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Solar Cycle 25 Forecasting


theartist

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Over the past several months, the threads I've started on this forum have been a "stream of consciousness", where you the reader have been allowed to watch my learning process in pursuit of a Solar Cycle 25 Forecast that is based on sound physical principles that we can all understand.  When I come across insights, sometimes it is hard to contain my excitement, and I share it by putting it out there in the 'internet ether', here on this forum.

I'll continue in that vein here, in this thread.  

In very recent weeks, I've been looking at magnetograms.  [Note: This thread is a follow-on to the thread titled, "Synoptic Magnetograms; SC24 Minimum Forecasting".]  Now, with greater understanding of that tool, greater confidence in our forecast will be achieved, as we merge that understanding with our previous findings.

I'm going to now drop a couple of what very well may be quite insightful graphs.  (Folks, this stuff could be huge, and it will have ramifications, going forward, on how solar cycle forecasting is done in the future.) I plan to update the following graphs with annotations.

Edited by theartist
Added thread reference.
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44250473_SC2324withgreenoscillationswithtext.thumb.jpg.50303cb080fc72b1b5a1abf1b63d0e17.jpg

Figure 1.  SC23/24 Transition. Carrington Rotation cycles are observed within 'oscillations of magnetic structure matrices'.

 

2041174491_SC2425withgreenoscillations.thumb.jpg.69e3791bbbd6954dff514f9f906c7cda.jpg

Figure 2.  SC24/25 Transition.  'Oscillations of magnetic structure matrices' are highlighted in green (as in Figure 1).

 

In Figure 1 and Figure 2 above, the cyclic oscillations of the F10.7cm Flux, within the larger mag-structure oscillations (highlighted in green), generally occur over multiple Carrington Rotations.

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What is termed a 'mag-structure oscillation' in Figure 1 above, is a matrix collection of smaller photospheric 'magnetic-structures'.  Sometimes these smaller 'mag-structures' get assigned Active Region numbers.

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The temporal change of some 'magnetic structure matrix (MSM) oscillations' are illustrated in the following figures.  The highlighted Carrington Rotations (CR) in Figure 3 are from the SC23/24 transition.  Their respective magnetogram maps are shown in Figure 4.

908877427_HighlightedCRs.thumb.jpg.058ed99e948bee8cb73a602774f56994.jpg

Figure 3. Carrington Rotation callouts within their 'magnetic structure matrix (MSM) oscillations'.

 

810045372_SC2324magnetogrammapsannotated.thumb.jpg.3f66635555e69345814b2e672f299355.jpg

Figure 4.  A recurring 'magnetic structure matrix' (MSM) is observed in the magnetogram maps of the SC23/24 transition.

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The most accurate way (I believe) is the date is where the SC25 spots start to equal the SC24 spots.  Right now there is a SC25 plaque on the southern hemisphere, and there was a SC25 spot last month I believe.  If this trend continues, we are just a few months away from the cross over period.

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3 hours ago, gozzak said:

The most accurate way (I believe) is the date is where the SC25 spots start to equal the SC24 spots.  Right now there is a SC25 plaque on the southern hemisphere, and there was a SC25 spot last month I believe.  If this trend continues, we are just a few months away from the cross over period.

Thank you for your contribution!  By "spots", you are referring to the magnetic-structures observed in the magnetograms, rather than actual sunspots, yes?  I will proceed to post up the magnetogram maps for the current transition. Afterward, let's discuss further whether you agree with my placing (in Figure 1 above) the Tentative Solar Minimum Nadir (which I interpret you are calling the "cross over period") in Jan/Feb 2020, or if you think it should be projected even further out in time.

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The highlighted Carrington Rotations (CR) in Figure 5 are from the SC24/25 transition.  Their respective magnetogram maps are shown in Figure 6.

1847846272_SC2425HighlightedCRs.thumb.jpg.18ec26a0cd823500774697aec91ab249.jpg

Figure 5. Carrington Rotation callouts in the SC24/25 transition.

 

635495258_SC2425Magnetos.thumb.jpg.4acf8447bf625f2cf5565b3bea0b247a.jpg

Figure 6.  Magnetogram maps from the SC23/24 transition.

Edited by theartist
Updated the CR 2224 panel in Figure 6.
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CR 2224 is only partially complete, and so I plan to update the lower right panel in Figure 6 when it completes.

A high latitude mag-structure is due if the scenario presented in this thread is to hold true.  The solar system may be presenting opportunity for that to happen around 24 November

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 11/19/2019 at 8:29 AM, theartist said:

I plan to update the lower right panel in Figure 6 when it completes.

