Solar Cycle 24

[Marcel de Bont]

Solar activity remains low with just one M-class solar flare during the past month. Despite eight numbered Active Regions (at the time of writing) things remain calm. Even C-class flares seem rare at the moment. There are no Active Regions that seem capable of breaching this silence. Does this mean Solar Cycle 24 has reached it's peak?

I personally think that we have seen solar maximum during the final months of the year 2011. But... I do think we will see a increase in activity during the final months of 2013, a second peak of Solar Cycle 24. I am afraid however that this second peak will be weaker then the first peak we saw in the end of 2011. This revival of the solar activity should come then from the sun's southern hemisphere because the southern hemisphere is lagging behind from the activity that we saw so far from the northern hemisphere.

What do you think? Please leave your opinion in SpaceWeatherLive's Solar Cycle 24 topic!

Take a look here to see how Solar Cycle 24 has been progressing so far.

[Eieretertje Hayday]

I am watching the graphs with proton/electron activity every day, and it is flat line for the past month, even though it was very dynamic for the previous half year.

So, no flares expected until the end of the year?

How come we still have geomagnetic storms.

Its a bit weird, it is basically a bowl of boiling plasma, i would expect flares non-stop. Looking at the cycle graph, it obviously follows some strange attractor pattern, as most non-linear quasi stable systems do.

[Vancanneyt Sander]

EPAM electron and proton monitor only registers the energetic flares thus the smaller flares with CME that aren't so energetic aren't registered by EPAM. We need a bit of stronger flares for that and that has been quiet a while...

 

We get geomagnetic storms with every coronal hole too, so it's not all flares ;-)

[Marcel de Bont]

Also, the EPAM monitor does not predict flaring activity, it only tells us if a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) could have an earth-directed component after a strong flare, and when a Coronal Mass Ejection get's close to the ACE spacecraft.

Solar activity is very hard to predict if not impossible. The only thing we know for sure is that solar activity in general peaks and falls every 11 years. There are also sunspot groups that look very simple but still produce good flares, but we have also seen very complex groups that never produced a moderate flare.

It's impossible to say when the next solar flare occurs, or when the next sunspot group with flaring potential develops. This is not something we can read from the EPAM plot.

[Eieretertje Hayday]

Is it like that every year, that flares stop coming for months, or is it completely random? Does flare activity correlate with that graph from first post?

[Marcel de Bont]

Is it like that every year, that flares stop coming for months, or is it completely random? Does flare activity correlate with that graph from first post?

There are always periods when solar activity raises and falls within a solar cycle, it's normal, but this cycle is weaker then normal and the more quiet periods seem really quiet is my feeling.

The graph from the first posts shows the sunspot number for every month and the smoothed sunspot numbers. This has nothing to do with flaring activity. It just tells us which months had a lot of sunspot regions and sunspots on the disk. Hope this answers your questions. :)

[oemSpace]

I would like to know what 24 represents in Solar cycle 24.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions :>

[Vancanneyt Sander]

That is the number of the solar cycle. The previous one was 23 (of course ;-) )

The daily sunspot number has been recorded for centurys, from all that data we know where the solar maxima where and where the minima where, so from the start of the counting we have had 24 cycles.

[oemSpace]

Thanks everyone very much for suggestions :>

[Guest]

any one got latest solar polar data... (must try saying that drunk)... my web y mabob has serious bandwidth issue and keeps say no when i try accessing...thank you muchly

[Marcel de Bont]

any one got latest solar polar data... (must try saying that drunk)... my web y mabob has serious bandwidth issue and keeps say no when i try accessing...thank you muchly

What are you exactly looking for? Data regarding the solar pole flip? Do you have a link perhaps that we can check out, as you said you can not access it?

[Guest diego]

Hi, could you tell me what's the real situation about solar pole shift?, because in astronomy.com did appear a news where they asseverated that only the north pole had shifted and the south is near to do it this month possibly, on other hand we have that according to Stanford Observatory's data this just happened.

Somebody get me through this doubt please.

 

Thanks

 

http://astronomy.com/news/2013/11/physicists-monitoring-huge-solar-event

[Vancanneyt Sander]

Don't expect that a polar shift will cause huge solar storms ;-). As the words say it: the poles just shift from north to south. It will be probably be visible in the magnetogram where the poles will have the opposite polarity. According to latest data it has not yet happened but is about to happen any time now. It's a normal phenomenon that happens every cycle when it's in solar max, it is a huge event for the solar system  but does not mean a big threat for us.

An informative video about the phenomenon can be watched here

 

The northern hemisphere has got a lot of activity and the southern hemisphere got a bit behind bit is indeed racing up to become active. This was also a bit the case in the previous cycle where the southern hemisphere will take it over from the northern hemisphere in terms of sunspot regions and activity.

