Lack of sunspots to bring record cold, warns NASA scientist

“It could happen in a matter of months,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center. ________________

“The sun is entering one of the deepest Solar Minima of the Space Age,” wrote Dr Tony Phillips just six weeks ago, on 27 Sep 2018.

Sunspots have been absent for most of 2018 and Earth’s upper atmosphere is responding, says Phillips, editor of spaceweather.com.

Data from NASA’s TIMED satellite show that the thermosphere (the uppermost layer of air around our planet) is cooling and shrinking, literally decreasing the radius of the atmosphere.

To help track the latest developments, Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center and his colleagues recently introduced the “Thermosphere Climate Index.”

The Thermosphere Climate Index (TCI) tells how much heat nitric oxide (NO) molecules are dumping into space. During Solar Maximum, TCI is high (meaning “Hot”); during Solar Minimum, it is low (meaning “Cold”).

“Right now, it is very low indeed … 10 times smaller than we see during more active phases of the solar cycle,” says Mlynczak

I went back and kicked around the Paducah NWS site a bit more: Today’s high was 27 deg. F below normal. Tomorrow, up around Murphysboro (Trump’s only 2018 IL rally location) they are looking at over 7” of snow possible. A little to the NW of that, it’s 9-1/2”. I don’t know if that’d be a record for mid-November, but I would not be surprised.

Of course, in the mid-South, if the Low tracks slightly differently than forecast, it makes a huge difference: The snow potential could be a total bust. But, even just the potential this early in that area is quite unusual, and it’s mainly due to the cold. The system and moisture patterns are not unusual at all, to my amateur eye.

Weather update: 79 degrees here, the low might hit 73. Clearwater, FL area.

Luckily, by Friday we’ll have a low of maybe 47 so we can light up the 36” copper kettle and have a fire. We live in a forest so firewood is just a collection of deadwood small to large.

Palmetto leaves are remarkably flammable - no stinking tinder and blowing on a hot spark here. Just a few dry palmetto leaves - like small palm fronds - so palmetto leaves, twigs, adding small cut branches and we have a fire, as it kicks in add the bigger stuff.

I was only a cub scout but with reading and several semesters of “Survival” classes I ain’t no country boy but I can survive.

Me? I prefer to sit in my chair on the hardtop screened-in porch, 25x30. 15’ by 15’ screening floor to ceiling, wet side fully screened, south side the same except it has the screened door. Heh.

We’ve been here 25 years. Hurricanes tend to come from the east across land or just head north to Mexico, Texas, Louisiana or north Florida. See Hurricane Florence for reference.

Which is nice because most everybody will be in shorts and a tee shirt but we’ll be warm. ;-)

Tired of snow boots, gloves, snow shovels/blowers, scraping ice off you windshield, cold coffee, etc.

Come on down to Florida - no income tax, most counties are 7% sales tax, 6 months of the year the gulf is 80 degrees plus and the beaches are scenic complete with sea shells, lots of other amenities.

We definitely need more conservatives down here!

I can agree with that. This article has a pretty good discussion, and a link to the original paper:

https://phys.org/news/2018-04-earth-magnetic-field-reverse.html

That said, there is fairly good evidence that these reversals happen, roughly, every 750k to 800k years, and it’s been about 780k years since the last one. (I am a little unclear on how often “excursions” to near zero field occur, which might be just as important as flips, since the problem is not the reversal itself, it is the loss of the field protection if it goes to zero or near zero.)

Still, going with the 750k to 800k year recurrence, and ~780k years since the last flip, I think a prudent civilization should say to itself, “Ya’ know, maybe we should put a little thought into how to best prepare for such an event, since adequate preparations might necessitate a planet wide effort of multiple generations’ time, and there appears to be a significant chance the next event will be in the next few thousand years. It will also help to better understand how much warning we may get, and how long dangerously low magnetic field levels will last.”

Further out, say, a few thousand years or more*, assuming something else doesn’t kill us off, putting up a “substitute” field during an event should be possible.
*Whether we humans will be advanced enough to create that capability in under 3000 years or so is iffy to me.

I look at these things much as I face living in a tornado prone area, but adjusted, since the “in any given year” risk of a flip is low, but the consequences to civilization are immensely higher than tornados here and there. The risk to me personally is nil, but the risk to human civilization, and therefore the need to think in appropriate time spans, is significant. There’s no need to panic or be alarmist: Do the research and as knowledge is gained, begin to plan accordingly.

In the case of tornados (and I’ve had my house wrecked by one), I similarly do not panic, but I do try to plan appropriately: I am a bit of a weather buff, have insurance, a generator, and a safe refuge. :-)

Loss of freedoms? Now, THAT is an imminent threat. Kyrsten Sinema getting elected in AZ? Where’s my vomit pail...

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.