It has been updated.  There was no high-latitude mag-structure (of significance) in CR 2224 (Figure 6) as there was in CR 2075 (Figure 4).  Conceivably, CR 2224 corresponds temporally to CR 2073 in the last minimum.  Since CR 2073 was four-to-five Carrington Rotations before the previous Solar Minimum Nadir (SMN), it's consequently conceivable that SMN will occur in four-to-five Carrington Rotations from now (i.e., Mar-May 2020).

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"What do you think of the update to the Solar Cycle 25 prediction released by the NOAA panel today"

There are a few things that I wish to share:  

  1. The swpc.noaa statement released at that URL link has what I consider to be a serious error that should not have happened coming from the reputable agency that should understand this stuff.  The error is in their following statement, "The panel agreed that Cycle 25 will be average in intensity and similar to Cycle 24."  Wrong. Cycle 24 was a 'weaker than average' cycle, instead of "average intensity";  consequently, if Cycle 25 will be similar to Cycle 24, then it too will be 'weaker than average'.  I hope they will correct this particular point in their statement, which I consider to be a gross error. 
  2. The WSO polar field measurement is on trial this cycle. It has been heralded as the benchmark precursor for solar cycle prediction, because Babcock-L dynamo theories assume the polar field strength is a primary indicator of the next cycle's strength, as polar fields are believed to be the 'seed' to the cycle dynamo. As discussed elsewhere on this forum, Leif Svalgaard's early prediction, being higher than that panel forecast, should not have changed since his last forecast, since the polar fields have not significantly changed. The panel forecast is, in essence, 'breaking ranks', going with a considerably lower forecast than that based on Svalgaard's WSO polar field measurement forecast.
  3. The panel's + 6 months window of the temporal location of "minimum" [i.e., Solar Minimum Nadir (SMN)] opens up the possibility for it to occur in the latter quarter of 2019. Based on the analysis I've gone over in various threads on this forum, I don't think SMN will occur before or in either October or November 2019, and in order for SMN to have a chance of occurring in Dec 2019, I think we will need to start seeing a photospheric magnetic structure (significant in size), above the critical latitude of + 32 deg, starting this month, pronto!
  4. If I had seen this forecast 24 hours ago, I would have been somewhat patting myself on-the-back in coming to agreement, with contributions to the 'collective conciousness' on this forum over the past several months. (It has been an educational experience.)  However, I'm now seeing some interesting information on 'torsional oscillations' (which I posted about today over on the thread titled, "Ap & aa Indices and Solar Minimum") in a new light.  It is certainly giving me pause, and I'm not as confident as I was 24 hours ago.
Edited by theartist
Added the '32deg latitude' phrase, which I had mistakenly neglected earlier.
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To 'The Artist'. 

Thank you for your excitement and expertise in analyzing this transitionary period.  I always look forward to your posts and try my best to absorb as much as my aging brain will permit.  There is so much nested & vested political angles in individuals who are more gripped with a narrative than channeling Diogenes.  I look forward to seeing where your journey takes you...

On a much more simplistic note:  Can you tell me why Space Weather has 2 separate "Current Stretch' numbers for spotless days?  The Solar Cycle page today says "38". and the Current Conditions homepage says "25"...  it's like listening to my airline pilot friend brag about his manhood!!

   --The Novitiate

Image result for the novitiate meme

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10 hours ago, theartist said:

I think we will need to start seeing a photospheric magnetic structure (significant in size), above the critical latitude of + 32 deg

The little ones popping up, like the one today clear above 50deg latitude (circled in the image below), are a start of things to come.

1880524751_above50deg.thumb.jpg.52498d1e07895aa31b6acb77c55c37d0.jpg

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21 hours ago, The Novitiate said:

I look forward to seeing where your journey takes you...

Welcome to the forum, 'The Noviatiate'!  (When a newcomer posts, there is a wait period before their first post is revealed to all. So I wasn't ignoring your earlier; rather, I just didn't see your post.)   

21 hours ago, The Novitiate said:

Can you tell me why Space Weather has 2 separate "Current Stretch' numbers for spotless days?  The Solar Cycle page today says "38". and the Current Conditions homepage says "25"

I see the "38" you are referring to, but I can't find the "25" or "Current Conditions".  Can you post a URL to that page, and we'll try to get Marcel or Vancanneyt  to answer.

Also, 'The Novitiate', I consider the 'official' sunspot counters to be the guys in Belgium, and you can find their official sunspot count here:

http://www.sidc.be/silso/eisnplot 

According to that plot, the current spotless days stretch is 26 days.

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1 hour ago, The Novitiate said:

I'm assuming each represents a different source of original data.

