The Elmer's Shack
Solar Cycle 25 & Solar Weather
Solar Cycle 25, Solar Weather, Propagation
Is The Run Done?
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
The “experts” seem to be having a real difficult time with solar cycle 25. As you read about in the August 2020 CrossTalk, and then in an update titled “10 Meters Is Back!” in the April 2023 CrossTalk (https://bit.ly/3vckzSh), predictions of cycle 25 have been consistently wrong. And it might be happening again. Though some experts have been saying the peak is yet to come later in this year 2024, or early 2025, the contrarian view is that the peak may have already happened. Have we already peaked, or are there are more fun times ahead? Anybody want to offer their own prediction?
As a reminder of the original predictions, we can go back to what NOAA had published, saying “The Prediction Panel predicted Cycle 25 to reach a maximum of 115 occurring in July, 2025. The error bars on this prediction mean the panel expects the cycle maximum could be between 105-125 with the peak occurring between November 2024 and March 2026”. Well, we already saw a peak of 160 and it came early, in June of 2023. So “oops” on that prediction.
More recently, we can see an article at Sky & Telescope (https://bit.ly/3GVidtw) published in November suggesting there is a new updated prediction from NOAA (https://bit.ly/41zyjT9) that now calls for Solar Cycle 25 to peak between January and October 2024, with a maximum sunspot number between 137 and 173. Well if the first prediction was clearly wrong, what about the updated one?
To help with your own prediction, let’s look at the historical and current data. What does the data show? As we did back in 2020, and again earlier in 2023, let’s look at the data shown at https://bit.ly/48k0nMu. What do we see here?
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
The “experts” seem to be having a real difficult time with solar cycle 25. As you read about in the August 2020 CrossTalk, and then in an update titled “10 Meters Is Back!” in the April 2023 CrossTalk (https://bit.ly/3vckzSh), predictions of cycle 25 have been consistently wrong. And it might be happening again. Though some experts have been saying the peak is yet to come later in this year 2024, or early 2025, the contrarian view is that the peak may have already happened. Have we already peaked, or are there are more fun times ahead? Anybody want to offer their own prediction?
As a reminder of the original predictions, we can go back to what NOAA had published, saying “The Prediction Panel predicted Cycle 25 to reach a maximum of 115 occurring in July, 2025. The error bars on this prediction mean the panel expects the cycle maximum could be between 105-125 with the peak occurring between November 2024 and March 2026”. Well, we already saw a peak of 160 and it came early, in June of 2023. So “oops” on that prediction.
More recently, we can see an article at Sky & Telescope (https://bit.ly/3GVidtw) published in November suggesting there is a new updated prediction from NOAA (https://bit.ly/41zyjT9) that now calls for Solar Cycle 25 to peak between January and October 2024, with a maximum sunspot number between 137 and 173. Well if the first prediction was clearly wrong, what about the updated one?
To help with your own prediction, let’s look at the historical and current data. What does the data show? As we did back in 2020, and again earlier in 2023, let’s look at the data shown at https://bit.ly/48k0nMu. What do we see here?
Looking at the current data, we see the run up to a first peak happened much quicker than the experts predicted (shown by the trend line with the grey confidence bands around it). Then things kind of retreated during the month of December. Will it peak again, or is the run done?
Though past performance is no guarantee, historically it kind of looks to me like each of the last 3 cycles have what looks like a “camel hump”, where there is a first peak followed by a lull of a few months, and then a second peak before tailing off. Maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see. But if you are optimistic, like I want to be, we can hope that we’ll have a second fun run up here in 2024 towards a second peak to give us an awesome field day and some great fall DX before the run is really done. But is that what is going to happen? Your thoughts?
In Like A Lion
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
We like to talk about the weather. But have you heard about space weather, and what has been happening on the sun, lately? To say March is coming “in like a Lion” could be an understatement.
