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Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high
BBC News ^ | Tuesday, 6 July, 2004 | Dr David Whitehouse

Posted on 04/10/2007 7:30:56 AM PDT by George W. Bush

Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high

By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor

The Sun, Stanford University
Sunspots are plentiful nowadays

A new 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.

This trend is being amplified by gases from fossil fuel burning, they argue.

'Little Ice Age'

Sunspots have been monitored on the Sun since 1610, shortly after the invention of the telescope. They provide the longest-running direct measurement of our star's activity.

The variation in sunspot numbers has revealed the Sun's 11-year cycle of activity as well as other, longer-term changes.

In particular, it has been noted that between about 1645 and 1715, few sunspots were seen on the Sun's surface.

This period is called the Maunder Minimum after the English astronomer who studied it.

Ice core disc, Epica
Ice cores record climate trends back beyond human measurements

It coincided with a spell of prolonged cold weather often referred to as the "Little Ice Age". Solar scientists strongly suspect there is a link between the two events - but the exact mechanism remains elusive.

Over the past few thousand years there is evidence of earlier Maunder-like coolings in the Earth's climate - indicated by tree-ring measurements that show slow growth due to prolonged cold.

In an attempt to determine what happened to sunspots during these other cold periods, Dr Sami Solanki and colleagues have looked at concentrations of a form, or isotope, of beryllium in ice cores from Greenland.

The isotope is created by cosmic rays - high-energy particles from the depths of the galaxy.

The flux of cosmic rays reaching the Earth's surface is modulated by the strength of the solar wind, the charged particles that stream away from the Sun's surface.

And since the strength of the solar wind varies over the sunspot cycle, the amount of beryllium in the ice at a time in the past can therefore be used to infer the state of the Sun and, roughly, the number of sunspots.

Latest warming

Dr Solanki is presenting a paper on the reconstruction of past solar activity at Cool Stars, Stellar Systems And The Sun, a conference in Hamburg, Germany.

He says that the reconstruction shows the Maunder Minimum and the other minima that are known in the past thousand years.

But the most striking feature, he says, is that looking at the past 1,150 years the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years.

Over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots, a trend that has accelerated in the past century, just at the time when the Earth has been getting warmer.

The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer.

Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to increase.

This is put down to a human-produced greenhouse effect caused by the combustion of fossil fuels.

This latest analysis shows that the Sun has had a considerable indirect influence on the global climate in the past, causing the Earth to warm or chill, and that mankind is amplifying the Sun's latest attempt to warm the Earth.



TOPICS: Extended News; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: algore; bees; bushesfault; climate; climatecycles; climatology; globalhotting; globalwarming; godsgravesglyphs; honey; honeybees; sun; sunspots; weathercycles
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To: irishtenor

I don’t trust Al Gore, I trust the facts.


121 posted on 04/10/2007 11:41:23 AM PDT by cogitator
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To: cogitator
I think that's a tad extreme. And also vague.

As oppose to for all the moronic fear-mongering from the global alarmists, I never see you call them out for being extreme. What hasn't been blamed on global warming by the alleged scientists?

122 posted on 04/10/2007 11:42:44 AM PDT by Always Right
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To: RegulatorCountry

I would think that the stress of climate change (especially way back when) would offer some opportunites to take advantage of. The price of gold also shows some correlation to the sunspot number!?


123 posted on 04/10/2007 11:43:28 AM PDT by geopyg (Don't wish for peace, pray for Victory.)
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To: cogitator

Feelings, nothing more than feelings...
Come on, sing it with me. Feelings, nothing more than...
You’re not trying :>)


124 posted on 04/10/2007 11:45:01 AM PDT by irishtenor (Save the whales. Collect the whole set.)
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To: dirtboy
Hey, a followup quick exercise; look at the second plot in point #4. Mentally remove the 1998 peak. What direction is the trend?

GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: Global Temperature Trends: 2005 Summation

"The highest global surface temperature in more than a century of instrumental data was recorded in the 2005 calendar year in the GISS annual analysis. However, the error bar on the data implies that 2005 is practically in a dead heat with 1998, the warmest previous year. ... Record warmth in 2005 is notable, because global temperature has not received any boost from a tropical El Niño this year. The prior record year, 1998, on the contrary, was lifted 0.2°C above the trend line by the strongest El Niño of the past century."

125 posted on 04/10/2007 11:45:41 AM PDT by cogitator
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To: Strategerist

I think that they believe that this next peak sunspot cycle will be higher this next cycle (which is just about to begin) with a more rapid increase in the suspot numbers that has been observed before.


126 posted on 04/10/2007 11:46:22 AM PDT by geopyg (Don't wish for peace, pray for Victory.)
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To: George W. Bush
the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years.

George W. Bush just happens to be 60 years old. So it must be his fault</sarcasm>.

127 posted on 04/10/2007 11:48:56 AM PDT by JohnBovenmyer
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To: cogitator

“It’s too short-term to call it anything else”

So are 180 years of weather records in proving we are all gonna die because of anthropomorphic global warming.


