in their public information presentations. The SILSO people do not explain why all the forecasts on their site here
www.sidc.be/silso/forecasts
…using three different methods, all forecast that Cycle 25 should have started already with rapidly increasing sunspots now, whereas the consensus forecast is for the minimum not to occur for another 5 months. And NASA’s latest forecast, to which you link, says:
“The panel agreed that Cycle 25 will be average in intensity and similar to Cycle 24”
…when Cycle 24 was not average, but rather the weakest since 1820, and their April forecast said:
“it’s likely to be weak, much like the current one. The current solar cycle, Cycle 24, is declining and predicted to reach solar minimum – the period when the Sun is least active – late in 2019 or 2020.””
www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/solar-cycle-25-forecast-update