Growth of Cycle 25

[Drax Spacex]

On 2023-08-07, 126 days ago, 4 months and 4 days ago, was the most recent X flare, an X1.51.  

Where are the X flares?

It seems unusual to have a stretch this long without X flares so close to solar maximum.

Edited December 12, 2023 by Drax Spacex

[hamateur 1953]

3 hours ago, Drax Spacex said:

On 2023-08-07, 126 days ago, 4 months and 4 days ago, was the most recent X flare, an X1.51.  

Where are the X flares?

It seems unusual to have a stretch this long without X flares so close to solar maximum.

We all wanna know this Drax!   They’re being saved for future use is my theory. At least if they’re happening on the farside, we’re unaware of it.  We evidently have more than our share of C class and even M class I think. @3gMike should weigh in as he probably has a current tally of both. 

[Patrick P.A. Geryl]

7 uren geleden, Drax Spacex zei:

On 2023-08-07, 126 days ago, 4 months and 4 days ago, was the most recent X flare, an X1.51.  

Where are the X flares?

It seems unusual to have a stretch this long without X flares so close to solar maximum.

Solar max has passed🤣

[hamateur 1953]

Hang on a bit longer. Even once solar max really does pass, we still have the downslope which typically yields more fun ( ie: aug 1972 oct, nov 2003) for good examples of unbridled auroral chaos!  Rockandroll 

[Philalethes]

8 hours ago, Drax Spacex said:

On 2023-08-07, 126 days ago, 4 months and 4 days ago, was the most recent X flare, an X1.51.  

Where are the X flares?

It seems unusual to have a stretch this long without X flares so close to solar maximum.

Not sure how unusual it actually is, but it would be interesting to check for similar periods for the previous cycles we have records of; also, it should be noted that the M9.8 was pretty close.

Also, we don't know how close we really are to Solar maximum, could still potentially be in as much as a year at the latest, although I don't think it's likely that it'll be that late.

And another thing: isn't it true that most strong events tend to occur after maximum rather than before it? I believe I've read this a few times in some of the scientific articles I've browsed over these past few years, but I'm not sure exactly how much of a fact that is. I can see how it would be possible at least, since maximum concerns the sunspot number only, and not actual activity, even though the two are obviously associated.

Lots of interesting things to investigate here, but you certainly raise a good question that deserves being looked into; maybe I'll check the records myself at some point to see what can be gleaned.

[hamateur 1953]

I definitely would like some Christmas Aurora!!  Red and Green. We have a few new ARs on the way.   Justin time maybe?  We can’t always get what we want, ( Ukrainian Masseuses) but we will eventually get what we need.  Haha.  

[tniickck]

14 minutes ago, hamateur 1953 said:

(Ukrainian Masseuses) 

what is it

1 hour ago, Patrick P.A. Geryl said:

Solar max has passed🤣

why do you keep saying this even though nobody knows it yet

[Philalethes]

1 hour ago, hamateur 1953 said:

I definitely would like some Christmas Aurora!!  Red and Green. We have a few new ARs on the way.   Justin time maybe?  We can’t always get what we want, ( Ukrainian Masseuses) but we will eventually get what we need.  Haha.  

It would be fitting with some activity for Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, but I have my doubts. The first spot in what is presumably the group we discussed yesterday in the Incoming Regions thread is visible now, so we'll see soon if there's any promise to it, and there's also a chance the larger cluster we also talked about will return around the solstice, so that could perhaps bring something too. Otherwise the only hopes would be a newly and rapidly emerging region with a lot of complexity or a good filament.

I wouldn't get my hopes up personally though, as Sol seldom operates according to our puny schedules. Very close to the equator people would historically (and prehistorically for that matter) never even had much if any reason to celebrate something like a winter solstice at all, even though around the edge of the equatorial tropics around 10-15° of latitude there is evidence of both Inca and Maya celebrating their respective winter solstices, as the differences in day length and temperature are already quite notable there.

I think the closest we come to established effects that operate according to days we still note and sometimes celebrate are the equinoctial and R-M effects that increase the chance of geomagnetic activity around the equinoctes, but that won't do us much good now (in fact, if anything there's typically less geomagnetic activity around this time of year).

I guess that's a bit of an off-topic digression though, but I think it's safe to say that most of us are hoping for more growth in any case (except for Patrick, who is presumably hoping for none of that pesky activity to interfere with his hypothesis).

