[SFDXA] ARLX012 Two Solar Cycle 25 Sunspots Appear

[Bill]

SB SPCL @ ARL $ARLX012
> ARLX012 Two Solar Cycle 25 Sunspots Appear
> 
> ZCZC AX12
> QST de W1AW  
> Special Bulletin 12  ARLX012
> From ARRL Headquarters  
> Newington CT  December 30, 2019
> To all radio amateurs 
> 
> SB SPCL ARL ARLX012
> ARLX012 Two Solar Cycle 25 Sunspots Appear
> 
> New Solar Cycle 25 is on the way, but just when the transition from
> Solar Cycle 24 to Solar Cycle 25 will take place is not entirely
> clear.
> 
> On December 24, two new sunspots - one in each hemisphere - emerged
> on the face of the Sun that exhibit the reversed magnetic polarity
> marking them as belonging to Solar Cycle 25. According to Hale's
> Law, sunspot polarities flip-flop from one solar cycle to the next,
> the National Center for Atmospheric Research explains.
> 
> "The Sun is currently in solar minimum - the nadir of the 11-year
> sunspot cycle," Tony Phillips said in his article, "Reversed
> Polarity Sunspots Appear on the Sun" on the Spaceweather.com
> website. "It's a deep minimum, century-class according to sunspot
> counts." The remarkable sunspot scarcity has prompted discussion of
> a possible "extended minimum" akin to the Maunder Minimum in the
> 17th century, when no sunspots appeared for decades, Phillips said.
> "Such an event could have implications for terrestrial climate."
> 
> This article can be found online at,
> https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2019/12/25/reversed-polarity-sunspots-appear-on-the-sun/
> .
> 
> "Today's new-cycle sunspots (along with isolated new-cycle spots
> earlier this year) suggest that the solar cycle is, in fact,
> unfolding normally," Phillips wrote, adding that a new Maunder
> Minimum does not appear to be in the offing.
> 
> Earlier this month, the NOAA/NASA-co-chaired international Solar
> Cycle Prediction Panel released its latest forecast for Solar Cycle
> 25. The panel's consensus calls for a peak in July 2025 (+/- 8
> months), with a smoothed sunspot number of 115 and the solar minimum
> between Solar Cycles 24 and 25 occurring in April 2020 (+/- 6
> months). If this solar minimum prediction is correct, it would make
> Solar Cycle 24 the seventh longest on record at 11.4 years.
> 
> The forecast can be found online at,
> https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/solar-cycle-25-forecast-update .
> 
> Climate scientist David Archibald speculates that the Solar Cycle
> 24/25 minimum could occur as late as March 2021, and that Solar
> Cycle 25 maximum might not happen until 2027.
> 
> "We are well into the Solar Cycle 24/25 minimum but [Cycle] 24 may
> not have ended yet," Archibald said in a December 22 update on the
> "Watts Up With That?" website. "A solar cycle isn't over until the
> heliospheric current sheet has flattened. And that could be as late
> as March 2021. Solar cycle amplitude does matter with respect to
> climate and the amplitude of Solar Cycle 25, from projecting trends
> from the last three cycles, looks like being about 80 in 2027."
> 
> The Solar Cycle Prediction Panel agreed that Solar Cycle 25 will be
> of average intensity and similar to Solar Cycle 24.
> 
> In an article posted on NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center site,
> Scott McIntosh, the Director of the High Altitude Observatory at
> National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR -
> https://ncar.ucar.edu/ ), stresses that Solar Cycle 25 will happen,
> "but a sunspot cycle could be small."
> 
> Predictability comes with some physical understanding of the
> underlying process, McIntosh asserts. "The sunspot cycle is
> erratic," he said in his presentation, "provocative of a chaotic,
> turbulent solar interior where sunspot progressions with time and
> latitude are the only tracers..."
> NNNN
> /EX