SOLAR BLAST: No sunspots? No problem

SpaceWeather.com ^ | 4/28/2008 | spaceweather.com

[Cementjungle]

SOLAR BLAST: No sunspots? No problem. Yesterday the blank sun unleashed a solar flare without the usual aid of a sunspot. At 1408 UT on April 26th, Earth-orbiting satellites detected a surge of X-rays registering B3.8 on the Richter scale of solar flares. Shortly thereafter, SOHO coronagraphs photographed a coronal mass ejection (CME) billowing away from the sun:

The expanding cloud could deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field late on April 28th or 29th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when it arrives.

This strange solar flare came from a patch of sun (N08,E08) where magnetic fields were not intense enough to form a visible sunspot (sunspots are made of magnetism). Nevertheless, magnetic fields were present with sufficient energy and instability to produce a powerful explosion. NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft, observing the sun from widely separated vantage points, recorded a million mph shock wave or "solar tsunami" spreading from the blast site through the sun's atmosphere: movie.

[Cementjungle]

Maybe this will help slow down the current global cooling and provide a reprieve for Al Gore and allow him to continue his scam.

[ml/nj]

registering B3.8 on the Richter scale of solar flares

There's a Richter Scale for solar flares?

ML/NJ

[wastedyears]

Million mile per hour shockwave... *head explodes*

What’dya say again?

[FormerACLUmember]

No sunspots = very, very cold weather; escalating each year the sunspots are vanished.

Al Gore may prove to be the greatest charlatan in all of human history.

[milwguy]

There is currently no sunspots on the face of the sun however there was a B3 solar flare that actually produced a small CME. This originated from an unnumbered plage region.

http://www.solarcycle24.com/

Good sight to learn about the sun. Good discussion board on sun and Global Warming as well.

[Man50D]

This strange solar flare came from a patch of sun (N08,E08) where magnetic fields were not intense enough to form a visible sunspot (sunspots are made of magnetism). Nevertheless, magnetic fields were present with sufficient energy and instability to produce a powerful explosion.

Are you sure this wasn't Al Gore crashing into the Sun?

[VeniVidiVici]

Al Gore may prove to be the greatest charlatan in all of human history

He and his lemmings on the Left will manage to convince the .edu establishments that Earth Global Warming caused the disappearance of the sunspots.

[liege]

I wonder what else we don’t know about El Sol? Maybe it won’t really last another 5 billion years and then go out as a red giant?

[eyedigress]

It should arrive in about 93 hours?

[goodnesswins]

I’ve got a target right HERE....*......please, we want some global warming!

[familyop]

It appears from the numbers at the NOAA site that they don’t really know what it’s going to do around the earth. ...low probabilities shown for any major-severe storm, though.

[Cementjungle]

It appears from the numbers at the NOAA site that they don’t really know what it’s going to do around the earth. ...low probabilities shown for any major-severe storm, though.

The part of this that seems to be new is the fact that there is an ejection without the usual sunspot beforehand. I dont' know what it means, perhaps nothing.

[Eye On The Left]

Sunspots are circular cross sections of magnetic field lines that are 'poking' out of the Sun's surface (perpendicular to it). The lines loop from one spot into a neighboring one. They are dark because they are cooler than their surroundings. Here's an interesting piece from NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory's "Not So Frequently Asked Questions" section on sunspots and climate:

Q-Does the number of sunspots have any effect on the climate here on Earth?

A-Sunspots are slightly cooler areas on the surface of the Sun, due to the intense magnetic fields, so they radiate a little less energy than the surroundings. However, there are usually nearby areas associated with the sunspots that are a little hotter (called falculae), and they more than compensate. The result is that there is a little bit more radiation coming from the Sun when it has more sunspots, but the effect is so small that it has very little impact on the weather and climate on Earth.

However, there are more important indirect effects: sunspots are associated with what we call "active regions", with large magnetic structures containing very hot material (being held in place by the magnetism). This causes more ultraviolet (or UV) radiation (the rays that give you a suntan or sunburn), and extreme ultraviolet radiation (EUV). These types of radiation have an impact on the chemistry of the upper atmosphere (e.g. producing ozone). Since some of these products act as greenhouse gases, the number of sunspots (through association with active regions) may influence the climate in this way.

***********************************
Many active regions produce giant outflows of material that are called Coronal Mass Ejections. These ejections drag with them some of the more intense magnetic fields that are found in the active regions. The magnetic fields act as a shield for high-energy particles coming from various sources in our galaxy (outside the solar system). These "cosmic rays" (CRs) cause ionization of molecules in the atmosphere, and thereby can cause clouds to form (because the ionized molecules or dust particle can act as "seeds" for drop formation).
************************************

If clouds are formed very high in the atmosphere, the net result is a heating of the Earth - it acts as a "blanket" that keeps warmth in.

