11 Facts About Solar cycle

Solar cycle, known as the solar magnetic activity cycle, sunspot cycle, or Schwabe cycle, is a nearly periodic 11-year change in the Sun's activity measured in terms of variations in the number of observed sunspots on the Sun's surface.

Understanding and predicting the solar cycle remains one of the grand challenges in astrophysics with major ramifications for space science and the understanding of magnetohydrodynamic phenomena elsewhere in the universe.

Idea of a cyclical solar cycle was first hypothesized by Christian Horrebow based on his regular observations of sunspot made between 1761 and 1776 from the Rundetaarn observatory in Copenhagen, Denmark.

In 1852, Rudolf Wolf designated the first numbered solar cycle to have started in February 1755 based on Schwabe's and other observations.

In 1961 the father-and-son team of Harold and Horace Babcock established that the solar cycle is a spatiotemporal magnetic process unfolding over the Sun as a whole.

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Several predictions have been made for solar cycle 25 based on different methods, ranging from very weak to strong magnitude.

The primary driver of TSI changes on solar rotational and solar cycle timescales is the varying photospheric coverage of these radiatively active solar magnetic structures.

Solar cycle UV flux is a major driver of stratospheric chemistry, and increases in ionizing radiation significantly affect ionosphere-influenced temperature and electrical conductivity.

Solar cycle variations affect the orbital decay of objects in low Earth orbit by altering the density of the upper thermosphere.

The relative strengths of these flux transport processes determine the "memory" of the solar cycle that plays an important role in physics-based predictions of the solar cycle.

Yeates, Nandy and Mackay and Karak and Nandy, in particular, utilized stochastically forced non-linear solar dynamo simulations to establish that the solar cycle memory is short, lasting over one cycle, thus implying accurate predictions are possible only for the next solar cycle and not beyond.