Did hear about the “starlink incident”, where upwards of 40 newly launched satellites pre-maturely de-orbited due to a solar event (Great pictures, Ref01). Well, that was about a month ago. And, as we know, due to the way that things rotate on the Sun based on their solar latitude (Ref02), here we are, about a month later, and what amounts to a loaded “solar cannon” is about to rotate around to face Earth again. Yes, AR2936 and its sunspot friends are about to make their Earth-facing return. And it looks like they may return with a Lion’s roar full of vengeance!
Lion’s roar full of vengeance?
Isn’t that a bit dramatic? Maybe, but consider this. On February 17, while this sunspot cluster was on the far side of the Sun, facing away from Earth (thank goodness!), SOHO recorded what is reported to be one of the most dramatic Coronal Mass Ejections in years (More great pictures, Ref03). It could have been X-class. How big is X-class? Each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy output, with flares in class M being 10 times stronger than class C, and those in class X being 10 times stronger than M (Ref04) (like “dB”, not a foreign concept to us Hams). And then on February 20, GOES recorded a C-class event (Can track live data since then, Ref05).
How will this affect HF DX in the coming weeks? We won’t have long to find out! As we know from our General license studies, it takes about 8 minutes for the X-ray energy from the “muzzle flash” of a flare to get to Earth, with the projected CME material traveling the same distance in about 3 days (Ref06), (Ref07), (Ref08). Best advice is to get on the radio and take a listen. We could be in for some interesting propagation for this first week in March!
References, if want to a deeper-dive on the subject :
· (Ref01) : https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2022/02/09/the-starlink-incident
· (Ref02) : https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/science/solar-rotation.html
· (Ref03) : https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2022/02/19/huge-explosion-on-the-farside-of-the-sun
· (Ref04) : https://spaceweather.com/glossary/flareclasses.html
· (Ref05) : https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-x-ray-flux
· (Ref06) : https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/the-difference-between-flares-and-cmes
· (Ref07) : http://arrl.org/the-sun-the-earth-the-ionosphere
· (Ref08) : https://hamwaves.com/nvis/en/index.html
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
We like to talk about the weather. But have you heard about space weather, and what has been happening on the sun, lately? To say March is coming “in like a Lion” could be an understatement.
Did hear about the “starlink incident”, where upwards of 40 newly launched satellites pre-maturely de-orbited due to a solar event (Great pictures, Ref01). Well, that was about a month ago. And, as we know, due to the way that things rotate on the Sun based on their solar latitude (Ref02), here we are, about a month later, and what amounts to a loaded “solar cannon” is about to rotate around to face Earth again. Yes, AR2936 and its sunspot friends are about to make their Earth-facing return. And it looks like they may return with a Lion’s roar full of vengeance!
Lion’s roar full of vengeance?
Isn’t that a bit dramatic? Maybe, but consider this. On February 17, while this sunspot cluster was on the far side of the Sun, facing away from Earth (thank goodness!), SOHO recorded what is reported to be one of the most dramatic Coronal Mass Ejections in years (More great pictures, Ref03). It could have been X-class. How big is X-class? Each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy output, with flares in class M being 10 times stronger than class C, and those in class X being 10 times stronger than M (Ref04) (like “dB”, not a foreign concept to us Hams). And then on February 20, GOES recorded a C-class event (Can track live data since then, Ref05).
How will this affect HF DX in the coming weeks? We won’t have long to find out! As we know from our General license studies, it takes about 8 minutes for the X-ray energy from the “muzzle flash” of a flare to get to Earth, with the projected CME material traveling the same distance in about 3 days (Ref06), (Ref07), (Ref08). Best advice is to get on the radio and take a listen. We could be in for some interesting propagation for this first week in March!
References, if want to a deeper-dive on the subject :
· (Ref01) : https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2022/02/09/the-starlink-incident
· (Ref02) : https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/science/solar-rotation.html
· (Ref03) : https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2022/02/19/huge-explosion-on-the-farside-of-the-sun
· (Ref04) : https://spaceweather.com/glossary/flareclasses.html
· (Ref05) : https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-x-ray-flux
· (Ref06) : https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/the-difference-between-flares-and-cmes
· (Ref07) : http://arrl.org/the-sun-the-earth-the-ionosphere
· (Ref08) : https://hamwaves.com/nvis/en/index.html
Ready To Kick This Solar Cycle Into High Gear?
