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The sun's current space-weather cycle is the most anemic in 100 years, scientists say.
Our star is now at “solar maximum,” the peak phase of its 11-year activity cycle. But this solar max is weak, and the overall current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, conjures up comparisons to the famously feeble Solar Cycle 14 in the early 1900s, researchers said.
http://www.space.com/23934-weak-solar-cycle-space-weather.html
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The current prediction for Sunspot Cycle 24 gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 70 in late 2013. The smoothed sunspot number reached 75.4 in November 2013) so the official maximum will be at least this high. The smoothed sunspot number has been rising again towards this second peak over the last five months and has now surpassed the level of the first peak (66.9 in February 2012). Many cycles are double peaked but this is the first in which the second peak in sunspot number was larger than the first. We are currently over five years into Cycle 24. The current predicted and observed size makes this the smallest sunspot cycle since Cycle 14 which had a maximum of 64.2 in February of 1906.