Southern field close to flipping?

[Philalethes]

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

I seriously disagree. The relation between the high resolution sunspots and the solar flux is pretty linear from high to low. That can’t be said from the ISN. Huge differences at the low, because they see almost no sunspots while we see a lot in high resolution.

Same at the high…

This is logic because if you have 50 percent to 600 percent more sunspots, the fault diminishes considerably….

On these points I agree with you. I also think a higher resolution of sunspots is more reflective of what's actually going on, which as you say can clearly be seen in the F10.7 index. What I still can't get myself to agree with is the way you're trying to predict future activity based on past activity, since it seems to me that you're just trying to base such a prediction on past flux levels, and not really accounting for any particular physical model of Sol's dynamo.

That being said, on a different note, have you looked into using the F30 index as well? I've read some papers which claim that it's even more reliable overall, and considering how F10.7 was primarily borne out of a "fluke" (noticing variable levels when pointing a 2800 MHz antenna at Sol, corresponding to a 10.7 cm wavelength) it would be interesting to see more people check against F30 too.

Edited February 17, 2023 by Philalethes Bythos

[3gMike]

On 2/17/2023 at 12:40 AM, Philalethes Bythos said:

That being said, I still think there's some truth to your statement, because the uptick in activity has been significantly more rapid than for SC24 (as many have noted), and this is indeed reflected in the activity not just going back to July 2022, but all the way back to January 2022.

Based on a comparison of SC25 with SC24, using data from Historical cycles page, I am not convinced that is true

[Philalethes]

17 minutes ago, 3gMike said:

Based on a comparison of SC25 with SC24, using data from Historical cycles page, I am not convinced that is true

It's true that SC24 looks to have caught up at this point, but from looking at it more closely it seems to me that this is primarily due to just having gotten to include the large spike from September 2011 to February 2012 in the SSN, while the SSN for SC25 hasn't yet incorporated its own sustained high activity and two months of even higher activity; this to me seems to imply that it's more likely that the two SSNs will diverge again in the coming months unless activity is abnormally low.

Does that make sense, or am I not thinking about this correctly?

[Philalethes]

As an addendum to the above, I was writing some scripts for the SILSO data, and decided to plot a projection of what SC25 will look like in terms of SSN under the assumption that each month after January will have a monthly average corresponding to the current daily average of February, just to illustrate what I meant:

[Patrick P.A. Geryl]

8 uren geleden, Philalethes Bythos zei:

As an addendum to the above, I was writing some scripts for the SILSO data, and decided to plot a projection of what SC25 will look like in terms of SSN under the assumption that each month after January will have a monthly average corresponding to the current daily average of February, just to illustrate what I meant:

After the high in cycle 24 we found an increasing discrepancy between the SN and the solar flux. If you use the factor from our published article in Astrophysics and Space Science, you can check by yourself if this is happening

SN x 0.635 + 64 = 10.7 Solar flux

[3gMike]

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

After the high in cycle 24 we found an increasing discrepancy between the SN and the solar flux. If you use the factor from our published article in Astrophysics and Space Science, you can check by yourself if this is happening

SN x 0.635 + 64 = 10.7 Solar flux

So, taking you at your word, I compared figures for January 2023 as represented on the Solar Cycle page.

SN 143.6 / 10.7cm flux 182.47

143.6 x 0.635 = 91.19 + 64 = 155.19 !

[Patrick P.A. Geryl]

44 minuten geleden, 3gMike zei:

So, taking you at your word, I compared figures for January 2023 as represented on the Solar Cycle page.

SN 143.6 / 10.7cm flux 182.47

143.6 x 0.635 = 91.19 + 64 = 155.19 !

