Author Topic: Solar Cycle 25 Has Started  (Read 406 times)

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Online Elderberry

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Solar Cycle 25 Has Started
« on: April 22, 2020, 11:30:00 pm »
Watts Up With That by David Archibald 4/22/2020

The heliospheric current sheet has flattened meaning that Solar Cycle 24 is over and we are now in Solar Cycle 25.


Figure 1: Heliospheric current sheet tilt angle 1976 -2020

The solar cycle isn’t over until the heliospheric current sheet has flattened. The data is provided by the Wilcox Solar Observatory at Stanford University. There were no observations from about 19 December to 5 February; so the values in between have been interpolated from the rotations before and after.



Figure 4: Ap Index 1932 – 2020

What this figure shows is that there has been a permanent shift down in the Sun’s magnetic flux into the New Cold Period. The breakover was most probably in 2005 when the Ap Index suddenly dropped to solar-minimum type levels just above the Modern Warm Period activity floor. Then there was another sudden break down in 2008 with the absolute low in 2009.



Figure 7: Sunspot Area 1874 – 2020

The change in character from the Little Ice Age to the Modern Warm Period is quite evident in the hemispheric sunspot area data. Apart from the much lower amplitude, there was far more asymmetry between the northern and southern solar hemispheres in the Little Ice Age than in the Modern Warm Period. Solar Cycle 24 returned to the sunspot area amplitudes of the late Little Ice Age and has north-south asymmetry similar to that of Solar Cycle 12 from 1878 to 1890.

More: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/22/solar-cycle-25-has-started/