The website you sited belongs to a different entity and has no affiliation (that I'm aware of) with the spaceweatherlive.com website.  The latter has a descriptive 'about' section here:  https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/about .  I'm not sure where spaceweatherlive.com is getting their info for spotless days.  I vaguely recall mention of them using NOAA data, so maybe NOAA keeps a separate count?  This would be a good question for you to ask over in this section:  https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/community/forum/26-questions/ .

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spelling correction
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On 12/10/2019 at 6:56 PM, noobsauce said:

MW core lobe alignment

How many years does it take for our solar system to change position relative to other matter within the next closest spiral in the Milky Way?  The matter within that spiral is moving along through space too, correct?  What is the magnitude of an electric or magnetic field perturbation from outside our solar system?  In order to affect our star, wouldn't the perturbation need to be large enough to be picked up by satellite platform sensors within our solar system?  

   2 hours ago,  noobsauce said: 

2008       4.8 MeV/m (8%.....)  SOLAR MIN SC23

 Source was OMNI (Fluxes from GOES >60MeV,1 & Electric Field mV/m). All data from December of each year.

Do you wish to be more explicit as to where/what data you are using from OMINweb (because I'm not quite understanding the mix of units)?  Also, something to consider when evaluating the sun's activity for forecasting purposes, one might wish to avoid using GOES for particle data, because GOES satellites are within the earth's magnetosphere, and so the solar wind data is going to be modified by the vagaries of it.  (However, short wavelength EM radiation, like X-rays, would not be expected to be modified too  nearly as much by earth's magnetosphere.) 

On 12/10/2019 at 6:56 PM, noobsauce said:

Previous SC min between 4-5MeV/m and current SC24 min at 7.8MeV/m?

There seems to be a mixup of units here?  Where explicitly on OMNIweb did you get that data?

Edited by theartist
Changed phrasing to read "nearly as much".
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Today it appears a sunspot is coming around the east limb.  It is not above the critical 32deg latitude; but this Carrington Rotation has a ways to go before it's finished.  If you recall, in Oct 2008 we had a mag-structure below 32deg latitude, followed a few days later with activity above 32deg (see CR2075 in Figure 4 above).

latest_1024_1600.thumb.jpg.c7276bf47d1e49ac50914da924fa994d.jpg

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noobsauce,  One of the aspects about this forum that makes it very unique from elsewhere on the net is that it trys to stick to serious scientific inquiry, without being unorganized gibberish.  That is what makes it useful.  Your posts are starting to appear off-topic.  You have a fascination with theoretical cosmology, and you have a fascination with astrology.  If you wish to talk about those things here on this forum, I suggest you keep your posts on those matters in its own thread, rather than (what appears to be) haphazardly dropping them scattered all over on other threads that are not related to that 'stuff'.  Such 'stuff' can easily move outside the realms of scientific inquiry, if you catch my drift.  

I'm not trying to belittle you, because your voice is legitimate, just like the folks living on park benches in SF are legitimate.  Nonetheless, possibly you can understand the frustration of the working class that have to pay taxes while working hard to maintain infrastructure, having to walk through feces on the sidewalks due to the conditions, neglect, or spite of the homeless leaving those feces.  There is a message for all of us here, which is to be considerate of others, including the folks that are providing us the privilege of posting on this forum, and the folks that are reading this forum.  Please be considerate of the folks that work hard to maintain this website, and be considerate of the service they are providing.

As participants, we should, in return, try and leave quality content.  The first way to do this is to try and stay organized.  Consider, for example, that so far this forum has not been overun with endless debates on 'climate change' and whether it is the sun or humans that cause climate change.  Those may be legitimate questions, but there is a place for those inquiries, and for the purposes of this forum, with its organization, it would make sense to carry extensive debate (argument) elsewhere, or at least contained within a few threads specifically on that topic, without the debate endlessly overflowing onto other threads.  

These are things to think about.  I think your thoughts, for example, on your latest thought on galactic cosmology should legitimately be placed in its own topical thread.  You will get views on your thoughts.  You may or may not get responses. Those topics require serious scientific rigor to make any headway (and even then, it can be legitimately debated if headway is being made). Which means you may or may not get responses, but the responses you get will depend on whether your posts make sense to the scientists that make serious inquiries into those matters.

I hope you do not feel too offended.  The folks that really have a legitimate beef are those that would get banned from a forum without legitimate explanation or warrant for cause.  So, I'm trying to rationally discuss this with you so that hopefully, that doesn't happen to you here.  The guys running this site are real humans, and so, I would hope they would at least give anyone a warning before they are banned.

