Posted on 04/26/2007 1:01:47 PM PDT by Islander7
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The peak of the next sunspot cycle is expected in late 2011 or mid-2012 -- potentially affecting airline flights, communications satellites and electrical transmissions. But forecasters can't agree on how intense it will be.
A 12-member panel charged with forecasting the solar cycle said Wednesday it is evenly split over whether the peak will be 90 sunspots or 140 sunspots.
The government's Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colorado, tracks space weather and forecasts its changes, which can affect millions of dollars worth of activities such as oil drilling, car navigation systems and astronauts.
Half of the specialists predicted a moderately strong cycle of 140 sunspots expected to peak in October of 2011, while the rest called for a moderately weak cycle of 90 sunspots peaking in August of 2012.
"We're hoping to achieve a consensus sometime in the next six to 12 months," said Douglas Biesecker, a space environment center scientist who is chairman of the forecast panel.
An average solar cycle ranges from 75 to 155 sunspots.
During an active solar period, violent eruptions occur more often on the sun, the agency said. Solar flares and vast explosions, known as coronal mass ejections, shoot highly charged matter toward Earth.
Making these predictions is important for many businesses, which have been asking for a forecast for nearly a year, Biesecker said.
Just like coastal residents want a hurricane forecast as early as possible, so do those affected by solar activity, said Joseph Kunches, chief of forecast and analysis at the center, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Looks like the Sun is going to have a fever.
If you could forecast the solar cycle within a margin of error, there would be a Vegas Line on it.
See? Human CO2 emissions have lengthened the sunspot cycle!
Naturally, the only prescription is more cowbell.
I say implement a cap-and-trade scheme for sunspot activity.
After six years of increasing global warming overload and alarms, and three years of (literally!) EVERY science or environmental or weather or technology story being inherently linked to global-warming-is-a-disaster-caused-by-humans ...
Here is a sun-spot alert message that does everything BUT include global warming affects!
Good. I’ll finally start being able to work some DX with a small antenna in a couple of years. It ain’t easy being a ham radio geek stuck in a small apartment during a solar minimum.
}:-)4
Synapses in Algore’s brain will get fried (moreso than they are now).
...and it'll be just about as accurate and worthless........
That gives me time to save up for a bigger HF rig.
We’re all gonna FRY!!!
[/s]
Geez, we’re already concerned about peak oil. Now we gotta worry about peak sun too?
That explains the timing of the left’s big push for oppressive laws in the name of fighting “global warming”.
Soon it will be apparent that the SUN is causing the heating, but then they will already have their oppressive laws and we will be paying carbon taxes on everything from driving to breathing.
Something strange is happening with the sun right now.
Circulation of plasma in sun has slowed to a record low. This flow is responsible for the length of a solar cycle. If things were normal, we’d certainly have a huge cycle coming next, but this dramatic slowing of the meridional flow is make prediction very difficult.
No one really knows what has caused the slow down and when it will get back to normal. If the circulation stops, then we may end up with another Maunder minimum, a time when solar activity nearly disappeared and the climate became much colder.
I predict global cooling in 2015-2025.
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