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
Some call it the “Termination Event”. Ever hear of it? Me neither, until a recent article by Dr. Tony Phillips appeared on Spaceweather.Com (https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2021/06/11/the-termination-event). Descriptions of this event are not getting picked up in other magazines, including (surprisingly for me) Forbes.com (https://www.forbes.com), and others.
As described in the article, the interest in termination events are a relatively new area in study in solar physics, based on measuring time intervals between when oppositely charged bands of magnetism collide at the solar equator.
Controversially, by measuring the time between termination events, a theory using researched data is suggesting solar cycle 25 may be a strong one, going against other predictions. That would be fun!
So which is it? Is cycle 25 going to exceed the “expert’s” expectations? Relatively speaking, we won’t have long to find out. Things are already starting to pick up! It’s a great time to be in HF radio!
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
Some call it the “Termination Event”. Ever hear of it? Me neither, until a recent article by Dr. Tony Phillips appeared on Spaceweather.Com (https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2021/06/11/the-termination-event). Descriptions of this event are not getting picked up in other magazines, including (surprisingly for me) Forbes.com (https://www.forbes.com), and others.
As described in the article, the interest in termination events are a relatively new area in study in solar physics, based on measuring time intervals between when oppositely charged bands of magnetism collide at the solar equator.
Controversially, by measuring the time between termination events, a theory using researched data is suggesting solar cycle 25 may be a strong one, going against other predictions. That would be fun!
So which is it? Is cycle 25 going to exceed the “expert’s” expectations? Relatively speaking, we won’t have long to find out. Things are already starting to pick up! It’s a great time to be in HF radio!
2020 Vision
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
There’s a NOAA/NASA co-chaired international panel that has just released their latest forecast for Solar Cycle 25. According to swpc.noaa.gov, they are predicting that the solar minimum between cycles 24 and 25 will be April 2020 (+/- 6 months) - which means we may already be at minimum, or will be shortly. That’s great! But how quickly after the minimum could we expect HF contacts to really pick up? Fairly quickly appears to be the anecdotal evidence. The last minimum is recognized as having occurred in December 2008, 11 years ago (see chart of “spotless days”, compiled from solar data at spaceweather.com plotted below). Following the December 2008 minimum, the ARRL’s QSL card bureau described processed an increased number of cards in 2009 and again in 2010
(ref: http://www.arrl.org/news/2010-a-banner-year-for-dxcc-incoming-outgoing-qsl-bureaus).
So, here we are 11 years later. If history repeats itself, does this mean 2020 and 2021 will also be the start of a good run for improved DX, and improved field day scores, turning the tide of the current sunspot drought? As they say, hindsight is 20/20, in that it is easy to predict something after it has already happened. We’ll check back again after field day this year!
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
There’s a NOAA/NASA co-chaired international panel that has just released their latest forecast for Solar Cycle 25. According to swpc.noaa.gov, they are predicting that the solar minimum between cycles 24 and 25 will be April 2020 (+/- 6 months) - which means we may already be at minimum, or will be shortly. That’s great! But how quickly after the minimum could we expect HF contacts to really pick up? Fairly quickly appears to be the anecdotal evidence. The last minimum is recognized as having occurred in December 2008, 11 years ago (see chart of “spotless days”, compiled from solar data at spaceweather.com plotted below). Following the December 2008 minimum, the ARRL’s QSL card bureau described processed an increased number of cards in 2009 and again in 2010
(ref: http://www.arrl.org/news/2010-a-banner-year-for-dxcc-incoming-outgoing-qsl-bureaus).
So, here we are 11 years later. If history repeats itself, does this mean 2020 and 2021 will also be the start of a good run for improved DX, and improved field day scores, turning the tide of the current sunspot drought? As they say, hindsight is 20/20, in that it is easy to predict something after it has already happened. We’ll check back again after field day this year!