A new solar activity parameter and the strength of 5-cycle periodicity

A weak 5-cycle periodicity (r = -0.64) is found in the maximum amplitudes of the modern era sunspot cycles (11-23), slightly stronger than the 8-cycle (Gleissberg) periodicity (r = 0.60). We propose a new parameter called 'effective duration', defined as the total sunspot numbers in a cycle divided by the maximum amplitude. This parameter has two advantages: one is that it is almost independent of the exact definition of minimum timing; another is that the maximum amplitude is found to be highly correlated (r = 0.86) with this parameter five cycles before, when applied to the smoothed monthly mean sunspot numbers in modern era. Implied is that this parameter carries some information of the amplitude five cycles later, and may become one of the parameters to study solar activity and the theory of solar dynamo. With the relationship above, the amplitude of cycle 24 is estimated to be 115.7 +/- 19.7, where the error is the standard error. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.