Are we at the beginning of Solar Cycle 25?

Credit: solen.info

This story appeared two weeks ago, and is by no means the first to suggest the arrival of the new solar cycle. But now the claims are getting louder and the telltale sunspots bigger.

Looks like Solar Cycle 25 has indeed begun, writes Christian Harris at Spaceweatherlive.

The first photo is the mapping of how strong each hemisphere of the sun’s magnetic field is, blue for the northern, red for southern, and black is the average field strength.

The second photo covers from about 2014 (SC24 maximum) to last month.

When the new solar cycle begins, the polarity strength of each hemisphere maxes, and then begins to decrease as the two hemispheres start to blend together.

The northern hemisphere appears to already have peaked and is decreasing, while the southern looks like it’s just beginning to drop.

Also helps explain why the new sunspot was in the northern hemisphere.

The average magnetic field strength peaked a bit higher than the beginning of last cycle’s, so hopefully this means a more active maximum. Though the amount of data we have compared to our star’s lifespan is basically zero, so it’s hard to tell.
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Other commentators have suggested the same thing, including the latest offering this week from Miles Mathis: SOLAR CYCLE 25 has already begun, in which he says he predicted the 2018 start four years ago.

He points out that the Wikipedia page on solar cycle 25 has a link to this website: Cycle 25 observations in SDO HMI imagery, which is where the image at the top of this post came from.