We now have a new forecast from NOAA Space Environment Center for the
bottom of this solar cycle, and compared to the forecast of the past few
years, it puts the bottom just slightly further out than the forecast of a
few years ago, which is all we had until this week. You can see it in the charts in the back of the July 4 Preliminary Report
and Forecast, at
<http://www.sec.noaa.gov/weekly/pdf/prf1609.pdf>http://www.sec.noaa.gov/weekly/pdf/prf1609.pdf.
Note on pages 9 and 10 that the table of predicted smoothed sunspot numbers
put the minimum in January 2007, or it may be more realistic to
characterize it as occurring between December 2006 and May 2007. The
projection running just one week earlier, at
<http://www.sec.noaa.gov/weekly/pdf/prf1608.pdf>http://www.sec.noaa.gov/weekly/pdf/prf1608.pdf
is the same one that has been out for several years. Note the minimum
sunspot numbers at December 2006 and January 2007. Similar numbers for the
smoothed solar flux, which in last week's table show a minimum from
December 2006 through April 2007, while this week's forecast shows January
through April 2007. Not much difference, but a slight shift out into 2007,
and the first update to this forecast in years.
