Timing Terminators: Forecasting Sunspot Cycle 25 Onset, Activity Levels
and Overcoming Social Constraints That Hamper Progress
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.