Solar minimum – how low can it go ??

I was wondering what the latest status of forecast was on the current solar cycle (23). One of the sources of this subject is the excellent site of the Australian Government IPS Space and Radio Services.
On this page you can find the plot below of the forecasted smoothed sunspot number. As you see the minimum is supposed to appear in September 2007. That is consistent with earlier reports that this cycle would be considerably longer than the previous one. It could also indicate that the next cycle will be a major one. But as we have seen in the past, many theories even the most advanced ones, never succeeded in making an accurate prediction of the peak value of the next cycle. We can only hope.
This is what IPS forecasts now:

Last updated 05 Oct 2006 23:17 UT

IPS Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Details:

Cycle 24 Parameter value
Start Time 2007.8 +/- 0.5
Peak Time 2011.7 +/- 1.0
End Time 2018.2 +/- 1.5
Peak Value 134 +/- 50

Description of Prediction Technique
The prediction is based on the average of the last 8 solar cycles
(Cycles 15 to 23). IPS plans to adjust this average cycle as the new cycle
unfolds. To do this IPS is developing software for manipulating this
predicted cycle. The difficulty is ensuring that adjustments are not
made for short term variation, only for longer term cycle variation.

So, compared to the peak of cycle 23, SSN(peak)=121, cycle 24 should be slightly better indeed with SSN(peak)= ~134 (remember the days of cycle 21 and 22 with peak values of 165 and 159 respectively … ?).

At any rate, for the time being we can have fun on the low bands for yet another season …