SC25 flare activity greater than SC23?

[Sam Warfel]

I checked on the solar cycle progression page to see how far SC25 has now exceeded the peak of SC24 as measured in yearly flare activity, and I was somewhat surprised to see that not only has it far surpassed the peak of SC24, it has solidly passed the peak of SC23. This surprised me, SC23 was such a generally strong cycle!  Of course, this is only one metric, others such as the SSN still have SC25 much lower than the peak of SC23, still in the territory of the peak of SC24.
Anyway, I wanted to see if the big nerds knowledgeable folks on here had any reactions to this graph (SC25 exceeding the peak of SC23 in yearly flare counts).  Is this a quirk of the data measuring somehow?  What, if any, significance or conclusions can we draw from this piece of information?
It sure seems like a good sign for the SC to me! I’m looking forward to the next year or two!

P.S. Yes, I’m back!  I’ve been pretty busy this semester with college, and had less time to read the forums, but I’m back over break at least.  Good to be back!

Edited December 24, 2023 by Sam Warfel

[Jesterface23]

2 hours ago, Sam Warfel said:

 Is this a quirk of the data measuring somehow?

Pretty much. GOES 16-18 values are higher compared to the previous GOES satellites. The GOES 1-15 science quality data is being re-processed. Goes 8-15 looks to be done, but at this point last year I believe they planned to have it all done by now. GOES 1-7 is now planned to be completed in 2024.

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/goes-space-environment-monitor/access/science/xrs/GOES_1-15_XRS_Science-Quality_Data_Readme.pdf

[hamateur 1953]

I’m pretty sure @3gMikewould like to weigh in on this.  I pmed him to wish him a Merry Christmas etc. But he’s very busy lately. Hopefully back soon. Nice to see ya back btw @Sam Warfel Mike/Hagrid. Merry Christmas dude!! 

[Aten]

5 hours ago, Jesterface23 said:

Pretty much. GOES 16-18 values are higher compared to the previous GOES satellites. The GOES 1-15 science quality data is being re-processed. Goes 8-15 looks to be done, but at this point last year I believe they planned to have it all done by now. GOES 1-7 is now planned to be completed in 2024.

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/goes-space-environment-monitor/access/science/xrs/GOES_1-15_XRS_Science-Quality_Data_Readme.pdf

Looks like you can multiply the magnitudes of recent flares by 0.7 to get what they would have been in previous cycles. So an M5 in this cycle would have been measured at around M3.5 last cycle.

This cycle has been really lacking in strong flares. The flare on December 14 is the only flare of this cycle that would have reached X2 in previous cycles.

[Sam Warfel]

9 hours ago, Jesterface23 said:

Pretty much. GOES 16-18 values are higher compared to the previous GOES satellites. The GOES 1-15 science quality data is being re-processed. Goes 8-15 looks to be done, but at this point last year I believe they planned to have it all done by now. GOES 1-7 is now planned to be completed in 2024.

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/goes-space-environment-monitor/access/science/xrs/GOES_1-15_XRS_Science-Quality_Data_Readme.pdf

Interesting, I didn’t know that. Thank you for the information!

8 hours ago, hamateur 1953 said:

I’m pretty sure @3gMikewould like to weigh in on this.  I pmed him to wish him a Merry Christmas etc. But he’s very busy lately. Hopefully back soon. Nice to see ya back btw @Sam Warfel Mike/Hagrid. Merry Christmas dude!! 

Merry Christmas!

[hamateur 1953]

13 hours ago, Jesterface23 said:

Pretty much. GOES 16-18 values are higher compared to the previous GOES satellites. The GOES 1-15 science quality data is being re-processed. Goes 8-15 looks to be done, but at this point last year I believe they planned to have it all done by now. GOES 1-7 is now planned to be completed in 2024.

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/goes-space-environment-monitor/access/science/xrs/GOES_1-15_XRS_Science-Quality_Data_Readme.pdf

Soo. This is potentially a very big deal, unless I am missing something.  Our SFI logs should be uncorrupted as they have been and still are ground based in British Columbia Canada.  Hmmm. Well for now I can easily multiply times .7 to get our relative baseline ABCMX levels until this gets corrected.   Edit: Now I am really getting confused.  Haha. I give up!!   I guess where I am particularly confused is hypothetically is it safe for me to presume that our current renderings of flux levels are therefore approximately seven tenths of the displayed values?? Tnx Mike

Edited December 24, 2023 by hamateur 1953
Cornfused over data

[arjemma]

Cross-calibration among measurements of irradiance/x-ray by different instruments has been a major problem sadly. That makes it hard to compare data from old instruments with new ones. I hope we can settle on some sort of standard in the future.

Edited December 25, 2023 by arjemma

[LunarLights58]

What's this?

