Another Highest Sunspot Number Since Cycle 23

Many may not have noticed (or remember) this, but in a post in early July of 2023, I passed on that the month of June '23 had posted the highest monthly average sunspot number since cycle 23 in 2002, or 21 years. 

We just had another one with this July's average sunspot number the highest since 2001.  Also from SpaceWeather.com 

The sun is partying like it's 2001. That's the last time sunspot counts were as high as they are now. The monthly average sunspot number for July 2024 was 196.5, according to the Royal Observatory of Belgium's Solar Influences Data Analysis Center. This eclipses every month since Dec. 2001:

It practically goes without saying, because we've said it so often, but when Cycle 25 started, the experts were predicting a cycle about as weak as Cycle 24 before it, which was the weakest cycle in a century. In this plot from the Data Analysis Center, the gray band on the right is the predicted range - which was already raised from the predictions made in 2020. The dark blue line is the average monthly sunspot numbers and how much higher that has been for the whole cycle compared to the predicted average (red curve) is pretty obvious. 

Instead, Solar Cycle 25 has shot past Solar Cycle 24 and may be on pace to rival some of the stronger cycles of the 20th century. Already in May 2024 we have experienced a century-class geomagnetic storm with auroras sighted in the South Pacific, central America and south Africa.

We're comparing current activity to 2001 back in Cycle 23, which is close to two of the most historic events ever seen. There was a flare in November of 2003 that was the biggest one seen since the satellite age started, it was classed as X28 in retrospect - because it saturated the X-ray detectors on the satellites and they couldn't measure it properly. Now, SpaceWeather.com is reporting that it has been re-classified from X28 to X45.  The kicker is that 45 is based on a completely different way of determining strength than that always used so I'm not sure I buy that the numbers mean the same thing. They also report there was “a CME so powerful” (cool animation) it was ultimately detected by the Voyager spacecraft at the edge of the solar system.

While it's hard to know except by looking back in time, we're close to the peak of Cycle 25. The conventional timing plots confirm we're definitely near the peak and it looks like it will be some time in the next 2 to 3 years, but much like the blue curve in the plot above, it can be tricky to know where the curve really is going. I showed a plot of the progress of the cycle back in May,  and the latest update is just two lines on the chart to the right along the "Months After Start" axis. Yeah, they're higher, but there's very little new information there - which is why I tend to do my cycle updates twice a year.

Another thing I've repeated just about every time I've talked about this is that, yes, Cycle 25 is stronger than predicted and it's definitely stronger than the previous cycle, but that's not saying much. Cycle 24 was the weakest cycle in a hundred years. A bigger challenge is for it to be stronger than cycle 23, which this data shows has happened in two different months, now. Still, that plot I showed back in May shows that 25 has a long way to go to be stronger than 23 in terms of monthly Smoothed Sunspot Number. Probably an impossibly long way. Further, Cycle 23 was weaker than 22 and 22 was weaker than 21.