Posted on 12/04/2009 9:41:40 AM PST by dila813
September 3, 2009: The sun is in the pits of the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. Weeks and sometimes whole months go by without even a single tiny sunspot. The quiet has dragged out for more than two years, prompting some observers to wonder, are sunspots disappearing?
"Personally, I'm betting that sunspots are coming back," says researcher Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona. But, he allows, "there is some evidence that they won't."
Penn's colleague Bill Livingston of the NSO has been measuring the magnetic fields of sunspots for the past 17 years, and he has found a remarkable trend. Sunspot magnetism is on the decline:
(Excerpt) Read more at science.nasa.gov ...
I agree. Life is better when it is lived in warmer temps. Trees and crops grow better, people are happier, etc. Alaska could use a little bit longer growing season, too. Just because people choose to live up here doesn't mean we don't like it when it is warm! LOL! Summers in this area can be very pleasant. Short, but nice.
>> Go here and see the blank face of the sun, day after day. Not a good thing, especially for us up here in Alaska. <<
And the spots they cite are so darned small they are a mere pixel or maybe two.
We are in a solar minimum and this last year’s weather is proof of that.
You are making the same mistake that "warmists" make. They look at a short, near-term, cycle and extrapolate forward. Yes, the Sun has an 11-year sunspot cycle. It also has cycles of much longer duration and while sunspots may return, there is a good possibility it won't be anytime soon. The historical trend has been 100,000 years of cold followed by 10,000 of warm.
Guess where we are in the curve.
Yup, we are going to freeze AND burn. Good thing for liberals that such a paradox can easily exist in their minds.
As a ham radio operator, sunspots cause great world wide radio communications. I learned sun spots run in cycles of about 11 years, with a few minor exceptions here and there. If there are only a few sunspots, just wait awhile and they will return. When sun spots are at their peak, world wide radio communication is really hopping.
I bought grow lights for our extra room and I’m saving strawberries through the winter.
You are missing the point, if the magnetic field is too weak, they can’t form regardless of where we are in the cycle.
He is talking about the possibility of a major minimum.
No, that is already proven.
He is talking about the chance that we may even have seen the last of sun spots in 2015 on a permanent basis.
My Son’s Son, asks his dad “Do you remember when there were sun spots and the earth was warm?”
The data doesn’t come before the cycle though.
The drop may just happen to correlate with a decrease in the sunspot cycle itself.
If that’s the case, this doesn’t mean anything.
Easy now. The solar flares, sun spots, run in roughly 11 year cycles. I learned a great deal about solar activity while stationed in Teheran before the ouster of the Shah. The Air Force ran a solar observatory for the main purpose of monitoring solar activity because of the three HF communications trunks we (STRATCOM) serviced for the Embassy and Armish Maag agencies in country. This observatory was located on the same compound as our receivers site and we frequented the guys there just out of interest. If there was a sudden solar flare, they would call us with about a five minute warning of the higher freqencies going to hell so we could configure our transmitters and receivers to prepare for minimal imact from the radio waves that would bombard the planet.
When we got our tactical sattelite link installed with DC, it was not so much of an emergency since it was relatively unaffected as compared to the HF.
Now here we have another scientist telling us what he has observed and all I hear is the scare tactics of the early 70’s may very well be upon us. How convenient it is that now we have this issue coming to prominence since the AGW scam has been exposed.
I have been following this solar minimum and this paper since it came out. The discussions at Watt's up with that? is quite good on these issues. The solar scientist Lei Svalgaard is a regular contributor.
I always assumed he was talking about the "forseeable" future. As in longer than a few regular solar cycles.
Svalgaard has an interesting page that he updates daily with solar variables.
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
As you can see there has been some activity on both TSI and sunspots, but the magnetic field remains "dead".
Anyhow, as an economist this is way out of my field, but I find it interesting to follow as a layman nontheless
Cheers.
I assume that is a misquote or that he means they won't come back for some time, (by our standards,) like 80-100 years.
Sunspots were not seen or too small too be seen during a period of several decades.
And we only have sunspot records for a few centuries of the whole 6000? years since god created the Earth!Or was it a couple billion years in which case our data sample is really small!
At the same time, on the other hand, the evidence is preliminary...
Actually we do know that the new cycle has begun. Turns out that the direction of the magnetic fields switch on cycle boundaries.
Further - with new detection capability that lets scientists look below the surface of the sun, they have found what they believe is the cause of the 11 year cycle. There appears to be a current below the surface that moves north then south then north again on an 11 year cycle.
There are sun spots occuring right now -but not very many.
“They look at a short, near-term, cycle and extrapolate forward.”
Indeed. But I am neither a “warmer”, nor a practicing scientist (though I have a few academic degrees from the past that might indicate that I was). Since I have no current expertise, or recent academic on such matters I must rely upon reading a lot since I am not terribly bright (truly!).
As such I’m only a very “short, near time cycle” myself. I’m probably going to make it through at least one more sun cycle. With luck, maybe two. As such, my event horizon is a bit closer in than the really neat graph you’ve provided. While it’s fascinating on a solar scale, it is of less practical interest for someone that is just “passing through”. I hope you can understand why my interest in the phenomenon is on a shorter temporal scale.
How do you suppose they came by the data for such an extended period? Certainly interesting stuff.
the magnetic field is declining.
&&&
I have read this before, and it makes me wonder if the poles are in the process of reversing magnetically, as has happened a few times in the past long before man’s existence. What would actually happen to us, I wonder.
This is on the sun, not the earth.
I think you are talking about the 2012 prediction some have made of us hitting a solar maximum at the same time as the earth swaps magnetic poles.
The thing to remember is that it takes 10k years for the poles to reverse but during that time the earth’s magnetic field does weaken.
pole swap on the sun? I will have to google it
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