Cycle 24 spotless days keeps moving up the hill – now “competitive with the Baby Grand minimum”

Watts Up With That?
Sunday, Oct 4th, 2009

After an exciting encounter last week with some genuine sunspots that weren’t arguable as specks, pores, or pixels, the sun resumes its quiet state this week.

People send me things. Here’s the latest email from Paul Stanko, who has been following the solar cycle progression in comparison to previous ones.

Hi Anthony,

Out of the numbered solar cycles, #24 is now in 7th place. Only 5, 6, and 7 of the Dalton Minimum and cycles 12, 14, and 15 of the Baby Grand Minimum had more spotless days.  Since we’ve now beaten cycle #13, we are clearly now competitive with the Baby Grand minimum.

Here’s a table of how the NOAA panel’s new SC#24 prediction is doing:

November 2008:  predicted = 1.80, actual = 1.67 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 83.7)
December 2008:  predicted = 1.80, actual = 1.69 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 84.7)
January 2009:  predicted = 2.10, actual = 1.71 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 73.2)
February 2009: predicted = 2.70, actual = 1.67 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 55.6)
March 2009: predicted = 3.30, actual = 1.97 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 53.8)

April would require the October data which is still very incomplete.  If this analysis intrigues you, I’d be happy to keep you updated on it.  Please also find a couple of  interesting graphs attached as images.

Paul Stanko

Here’s the graphs, the current cycle 24 and years  of interest are marked with a red arrow: 

And how 2008/2009 fit in:

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