The daily sunspot number reached a peak of 105 on April 6. To find a daily
sunspot number this high, one must look back to last summer, when the
sunspot number on August 2 was 112, over seven months ago. But this is just
another one of those little up-ticks as this solar cycle gradually
declines, probably reaching a minimum in less than a year. You can see the projection for the next year and a half in the current
April 4 issue of the NOAA Preliminary Report and Forecast of Geophysical
Data, in PDF format. Look on page 9 of this issue at,
<http://www.sec.noaa.gov/weekly/pdf/prf1596.pdf>http://www.sec.noaa.gov/weekly/pdf/prf1596.pdf.
You'll see that the predicted smoothed sunspot number for April 2006 is 12,
and that this chart predicts a decline that won't rise again to the current
level until some time around August or September 2007. But after that, the
next solar cycle (based on past cycle behavior) should rise faster than the
current one declined.
