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Timing Terminators: Forecasting Sunspot Cycle 25 Onset, Activity Levels and Overcoming Social Constraints That Hamper Progress
  • Robert Leamon,
  • Scott McIntosh
Robert Leamon
University of Maryland College Park

Corresponding Author:robert.j.leamon@nasa.gov

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Scott McIntosh
High Altitude Observatory
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Abstract

Recent research has demonstrated the existence of a new type of solar event, the “terminator”. Unlike the Sun’s signature events, flares and Coronal Mass Ejections, the terminator takes place in the solar interior. The terminator signals the end of a magnetic activity cycle at the Sun’s equator and the start of a sunspot cycle at mid latitudes. Observations indicate that the time difference between these events is very short, less than a solar rotation, in the context of the sunspot cycle. As the (definitive) start and end point of solar activity cycles the precise timing of terminators should permit new investigations into the meteorology of our star’s atmosphere. In this letter we use a standard method in signal processing, the Hilbert transform, to identify a mathematically robust signature of terminators in sunspot records and in radiative proxies. Using this technique we can achieve higher fidelity terminator timing than previous estimates have permitted. Further, this method presents a unique opportunity to project when the next terminator will occur, 2020.33(±0.16), and trigger the growth of sunspot cycle 25. We also will use this method to show why Cycle 23 was unusually long, why the Cycle 23-24 minimum was unusually quiet, and why neither of these occurrences will happen with the end of Cycle 24. Ignoring the wealth of observational evidence and viewing the solar activity cycle as merely the growth and decay of sunspot number is one “social constraint that hampers progress” to be overcome.