Get those winter coats out of storage! Yesterday NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center published its monthly update of the Sun’s sunspot cycle. I’ve posted the newest graph below, showing the continuing slow rise in sunspots (blue/black lines) in comparison with the consensis prediction made by the solar science community in May 2009 (red line).

Though the sunspot count made a slight recovery in January, it was not enough to make up for the plunge in December. Essentially, the Sun continues to act like a sleepy kitten that really doesn’t want to wake up. This suggests that even the newest and wimpiest prediction for the next solar maximum, from solar scientists at the Marshall Space Flight Center, is still overstating the Sun’s upcoming sunspot activity.

In the past a wimpy Sun has been linked to cold weather, for reasons that scientists as yet don’t quiet understand. And this next solar maximum continues to look like the wimpiest in more than 200 years (see the graph on this page)!