You need to compare with adjusted flux

also the 1K high resolution is far more right

1K x 0.5 + 64

also take other months and calculate difference

and compare with 2014

takes a few minutes in excel

[3gMike]

23 hours ago, Philalethes Bythos said:

As an addendum to the above, I was writing some scripts for the SILSO data, and decided to plot a projection of what SC25 will look like in terms of SSN under the assumption that each month after January will have a monthly average corresponding to the current daily average of February, just to illustrate what I meant:

Thanks for clarifying. Of course it is likely that the sunspot number will fall back again - similar to what happened in Cycle 24. I do not see anything to indicate that the cycle will be significantly bigger than Cycle 24 at present. Given that this topic was meant to be discussing flipping of fields I would make a loose prediction that 20nHz filtered average field might flip by June this year with unfiltered fields continuing to flip for maybe another year after that. I will try to put together some plots to indicate how that compares with Cycles 23 and 24

[Philalethes]

10 hours ago, 3gMike said:

Of course it is likely that the sunspot number will fall back again - similar to what happened in Cycle 24.

From looking at it historically, such a falling off (in the monthly SN, that is, in turn leading to a drop in the SSN later) seems to occur at the earliest a few months after activity levels first spike, and often significantly later; the immediate sudden drop that would be required for the divergence highlighted above not to continue would be rather abnormal, as even the drop for SC24 didn't occur until after a few months of sustained high activity. The projection above to me is primarily meant to highlight that even with a conservative drop in average activity from current levels, the lines will continue to remain visibly apart. This is also echoed in the fact that the SC25 spike has occurred later than the SC24 one (hence why a drop is likely to occur later too), yet still the lines remained apart (due to the higher activity levels earlier, seen in the divergence between the lines at that point).

All in all, based on this it still seems like to me that SC25 has shown notably higher activity levels than SC24 so far; but that being said, this is relative to SC24 being a small cycle, it still doesn't seem to be nearly as active as e.g. SC23 based on current activity (unless one adjusts for start time of the cycle by e.g. terminators instead of "canonical" minima, but that's besides the point here for sure).

As for the topic of the thread, it was primarily the occurrence of a specific event that has already occurred according to Patrick (the first flipping of the southern field), and from what I could tell later on mostly related to the predictions Patrick had made based on or in line with that, so I'm not sure exactly what is or isn't on-topic here anymore, but I agree that a lot of the discussion has probably strayed from what belongs in here; returning to primarily discussing the polar fields as they continue to "teeter" and eventually fully flip sounds reasonable to me.

Edited February 22, 2023 by Philalethes Bythos

[Patrick P.A. Geryl]

Latest update average polar field: not flipped yet…

[Patrick P.A. Geryl]

April 5: average not flipped yet

[Philalethes]

On 5/11/2023 at 4:18 AM, Patrick P.A. Geryl said:

April 5: average not flipped yet

If you look at the filtered values WSO uses to eliminate variations in the alignment between the observatory and the Solar poles, it's interesting to note that the southern field didn't flip yet either, nor did the northern field (which looks to be the first one to actually flip). At this rate I'd estimate that the northern field will have flipped in the next measurement, and the average field in a couple of months.

This also seems to match up with the polar fields measurements by HMI.

Addendum:

To illustrate what I mean and what WSO states about their data, here's a plot of the polar field data from WSO, with markers spaced out yearly to highlight the effect:

As you can see, the cyclical variation that leads to the idea that the southern field already flipped and then subsequently the northern field as well very clearly is due to the yearly oscillation in those data that are caused by the difference in measurement over the course of the year, just like they state on their site, rather than something to do with the actual field itself. As they state (here, for reference):

Quote

The Sun's Polar Field strength is measured in the polemost 3' apertures at WSO each day, north and south.

The polemost aperture measures the line-of-sight field between about 55 and the poles.

As Earth moves above and below the equator each year the solar coordinates of the apertures shift.

Depending on the observatory optics and the date, the square aperture at the pole will be oriented differently on the Sun during each measurement.

These are the "yearly geometric projection effects" being filtered out in the filtered values, as mentioned right below:

Quote

A 20nhz low pass filtered values eliminate yearly geometric projection effects.

It must surely be those latter filtered values that are reasonable to use in this regard, which like mentioned above are in agreement with the measurements of HMI. I linked to the site where we can see those measurements above, but here I've fetched the data myself and plotted it in the same manner, taking one measurement per day and using 30-day smoothing:

Clearly the southern field never flipped at all, and neither has the northern field yet; curiously, the northern field has even slowed its descent a bit, so perhaps it will be a bit longer than expected until it hits zero, and also until the average field flips. Time will tell.

