Solar Cycle 25 Update #4

Going through previous posts, to see if I put numbers on Cycle 25 updates, I found that I posted about the first spots of the cycle being identified two years ago - to the day - January 12, 2020.  The way these cycles work is that the first spots appear at higher latitudes, that is, closer to the poles, and as the cycle progresses, they move toward the solar equator, a pattern often called a Butterfly pattern.  There's generally a period of overlap when spots from both cycles can be observed at the same time (determined by the magnetic polarity of the spots) and that happened at least until April of 2020, when Cycle 24 spots hadn't been seen in a while.  These folks say the first cycle 25 sunspot was seen in December of 2016.

As the new cycle started, it began to look to be rather more active than the official models were predicting.  I posted this diagram last August showing the progression of sunspot number being noticeably above the official predictions. 

This appeared August 4th on SpaceWeather.com.  The plot has been updated for the last five months, and posted at Spaceweather.com again.  The divergence between reality and the official forecast is even stronger. At this point, it looks like the cycle could go higher than predicted or the peak could be sooner.  Or both.

All of the conventional experts had been predicting this solar cycle would like the previous one - which was the weakest in a hundred years.  In these plots, the "official forecast" plot is the one NOAA (and by extension the US) has as its forecast.  In August of '20, I go into more details on some of these issues as I introduce a prediction by a new group that was very different from the official forecasts.  These guys were saying 25 could be in the top couple of strongest sunspot cycles ever.  

To be blunt, we see someone making a prediction like "this is going to be as strong as cycle 19" (the strongest cycle on record, peaking in 1957) virtually every cycle.  I've come to ignore them.  I'll note the prediction and see what really happens.  As I said along the way:

It's an interesting prediction, but when a new group comes along with a whole new way of looking at a problem that has been studied for years, they either suddenly revolutionize the field or fail and go away.  We'll see what happens with this prediction.

In the last few months, I came across a video by the leader of that prediction group, Dr. Scott McIntosh, that was made in early September of '21.  It's a half hour long video (32:11) and he both explains their model and updates it.  All of their prediction depends on predicting and identifying so-called 'termination' events:  landmarks marking the start and end of sunspot and magnetic activity cycles.  Some of their early predictions hadn't happened yet as of that date, and as a result, he lowered their prediction to put cycle 25 "in the top 10 strongest cycles" while saying we should know more in the next couple of months (next few solar rotations).  

Since we're now in the couple of solar rotations time period since the video, I'd like to see an update to their predictions.  The progress of the cycle, though, seems to make them look good.  Cycle 25 has been consistently stronger than the official forecast since activity started going up.