Hi 3bar,
I guess I don't share your confidence in solar cycle predictions...
“Rogue” Sunspots Spoil Chances For Long-Term Space Weather Forecasting
sciencetrends.com
Forecasting these long-term, cycle-to-cycle variations is the Holy Grail of solar dynamo theory, the discipline studying the origin of solar activity. In recent years, our understanding of the driving mechanisms of the solar dynamo has developed significantly, however, sadly, the new results also pointed out the limits of predicting the properties of the upcoming solar cycle.
A team of researchers at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary and the University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, using a state-of-the-art dynamo model designed to simulate very solar-like cycles, reported extreme effects of single large active regions disobeying the overall statistics of the sunspot cycle. The model confirms, that certain large sunspots, emerging at the wrong place at the wrong time may change the entire further evolution of the solar cycle, an observational result found earlier by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. The new study, however, shows that such ‘rogue’ active regions can have even more extreme effects than previously found. A single event like this may even induce a grand minimum like the Maunder Minimum. |
