Solar Cycle 25 update: Sun takes a post-minimum nap.

Back in November it looked like solar cycle 25 was finally getting underway, with daily sunspot numbers peaking up to 80, and the 30 day Wolf number climbing over 30 in early December. Since then though, the Sun has relapsed into a low activity state.

This won’t come as any surprise to Talkshop followers, we’ve been saying that cycle 25 would be very low for most of the last decade. Our group research culminated in late 2013 with publication of Rick Salvador’s orbital resonance model in the journal ‘Pattern Recognition in Physics’. We provided an update on the validation of the model a while back, showing it has remained on track since publication.

There is, as usual, a broad range of predictions for the solar cycle from various groups and individual researchers, which we summarised in a post in December 2019. Which one of these is closest to reality will be revealed as the solar cycle progresses.

It’s something policy makers should be interested in, as there are potentially serious implications, especially for energy and agricultural production. If the cycle is as low as our model predicts, we can expect to see a general cooling and shortening of the growing season, as well as unseasonal crop-damaging hailstorms. ‘Just in time’ food supply might benefit hedgefunders and speculators, but its no way to run a railroad.

Given the success of Rick’s model in hindcasting the last 4000 years of proxy-reconstructed solar activity, it’s our opinion that the possibility of a deep solar grand minimum should be taken seriously.