NASA finally agrees with our model estimate for cycle 25 published in 2013. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out. Leif Svalgaard predicted that cycle 25 would be higher than 24, but lower than cycle 20.
Research now underway may have found a reliable new method to predict this solar activity. The Sun’s activity rises and falls in an 11-year cycle. The forecast for the next solar cycle says it will be the weakest of the last 200 years. The maximum of this next cycle – measured in terms of sunspot number, a standard measure of solar activity level – could be 30 to 50% lower than the most recent one. The results show that the next cycle will start in 2020 and reach its maximum in 2025.
The new research was led by Irina Kitiashvili, a researcher with the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at NASA’s Ames Research Center, in California’s Silicon Valley. It combined observations from two NASA space missions – the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and the Solar Dynamics Observatory – with data collected since 1976 from the ground-based National Solar Observatory.
One challenge for researchers working to predict the Sun’s activities is that scientists don’t yet completely understand the inner workings of our star. Plus, some factors that play out deep inside the Sun cannot be measured directly. They have to be estimated from measurements of related phenomena on the solar surface, like sunspots.
Kitiashvili’s method differs from other prediction tools in terms of the raw material for its forecast. Previously, researchers used the number of sunspots to represent indirectly the activity of the solar magnetic field. The new approach takes advantage of direct observations of magnetic fields emerging on the surface of the Sun – data which has only existed for the last four solar cycles.
Mathematically combining the data from the three sources of Sun observations with the estimates of its interior activity generated a forecast designed to be more reliable than using any of those sources alone.
In 2008 the researchers used this method to make their prediction, which was then put to the test as the current solar cycle unfolded over the last decade. It has performed well, with the forecast strength and timing of the solar maximum aligning closely with reality.
Knowing how the Sun will behave can offer necessary insight to plan protections for our next explorers who will venture into deep space. It also lets us protect technology we depend on: satellite missions studying the universe from space, landers and rovers heading to the Moon and Mars, and the telecommunications satellites right in our own backyard.
NASA is charged to get American astronauts to the Moon in the next five years with a landing on the lunar South Pole. With a calm and quiet space weather forecast for the coming decade, it is a great time to explore!
I haven’t found a full copy but Kitiashvili gave a conference paper at SHINE in 2018:
Physics-Based Approach to Predict the Solar Activity Cycles
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Abstract
Observations of the complex highly non-linear dynamics of global turbulent flows and magnetic fields are currently available only from Earth-side observations. Recent progress in helioseismology has provided us some additional information about the subsurface dynamics, but its relation to the magnetic field evolution is not yet understood. These limitations cause uncertainties that are difficult take into account, and perform proper calibration of dynamo models. The current dynamo models have also uncertainties due to the complicated turbulent physics of magnetic field generation, transport and dissipation. Because of the uncertainties in both observations and theory, the data assimilation approach is natural way for the solar cycle prediction and estimating uncertainties of this prediction. The data assimilation approach combining information from both models and observations together with estimation possible errors has been developed in a large number of different methodologies. In this presentation I will compare results from four such methodologies: the Ensemble Kalman Filter method, the Extended Kalman Filter, the Ensemble Kalman Filter Smoother, and the Ensemble Adjustment Kalman Filter, for predicting sunspot cycles using a low-order solar dynamo model that takes into account the effects of magnetic helicity balance. I will discuss the prediction results for the upcoming Solar Cycle 25 and their uncertainties.
Publication: Solar Heliospheric and INterplanetary Environment (SHINE 2018), Proceedings of the conference held 30 July-3 August, 2018 in Cocoa Beach, FL, id.155Pub Date: July 2018Bibcode: 2018shin.confE.155K
Kitiashvili’s work was supported by the National Science Foundation and by NASA.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
July 14, 2019 at 03:16PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.
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