Posted on 12/13/2013 6:44:59 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
SAN FRANCISCO The sun's current space-weather cycle is the most anemic in 100 years, scientists say.
Our star is now at "solar maximum," the peak phase of its 11-year activity cycle. But this solar max is weak, and the overall current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, conjures up comparisons to the famously feeble Solar Cycle 14 in the early 1900s, researchers said.
"None of us alive have ever seen such a weak cycle. So we will learn something," Leif Svalgaard of Stanford University told reporters here today (Dec. 11) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. [Solar Max: Amazing Sun Storm Photos of 2013]
The learning has already begun. For example, scientists think they know why the solar storms that have erupted during Solar Cycle 24 have caused relatively few problems here on Earth.
The sun often blasts huge clouds of superheated particles into space, in explosions known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Powerful CMEs that hit Earth squarely can trigger geomagnetic storms, which in turn can disrupt radio communications, GPS signals and power grids.
But such effects have rarely been seen during Solar Cycle 24, even though the total number of CMEs hasn't dropped off much, if at all. The explanation, researchers said, lies in the reduced pressure currently present in the heliosphere, the enormous bubble of charged particles and magnetic fields that the sun puffs out around itself.
This lower pressure has allowed CMEs to expand greatly as they cruise through space, said Nat Gopalswamy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Indeed, Solar Cycle 24 CMEs are, on average, 38 percent bigger than those measured during the last cycle a difference with real consequences for folks here on Earth.
"When the CMEs expand more, the magnetic field inside the CMEs has lower strength," Gopalswamy said. "So when you have lower-strength magnetic fields, then they cause milder geomagnetic storms."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory
Ice Cube should get us some information about what is going on in the core.
But for man-caused carbon dioxide-induced warming (i.e. AGW), we’d be at the mercy of that fickle Sun, freezing.
I suspect that the Prophet Algore had certain undefined, non-specific premonitions about this possibility.
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Jerusalem in Israel had several inches,
not much interest on this site for exposing the global warming hoax?
with this we can expose the media, government and scientists for being liars all these decades of their crying global warming. why aren't we using this?
we can show the low info voters that the news media and the democrat party etc. have been lying and funding a hoax (fake gov funded research)
"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow,and our planet began to heal.
Welcome King Barack "Canute" Obama the Great.....
...Obama issues an Executive Order to the Sun...
....to increase it's magnetic field....
and make a good crop of sunspots before elections in 2016....
(PhysOrg.com) -- Sunspot formation is triggered by a magnetic field, which scientists say is steadily declining. They predict that by 2016 there may be no remaining sunspots, and the sun may stay spotless for several decades.
The last time the sunspots disappeared altogether was in the 17th and 18th century, and coincided with a lengthy cool period on the planet known as the Little Ice Age....and lasted 400 years.
Good luck surviving with no electricity and GE modified seeds.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news203746768.html#jCp
Read more here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/08/the-climate-grain-production-relationship-quantified/
You're kidding, right? Search on FreeRepublic for the keyword "globalwarming". There have been thousands of articles posted on this site about the global warming hoax over the years.
LOVING my Hot Flashes this cold, cold Wisconsin Winter, LOL!
What did they use to judge the intensity of the cycle a hundred years ago?
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