Growth of Cycle 25

[Philalethes]

23 hours ago, Rubén Vázquez said:

Thank you very much for your responses. It seems that the trend is towards a clear decrease in activity at the moment.

 

Yeah, it's been quiet lately. Keep in mind that that's the 81-day average, which does tend to swing quite a bit, so it's a rather short-term trend that won't necessarily say much about future development. Here you can see the movement of the 81-day average over the course of the entire cycle so far, and for a few other cycles of interest in terms of comparison:

As you can see from e.g. SC23 there, it still had a lot of growth left after a couple of similar smaller peaks, so it's certainly not out of the question that we'll see something like that for this cycle too.

In terms of 1-year averaging like is done for sunspots (albeit on a daily rather than a monthly basis), this shows up as a decline in growth, but still not any downward trend yet:

How things will continue to develop remains to be seen, but I personally definitely think this is just another calm before the storm, and that we'll see more activity start to emerge again as we move towards a maximum next year sometime.

As has been discussed in a few threads by now, maximum typically coincides somewhat with the crossing of the polar fields as they flip, although it's not a perfect association. Part of the problem is that we simply don't have that much data on it going way back, even the WSO polar field data only goes back a few cycles and only measures at a set latitude that might not account for variations in the overall development. The most detailed data we have on it is the HMI polar field data, but that only dates back to around 2010, so the only maximum on that record is the SC24 maximum. You can see the development here at different caps (50+°, 60°+, and 70°+ respectively, with the 50°+ corresponding most closely to the WSO field data as far as I'm aware) according to HMI:

As can be seen here it looks like the crossing around 2014 was associated with the maximum around then (with the peak being towards the end of it, as the fields started moving apart again), but given how we don't have this data for earlier cycles it's hard to say if that would be valid for other cycles too, including this one; physically speaking it does make sense though, as that would be the time of the most unstable and chaotic field configurations before they separate and move into the more orderly flipped fields we see at minimum. Going by this I'm still expecting maximum in 6-12 months or so, and that we'll see corresponding periods of heightened flux in that span of time too.

[Patrick P.A. Geryl]

Where is the link to these data? Especially the average at 70 degrees

Edited October 21, 2023 by Patrick P.A. Geryl

[Philalethes]

11 hours ago, Patrick P.A. Geryl said:

Where is the link to these data? Especially the average at 70 degrees

The way to get the data is described on the HMI polar field page; it will point you here, with this being the description of how to get the data you want. You ultimately do get a link, but it dynamically loads the data, and I had to load all of it in batches of one year each to get it to work as it's a lot of entries total (almost 600k), your mileage might vary. The data products are BANDN3 and BANDS3 for 70°+ north and south respectively, CAPN1 and CAPS1 for 50°+, and CAPN2 and CAPS2 for 60°+ (which is what is presented in the graph on the first page I mentioned).

Notice that these are not averages at a specific latitude, but the average of an entire "cap", i.e. from a given latitude and all the way up to the pole (the 70°+ falls under the "band" data since it's lumped together with the bands 50°-60° and 60°-70°, i.e. as a 70°-90° band, but that's the exact same as the corresponding cap).

Addendum:

I've made accessing the data a bit simpler if you don't want to look through the above. I uploaded all the records I've already downloaded in a single text file here (note the order of the different records at the very top of the document, it's a bit jumbled), and to update it with new data as it comes in you can use this link, but replace the date with whatever is the latest date you've already downloaded. As you can tell from the link it's using the date 2023-10-03, as that's the latest I had when I fetched the newest data for the above graphs, yielding me data until 2023-10-16 as you can see from the text file; the next time I'd get data I'd use that date, and it'd give me all the records from that date, and immediately following the last one, from 23:24 on the same date until 23:12 on the most recent date (i.e. if you just change it to the last date you see in the text file you won't have to worry about removing any duplicates, you can just copy all the new records and append them to the file, and there won't be any overlap), the 12-minute intervals being the 720-second resolution of the data itself for a total of 120 records each day. Hope that helps.

Edited October 22, 2023 by Philalethes
addendum

[Rubén Vázquez]

Philalethes: An explanation out of 10. Thank you very much for the clarifications and the time you have dedicated to preparing this response. From what I see, the probability that activity will increase again is very high. As you say, we don't have much data to compare, and we still have a lot to learn. For me, it is what makes this science exciting. It's time to continue observing and analyzing. A hug and thank you once again.

[hamateur 1953]

It has been a few weeks, and presently it seems we are heading into another perhaps even deeper lull.  SFI as presently posted around 126 just now by NRC Canada.   I expect a resurgence in activity as do most of the scientists involved in research and predicting these things.  A double peak is looking to be the most likely outcome if I were to guess at this point.  I am a bit surprised, however at some predictions placing it as far ahead as 2025.   To me, anyway this seems a bit unlikely. But perhaps I was reading a misprint somewhere. In any event incoming regions are looking hopeful for the present time keeping our sfi above 100 possibly.   

