  Solar cycle activity forecasting, mainly its magnitude and timing, is an
essential issue for numerous scientific and technological applications: in
fact, during an active solar period, many strong eruptions occur on the Sun
with increasing frequency, such as flares, coronal mass ejections, high
velocity solar wind photons and particles, which can severely affect the
Earth's ionosphere and the geomagnetic field, with impacts on the low
atmosphere. Thus it is very important to develop reliable solar cycle
prediction methods for the incoming solar activity. The current solar cycle 24
appeared unusual from many points of view: an unusually extended minimum
period, and a global low activity compared to those of the previous three or
four cycles. Currently, there are many different evidences that the peak in the
northern hemisphere already occurred at 2011.6 but not yet in the southern
hemisphere. In this brief note we update the peak prediction and its timing,
based on the most recent observations.