Also, here is the first plot along with the last few cycle progressions in terms of SSN, hopefully in a reasonably clear manner:

Overall this sheds some light on what was discussed much earlier in the thread about the location of the maximum of each cycle relative to the time the field flips. At that point I was personally still looking at the unfiltered values, so some of the statements based on that might have been slightly inaccurate (others may have done the same), but in general we see the same, i.e. how SSN maximum doesn't necessarily coincide with the field flipping.

That being said, there does seem to be more of a relationship between when the field flips and the average peak of the cycle, e.g. as seen in SC24 where the flip happens right in the middle, so perhaps a stronger relationship could be found with even more smoothing of the sunspot numbers than the SSN provides (i.e. highlighting the previously discussed problem with simply using one of the peaks as the maximum). But this isn't always true either, because in the case of e.g. SC23 you can see the flip happen at the beginning of the first peak, a very straightforward crossing of the fields, but then the field seems to flat out and even slightly reverse, and at the same time another peak occurs, containing the maximum. This flattening can be found in SC21 and SC24 too in a similar manner, but in e.g. SC22 there seems to be nothing like that happening at all as the second peak there occurs.

This all seems to indicate that there's still no way to only look at what the polar fields are doing and determine what will happen next, neither in terms of the polar fields themselves nor in terms of SSN, but that there likely is some relationship there along with other variables that aren't taken into account here.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Philalethes
added plots and further thoughts

[Patrick P.A. Geryl]

Op 11/5/2023 om 06:03, Philalethes zei:

If you look at the filtered values WSO uses to eliminate variations in the alignment between the observatory and the Solar poles, it's interesting to note that the southern field didn't flip yet either, nor did the northern field (which looks to be the first one to actually flip). At this rate I'd estimate that the northern field will have flipped in the next measurement, and the average field in a couple of months.

This also seems to match up with the polar fields measurements by HMI.

Addendum:

To illustrate what I mean and what WSO states about their data, here's a plot of the polar field data from WSO, with markers spaced out yearly to highlight the effect:

As you can see, the cyclical variation that leads to the idea that the southern field already flipped and then subsequently the northern field as well very clearly is due to the yearly oscillation in those data that are caused by the difference in measurement over the course of the year, just like they state on their site, rather than something to do with the actual field itself. As they state (here, for reference):

These are the "yearly geometric projection effects" being filtered out in the filtered values, as mentioned right below:

It must surely be those latter filtered values that are reasonable to use in this regard, which like mentioned above are in agreement with the measurements of HMI. I linked to the site where we can see those measurements above, but here I've fetched the data myself and plotted it in the same manner, taking one measurement per day and using 30-day smoothing:

Clearly the southern field never flipped at all, and neither has the northern field yet; curiously, the northern field has even slowed its descent a bit, so perhaps it will be a bit longer than expected until it hits zero, and also until the average field flips. Time will tell.

Also, here is the first plot along with the last few cycle progressions in terms of SSN, hopefully in a reasonably clear manner:

Overall this sheds some light on what was discussed much earlier in the thread about the location of the maximum of each cycle relative to the time the field flips. At that point I was personally still looking at the unfiltered values, so some of the statements based on that might have been slightly inaccurate (others may have done the same), but in general we see the same, i.e. how SSN maximum doesn't necessarily coincide with the field flipping.

That being said, there does seem to be more of a relationship between when the field flips and the average peak of the cycle, e.g. as seen in SC24 where the flip happens right in the middle, so perhaps a stronger relationship could be found with even more smoothing of the sunspot numbers than the SSN provides (i.e. highlighting the previously discussed problem with simply using one of the peaks as the maximum). But this isn't always true either, because in the case of e.g. SC23 you can see the flip happen at the beginning of the first peak, a very straightforward crossing of the fields, but then the field seems to flat out and even slightly reverse, and at the same time another peak occurs, containing the maximum. This flattening can be found in SC21 and SC24 too in a similar manner, but in e.g. SC22 there seems to be nothing like that happening at all as the second peak there occurs.

