[21twelve]

The more important part to your chart, imho, is that the decreasing sunspots also are indicators of a cooling period for the earth.

HOWEVER - the number of sunspots doesn’t affect the STRENGTH of a CME (coronal mass ejection) from what I understand - but it does increase the likely-hood of a big one, and also increases the chance that it might be headed in our direction. I believe earlier this year their was a very large flare - but headed away from us.

[Spitzensparkin1]

Good points, and yes we were missed by one very large CME earlier this year. As to when our luck will run out is anyone’s guess. It is not if but when.

Eventually we will get hit with a large X-class flare and resulting Coronal Mass Ejection. We should be preparing for it, on a national level, to protect the power grid, but we are not. We are also just as vulnerable to an EMP attack which worries me more.

[palmer]

The sunspot number was 106 at the time of the Carriington Event: http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/greenwch/spot_num.txt which is not a whole lot higher than where we are at. I think such strong events are uncorrelated to the strength of the solar cycle although they will appear around the peak.