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Days after a Solar Cycle 23 sunspot appeared at the end of April, once again U.S. government forecasters changed their evaluations about Solar Cycle 24, now making a prediction that the next sunspot cycle will be the weakest since 1928, as radio amateurs wait for better propagation on the high bands.
The Space Weather Prediction Center revised its 2007 prediction - now clearly in error - that Cycle 24 would begin in March of 2008 and peak by mid-2012.
The new forecast is that Cycle 24 will peak in May 2013, meaning HF contesters may have to wait even longer than anticipated for better conditions, especially on 10 and 15 meters.
And even then, conditions might not be what we remember from a sunspot maximum, as the new forecast is for an average month of 90 sunspots, which would be the weakest recorded since the peak of Cycle 16 in 1928.
That would be well below any solar maximum since World War II.
"The persistence of a quiet sun since the last prediction has led the panel to a consensus that the next cycle will be 'moderately weak,'" read a release from the SWPC.
The group also decided that the sunspot minimum has actually already occurred, in December of 2008, though that is still up for debate.
One member of the SWPC experts board, Leif Svalgaard, told solar enthusiasts that the new prediction should be even lower, arguing that researchers have been ignoring clear signs of lower solar activity.
"They call it 'moderately weak', although my general feeling (as I gauge it) was that the panel was split between very high and very low," Svalgaard told the Watts Up With That web site.
"Just another flawed prediction," he added.
One could argue that possibility based on the raw data so far in calendar year 2009, as the rate of days without sunspots is definitely higher in 2009 than in 2008.
In 2008, the sun had no sunspots on 266 of the 366 days - which works out to 73%.
So far in 2009, the sun has had no sunspots on 86% of the days. 1913 had no sunspots on 85%, or 311 days.
Just a month ago, a separate forecast issued by the U.S. Space Agency known as NASA, was still predicting a much higher sunspot cycle.
While this new U.S. government prediction has a sunspot peak in mid 2013, some private researchers say even that updated forecast is off.
Australian solar expert David Archibald doesn't see a Solar Cycle 24 max until the year 2016.
"Solar Cycle 24 is now the latest-developing (cycle) after Solar Cycle 5," Archibald wrote in a recent paper.
His prediction? "Solar Cycle 24 is likely to have a peak amplitude substantially less than 80," in fact, he predicts 45 - half of the latest sunspot estimate from U.S. researchers.
The website spaceweather.com reports that since 2004, there have been over 620 spotless days on the sun as of early May 2009.
"The fact that the ongoing solar minimum has already racked up 590+ spotless days with no end in sight tells us that it (this solar minimum) is much deeper and longer than average."
As of May 9, 86% of the days in 2009 - 111 in all - have shown no sunspots.
That is a much higher rate than last year, when 73% of the days had no sunspots - as 266 days found the sun blank.
That was the highest number since 1912, and second only to 1913.
This was what the sun looked like just seven years ago at the peak of Solar Cycle 23, with lots of sunspots visible on the solar disk.
