On 17/01/2014 09:10, Jim wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25771510

Thoughts?

It is true we haven't seen such a low solar sunspot maximum since about
1930 but then the recent ones have all been more active than average!

Here is the Zurich number data as a graph:
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/im...olor_Small.jpg

They are hamming it up something rotten. It is just possible that the
trend is towards less activity with each successive cycle, the present
level of solar activity is no different ot what it was between 1880 and
1930 or further back 1800-1820. It is nowhere near Maunder minimum yet!

The sunspot number does vary considerably from cycle to cycle and the
peak in 1958 was abnormally high. Halving the number of spots between
successive maxima has also occurred as recently as 1957 vs 1970.

A quieter sun might well make for a cooler Earth, but it is far from
clear that the sunspots really are about to all vanish. We had a naked
eye sunspot and a fat X class flare CME just miss us during Astronomy
week which if it had hit would have provided an auroral display across
most of the UK.

If I had to bet I would guess that the next cycle 25 will be about the
same or more active on the basis of regression towards the mean.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown