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
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 cores record climate trends back beyond human measurementsIt 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.
As Mr Ponte writes today:
“But the Leftist press continues to quote bug and flower scientists about global warming - including doomsayers who three decades ago were predicting a fast-approaching, planet-freezing ice age. (I should know, being author of the 1976 Prentice-Hall bestselling climate book The Cooling.)
Helen Caldicott says ‘bomb’ the same way as Peter Seller’s Inspector Clouseau.
***The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer. ***
These guys are brilliant! I never would have come up with the conclusion that the SUN is causing the world to get warmer. I thought it was all man’s fault.
When sunspots are numerous, the solar wind protects the earth from cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are the cause of nucleation of clouds that bring rain, snow and shield the earth from direct sunlight. More cosmic rays means more clouds and colder weather. Conversely, more solar wind reduces cosmic rays and brings fewer clouds, rain and snow. The impact is net warming.
Solar cycles are evident in the ice cores. The current warming will turn around when the sunspot cycle heads toward another minimum. No socialist legislation, carbon credits and similar green weenie inspired activities will be necessary or required.
Not really true. The entire concept of an "average" temperature, on which the global warming advocates depend, is in dispute. Additionally, there are many scientists who scoff at the idea that we can know what the "average" temperature of the earth is, to a degree or less, even now let alone 100 years ago.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/03/is_there_an_average_global_tem_1.html
Stewart Brand was being sarcastic when he said that. He is actually pro-technology.
I think it's just a sign of how bad man-made global warming has become...things are getting so bad here they're actually effecting the sun!!
We're all going to die.
GASP! It’s not GLOBAL WARMING, but SOLAR WARMING! We have caused the entire system to go bad. We are the cause of even the temperature raises in other systems.
We are at the minimum now, but like many things in nature there is a lag time. We will be headed toward the maximum soon but right now we are down, ask any ham radio operator, we keep excellent track of sunspots since radio propagation on certain bands is great during the sunspot maximum and very bad during the low, such is the case now.
Thank you. Exactly right. The scientists are intimidated, the reporters don’t understand the science, and the readers - for the most part - understand neither the politics nor the science. Hence silly propositions float freely through our media space.
But the sun has nothing to do with Global Warming. Nothing at all.
Algore and the envirowhackos want to send probes to Uranus....
It seems to me that the greens are plotting the extinction of the human race, by banning fur coats, fossil fuels to heat homes, and nuclear power to heat as well. The ethanol situation was a stroke of brilliance, cutting off our food supply and fossil fuels in one swift stroke.
bump
It's not happening
Dagnabbit, it is not my fault!
Don't you get tired of being blamed for everything?
My theory, which I have, is mine, which belongs to me, is as follows...a-hem...this is how it goes...a-hem...The Theory, by A. Elk....The next thing I am about to say is my theory...a-hem... (rapid machine gun fire)
Yeah, it’s like the fact that the sun setting below the horizon indirectly causes it to get dark every night...
Is too!
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