[Drax Spacex]

11 hours ago, Philalethes said:

Not sure how unusual it actually is, but it would be interesting to check for similar periods for the previous cycles we have records of; also, it should be noted that the M9.8 was pretty close.

Also, we don't know how close we really are to Solar maximum, could still potentially be in as much as a year at the latest, although I don't think it's likely that it'll be that late.

And another thing: isn't it true that most strong events tend to occur after maximum rather than before it? I believe I've read this a few times in some of the scientific articles I've browsed over these past few years, but I'm not sure exactly how much of a fact that is. I can see how it would be possible at least, since maximum concerns the sunspot number only, and not actual activity, even though the two are obviously associated.

Lots of interesting things to investigate here, but you certainly raise a good question that deserves being looked into; maybe I'll check the records myself at some point to see what can be gleaned.

I'm sure raw flare data is available that could be queried and parsed to provide the answer to how unusual this is- but this was the best I could find from a web search for a graph or spreadsheet for number of X flares per month.

From the following pdf file, for SC23 maximum years 2000,2001,2002 there were two stretches of 3 months with no X flares.  There was one stretch in the latter months of maximum of 4 months (Nov 2002-Feb 2003) with no X flares.

>And another thing: isn't it true that most strong events tend to occur after maximum rather than before it?

A good example here, Sep 2005 registered the highest monthly X flare count of the solar cycle with 10.

https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/sun/8Page44.pdf

Edited December 12, 2023 by Drax Spacex
count

[hamateur 1953]

Major activity usually occurs on the downslopes

3 hours ago, Drax Spacex said:

I'm sure raw flare data is available that could be queried and parsed to provide the answer to how unusual this is- but this was the best I could find from a web search for a graph or spreadsheet for number of X flares per month.

From the following pdf file, for SC23 maximum years 2000,2001,2002 there was one stretch of 3 months with no X flares.  There was one stretch in the latter months of maximum of 4 months (Nov 2002-Feb 2003) with no X flares.

>And another thing: isn't it true that most strong events tend to occur after maximum rather than before it?

A good example here, Sep 2005 registered the highest monthly X flare count of the solar cycle with 10.

https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/sun/8Page44.pdf

Absolutely true @Drax Spacexone very notable exception might be in 1859 during the ascent to solar max in SC 10.  Ha ha. 

11 hours ago, tniickck said:

what is it

why do you keep saying this even though nobody knows it yet

The masseuses were from an earlier discussion and probably should never be brought up again here.  As to why Patrick remains oblivious??? Your guess is as good as any I can come up with @tniickck  Hopefully things are doing better for y’all!  Mike/Hagrid edit:  It is possible @tniickck even likely that Patrick will eventually succeed in his proclamation “ Solar Max has passed”. Naturally, he can then claim his prediction was correct.  Edit again!   Haha. I was watching Adam Savage from the old American show “ Mythbusters”  He made famous the saying “ I reject your reality and substitute my own! “   This may very well apply to Patrick.  

Edited December 12, 2023 by hamateur 1953

[Philalethes]

2 hours ago, Drax Spacex said:

I'm sure raw flare data is available that could be queried and parsed to provide the answer to how unusual this is- but this was the best I could find from a web search for a graph or spreadsheet for number of X flares per month.

From the following pdf file, for SC23 maximum years 2000,2001,2002 there was one stretch of 3 months with no X flares.  There was one stretch in the latter months of maximum of 4 months (Nov 2002-Feb 2003) with no X flares.

>And another thing: isn't it true that most strong events tend to occur after maximum rather than before it?

A good example here, Sep 2005 registered the highest monthly X flare count of the solar cycle with 10.

https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/sun/8Page44.pdf

That's a great summary of a cycle to look at; it's just one cycle of course, so we can't draw any definite conclusions as to whether these patterns hold for all or most of them, but it's definitely interesting to see how the X-flares are distributed there regardless.

One of the things that stands out to me is how SC23 had two very symmetrical peaks, with SSNs of ~175 and ~180 respectively, so it's hard to say if one can safely look at activity before the second peak as representative of what activity would typically look like before max, since the first peak in some ways represents a lesser "maximum" of its own (a so-called local maximum, terminology I'm sure you're familiar with).

