PROBLEMS OF GEOCOSMOS

Proceedings of the 7th International Conference "Problems of Geocosmos" (St. Petersburg, Russia, 26-30 May 2008)
The sunspot, 1 NOAA 981 at the latitude N30 o and at the carrington longitude (L) equals 246 o , has emerged
in the same longitudinal region as sunspot NOAA 980 of the old polarity (S06 o , L239 o ).
n March 28 8 the cycle 23 returned: three big sunspots ( 1 NOAA 987, NOAA 988, and NOAA 989)
atitude 25 o -35 o O , 200
appeared and they were all old cycle spots. After that, the Sun was practically blank. Usually, the beginning
of the new cycle corresponds to the appearance of sunspots with a new polarity at the l
, and
the all sunspots of the old polarity, that are located close to the equator, are disappeared. But, there is a
period of the overlapping of two cycles when both sunspots with the old and the new polarity coexist on the
Sun. On October 5, 2008 the sunspot (NOAA 1003) of the new cycle appeared in the southern hemisphere at
23 o latitude and at 222 o carrington longitude (L). It has disappeared rapidly, and next several days we
observe plages instead of sunspot in the same place. On 11 October 2008, small sunspot (NOAA 1004)
emerged at S08 and L188 and one more (NOAA 1005) at higher latitude in the North (N26, L116). During
the next day two plages 1003 NOAA (S23, L222) and NOAA 1004 (S08, L188) have coexisted with the
sunspot (NOAA 1005) in the North which coordinates are N26 o and L116 o .
The tendency of the solar cycle to appear at the preferred longitudes was found by Benevolenskaya,
Hoeksema, Kosovichev and Scherrer (1999) and Bumba, Garcia, and Klvana (2000).
Figure 4. Left panel: Synoptic maps of the solar magnetic field for Carrington rotations (CR) 1911–1934 derived from
the SOHO/MDI magnetograms during the activity minimum between cycles 22 and 23. Values of the line-of-sight
component of the magnetic field are represented in light and dark colors for positive and negative polarities,
respectively. The gray scale shows magnetic field in the range from -10 to 10 G.
Right panel: More detailed synoptic magnetic maps for Carrington rotations 1916–1923. The plots indicate the NOAA
sunspot number for selected active regions. Bins are 1 o square and extend to latitude ±65 o . (Benevolenskaya et al.,
1999).
hich is shown in more detail in Figure 4 (right panel). One major zone occurred at longitudes 240 o –
80 o and lived over a year. This longitude was active from CR 1911 to CR 1917 (region 1 The transition from old (cycle 22) to new flux (cycle 23 ) is largely concentrated in the interval CR 1916-
1923, w
2
NOAA 8006)
1 NOAA sunspot region number reached 9999 and rolled over to 0000 on 16 June 2002.
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