Sunspot areas near Solar Max

[hamateur 1953]

During my recent research through our archives for sunspot latitudes, I couldn’t help but notice the pronounced differences between AR sizes we have been seeing typically.  Much larger, by far.   For some reason I’d assumed beforehand that the areas in general did not begin to increase substantially until after solar max.   The archives clearly would indicate otherwise!   Just thought I’d bring this other interesting point up. Also as I’ve posted elsewhere, it would seem advisable to set the latitude averages a bit higher At 13 degrees.  SC 23 and 24 had average latitudes of 11.5 and 12 degrees respectively at solar maximums.   Mike. 

Edited December 21, 2023 by hamateur 1953

[Drax Spacex]

We have seen recently some ARs with larger areas.  Larger AR size I think correlates with a higher number of sunspots within that AR.  So I would think that solar maximum should have more ARs, more ARs of larger size, or both.

December 2023 seems to have bucked the trend we've seen in prior months of the longitudinal imbalance where half the Sun had very few sunspots.  The daily sunspot dipped below 50 for some days and resulted in relatively low monthly mean sunspot number.

There seems to be a fairly consistent train of regularly spaced sunspots now.

 

[hamateur 1953]

Interesting   While I was digging in the archives I also noted that in general the Southern Hemisphere ran consistently lower latitudes whatever that means, not really sure. Also we were Northern Hemisphere dominant in both 23 and 24.  Strikingly so in 23 at max. 

[Newbie]

13 hours ago, hamateur 1953 said:

During my recent research through our archives for sunspot latitudes, I couldn’t help but notice the pronounced differences between AR sizes we have been seeing typically.  Much larger, by far.   For some reason I’d assumed beforehand that the areas in general did not begin to increase substantially until after solar max.   The archives clearly would indicate otherwise!   Just thought I’d bring this other interesting point up. Also as I’ve posted elsewhere, it would seem advisable to set the latitude averages a bit higher At 13 degrees.  SC 23 and 24 had average latitudes of 11.5 and 12 degrees respectively at solar maximums.   Mike. 

I would have thought that not only the area covered by AR’s has not been large (up until recently) but also the size of the sunspots themselves in general seem to be have been rather small. 
With the increase in AR size lately hopefully the trend continues. 
Another observation is wrt Solar Irradiance.
During heightened solar activity eg at Solar Max irradiance from the sun can be reduced but not as much as one might have expected.

In contrast to older reconstructions, most recent TSI reconstructions point to an increase of only about 0.05% to 0.1% between the 17th century Maunder Minimum and the present. Ultraviolet irradiance (EUV) varies by approximately 1.5 percent from solar maxima to minima, for 200 to 300 nm wavelengths. A research paper looked at past and present studies.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2011GL048529

N.

Edited December 22, 2023 by Newbie
Extra information

[hamateur 1953]

19 hours ago, Drax Spacex said:

We have seen recently some ARs with larger areas.  Larger AR size I think correlates with a higher number of sunspots within that AR.  So I would think that solar maximum should have more ARs, more ARs of larger size, or both.

December 2023 seems to have bucked the trend we've seen in prior months of the longitudinal imbalance where half the Sun had very few sunspots.  The daily sunspot dipped below 50 for some days and resulted in relatively low monthly mean sunspot number.

There seems to be a fairly consistent train of regularly spaced sunspots now.

 

Presently it seems to me that we are still a bit asymmetrical with respect to longitude development, unfortunately. 
However, we both expect this to gradually improve towards Solar maximum of course.  The 10.7 us Hams really care about should as well.  We haven’t dipped below 100 this year for certain. Keeping ten meters wide open daytime at the very least.  Mike.