Sunday, June 25, 2017

Increased Cosmic Rays - Solar Cycle #24 minimum

Solar Cycle #24 is moving in to a minimum with more and more sunspots free days. As a result the sun will be less active and the magnetic field will be weaker with decreasing solar wind. This solar wind acts as a shield to protect Earth against high energetic cosmic rays. Based on historical data we see an inverse correlation between the sun's activity (sunspot number) and gallactic cosmic rays.

As we are moving into a "quit" period I took data from 1/1/2014 - today and compared :
1) Sunspot data from Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels (WDC-SILCO-SIDC) with
2) Gallactic Cosmic Rays data from University of Oulo, Finland

It's not outspoken but we see clearly an inverse correlation between the sunspot data and the cosmic ray activity.



Also Spaceweather.com is tracking these changes with balloonflights above the US. Since 2015, levels of radiation increased up to 19%.