So if then, hypothetically, we are not yet at the first (or only) peak of SC25, then I would expect to see activity more like that in the years preceding 2000, especially 1999. Interestingly there is indeed a pretty long period there, after a relative burst the year before, without any X-flares at all, a "calm before the storm" if you will. So perhaps this period is such a calm for SC25, wouldn't be too much of a stretch to have one of 4+ months given the 8 months of that one in 1999 (which had its first month in December of 1998).

The local maximum of the first peak of SC23 was in April of 2000, and that X-flare-less period ended 9 months prior to that; I guess that might be a stretch for this one, but it's of course a possibility we're about to see some X-flaring and that we won't see maximum until September, and also always possible that we can't really compare the two that directly. If SC25 turns out to have a more synchronized single peak then maybe that will occur a bit later (like if SC23 were to have had such a peak, then presumably it'd occur sometime between the two peaks we observed, although maybe that's not actually true).

And yeah, as you say it does indeed seem like the X-flaring is end-heavy, with much more occurring after the first peak, including after the second too. If this is indeed what's common, then personally I take that as yet another indicator that we're probably not quite at max yet, or that we're soon going to start to see a lot more serious flaring. I really struggle to see much of a chance that we simply passed the top and that the cycle will drift into oblivion from here on, but who knows; that'd be very disappointing.

Good data, very interesting to look at and analyze, would be interested to hear if you have any further thoughts on what you think it might mean relative to this cycle.

[hamateur 1953]

I believe as you seemed  to earlier@Philalethes that we won’t see significant high-level activity until May or so.  I expect a saw-toothed climb of sorts with perhaps a pause like last April.  But hey, I could be wrong.  Time will again show and surprise us no doubt! 

[Drax Spacex]

Additional data after a romp through the spaceweatherlive archive:

SC24 had two peaks: 3/2012 (98) and 4/2014 (116)

In the eleven months from 11/2012-9/2013, there was a dearth of X flares.  Only one month in this range (5/2013) had any X flares.

11/2012 was between the two peaks, and 9/2013 was at the rising edge of the second peak.  More regular occurrences of monthly X flares resumed 10/2013.

Could we hypothesize that after the sun has downshifted for many consecutive months with no X flares, does a reemergence of X flares signal the start of an upturn in solar activity?   Maybe.

Or maybe not.  This may simply corroborate what we already know -  that a month without X flares typically correlates with a lower monthly sunspot number, and a month with X flares typically correlates to a higher monthly sunspot number (relative to a predicted value for that month within the solar cycle).

Edited December 13, 2023 by Drax Spacex

[Jesterface23]

On the flip side of sunspot regions, I wonder what 'filament cycles' are like month by month compared to the sunspot numbers

[Philalethes]

7 hours ago, Drax Spacex said:

Or maybe not.  This may simply corroborate what we already know -  that a month without X flares typically correlates with a lower monthly sunspot number, and a month with X flares typically correlates to a higher monthly sunspot number (relative to a predicted value for that month within the solar cycle).

It could be, but I'm not sure how well that fits with e.g. the data from SC23, because from looking at it it seems like there were a lot of X-flares towards the end of it as well, after the sunspot number had subsided well into territories where there was significantly less X-flare activity during the rise.

On the other hand, if as you say you adjust it relative to a predicted value for what's predicted in a certain part of the cycle, then it could very well be, would be interesting if one could find a general relationship there, i.e. a kind of blueprint for how many flares should occur at a given point along in a cycle independent of the specifics of each cycle.

I also just checked the distribution for SC25 so far too, which looks like this:

Quote

2020: 0
2021: 2
2022: 7
2023: 11

Interesting to note is that this is a total of 20 X-flares so far, while the same number for all the X-flares in SC23 up to and including 1999 was 22, whereas in a couple of years after it reached the first peak there were 21 and 20 single years. I still don't know to what extent it really makes sense to compare directly like this, but it still looks like this could be our corresponding period of lower activity to the one in 1999, and that the activity so far has only been the warm-up. Could just be wishful thinking too I guess, heh.

3 hours ago, Jesterface23 said:

On the flip side of sunspot regions, I wonder what 'filament cycles' are like month by month compared to the sunspot numbers

Well now you're opening a whole new can of coronal plasma worms. Would definitely be very interested to see something like that myself too though.

