A study of the regularities in solar magnetic activity by singular spectral analysis

The method of singular spectral analysis (SSA) is described and used to ana lyze the series of Wolf numbers that characterizes solar activity from 1748 until 1996. Since this method is relatively new, we detail its algorithm a s applied to the data under study. We examine the advantages and disadvanta ges of the SSA method arid the conditions for its applicability to an analy sis of the solar-activity data. Certain regularities have been found in the dynamics of this series. Both short and long (80-100-year) periodicities h ave been revealed in the sunspot dynamics. We predict the solar activity un til 2014. (C) 2001 MAIK "Nauka/Interperiodica".