Dibyendu Nandi, Professor at IISER Kolkata who is an associate of IUCAA in Pune and an Associate at IUCAA and his PhD student Prantika Bhowmik have devised a novel technique to predict the next sunspot cycle. (Representational Image)The Sun’s activity influences environmental conditions in space adversely affecting satellites and space-based technologies such as telecommunications and navigational networks. Predicting the changes caused by the Sun’s activity level has been challenging. Now a team of two scientists from the Center of Excellence in Space Sciences India at IISER Kolkata has come out with a prediction for the upcoming sunspot cycle which reveals the expected conditions in space over the next decade. Their research work appears today in the journal Nature Communications.
Dibyendu Nandi, Professor at IISER Kolkata who is an associate of IUCAA in Pune and an Associate at IUCAA and his PhD student Prantika Bhowmik have devised a novel technique to predict the next sunspot cycle. Bhowmik and Nandi have predicted space environmental conditions over the next decade would be similar or slightly harsher compared to the last decade. They find no evidence of an impending disappearance of sunspot cycles and say that speculations of an imminent Sun-induced cooling of global climate is very unlikely.
The duo combined two different computer models of the Sun based on complicated mathematical equations, one for studying conditions in its interior where sunspots are created and the other for its surface where sunspots are destroyed, and devised a novel technique to predict the next sunspot cycle. Their technique has been successful in matching sunspot activity observations over the last one hundred years – a first for any team in the world. Their method also makes it possible to make predictions almost a decade before the next sunspot cycle activity peaks in strength.
“Crucially, Indian scientists predict that the next sunspot cycle would not be insignificant. Our forecast surprisingly suggests it could even be stronger than the cycle which is just ending. We expect the next cycle to start rising in about a year following the end of the current sunspot cycle minimum and peak in 2024,” Prof Nandi said. They have predicted space environmental conditions over the next decade would be similar or slightly harsher compared to the last decade. They find no evidence of an impending disappearance of sunspot cycles and thus conclude that speculations of an imminent Sun-induced cooling of global climate is very unlikely.
Explaining further he said that Sunspots are about ten times the size of Earth and have magnetic fields which are ten thousand times stronger. These spots have been observed through telescopes since the times of Galileo and these observations show that there is a cycle of sunspots with some cycles being stronger or weaker than average. The current sunspot cycle dubbed as solar cycle 24 is just ending and it has been one of the weakest cycles in a century, Prof Nandi explained.
Over the last several decades, successive sunspot cycles have significantly weakened in strength and some earlier studies based on simplistic statistical approaches have claimed a significant weakening of the Sun’s activity is imminent, resulting in a loss of sunspot cycles. The last such episode, known as the Maunder minimum occurred between 1645-1715 and coincided with the little ice age, a period of long winters and global cooling. This association has led to widespread speculation that a significantly weak sunspot cycle 25 or an impending disappearance of sunspots for many decades would alleviate global warming and bring down the Earth’s temperature.
The research of the team members was supported by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research and NASA.
