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Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel forecast update

solar-cycle-25-prediction-panel-forecast-update

Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel, co-chaired by NOAA/NASA, released its latest forecast for Solar Cycle 25 (SC25) on December 9, 2019.

The forecast consensus: a peak in July 2025 (+/- 8 months), with a smoothed sunspot number (SSN) of 115.

The panel agreed that SC25 will be average in intensity and similar to Solar Cycle 24 (SC24).

Additionally, the panel concurred that solar minimum between cycles 24 and 25 will occur in April 2020 (+/- 6 months).

If the solar minimum prediction is correct, this would make SC24 the 7th longest on record (11.4 years).

In their preliminary forecast, released in April 2019, panel scientists said SC25 is likely to be weak, much like the current one (SC24).

"SC25 may have a slow start, but is anticipated to peak with solar maximum occurring between 2023 and 2026, and a sunspot range of 95 to 130. This is well below the average number of sunspots," they said back in April, adding that 'the panel has high confidence that the coming cycle should break the trend of weakening solar activity seen over the past four cycles.'

"We expect SC25 will be very similar to Cycle 24: another fairly weak cycle, preceded by a long, deep minimum," said panel co-chair Lisa Upton, Ph.D., solar physicist with Space Systems Research Corp.

"The expectation that SC25 will be comparable in size to SC24 means that the steady decline in solar cycle amplitude, seen from cycles 21-24, has come to an end and that there is no indication that we are currently approaching a Maunder-type minimum in solar activity."

Solar Cycle 24 reached its maximum – the period when the Sun is most active – in April 2014 with a peak average of 82 sunspots. The Sun’s Northern Hemisphere led the sunspot cycle, peaking over two years ahead of the Southern Hemisphere sunspot peak.

Featured image credit: NASA/SDO 

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5 Comments

  1. Hello, It know Geophysik 40 years.
    Bigger vulcanic eruption on the Earth and Earhquakes…Iceland, Alaska, New Zeeland, South America.
    Its typical cycle 62,5 Year and other. See in Researschgate Ivanka Charvatova, Pavel Kalenda…
    Very good NASA.
    2150 is here Iceage… Yellowstone?

  2. I think that the projection for SC25 to go so far past 2030 is wrong. This will be highly interesting to see how this develops. My key to predicting the next solar cycle has to do with the suspected West Coast flood cycle. Those little bits of information of this suspected flood cycle were my entire foothold into the climate debate. Without which it is doubtful that I would have spent the 6 or 7 thousand hours of time which I have given to this subject since mid 2008.

    All of that jelled within me when in early 2014 after 6 years of studying I had a brilliant mental surge early in that year. That is when I was able to finalize my thoughts which led to the 2014 predictions that the next West Coast flood would occur in the winter of 2016/17, the ENSO regions would then be negative, and thirdly that the solar minimum would start at that time. In this case I am defining solar minimum as the beginning of the 2 to 4 year trend of zero sunspot days, ie in 2016 there were 32 spotless days which all occurred at the tail end of 2016. That was the beginning of this current minimum, from my perspective.

    With that in mind, I would predict that the most likely winter for the next West Coast flood cycle is the winter of 2026/27. That means that the ENSO regions will be negative at the end of 2026, and that the solar minimum will show itself with its first spotless days in late 2026. That also means that SC 25 will come to an end sometime in 2030. So there you have it. I might not make it that far in life, but your site should still be going strong. You can keep watch to see, if there wass any substance to my thoughts.

  3. MY PREDICTION VS NOAA/NASA PREDICTION

    In the next a few months you will see that those solar physicists who predicted solar cycle 25 do not know what they are talking about. And, here is my prediction. In 2020, the sun will unleash the biggest solar flare ever recorded.

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