Forecasting the solar cycle with genetic algorithms

In the past, it has been postulated that the irregular dynamics of the solar cycle may embed a low order chaotic process (Weiss 1988, 1994; Spiegel 1994) which, if true, implies that the future behaviour of solar activity should be predictable. Here, starting from the historical record of Zürich sunspot numbers, we build a dynamical model of the solar cycle which allows us to make a long-term forecast of its behaviour. Firstly, the deterministic part of the time series has been reconstructed using the Singular Spectrum Analysis and then an evolutionary algorithm (Alvarez et al. 2001), based on Darwinian theories of natural selection and survival and ideally suited for non-linear time series, has been applied. Then, the predictive capability of the algorithm has been tested by comparing the behaviour of solar cycles 19–22 with forecasts made with the algorithm, obtaining results which show reasonable agreement with the known behaviour of those cycles. Next, the forecast of the future behaviour of solar cycle 23 has been performed and the results point out that the level of activity during this cycle will be somewhat smaller than in the two previous ones.