Mausumi Dikpati at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO, has used new observations of the sun’s interior and computer simulations to model the flow of plasma to predict the next solar cycle.

As sunspots weaken, they are carried toward the poles and, ultimately, back into the sun’s core where they become the foundation of the next sunspot cycle. “The remnants from the past three cycles combine to produce a certain seed for the present cycle,” Dikpati explains. “We now know that it takes two cycles to fill half the belt with a magnetic field and another two cycles to fill the other half. The next solar cycle depends on characteristics from as far back as 40 years previously – the sun has a magnetic memory.”

When back tested, the model proved effective in predicting the relative strength and duration of the past eight solar storm cycles, which last for roughly 11 years, according to the current issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

The model suggests the next cycle – so-called cycle 24 – will be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the present one.

Solar storms and flares affect everything. Raising the atmosphere and dragging down low orbit satellites to zapping the electrical grid to unusual weather. Predicting such storms is important to NASA, NOAA, and other government and scientific groups and The Spaceweather Site reports it all.

“We think the next cycle will start late this year or early next year. We’re just anxiously awaiting the appearance of those first spots.”

You can watch it all from your desktop with the SOHO screensaver. The two-ton Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO, for short) watches the sun from a Lagrangian point about a million and a half kilometres from the Earth.

[tags]nasa,solarmax,supermax,solar flare,spaceweather,solar and heliospheric observatory[/tags]