[hamateur 1953]

All very interesting observations!   Jan 1 2024 I will do another sunspot latitude “ snapshot”. Hopefully we have another fairly equal distribution between hemispheres.  15 degrees average last check and still well above what STCE looks at when assuming we are near Solar Maximum.  Nine to eleven is what I recall.   Naturally I will stand corrected if any other credible sources are cited.  Mike/Hagrid

I wonder if 27 day intervals might be better?  Hmmm. Hafta think a bit about that….. 

Edited December 13, 2023 by hamateur 1953
Rotational position.

[Philalethes]

22 minutes ago, hamateur 1953 said:

All very interesting observations!   Jan 1 2024 I will do another sunspot latitude “ snapshot”. Hopefully we have another fairly equal distribution between hemispheres.  15 degrees average last check and still well above what STCE looks at when assuming we are near Solar Maximum.  Nine to eleven is what I recall.   Naturally I will stand corrected if any other credible sources are cited.  Mike/Hagrid

I wonder if 27 day intervals might be better?  Hmmm. Hafta think a bit about that….. 

I was just about to post about it in the thread about latitudes, actually, since I just checked myself; the mean sunspot latitude based on the latitudes given here on SWL is currently 13.57. Didn't separate that into hemispheres, just the overall.

And yeah, I think you're definitely right about the latitudes, especially when I look at the butterfly diagram on the site 3gMike provided there; I cropped out just the three closest bars to the equator for SC25 and the past 8 cycles, and it looks like this:

Unless there's something very odd and unusual about SC25, it looks to me like there's still a lot of activity in store.

[hamateur 1953]

Indeed @Philalethes  and you have a fairly good sample size presently also. I reconsidered and decided if I was going to do a “ snapshot” rather than a descending graph, it would be better to select 27 day intervals, and am going to go that way instead.  Hoping our sun is corporative and gives us five or six in each hemisphere like a couple weeks ago.   Otter likes again. Hahaha  later dudes, Mike/Hagrid 

[Philalethes]

Well, there's the X-flare, right on cue.

[hamateur 1953]

2 hours ago, Philalethes said:

Well, there's the X-flare, right on cue.

nrc reports 852.3.  Haha. I think I will wait for the Boulder Colorado official SFI in two hours. 

[David Silver]

What will it take for some folks here to agree with me (and NASA) that the peak is not until mid NEXT year. What is the metric that will convince you?

[Drax Spacex]

10 hours ago, Philalethes said:

Well, there's the X-flare, right on cue.

The Sun can be so easily provoked with a little prodding and taunting

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/sunspot-region-produces-x28-flare-largest-sep-10-2017

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/strongest-solar-flare-solar-cycle-25

Edited December 15, 2023 by Drax Spacex

[Philalethes]

9 hours ago, David Silver said:

What will it take for some folks here to agree with me (and NASA) that the peak is not until mid NEXT year. What is the metric that will convince you?

From what I've gathered something similar to this is pretty much what the majority of people here already believe, if I'm not mistaken, so I'm not exactly sure why you're asking in this way as if to imply that's not the case; unless by "next year" you mean 2025 rather than 2024, that is, in which I don't think a lot of people would agree, but maybe some. At least very few will agree that maximum has already passed, in that case I think Patrick would be the only one on your side for the time being.

The only metric that will convince me conclusively about where maximum is is looking at the SSNs after we're already so far past the peak that it's clear we're headed for minimum, so probably around 2027-2028.

[hamateur 1953]

18 hours ago, Philalethes said:

Well, there's the X-flare, right on cue.

nrc reports 852.3

 

On 12/12/2023 at 10:45 PM, Jesterface23 said:

On the flip side of sunspot regions, I wonder what 'filament cycles' are like month by month compared to the sunspot numbers

at 18:00 utc.  Yeah, if only not skewed by that nice historical X. Anyway 155 is more what I expected.    On @Jesterface23filament query, Since our sun is moving around surface-wise and running out of surface area, fewer and smaller coronal holes are also to be expected.  It makes sense that we should be seeing more filaments being ejected on our way up to solar max.  But I dunno if anyone has really taken the time yet to properly chronicle these events. Interesting subject though. 

Edited December 15, 2023 by hamateur 1953
Typo

[Philalethes]

11 minutes ago, hamateur 1953 said:

nrc reports 852.3

Heh, they measured the flux during the flare I see. I guess this is one of the moments where you could possibly make a case for Jan's personal adjustments for flares, but in the long run even events like that should even out. After all, trying to somehow exclude that flare in terms of the effect of the flux on the atmosphere would be even more wrong in many ways.