This all seems to indicate that there's still no way to only look at what the polar fields are doing and determine what will happen next, neither in terms of the polar fields themselves nor in terms of SSN, but that there likely is some relationship there along with other variables that aren't taken into account here.

Explain why the first unfiltered flip in cycle 21 coincides with the SSN HIGH… And the first average with the smoothed max…

 

[Philalethes]

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

Explain why the first unfiltered flip in cycle 21 coincides with the SSN HIGH… And the first average with the smoothed max…

Well, as we've talked about quite a lot throughout the thread, you can't extrapolate from a single cycle (or even two); for other cycles that is not true. This seems to have to do with the fact that it's hard, if not impossible, to predict exactly how the field will move; if you look at the overall patterns you see that the fields sometimes stop moving towards each other and start to move in parallel or even away from each other for a while. Additionally the overall polar field isn't always going to tell you how the field is looking closer to the equator, which is where most of the action happens.

And lastly I strongly doubt it's a good idea to look at unfiltered values from WSO and drawing conclusions from that, because when you look at e.g. the HMI polar field data you see how complex the field actually is, and that a single dip into opposite polarity at a specific measurement with such low sample size is not going to be representative of the overall field. If you look at the HMI data you'll see that they also have data on other specific bands, such as 70°+ exclusively (instead of the 60°+ that is the standard that they're showing on the site), which is also interesting to look at and compare to that before the field flipped for SC24 (sadly the data doesn't go back before 2010 since SDO was launched then).

Here I've e.g. used the 720-second cadence that is the highest temporal resolution provided, and included the 70°+ data as well, all with the ~27-day smoothing they use on the site too:

It should be fairly obvious from this that the overall field has not flipped at all despite single measurements of the field flipping by WSO; if we use 1-day smoothing instead we can see more clearly where the "flips" that you're thinking of are coming from:

As you can see, the southern field "flipping" last year around August-September was just a very specific part of the field along its rotation (reflected in the monthly oscillations). The same is true for the northern field "flips" earlier this year, where you also see that the majority of the field still remains above 0; in fact, even if the average field "flips" in this way, it's clear that the actual flip occurs when the mean of the oscillation is what crosses 0, rather than just a small part of it. This is what's reflected better in the smoothed values above.

Looking at the continuous butterfly diagram of the fields provided on the HMI polar field website we also see these facts reflected:

Interestingly, we also see that the equatorial fields have not yet met up as much as is characteristic of the time around maximum. Judging by the overall development, I would guess we're roughly around the equivalent of mid-2012 for SC24, and that it will be 1-2 years until maximum.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Philalethes
axis label correction

[Patrick P.A. Geryl]

the unfiltered average flipped in May. According to my findings this should give the 13 month smoothed max… 
 

2023:04:25_21h:07m:13s   -22N  -37S    7Avg   20nhz filt:  -11Nf  -18Sf    3Avgf
2023:05:05_21h:07m:13s   -22N  -28S    3Avg   20nhz filt:  -12Nf  -18Sf    3Avgf
2023:05:15_21h:07m:13s   -31N  -27S   -2Avg   20nhz filt:  -14Nf  -19Sf    2Avgf
2023:05:25_21h:07m:13s   -30N  -17S   -6Avg 

[Philalethes]

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

the unfiltered average flipped in May. According to my findings this should give the 13 month smoothed max… 
 

2023:04:25_21h:07m:13s   -22N  -37S    7Avg   20nhz filt:  -11Nf  -18Sf    3Avgf
2023:05:05_21h:07m:13s   -22N  -28S    3Avg   20nhz filt:  -12Nf  -18Sf    3Avgf
2023:05:15_21h:07m:13s   -31N  -27S   -2Avg   20nhz filt:  -14Nf  -19Sf    2Avgf
2023:05:25_21h:07m:13s   -30N  -17S   -6Avg 

Well, I still don't think that's a reasonable conclusion. For example, look at SC24, where the average field first flipped in October of 2012, before flipping back and forth a few times over the next 1.5 years, but where the SSN maximum didn't occur until 2014. I don't think it's as simple as looking at that single data point and making a determination, especially given how much information is missing about the overall field there.