If clouds are formed lower down in the atmosphere, they reflect sunlight better than they keep heat inside, so the net result is cooling. Which processes are dominant is still a matter of research.

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/classroom/notsofaq.html#SUNSPOT_CLIMATE

Also see:
Is the causal link between cosmic rays and cloud cover really dead??
-by Nir Shaviv
http://www.sciencebits.com/SloanAndWolfendale

[Red_Devil 232]

May be it is on a search and destroy mission ....

Mission - Melt down an Oscar and a Nobel

[Eye On The Left]

If you look at the chart below, you will see that sunspot activity (during solar maxes--the individual peaks) has been relatively high since about 1900 and almost non-existent for the period between about 1650 and 1700. This period is known as the Maunder Minimum or "Little Ice Age".

From BBC News [yr: 2004]:
A new [2004] analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years. Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past. They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3869753.stm

2008: "The Center for Sun-Climate Research at the DNSC investigates the connection between variations in the intensity of cosmic rays and climatic changes on Earth. This field of research has been given the name 'cosmoclimatology'"..."Cosmic ray intensities – and therefore cloudiness – keep changing because the Sun's magnetic field varies in its ability to repel cosmic rays coming from the Galaxy, before they can reach the Earth." :
http://www.spacecenter.dk/research/sun-climate __

[Captain Rhino]

Seems bad until you realize that the light striking the Earth crosses the 93 million mile distance separating the two bodies in approximately 11 minutes. (93,000,000/11 x 60 =507,272,727 mph).

The difference, of course, is the concentration of the energy into a single wave front

[Cementjungle]

It's really hard to imagine how this little ball of fire could have any impact on our climate at all. The little hottie only represent's 98% of the mass of our solar system, and is has atmospheric pressure silghtly higher than earth's: 1.3 million times more to be exact.

27,000,000 degrees Farenheight is not much more than lukewarm, so the only reasonable explaination for globall warming clearly is our conversion of .0000000000000001 percent of Earth's mass into fuel! The only solution, of course, is more taxes.

[P.O.E.]

We’re doomed.

Or not.

[Kolb]

Yep,

http://spaceweather.com/glossary/flareclasses.html?PHPSESSID=iak4d7enfsg2sbm4mca2eihb76

Looks like this one is a relatively minor CME on the scale.

[RightWhale]

High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when it arrives.

Here's the night sky situation in the high latitudes: At 64 north it is still light at midnight and it is light already at 4 AM. Saw the aurora a week ago and it might be visible again in about four months.

[Dr._Joseph_Warren]

Million mile per hour shockwave... *head explodes*

No big deal really when you consider that light travels at 670 million miles per hour.

[Clioman]

So, is it that a lack of sunspots contributes to global cooling, or a lack of solar flares? Which?

[Eye On The Left]

It's really hard to imagine how this little ball of fire could have any impact on our climate at all.

But the main arguments being made for a solar-climate connection is not so much to do with the heat of the Sun but rather with its magnetic cycles. When the Sun is more magnetically active (typically around the peak of the 11 year sunspot cycle --we are a few yrs away at the moment), the Sun's magnetic field is better able to deflect away incoming galactic cosmic rays, highly energetic charged particles coming from outside the solar system. The GCRs are thought to help in the formation of low-level cumulus clouds -the type of clouds that BLOCK sunlight and help cool the Earth. So when the Sun's MF is acting up (not like now), less GCRs reach the Earth's atmosphere, less low level sunlight-blocking clouds form, and more sunlight gets through to warm the Earth's surface...naturally. Clouds are basically made up of water droplets. When tiny dust particles in the atmosphere are ionized by incoming GCRs, they become very 'attractive' to water molecules, in a purely 'chemical' sense of the word.

[CedarDave]

Daily Sun: 27 Apr 08

The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SOHO/MDI

[Eye On The Left]

The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SOHO/MDI

Yes, I know. I check spaceweather.com often. The reason there have been so few 'spots in the past several years is that we are still at the minimum of the sun's 11-year sunspot cycle. Activity should pick up sharply in the next few years. The important thing is that solar maxes during the past 9-10 decades have been higher than at any period in the past 1,000 or so years. This is based on isotope research not direct observation since sunspot counting has only been around for about only 400 years (since Galileo).

If you look at the chart below, you will see that sunspot activity (during solar maxes--the individual peaks) has been relatively high since about 1900 and almost non-existent for the period between about 1650 and 1700. This period is known as the Maunder Minimum or "Little Ice Age".

From BBC News [yr: 2004]:
A new [2004] analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years. Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past. They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3869753.stm

[b4its2late]

You mean to tell me the sun has been causing global warming all this time? Holy Shiite!

[kenth]

The only solution, of course, is more taxes.

* applause *

[paristwelve]

It’s uncanny! I could feel Mother Earth’s suffering, and see the confusion on people’s faces during that devastating solar tsunami. Billions have been lost!