USA and European solar research groups differ over whether sunspots increased or decreased in April
May 8th, 2012 by Warwick HughesJust noticed that the SWO sunspot number published by NOAA increased for April while the RI number published by the ROYAL OBSERVATORY OF BELGIUM decreased.

Just eyeballing the graph it looks to be a significant difference of opinion.
I notice the NOAA show the 10.7cm flux decreased too – which tends to go with a decrease in sunspots. Link to my earlier posts – there is a chain back to Dec 2006 when I first posted on diverging predictions for solar cycle 24. Then in March 2007 I posted David Archibald’s provocative article The Past and Future of Climate – where David correctly predicted a long solar minimum between cycles 23 & 24 and a weak cycle 24.
Posted in Solar | 1 Comment »
May 11th, 2012 at 11:11 am
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Counting sunspots is still in the eye of the beholder. The F10.7 flux can’t be fiddled with, by comparison. The interesting thing in the heavens at the moment is that the cosmic ray flux, three and a half years into the cycle, isn’t much lower than that at the previous minimum in 1996. One thing I would like to examine is the Mean Field. You see on Dr Svalgaard’s chart at: www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png , that the MF went into the last minimum very orderly and looks far less organised coming out of it.