That's why I personally prefer looking at HMI data, although it sadly doesn't date back as far, which of course makes it more limited in scope. But if we take a look at some specific parts of the polar fields (as described in the legend) since HMI became operational in 2010, we do at least see something that might be indicative:

First thing to note is how there's quite a difference between the 50-60° band and the 60°+ cap, which is perhaps why WSO focuses on the 55° latitude and why sunspots tend to start appearing there. The 50-60° band is likely closer to that, but certainly not exactly the same, due to the measurements of the more disparate latitudes of 50° and 60° respectively.

But the interesting part is how the fields at all the latitudes appear to converge around 0 around the transition between 2013 and 2014, and how maximum occurred at the end of that convergence more or less right before the fields restored strength in the opposite direction, having completed the flip. Since we don't have data going further back, it's of course hard to say if this is anything universal at all, but it does make sense that it's when the stronger fields at the more extreme latitudes "cross over" as they flip that you get the most Solar activity, and not necessarily when that happens at the lower latitudes.

So as you can see, the 50-60° band has already flipped, but this happened as early as 2011 in SC24, a year before the first SSN peak; that's naturally also something to consider, i.e. that we don't know exactly how pronounced the two peaks of this cycle will be or how they will combine, for that it probably bears looking at something similar but with the northern and southern fields plotted too (which I didn't include here because it would make the plot look very chaotic with 9 different lines crossing each other wildly).

What we do see however is that the 60°+ cap field has clearly not reached 0 yet at all, and I doubt we're going to see a Solar maximum until it's at least significantly closer, or like last cycle has already flipped and is about to move in the opposite direction. Judging solely by the time it took from that strength in SC24, I'd estimate that to happen in 1-1.5 years, but of course extrapolating from a single cycle is unlikely to be an exact science.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Philalethes
corrected axis label in plot

[3gMike]

2 hours ago, Philalethes said:

Well, I still don't think that's a reasonable conclusion. For example, look at SC24, where the average field first flipped in October of 2012, before flipping back and forth a few times over the next 1.5 years, but where the SSN maximum didn't occur until 2014. I don't think it's as simple as looking at that single data point and making a determination, especially given how much information is missing about the overall field there.

That's why I personally prefer looking at HMI data, although it sadly doesn't date back as far, which of course makes it more limited in scope. But if we take a look at some specific parts of the polar fields (as described in the legend) since HMI became operational in 2010, we do at least see something that might be indicative:

Disregard the "6-hour smoothing" part, it's actually 30-day smoothing, I just forgot changing the axis label.

First thing to note is how there's quite a difference between the 50-60° band and the 60°+ cap, which is perhaps why WSO focuses on the 55° latitude and why sunspots tend to start appearing there. The 50-60° band is likely closer to that, but certainly not exactly the same, due to the measurements of the more disparate latitudes of 50° and 60° respectively.

But the interesting part is how the fields at all the latitudes appear to converge around 0 around the transition between 2013 and 2014, and how maximum occurred at the end of that convergence more or less right before the fields restored strength in the opposite direction, having completed the flip. Since we don't have data going further back, it's of course hard to say if this is anything universal at all, but it does make sense that it's when the stronger fields at the more extreme latitudes "cross over" as they flip that you get the most Solar activity, and not necessarily when that happens at the lower latitudes.

So as you can see, the 50-60° band has already flipped, but this happened as early as 2011 in SC24, a year before the first SSN peak; that's naturally also something to consider, i.e. that we don't know exactly how pronounced the two peaks of this cycle will be or how they will combine, for that it probably bears looking at something similar but with the northern and southern fields plotted too (which I didn't include here because it would make the plot look very chaotic with 9 different lines crossing each other wildly).

What we do see however is that the 60°+ cap field has clearly not reached 0 yet at all, and I doubt we're going to see a Solar maximum until it's at least significantly closer, or like last cycle has already flipped and is about to move in the opposite direction. Judging solely by the time it took from that strength in SC24, I'd estimate that to happen in 1-1.5 years, but of course extrapolating from a single cycle is unlikely to be an exact science.

