Sunspot ramp down resumes
On Monday NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle. I am posting it here, as I do every month, with annotations to give it context.
The graph above has been modified to show the predictions of the solar science community. The green curves show the community’s two original predictions from April 2007, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The red curve is their revised May 2009 prediction.
After two months of increased sunspot activity, the decline in sunspots resumed in September, though activity did not drop significantly. Overall though, the ramp down towards the next solar minimum continues to track quite closely the ramp down predicted by weak prediction made by half the solar science community back in 2007 (the lower green curve above). These scientists however do not have much to brag about. Their same prediction completely missed the ramp up, which happened a year later than predicted, as well as the activity peak, which was far weaker than predicted.
In fact, the ramp down now continues to point to the possibility that this very weak solar cycle will also be a very short one, something that is quite unprecedented, and suggests that we might be seeing the lead in to another Grand Minimum, where there are no sunspots for decades. Since no one understands yet exactly why such grand minimums happen, however, this remains pure speculation. We will only find out by watching what happens, as it happens.
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In this diagram:
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif
The dotted line should be two standard deviations from the prediction. That means 2% over and 2% below. However, it seems to me that they are almost always over, and more substantially so and persistently too. So I guess that a sudden increase of sun spots is far more likely than a decrease of them. Given any particular short time, not cyclical.
Don’t you mean Grand Minimum in the last paragraph?
Whoops. I’ve made this mistake before. Fixed to grand minimum.