[3gMike]

On 12/24/2023 at 7:03 AM, Jesterface23 said:

Pretty much. GOES 16-18 values are higher compared to the previous GOES satellites. The GOES 1-15 science quality data is being re-processed. Goes 8-15 looks to be done, but at this point last year I believe they planned to have it all done by now. GOES 1-7 is now planned to be completed in 2024.

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/goes-space-environment-monitor/access/science/xrs/GOES_1-15_XRS_Science-Quality_Data_Readme.pdf

I am not convinced that the higher readings explain the difference in number of observed flares, so I did some analysis of available data using the SWL archive.

Initially, I compared the numbers for 2014 with 2023. I chose 2014 because it had similar sunspot numbers.

As shown on the graphic in Solar Cycle section, 2014 had 1776 C flares, 207 M, and 16 X, compared with 2718 C, 341 M and 12 X for 2023 to date.(28th Dec) This clearly suggests significantly higher numbers of C (+53%) and M (+65%) flares in this cycle with slightly lower numbers (-25%) for X flares.

GOES data indicates that earlier readings were multiplied by a factor of 0.7, so I went through the archive for 2023 to see what would happen if reported flare strength was multiplied by the same factor. Results are presented below....

Reported C flares 2927 - Factored C flares 2834

Reported M flares 367 - Factored M flares 204

Reported X flares 12 - Factored X flares  6

The factored values were obtained simply by shifting any flare of magnitude 1.4 or less into the next lower category. For example, an M1.4 becomes C9.8

The reported values I have used are higher than those used on the chart, but I do not believe that should alter any conclusion. I suspect it came about in situations where multiple flares were reported simultaneously.

It is apparent from these results that the change in sensitivity has very little effect on the number of reported C flares, suggesting that cycle 25 has actually been a lot more active than cycle 24. The result for M and X flares is less conclusive. Examining the data in more detail shows that this is due to a relatively large number of M flares in the range M1 to M1.4 in this cycle. Similarly for X flares.

It is also clear that the result will be influenced by changes in the background flux. This can be seen if we examine monthly results....

                                              

Sometimes factored values are higher, sometimes lower.

So, I believe we have to look for another explanation for the higher activity.

[hamateur 1953]

Well done @3gMike   I tend to agree in general of course, as far as the higher activity.   Perhaps after this cycle, it will be able to be properly viewed in retrospect.  Net ergs or whatever speculative hypothesis the scientific community comes up with.  Cool stuff.  

[Vancanneyt Sander]

6 uren geleden, 3gMike zei:

The factored values were obtained simply by shifting any flare of magnitude 1.4 or less into the next lower category. For example, an M1.4 becomes C9.8

It’s actually the other way around, removing the SWPC scaling factor is actually making flares stronger. For example X2,5 would become X3,6.

thanks to @Jesterface23 for delivering the scientific data, we are in the process of updating our flare database with the corrected values based on the reprocessed scientific dataset (that has the scaling removed as well). it has been a tremendous work past couple of days to fix many things as well in the solar flare database (incorrect values, wrong times, wrong dates, typos,…) and to prepare for an as automated as possible update. 
Our archived X-ray operational data will also receive an update to remove the SWPC scaling. The top lists will be regenerated and SC cycle graphs after we do this major update. 

[hamateur 1953]

Well, although I’m even more confused than before, I trust that smarter people @Jesterface23and @Vancanneyt Sander evidently are going to work this through.  Haha. 

[Philalethes]

1 hour ago, Vancanneyt Sander said:

It’s actually the other way around, removing the SWPC scaling factor is actually making flares stronger. For example X2,5 would become X3,6.

thanks to @Jesterface23 for delivering the scientific data, we are in the process of updating our flare database with the corrected values based on the reprocessed scientific dataset (that has the scaling removed as well). it has been a tremendous work past couple of days to fix many things as well in the solar flare database (incorrect values, wrong times, wrong dates, typos,…) and to prepare for an as automated as possible update. 
Our archived X-ray operational data will also receive an update to remove the SWPC scaling. The top lists will be regenerated and SC cycle graphs after we do this major update. 

1 hour ago, hamateur 1953 said:

Well, although I’m even more confused than before, I trust that smarter people @Jesterface23and @Vancanneyt Sander evidently are going to work this through.  Haha. 

Yeah, now I'm confused as to which data is scaled which way too.

[3gMike]

2 hours ago, Vancanneyt Sander said:

It’s actually the other way around, removing the SWPC scaling factor is actually making flares stronger. For example X2,5 would become X3,6.

thanks to @Jesterface23 for delivering the scientific data, we are in the process of updating our flare database with the corrected values based on the reprocessed scientific dataset (that has the scaling removed as well). it has been a tremendous work past couple of days to fix many things as well in the solar flare database (incorrect values, wrong times, wrong dates, typos,…) and to prepare for an as automated as possible update. 
Our archived X-ray operational data will also receive an update to remove the SWPC scaling. The top lists will be regenerated and SC cycle graphs after we do this major update. 