Thanks for another good set of data. Looking back at your earlier plot from May 11 (not sure how to link to that) it is clear that there is no obviously consistent relationship between field crossover and sunspot maxima. The only observation I would make is that this field crossover seems to be occurring about 10.5 years after that for Cycle 24, which was about 13 years after that for Cycle 23, giving a total for both cycles of 23.5 years compared with nominal 22 year cycle. That may suggest that we should expect an early maximum.

[Philalethes]

1 hour ago, 3gMike said:

Thanks for another good set of data. Looking back at your earlier plot from May 11 (not sure how to link to that) it is clear that there is no obviously consistent relationship between field crossover and sunspot maxima. The only observation I would make is that this field crossover seems to be occurring about 10.5 years after that for Cycle 24, which was about 13 years after that for Cycle 23, giving a total for both cycles of 23.5 years compared with nominal 22 year cycle. That may suggest that we should expect an early maximum.

You can get a link to a post where it reads the date it was posted at the top of the post; I'm assuming you're referring to the last plot in this post.

I agree that that plot definitely does seem to indicate that, although I'm still not sure if it's ultimately that simple in terms of the actual field, given the aforementioned fact that the WSO data leaves a lot of information out; where the field is crossing over there might miss some of the data shown above in the HMI plots. Then again, Patrick is talking about WSO, so in that sense I most certainly agree, looking at the time the average WSO field data flips seems to be a poor indicator of SSN max. At best I think you can say that it seems like that flip will occur somewhere around one of the peaks or in the middle of the two peaks, but who knows whether even that has been the case for previous cycles before WSO started measuring (and by extension if it will hold for future ones).

As for your guess about what the length between the two consecutive flips might mean, I'm not sure if it's really possible to say anything from that; could be, but could also not be the case. At least I know according to Scott's work that the opposite seems to be the case between successive terminators, i.e. that the shorter a terminator cycle is, the stronger the next one seems to be, and if I'm not mistaken stronger cycles tend to peak earlier. Could be different for 22-year cycles, though.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Philalethes

[Patrick P.A. Geryl]

the average flipped back…
 

2023:06:04_21h:07m:13s    -9N  -14S    2Avg   20nhz filt:  -17Nf  -19Sf    1Avgf
2023:06:14_21h:07m:13s   -11N   -9S   -1Avg   20nhz fil

[3gMike]

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

the average flipped back…
 

2023:06:04_21h:07m:13s    -9N  -14S    2Avg   20nhz filt:  -17Nf  -19Sf    1Avgf
2023:06:14_21h:07m:13s   -11N   -9S   -1Avg   20nhz fil

It might be more informative to examine a wider range of data......

Using the 30 day averaged values we can now see that the Northern polar field has been consistently negative since 15th January, with strength varying cyclically between about -9 to -30. We can also see that the southern field, which earlier flipped positive, reverted to negative state on 26th December, grew in strength for a while, then has decayed consistently since 24th February. It looks likely that it will soon change to a positive state, but we know from past cycles that it is still possible that it (and the north field) could still change polarity again.

The 20nHz filtered data shows a slightly different story. Here it looks like the northern field effectively flipped on 24th February and has continued to grow in strength. Over the whole period 6th November 2022  to 14th June 2023 the southern field has been almost static in the range -15 to -18. Until that flips (and remains) positive again we will still wait for Solar maximum.

[Patrick P.A. Geryl]

They updated with different values!
 