128 posted on 04/10/2007 11:52:56 AM PDT by listenhillary
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To: staytrue
Plenty of people say it is not happening. Rush was reading an article last week that reported average temps of the atmosphere have not changed. What has heated up is the air in urban areas. Urban areas are basically heat islands because asphalt and concrete absorb heat from the sun whereas land does not. Temperatures in the rural areas have not changed.
129 posted on 04/10/2007 11:59:05 AM PDT by Lowcountry (RIP: Peterdanbrokaw)
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To: cogitator

Lindzen goes on to say...

“The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare,” Lindzen says. “The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman’s forecast for next week.”

His most important point—after dissembling models that show seas rising—is that temperatures should have risen much more dramatically if global warming from CO2 was really the only mechanism at work. “Average temperatures rose only about 0.6 degrees since the beginning of the industrial era, and the change hasn’t been uniform—warming has largely occurred during the periods from 1919 to 1940 and from 1976 to 1998, with cooling in between. Researchers have been unable to explain this discrepancy,” he points out.

http://www.thecarconnection.com/blog/?p=571


130 posted on 04/10/2007 12:01:01 PM PDT by listenhillary
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To: listenhillary

The debate is over. No more posts on this thread.


131 posted on 04/10/2007 12:04:11 PM PDT by Ieatfrijoles (Incinerate Riyadh Now.(Request shot splash))
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To: listenhillary
So are 180 years of weather records in proving we are all gonna die because of anthropomorphic global warming.

Hyperbolic statements are not useful.

132 posted on 04/10/2007 12:09:52 PM PDT by cogitator
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To: JohnBovenmyer; George W. Bush
the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years.

George W. Bush just happens to be 60 years old.

Coincidence? I don't think so.


133 posted on 04/10/2007 12:11:38 PM PDT by PhilDragoo (Hitlery: das Butch von Buchenvald)
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To: listenhillary
Researchers have been unable to explain this discrepancy,” he points out.

Lindzen's statement is a gloss. Sulfate aerosol forcing explains the majority of the cooling. A small increase in solar output is cited for part of the warming (anthropogenic GHGs for the other part) for the early century warming.

134 posted on 04/10/2007 12:12:29 PM PDT by cogitator
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To: Andrewksu

ping. Some great quotes accompany this article. Worth saving. Especially the one about Capitalism destroying the Earth.


135 posted on 04/10/2007 12:29:14 PM PDT by centurion316 (Democrats - Supporting Al Qaida Worldwide)
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To: cogitator
You really have no problems with IPCC ‘scientists’ telling the public that 130 million people in Asia will be displaced by 2050, with potentially catastrophic problems in Africa which includes wiping out their entire staple crops altogether and water shortages for between 75 to 250 million people? Predictions that floods, fires, droughts, heat waves, storms, hurricanes are are going to more frequent and more severe? You really believe that is what the science is telling us? I am 'extreme' for calling these scientists out as liars, but they are not extreme? They issue all these fear-mongering press releases as if they are virtual certainities and are actually upset that government officials made them tone down their outrageous rhetoric.
136 posted on 04/10/2007 12:35:58 PM PDT by Always Right
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To: Always Right
I might have problems with some of those predictions... but this is what you said: "Any ‘scientist’ who says with high confidence that man-made emissions are responsible for Global Warming is a liar."

And I have problems with that, too. If Richard Lindzen says that there is a human contribution to global warming because of greenhouse gas emissions, then I ought to have problems with your statement, don't you think?

If you want to talk about the rest, then be more specific.

137 posted on 04/10/2007 12:57:51 PM PDT by cogitator
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To: George W. Bush

Might be helpful to put “news flashback” in the title, I get tricked with these old storys thinking it is another just released study.


138 posted on 04/10/2007 1:05:27 PM PDT by Names Ash Housewares
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To: cogitator
And I have problems with that, too. If Richard Lindzen says that there is a human contribution to global warming because of greenhouse gas emissions, then I ought to have problems with your statement, don't you think?

No. The real issue issue is how much. The IPCC is maintaining that they are 90 percent certain that man is responsible for the majority of warming. Just conceding there probably is a human component is different than placing some high confidence level on something that we really know little about. How did they calculate this confidence level? How do they know what amount is caused by human factors? The 'scientists' can't answer either of those questions, so they are liars in how they presented it. Their 90% confidence level is based on their feelings of consensus. Their assumption that most of the warming is caused by humans is based on their biases and not on facts that they have conclusively eliminated the other variables.

139 posted on 04/10/2007 1:14:44 PM PDT by Always Right
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To: cogitator
It's too short-term to call it anything else, unless a definitive cause-and-effect mechanism can be identified. (And that might still be an aspect of natural variability.)

The evasive move of labelling evidences which call into question the AGW theory as short-term trends is a convenient refuge when it suits one's argument. That, however, did not prevent the IPCC in the AR4 SPM from selecting a 10-year short-term trend to conclude that sea-level rise increase in that 10-year period (1993-2003) was a new established rate of rise. The reference rise-rate (the basis rate that the new rate was compared to) was also conveniently chosen to be from 1961-2003, a range obviously chosen to produce a particularly lower basis rate. It seemed curious to me why they would pull the odd year of 1961 to establish a reference rate, until I examined their chart and I saw that if they had started the beginning of the range earlier, they would not have gotten as low a reference rate. Such subjective methods of drawing conclusions reveal, in my opinion, an agenda.
140 posted on 04/10/2007 1:40:45 PM PDT by AaronInCarolina
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