Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 09/02/2008 7:12:34 AM PDT by milwguy
Drop in solar activity has potential effect for climate on earth.
The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.
The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots -- is an influencing factor for climate on earth.
According to data from Mount Wilson Observatory, UCLA, more than an entire month has passed without a spot. The last time such an event occurred was June of 1913. Sunspot data has been collected since 1749.
When the sun is active, it's not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop to near-zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins.
But this year -- which corresponds to the start of Solar Cycle 24 -- has been extraordinarily long and quiet, with the first seven months averaging a sunspot number of only 3. August followed with none at all. The astonishing rapid drop of the past year has defied predictions, and caught nearly all astronomers by surprise.
In 2005, a pair of astronomers from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson attempted to publish a paper in the journal Science. The pair looked at minute spectroscopic and magnetic changes in the sun. By extrapolating forward, they reached the startling result that, within 10 years, sunspots would vanish entirely. At the time, the sun was very active. Most of their peers laughed at what they considered an unsubstantiated conclusion.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytech.com ...
And we just has one of the coolest Augusts on record here in Virginia.
Hmmmmmm.
A cold winter is coming, you can count on it.
It’s about to go nova!
We had a fabulous non-summer here in MN...hmmm
We’re all gonna die!
A spotless Sun. McCain should have picked it as his Vice-Presidential candidate.
It’s Bush’s fault!
Notice how once again, the gov’t ‘expert’ James hathaway cooks the data to call a tiny speck a sunspot. He and Hansen are both gov’t paid glaobal warming zealots who will cook the books and revise data to fit their global warming agenda.. Hathaway is a gov’t scientist with NOAA.
“Article Update, Sep 1 2008. After this story was published, the NOAA reversed their previous decision on a tiny speck seen Aug 21, which gives their version of the August data a half-point. Other observation centers such as Mount Wilson Observatory are still reporting a spotless month. So depending on which center you believe, August “was a record for either a full century, or only 50 years.
I hope so. I like a little snow in Jan/Feb.
So the long rumored Karl Rove anti-sunspot machine REALLY does work.
WOW!
Who would have thought that acitvity on our Solar System’s SUN would affect the climate here on earth?
...and why do they call it a “Solar” System anyway?
Nope, sorry Sting. There is not.
Actually, sunspot data has been collected since at least the 1600s. The Maunder Minimum was from 1645-1715.
I have heard and seen tons of anecdotal evidence world wide, that it was a fairly cool august. Worry not, Hansen will soon declare August 2008 to be within the top 3 warmest since the Jurassic.
Summer under suspension
Pencil it in for later, after a couple of wet, chilly days
August 19, 2008
By MIKE BARBER
P-I REPORTERLook outside. August left. November arrived.
September and October were no-shows.
Will summer return?
Considering that the growing season was shortened by the coldest and gloomiest start to June since records have been kept, when snowplows were called out to open the mountain passes, the short answer to the question:
Yeah.
"We still have hopefully another month of summer with a little interruption for the next couple of days -- it will get people ready for fall earlier," said Art Gaebel, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Seattle's Sand Point neighborhood.
Steady rain and gusty winds are expected to drench the area Wednesday before turning to showers Wednesday evening with temperatures in the high 60s...
LINK to entire article here: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/375564_weather20.html
Saw my breath nearly every morning in August, that is not normal in WNY.
I was hoping others would see this obvious answer. Thank you for posting. We know that the renewable biofuels industry, dominated by corn, is actually sucking up more than its fair share of energy from the sun, leaving a deficiency of sun-warming energy for the rest of the planet, as the nasty photosynthetic reaction turns the sun’s energy into the ethanol precursor.
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