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I agree. I think the article is a bit over dramatic as sunspot count is near its predicted maximum now (86 predicted / 84 observed). DE KK4NWA

I think the article is a bit over dramatic as sunspot count is near its predicted maximum now (86 predicted / 84 observed)

The max is the lowest max in about a century.

“I agree. I think the article is a bit over dramatic as sunspot count is near its predicted maximum now (86 predicted / 84 observed).”

Uhhh....if you can get your hands on the predictions by Hathaway and NASA over the last 4 years, you will see that the peak, and shape, and timing of this cycle has changed dramatically multiple times. NASA has updated the prediction graphs about every 3 months as their prediction was obviously failing. So being that this current predicted maximum is iteration 20 of the cycle prediction (and less than half the original prediction), I’m not super impressed that its near its “Predicted” maximum now.

LOL... You need to get a handle on facts. NASA has egg on their face and has been dragged kicking and screaming by ol'Sol and his performance.

Sunspot activity for Solar Cycle 24 was predicted by Hathaway and his fun and foolish group at NASA to peak at a minimum of 140 and even as high as 190. http://web.archive.org/web/20071011022944/http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml

Thus far, it appears the SIDC “Smoothed Sunspot Number” “possible cycle 24 max” may wind up being 66.9. http://www.solen.info/solar/

Although there were a few Russian, Finish and other European solar scientists who were predicting a low peak as far back as 2005 http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/May_24_2007_table.pdf , NASA’s fun group resisted and resisted, until about three years ago they finally capitulated and lowered their predictions, but even now they are still holding out hope for a figure near 100.

NASA’s major evidence was similar to the old “how to predict tomorrow's weather - same as today's”. Meanwhile the real solar scientists were looking at solar dynamics. In addition, I suspect strongly it was due to the known, but still mysterious, relationship of earth's temperature and Solar Activity. They can't afford to have solar activity low or it will cause problems for the meme of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, so they predicted what they knew was a high guess hoping against hope it would come true.

Note, I am not even getting into the way that SIDC and NASA have been very much overcounting sunspots during SC24 to get to this measly number! Let me do so now:

Here is a “fair count” from today of 15 (5 spots + group number of 10):

Here is a “fair count” of 19 (9 spots + group number of 10):

SIDC has also assigned a count of 16 (6 specks + group number of 10) to this mess:

Ya gotta be kiddin! How can anyone claim that the 16 above represents similar activity to that 15? This kind of "speck" mess has NEVER been considered to be a counted group in the past, and it inflates the sunspot number greatly. Today's count was inflated by 3 such "groups" for at "counted" number of 39, nearly half of today's "official count" of 84. Note that this then has to be multiplied by 0.6 due to the admitted way they have been overcounting. Today's real count ought to be 45, so the "official" reduction would be to 27.