Edited November 14, 2023 by hamateur 1953

[Patrick P.A. Geryl]

Op 16/8/2023 om 05:30, Patrick P.A. Geryl zei:

I stated in the beginning of this year that the 13-month smoothed max would fall on the first switch of the average polar magnetic field. This happened in May! Seems my theory could be right🤔🤨😉🥳😊 also my forward looking indicators give May-June… Can’t publish them here’… in peer review

I did 365 day smoothing on the ISN. Seems my prediction is quite close😊. Anybody willing to check?

[Jesterface23]

23 minutes ago, Patrick P.A. Geryl said:

I did 365 day smoothing on the ISN. Seems my prediction is quite close😊. Anybody willing to check?

Once enough data for review is available in a few years.

[hamateur 1953]

I have been hoping @3gMikemight take the time to weigh in with some fact-based analysis.  After all, this thread is about the growth of cycle 25 or should be. 😎Honestly, given the paucity of ARs on the disk at present, id expected a lower SFI yesterday. It will be interesting to see what is posted around 18:00 utc today. 119 officially today.  Definitely taking a dive, fortunately not below 100 yet before its recovery. 
Based on an rough average of one point/ day, January is still attainable for 180-200 sfi. Time will tell.  

Edited November 15, 2023 by hamateur 1953

[3gMike]

On 11/15/2023 at 5:48 PM, hamateur 1953 said:

I have been hoping @3gMikemight take the time to weigh in with some fact-based analysis.  After all, this thread is about the growth of cycle 25 or should be. 😎Honestly, given the paucity of ARs on the disk at present, id expected a lower SFI yesterday. It will be interesting to see what is posted around 18:00 utc today. 119 officially today.  Definitely taking a dive, fortunately not below 100 yet before its recovery. 
Based on an rough average of one point/ day, January is still attainable for 180-200 sfi. Time will tell.  

Just a quick look at numbers of Active Regions / Flares produced / Monthly ISN for year to date. Worth noting that the number of C flares already exceeds the annual maximum for any year in Cycle 23, and number of M flares is nearly equal with another month and a half remaining of this year.

[Jesterface23]

2 hours ago, 3gMike said:

Worth noting that the number of C flares already exceeds the annual maximum for any year in Cycle 23, and number of M flares is nearly equal with another month and a half remaining of this year.

That has already come up being the X-Ray flux values from GOES 16 onward have higher values than the previous satellites. They may have actually just finished reprocessing the older satellites. I'll need to see once I get my computer back up and running.

[hamateur 1953]

 

6 hours ago, 3gMike said:

Just a quick look at numbers of Active Regions / Flares produced / Monthly ISN for year to date. Worth noting that the number of C flares already exceeds the annual maximum for any year in Cycle 23, and number of M flares is nearly equal with another month and a half remaining of this year.

Not bad for a low-amplitude cycle so far.  Next year will be very interesting, no doubt. Edit: Thanks Mike, with STCE cycle 25 tracking still being down, its nice to have updates on solar activity, especially in comparison.  For what its worth, with flux staying above 100 for now, it says to me that our sun is a long way from finishing this cycle early.  Next year could be very good for flux and increased solar activity.  

Edited November 17, 2023 by hamateur 1953

[3gMike]

10 hours ago, Jesterface23 said:

That has already come up being the X-Ray flux values from GOES 16 onward have higher values than the previous satellites. They may have actually just finished reprocessing the older satellites. I'll need to see once I get my computer back up and running.

I understand that, and I have found some reprocessed files (in NCF format) but I cannot open them at present. I also note that GOES 16 came into operation in 2017 but the higher values only seem to appear in the last two years.

[Jesterface23]

3 hours ago, 3gMike said:

I also note that GOES 16 came into operation in 2017 but the higher values only seem to appear in the last two years.

It looks like GOES 16 became primary on December 9th, 2019,

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/goes-14-15-are-now-storage-mode

Monthly sunspot numbers looked pretty low until the end of 2020.

[Philalethes]

I thought it'd be interesting to look at the flux development compared to the other relevant cycles when smoothing enough for there to only be a single peak, which is from around 3 years of smoothing or more; here's what that looks like with 3-year smoothing:

Note that while SC25 overlaps SC20 quite nicely lately, it started out lower and has had a steeper ascent, so it wouldn't surprise me if we end up somewhere between SC20 and SC23 (in terms of integrated flux at least, if there ends up being a double peak there will of course be a dip in between with shorter smoothing), which is what I've expected for a while. Really looking forward to seeing what it looks like after the fact towards the end of the cycle.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Philalethes

[tniickck]

the sfi just hit 190

[hamateur 1953]

1 hour ago, tniickck said:

the sfi just hit 190

I’ve also been monitoring it directly on swpc dashboard cuz I was concerned about baseline. However the ionosphere doesn’t really care WHAT it is that ionises it.   On reflection ( pun Intended) 

Jan Alvestad also posted 201 low res sunspots yesterday probably preliminary but this makes sense to me. 

