Solar cycle 24 sunspots.
I’ve seen some reports recently from amateur radio operators around the world that band conditions are improving. Certainly on the higher frequency bands (20m and up) there seems to be some excitement as more DX is worked when this just wasn’t possible in 2009.
Spaceweather.com seems to bear this out. The calculated sunspot number is currently 40 which is as high as I’ve seen it in a long time. Bear in mind that this is about 15 times more than the number of actual visible sunspots (which today stands at three, sunspots 1051, 1052 and 1053). The data also shows that 2010 so far has only 3% spotless days versus 2009 which had over 70% of days with no sunspots.
It does very much look like propagation and band conditions are slowly climbing out of the doldrums as cycle 24 picks up.