The NOAA seems pretty desperate to not have this August go in the books as a sunspot-less month. <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/sun-has-first-spotless-calendar-month-since-1913/-2674″>Anthony Watts is, as ever, on the case.
After going days without counting the August 21/22 “sunspeck” NOAA and SIDC Brussels say NOT a spotless month!
They officially counted that sunspeck, after all. It only took them a week to figure out if they were going to count it or not, since no number was assigned originally.
But there appears to be an error in the data from the one station that reported a spot, Catania, Italy. None other stations monitoring that day did not report a spot. Catania reports a spot in the southern hemisphere that day, but there was not one seen by anyone else.
Inquires have been sent, stay tuned.