Yes, I understand that. I was scaling current values down to get a match with previous values.

[Vancanneyt Sander]

42 minuten geleden, Philalethes zei:

Yeah, now I'm confused as to which data is scaled which way too.

Everything prior to GOES-16 needs scaling  

[Philalethes]

42 minutes ago, Vancanneyt Sander said:

Everything prior to GOES-16 needs scaling  

Right, I think I understand why I was confused now; it's not that you get drastically different results in terms of just comparing activity by scaling down SC25 (and the last years of SC24 after GOES-16 launched), but that in reality you should be scaling up everything else (so that you get more flares for past cycles instead of less flares for 2016 and after), correct? If so that makes sense, if not I guess I'm still confused.

Edited December 29, 2023 by Philalethes

[3gMike]

49 minutes ago, Philalethes said:

Right, I think I understand why I was confused now; it's not that you get drastically different results in terms of just comparing activity by scaling down SC25 (and the last years of SC24 after GOES-16 launched), but that in reality you should be scaling up everything else (so that you get more flares for past cycles instead of less flares for 2016 and after), correct? If so that makes sense, if not I guess I'm still confused.

As I see it, and what I was attempting to illustrate, is that scaling the magnitude does not significantly affect the number of reported flares. I do not see any reason why we would expect any difference between scaling up earlier magnitudes, or scaling down current values. That said, I would be happy to hear alternative views.

Edit: For avoidance of confusion it is correct to say that pre GOES 16 values need to be scaled up to be represented correctly.

Edited December 29, 2023 by 3gMike

[Philalethes]

18 minutes ago, 3gMike said:

As I see it, and what I was attempting to illustrate, is that scaling the magnitude does not significantly affect the number of reported flares. I do not see any reason why we would expect any difference between scaling up earlier magnitudes, or scaling down current values. That said, I would be happy to hear alternative views.

Edit: For avoidance of confusion it is correct to say that pre GOES 16 values need to be scaled up to be represented correctly.

Yep, that's exactly what I figured; for comparing the two you should get roughly the same overall results in terms of relative activity by just scaling down the post-GOES-16 ones, but strictly speaking it's the pre-GOES-16 data that should be scaled up.

That being said, thinking a bit more about it, I can think of a factor that might throw a spanner in the works when doing such a comparison for C-flares specifically, although it would probably pose a problem regardless of which part you scale up or down, and that is that when you get down to a background flux level around low-level C or higher it won't always be possible to measure C-flares properly there; this would mean that scaling down the data will only scale down the C-flares that are registered, which will be mostly above the level where they'd be scaled down to B-level and thus out of the count (and when scaling the other way you'd encounter a similar problem, albeit a bit different, namely that there would probably not be a good way to measure all the high-level B-flares that should have been scaled up to C-level).

At least to me that stands out as a possible problem for such a comparison when looking at the C-flares, so perhaps in that sense it's better to look at M-flares, which do noticeably get shifted down (maybe due to the above the amount of actual C-flares occurring should also really have been shifted down, as the count would possibly be higher to begin with if one were able to register all the low-level C-flares that would be shifted down). In that case maybe it might just be better to just scale the number in each class down by the scaling factor, which would leave 2023 closer to around 1999 or 2000, which is more what I'd expect.

Hope that's not too confusing and some valuable input in any case; also, you can probably check if there's anything to what I'm saying by looking at the number of C-flares for each subdivision of the C-class (i.e. counting C1.X, C2.X...C9.X separately), and checking if there is indeed a conspicuous dearth of low-level flares there.

[hamateur 1953]

I will add an American monkey wrench to this…. Are we certain both scales are linear under comparison?   Oh no! Let’s not go THERE. Ok. Shutting up now. Btw I finally found the second peak in SC 20. It’s only taken me fifty years…credit: Jan Alvestad and historical triple  charts .  Hahaha   Edit:  Thanks for the clarification @Vancanneyt Sander  Happy New Year btw all. Mike/Hagrid 

Edited December 30, 2023 by hamateur 1953
Credit

[Vancanneyt Sander]

Well… we may not look directly at the C-flare count. If you watched a lot of the archived data, you’ll see that not every C-flare is registered as a flare in the graphs especially back in the old days where each flare was manually added to a list and depending on the day you’ll had all flares registered or just not all of them. In current days this is now more automated with each flare being registered. All M and X flares are in the flare lists so those are accurate.

Due to the scaling being removed from old GOES data prior to 16, the upper C-flares will now be M-class and the upper M-flares X-class. So after the removal of the SWPC scaling, we’ll have more M and X-class flares for SC23 and SC24. 

Ps: if all goes well, we might go live with it tomorrow

[Vancanneyt Sander]

With scaling removed, we now have 1.217 more M-class solar flares and 82 more X-class solar flares.