 

When it happens we can say we are in the middle of the current cycle with still big activity yet to come but than gradually weakening to go to solar minimum in a couple of years.

[Guest diego]

... According to latest data it has not yet happened but is about to happen any time now....

 

The next graphic from solen.info updated 02 November, and elaborated with Wilcox Solar Observatory's data show that reversal had already occurred.

 

Graphic linkhttp://www.solen.info/solar/polarfields/polar.html

 

Data link http://wso.stanford.edu/

[Guest Harry Twinotter]

I have been following the various stories about the solar magnetic pole 'flip' for the last week or so. It appears the stories started after the release of that video from the Wilcox Solar Observatory.
 

[Vancanneyt Sander]

according to the image of Solen it can be the case indeed but there is no official press release from the SWPC or SIDC indicating it did occur. 

But even if it did occur, as you would have noticed: nothing dramatic happend and will not happen. It's a normal thing ;-) 

It's normal in a way that in 4 years when we are in solar minimum we await the first region that has a reversed magnetic field and is on a higher latitude indicating a new cycle is going to start. It's just normal things.

[Guest Harry Twinotter]

I am puzzled by the Solar Polar Field strength plot - what is a "20 nHz low pass filter"? Will Goggle it. UPDATE it's just a filter to remove annual variations in the angle of the sun relative to the earth.

 

Either way I think the plots are averages of the magnetic field in the north and south poles of the sun. The magnetic field does not go to zero, it just means that the positive and negative magnetic fields in the hemisphere balance out ie average to zero.

 

[Vincent van Leijen]

Did anyone notice the polarity changes near sunspot 1899? In front of the big red spot a new spot of blue polarity has emerged. For a long time the leading spots on the northern half used to be of red polarity. The blue-before-red was typical for the southern half. So, could this change in leading polarity with sunspot 1899 indicate that the flip in solar polarity has begun?

[Guest diego]

Did anyone notice the polarity changes near sunspot 1899? In front of the big red spot a new spot of blue polarity has emerged. For a long time the leading spots on the northern half used to be of red polarity. The blue-before-red was typical for the southern half. So, could this change in leading polarity with sunspot 1899 indicate that the flip in solar polarity has begun?

 

Yes, I noticed the same some days ago on another active region, I think that is motivated by the weak magnetic field on northern and southern poles, then this is producing that  solar magnetic equator is not well demarcated as the geographic, being the magnetic like a band with magnetic field's strength level very negligible, that could be locally altered by the sunspot magnetic fields, because them are more stronger in comparison.

 

Edited to add that the polar fields could flip many times till normalize the polarity shift

[Guest diego]

Leif Svalgaard that's working on Stanford University have a very interesting website where we can find graphics, charts and readings concerning the sun and are quite updated.

 

LINK http://www.leif.org/research/

[Marcel de Bont]

Phew, it looks like am horribly wrong, and that is a good thing! It really starts to look like we are near solar max with these numbers. Both the 10.7cm radio flux and the sunspot number are trending up nicely. A double peaked solar max after all.

http://www.spaceweatherlive.com/community/uploads/monthly_03_2014/post-94-0-63626200-1393971735.pnghttp://www.spaceweatherlive.com/community/uploads/monthly_03_2014/post-94-0-93715700-1393971735.png

http://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/solar-activity/solar-cycle-progression

[Guest Sietse]

I didn't follow the solar activity for approximately 1,5 years. Last week I read everything what happened back. And I have to say: I'm impressed with the progress in the last 2 years! I 'left' the activity with the idea of 'The sun is already in the minimum, it's sleeping for a few months'. But that was too early I see now There is a second peak in the cycle 24. Very impressing regions were passing in the last 2 years, with especially this one:

The structure of this spot is amazing.

I'm up to date now again. Hopefully we'll see some action in the coming period. But I will never stop watching the activity again, it's always coming back

[Tim De Blanck]

I didn't follow the solar activity for approximately 1,5 years. Last week I read everything what happened back. And I have to say: I'm impressed with the progress in the last 2 years! I 'left' the activity with the idea of 'The sun is already in the minimum, it's sleeping for a few months'. But that was too early I see now There is a second peak in the cycle 24. Very impressing regions were passing in the last 2 years, with especially this one:

The structure of this spot is amazing.

I'm up to date now again. Hopefully we'll see some action in the coming period. But I will never stop watching the activity again, it's always coming back

great idea!

[Vancanneyt Sander]

Welcome back Sietse ;-)

Never say too early that the Sun has gone back to minimum! even after a solar max it can be very active, look at what happened around halloween 2003... that was well after the solar max of sc23. Activity just comes and goes and the sun is always so unpredictable, so you'll always have to keep an eye on it ;-)