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noobsauce, If you have read my posts, you realize one of major reasons behind my educational quest into heliophysics over the past several months was to try and understand why there are such diametrically opposed predictions from professional heliophysicists for the next solar cycle. It requires a tremendous amount of research and study to come to the point of sensible understanding in these matters.

1 hour ago, noobsauce said:

the magnetograms...are clearly relevant...what is really behind the magnetograms?

Yes.  They are a very important piece to the puzzle, with secrets yet to be uncovered. 

I understand with my posts that there may be some interested readers willing to learn alongside me. I try to give links to help the reader find the locations of the various data repositories. It is up to reader as to how much time they wish to invest in trying to understanding the deeper science.

1 hour ago, noobsauce said:

Is there bandwidth for that discussion without it being irrelevant? 

Actually yes, a very interesting contribution would be a simple statistical count of photospheric magnetic-structures in the magnetrograms, in terms of:

  1. their polarity;
  2. size;
  3. which hemisphere they belong to.  

I think that information might provide one of the credible reasons as to why the 'strength' of SC25 could be higher than SC24.

8 minutes ago, theartist said:

a simple statistical count

I meant 'simple' in the sense of it not being hard to understand, but it will take a sizable (not simple) amount of work to perform the task if done manually.

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On 12/9/2019 at 6:41 PM, theartist said:

"What do you think of the update to the Solar Cycle 25 prediction released by the NOAA panel today"

There are a few things that I wish to share:  

  1. The swpc.noaa statement released at that URL link has what I consider to be a serious error that should not have happened coming from the reputable agency that should understand this stuff.  The error is in their following statement, "The panel agreed that Cycle 25 will be average in intensity and similar to Cycle 24."  Wrong. Cycle 24 was a 'weaker than average' cycle, instead of "average intensity";  consequently, if Cycle 25 will be similar to Cycle 24, then it too will be 'weaker than average'.  I hope they will correct this particular point in their statement, which I consider to be a gross error. 
  2. The WSO polar field measurement is on trial this cycle. It has been heralded as the benchmark precursor for solar cycle prediction, because Babcock-L dynamo theories assume the polar field strength is a primary indicator of the next cycle's strength, as polar fields are believed to be the 'seed' to the cycle dynamo. As discussed elsewhere on this forum, Leif Svalgaard's early prediction, being higher than that panel forecast, should not have changed since his last forecast, since the polar fields have not significantly changed. The panel forecast is, in essence, 'breaking ranks', going with a considerably lower forecast than that based on Svalgaard's WSO polar field measurement forecast.
  3. The panel's + 6 months window of the temporal location of "minimum" [i.e., Solar Minimum Nadir (SMN)] opens up the possibility for it to occur in the latter quarter of 2019. Based on the analysis I've gone over in various threads on this forum, I don't think SMN will occur before or in either October or November 2019, and in order for SMN to have a chance of occurring in Dec 2019, I think we will need to start seeing a photospheric magnetic structure (significant in size), above the critical latitude of + 32 deg, starting this month, pronto!
  4. If I had seen this forecast 24 hours ago, I would have been somewhat patting myself on-the-back in coming to agreement, with contributions to the 'collective conciousness' on this forum over the past several months. (It has been an educational experience.)  However, I'm now seeing some interesting information on 'torsional oscillations' (which I posted about today over on the thread titled, "Ap & aa Indices and Solar Minimum") in a new light.  It is certainly giving me pause, and I'm not as confident as I was 24 hours ago.

Here are some additional points:

           5.  The panel is showing some moxie in their latest prediction by tightening up the 'window' of the predicted peak, from originally 112.5 + 17.5 (i.e, 95-130) to 115 + 10.  

On 12/9/2019 at 6:41 PM, theartist said:

The panel forecast is, in essence, 'breaking ranks', going with a considerably lower forecast than that based on Svalgaard's WSO polar field measurement forecast.

Leif Svalgaard's prediction, from the HMI Science Nuggets article titled, "25 Cycles of Solar Magnetic Dipole Moments", is ~136.5 [i.e., midway between SC20 (156.6 Smoothed Max ISN) and SC24 (116.4 Smoothed Max ISN)].

Additional point 6.  The "Conclusions" slide from the panel's original meeting in April (https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/images/u59/10%20Lisa%20Upton%20Official.pdf) indicated the following:

1873919573_Panelconclusionsslide.thumb.jpg.7e16563993377204e6a183d46275b3fd.jpg

I highlighted the last two bullet points in that slide, wondering if anything else has come forth from the pane on those topics?🤔   I think Hemispheric Asymmetry, or the possible lessening of that this next cycle, could greatly factor into what the peak "amplitude" will be.

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