2022:11:06_21h:07m:13s    61N   30S   15Avg   20nhz filt:   19Nf  -19Sf   19Avgf
2022:11:16_21h:07m:13s    44N    5S   19Avg   20nhz filt:   18Nf  -18Sf   18Avgf
2022:11:26_21h:07m:13s    44N   -2S   23Avg   20nhz filt:   16Nf  -17Sf   17Avgf
2022:12:06_21h:07m:13s    15N  -29S   22Avg   20nhz filt:   14Nf  -17Sf   15Avgf
2022:12:16_21h:07m:13s    23N    2S   11Avg   20nhz filt:   12Nf  -17Sf   14Avgf
2022:12:26_21h:07m:13s    17N   -2S   10Avg   20nhz filt:   10Nf  -16Sf   13Avgf
2023:01:05_21h:07m:13s     2N  -10S    6Avg   20nhz filt:    9Nf  -16Sf   12Avgf
2023:01:15_21h:07m:13s   -10N  -24S    7Avg   20nhz filt:    7Nf  -16Sf   11Avgf
2023:01:25_21h:07m:13s   -13N  -23S    5Avg   20nhz filt:    5Nf  -16Sf   10Avgf
2023:02:04_21h:07m:13s   -21N  -30S    5Avg   20nhz filt:    3Nf  -16Sf    9Avgf
2023:02:14_21h:07m:13s   -30N  -36S    3Avg   20nhz filt:    1Nf  -16Sf    8Avgf
2023:02:24_21h:07m:13s   -29N  -39S    5Avg   20nhz filt:   -0Nf  -16Sf    8Avgf
2023:03:06_21h:07m:13s   XXXN  XXXS  XXXAvg   20nhz filt:  XXXNf  XXXSf  XXXAvgf
2023:03:16_21h:07m:13s    -9N  -34S   12Avg   20nhz filt:   -4Nf  -16Sf    6Avgf
2023:03:26_21h:07m:13s   -13N  -35S   11Avg   20nhz filt:   -6Nf  -17Sf    5Avgf
2023:04:05_21h:07m:13s   -17N  -36S    9Avg   20nhz filt:   -7Nf  -17Sf    5Avgf
2023:04:15_21h:07m:13s   -21N  -36S    8Avg   20nhz filt:   -9Nf  -17Sf    4Avgf
2023:04:25_21h:07m:13s   -22N  -37S    7Avg   20nhz filt:  -11Nf  -18Sf    4Avgf
2023:05:05_21h:07m:13s   -23N  -30S    4Avg   20nhz filt:  -12Nf  -18Sf    3Avgf
2023:05:15_21h:07m:13s   -33N  -28S   -2Avg   20nhz filt:  -14Nf  -19Sf    2Avgf
2023:05:25_21h:07m:13s   -24N  -21S   -1Avg   20nhz filt:  -16Nf  -20Sf    2Avgf
2023:06:04_21h:07m:13s    -5N  -18S    6Avg   20nhz filt:  -17Nf  -20Sf    2Avgf
2023:06:14_21h:07m:13s    -9N  -13S    2Avg   20nhz filt:  -19Nf  -21Sf    1Avgf

Edited July 7, 2023 by Patrick P.A. Geryl

[3gMike]

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

They updated with different values!

Yes, I have noticed them do that on previous occasions but they do show the date of last update so it is easy to check for changes. For some reason they have also extended the table out to November 2052 - I don't expect to be around to see all of that get filled with data !

The changes do not significantly affect the comment that I made earlier, apart from a slight growth in strength of the southern field which may suggest that solar max. will be delayed further.

[Philalethes]

Looks like the southern field has been moving a lot again lately from the 1-day smoothed 60°+ HMI data:

Maybe that's part of the reason we're seeing so much activity lately. Still too early to tell how much of it is moving, but this could break the trend of the average field oscillating along with the northern field and might bring the average field further down and closer to 0.

[3gMike]

I thought it might be interesting to plot the WSO field using latest data - up to 14th July.

The Northern field seems to have reversed quite rapidly (and is now slowing), but the Southern field has hesitated and possibly even changed direction, so both fields currently negative. Smoothed average is sitting very close to zero. The next few updates (at 10 day intervals) will hopefully be revealing!

Apologies for lack of detail on the plot. I was not sure what file type to use to allow enlargement of the image. Red trace is Southern Field, Blue is Northern Field, Green is Smoothed Average and Grey is 30 day average.

 

[hamateur 1953]

Interesting and im still trying to digest Scotts most recent stuff 3g.  Should I throw in the towel at this point? Or pray for a miracle?  Ha ha.  Later guys. Mike/Hagrid.   
Well I definitely needed sleep!  After rereading Scott and company’s January publication. Which gives us I believe a ten month window after the magnetic pole flux crosses zero.  I’m still encouraged by the fact @3gMike noted southern magnetic flux at the same time. 
Agreed, it is going to get interesting for a whole lot of us!  

Edited August 4, 2023 by hamateur 1953
Slept on it. Haha