The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite is back in operation after some required downtime to keep it operating.
Alas, it didn’t miss anything, the sun remains spotless.
According to NOAA sunspot counts, the longest stretch of spotless suns during the current solar minimum was 52 days in July, August and Sept. of 2008. The current spate of blank suns is putting that record in jeopardy. There have been no sunspots for almost 42 days and there are none in the offing. Deep solar minimum continues.
Current Stretch: 42 days
2009 total: 184 days (79%)
Since 2004: 695 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days
There’s some contention over that claim, as WUWT readers may recall that SIDC in Belgium last year retroactively counted a sunspeck from a drawing by Catainia observatory, nullifying the stretch of sunspotless days in August 2008. NOAA’s SWPC appears not to recognize that sunspeck and so their claim is for a 52 day stretch.
Will SIDC pull another sunspeck stunt this August? I’m sure they are “poreing” over the sketches now.
Joe D’Aleo puts this current stretch in perspective:
Today, Thursday, August 20th marked the 41st straight day without a sunspot, one of the longest stretches this solar minimum.
In fact it rises into 10th place among all spotless periods since 1849 (first table here). The total number of spotless days this transition from cycle 23 to 24 is now 694 rapidly approaching the approximate number leading into cycle 15 in the early 1900s (below, enlarged here).
We have had 183 spotless days this year (79% of the days). We are in the top 20 years in 17th place. We will very likely rapidly rise up the list in upcoming weeks and rival 2008’s 265 days and likely end in the top 5 years. 2007, 2008, 2009 will only have 1911, 1912, 1913 in the top 20 as string of 3 per transition (below, enlarged here).
The cycle minimum probably was December, 2008. January 2009 13 month average came up a bit due to slight bump in activity in June and July but if August should end up sunspotless and September low, we could have a double bottom. The 12.7 years assuming December 2008 was longest in two centuries (below, enlarged here).
You can see on this chart, by 13 years after the solar minimum year, most of the last 5 cycles already had recovered, in one case already to the solar max (below, enlarged here).
This cycle has continued to decline in the solar irradiance, solar flux, sunspot number and geomagnetic activity after 10 years. On the following chart produced by Anthony Watts, you can see the Total Solar Irradiance declining whereas the prior cycle was rebounding(below, enlarged here).
Clilverd et al 2006 suggests using a statistical analysis of the various cycles (11, 22, 53, 88, 105, 213, and 426 years) shows the next two cycles will likely be very quiet much like those of 200 years ago in the early 1800s, the so called Dalton Minimum, the time of Dickens (with snows and cold in London like last winter) (below, enlarged here).