[MinYoongi]

1 hour ago, hamateur 1953 said:

I’ve also been monitoring it directly on swpc dashboard cuz I was concerned about baseline. However the ionosphere doesn’t really care WHAT it is that ionises it.   On reflection ( pun Intended) 

Jan Alvestad also posted 201 low res sunspots yesterday probably preliminary but this makes sense to me. 

is 190 a new high?  ive been out of the topic for the last couple months. what do you mean by concerned?

didnt we hit like 234 sfi In January ?

[hamateur 1953]

25 minutes ago, MinYoongi said:

is 190 a new high?  ive been out of the topic for the last couple months. what do you mean by concerned?

didnt we hit like 234 sfi In January ?

Yes we hit 234 last January ( actually higher, but officially 234). 
what I was and am looking into is the direct relationships between SFI and TCI. For my own interest. To see if TCI leads or lags SFI for one example. But was also concerned at the wild excursions posted on the 10.7 SFI live ramp at the bottom of the swpc dashboard.  Hopefully that answers your questions.  We are far from done with this cycle imho and looking forward to increasing solar activity and of course SFI.    Mike/Hagrid. 

Edited November 23, 2023 by hamateur 1953
Typo

[MinYoongi]

thanks for the nice explanation @hamateur 1953 ❤️ 

[Philalethes]

9 hours ago, hamateur 1953 said:

However the ionosphere doesn’t really care WHAT it is that ionises it.

That's a good point. If I'm not mistaken the extremely strong gamma ray burst detected last year (GRB 221009A, the "BOAT", "brightest of all time") had similar effects on the atmosphere as a Solar flare, or so I believe I read somewhere.

As for the relationship between TCI and flux, my guess is that TCI lags it a bit, just like e.g. water temperature tends to lag air temperature; that's mostly an intuitive guess on my part, but from looking at the TCI a few times it doesn't seem to respond as immediately as flux does.

[hamateur 1953]

11 hours ago, MinYoongi said:

thanks for the nice explanation @hamateur 1953 ❤️ 

You’re most welcome.  Btw I rechecked Penticton ( nrc) on January 15 2023  18:00 utc sfi was 244.9. ( 245). Typically they select the middle of the three posts. In this case it was 20:00 utc. 234.  See ya. Mike/Hagrid.   Edit:   In another thread @3gMikeremarked (paraphrasing here) That who is to say that this year might not be similar to last year??    I wonder if he might be psychic.  Ha Ha !!  Seems like it anyway. 

Edited November 23, 2023 by hamateur 1953

[helios]

9 hours ago, Philalethes said:

 If I'm not mistaken the extremely strong gamma ray burst detected last year (GRB 221009A, the "BOAT", "brightest of all time") had similar effects on the atmosphere as a Solar flare, or so I believe I read somewhere.

Correct, its effect on the ionosphere was comparable to a C3 to M1 flare.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2210.15284.pdf

[hamateur 1953]

9 hours ago, Philalethes said:

That's a good point. If I'm not mistaken the extremely strong gamma ray burst detected last year (GRB 221009A, the "BOAT", "brightest of all time") had similar effects on the atmosphere as a Solar flare, or so I believe I read somewhere.

As for the relationship between TCI and flux, my guess is that TCI lags it a bit, just like e.g. water temperature tends to lag air temperature; that's mostly an intuitive guess on my part, but from looking at the TCI a few times it doesn't seem to respond as immediately as flux does.

This is kinda funny.  So I cross-referenced tci vs sfi on the “Hot” vs max sfi because I expected, like you that TCI should post about a month or more past Max sfi.  The converse was true!!  WHAT   Hmm. So I think what other factors?? GRB? Unlikely. Geomagnetic seemed to fit.  Bingo!! Right before solar max in Dec 1957 for a couple mos. Mass flaring.  Hahaha. 

[3gMike]

28 minutes ago, hamateur 1953 said:

This is kinda funny.  So I cross-referenced tci vs sfi on the “Hot” vs max sfi because I expected, like you that TCI should post about a month or more past Max sfi.  The converse was true!!  WHAT   Hmm. So I think what other factors?? GRB? Unlikely. Geomagnetic seemed to fit.  Bingo!! Right before solar max in Dec 1957 for a couple mos. Mass flaring.  Hahaha. 

This article seems to confirm that view  https://www.space.com/earths-thermosphere-highest-temperature-solar-storms

[hamateur 1953]

Thank you Mike. Outta likes already today haha.  Unofficially sfi at 194. Wowie!!

55 minutes ago, 3gMike said:

This article seems to confirm that view  https://www.space.com/earths-thermosphere-highest-temperature-solar-storms