Posted on 01/01/2011 8:57:03 PM PST by TaraP
The coming year will be an important one for space weather as the Sun pulls out of a trough of low activity and heads into a long-awaited and possibly destructive period of turbulence. Many people may be surprised to learn that the Sun, rather than burn with faultless consistency, goes through moments of calm and tempest.
But two centuries of observing sunspots -- dark, relatively cool marks on the solar face linked to mighty magnetic forces -- have revealed that our star follows a roughly 11-year cycle of behaviour.
The latest cycle began in 1996 and for reasons which are unclear has taken longer than expected to end.
Now, though, there are more and more signs that the Sun is shaking off its torpor and building towards "Solar Max," or the cycle's climax, say experts.
"The latest prediction looks at around midway 2013 as being the maximum phase of the solar cycle," said Joe Kunches of NASA's Space Weather Prediction Center.
But there is a prolonged period of high activity, "more like a season, lasting about two and a half years," either side of the peak, he cautioned.
At its angriest, the Sun can vomit forth tides of electromagnetic radiation and charged matter known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs.
This shock wave may take several days to reach Earth. When it arrives, it compresses the planet's protective magnetic field, releasing energy visible in high latitudes as shimmering auroras -- the famous Northern Lights and Southern Lights.
But CMEs are not just pretty events.
They can unleash static discharges and geomagnetic storms that can disrupt or even knock out the electronics on which our urbanised, Internet-obsessed, data-saturated society depends.
Less feared, but also a problem, are solar flares, or eruptions of super-charged protons that can reach Earth in just minutes.
In the front line are telecommunications satellites in geostationary orbit, at an altitude of 36,000 kilometres (22,500 miles) and Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, on which modern airliners and ships depend for navigation, which orbit at 20,000 kms (12,000 miles).
In January 1994, discharges of static electricity inflicted a five-month, 50-million-dollar outage of a Canadian telecoms satellite, Anik-E2.
In April 2010, Intelsat lost Galaxy 15, providing communications over North America, after the link to ground control was knocked out apparently by solar activity.
"These are the two outright breakdowns that we all think about," said Philippe Calvel, an engineer with the French firm Thales. "Both were caused by CMEs."
In 2005, X-rays from a solar storm disrupted satellite-to-ground communications and GPS signals for about 10 minutes.
To cope with solar fury, satellite designers opt for robust, tried-and-tested components and shielding, even if this makes the equipment heavier and bulkier and thus costlier to launch, said Thierry Duhamel of satellite maker Astrium.
Another precaution is redundancy -- to have backup systems in case one malfunctions.
On Earth, power lines, data connections and even oil and gas pipelines are potentially vulnerable.
An early warning of the risk came in 1859, when the biggest CME ever observed unleashed red, purple and green auroras even in tropical latitudes.
The new-fangled technology of the telegraph went crazy. Geomagnetically-induced currents in the wires shocked telegraph operators and even set the telegraph paper on fire.
In 1989, a far smaller flare knocked out power from Canada's Hydro Quebec generator, inflicting a nine-hour blackout for six million people.
A workshop in 2008 by US space weather experts, hosted by the National Academy of Sciences, heard that a major geomagnetic storm would dwarf the 2005 Hurricane Katrina for costs.
Recurrence of a 1921 event today would fry 350 major transformers, leaving more than 130 million people without power, it heard. A bigger storm could cost between a trillion and two trillion dollars in the first year, and full recovery could take between four and 10 years.
"I think there is some hyperbole about the draconian effects," said Kunches.
"On the other hand, there's a lot we don't know about the Sun. Even in the supposedly declining, or quiet phase, you can have magnetic fields on the Sun that get very concentrated and energised for a time, and you can get, out of the blue, eruptive activity that is atypical. In short, we have a variable star."
What this is intended to convey is "yes, folks, the level of sunspots has been very low, and the weather has been REALLY COLD the last couple of years, but ANY DAY NOW, the sun will "stoke up again" and we'll be back into "global warming".
"This coming Tuesday marks the 150th anniversary of a unique astronomical event that has repercussions even today. On the morning of September 1st, 1859, Astronomer Richard Carrington found his routine of carefully drawing and recording the transit times of sunspot groups disrupted by an odd phenomenon emerging on the face of the Sun. The day dawned unusually sunny over his private observatory in Redhill, England, and 33 year old Carrington had taken to his usual daily task of sketching sunspot groups projected onto a screen in a darkened room. The scope used was a 2-meter long brass refractor, (scopes were often measured by focal length instead of aperture in those days) and it yielded an 11-inch diameter projected image of the Sun. the Sun itself had been extremely active most of the year, and there was plenty to draw. Carrington was not, however, ready for what appeared on the disk of the Sun at about 11:18 AM local: two kidney shaped beads of light appeared to stab upwards from an enormous sunspot group. This group was active, and as the chronometer ticked away the time in the background, Carrington realized he was witness to a rare event; what we now know as a white-light solar flare. He rushed back into the house to nab a witness, but as they returned not more than sixty seconds later, the flare was largely gone. After a span of five minutes, the flare had covered an estimated 35,000 miles over the face of the Sun and had faded entirely. Carrington had managed to do a hurried sketch and ran the numbers in his head; the material in the flare had to be moving at an astonishing 420,000 miles an hour!"
If you read the article, it is not about hot and cold temperatures on earth. It is not about climate change or global warming.
It is about potential damage to electrical and electronic equipment caused by solar activity.
the material in the flare had to be moving at an astonishing 420,000 miles an hour!”
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wow.. 420KPH .. I reckun that’d sizzle grandma’s whiskers for shur if she wasn’t wearing her bonnet..
uhh,, 420MPH . wow.
The same thing has happened in the past, and when the lull is prolonged, we have a Solar Minimum. There was one in the early middle ages, the Maunder Minimum in the mid 1600s, and the Dalton Minimum in the mid-to-late 1700s. It's no coincidence that the Global Warming extremists always talk about the "warmest temperatures in 150 years", because it was then that the Earth was coming out of the Dalton Minimum, and just about any temperature would look warmer by comparison!
Instead of spending money on the silly premise that anything humans do can change, or even AFFECT the climate, we need to be thinking about how humans can adapt to the changes in the climate, be that a warming trend, like we had in the 90s, or a cooling trend, like we're having right now.
what...you mean read the WHOLE thing before commenting?????
If what we’ve experienced is a true sunspot minimum, hubby and I think it should be named the Hansen-Gore Minimum, just to point out the cupidity of those two men!
I read it, and apologize for deviating into the fickle subject of temperature, but it’s cold, and when I think of sun spots, solar flares and plasma discharges soaring through space towards Earth, warmth comes to mind.
Thank you order is in.
No problem. It’s just that some people see one word in a title and instantly know the whole story. Sometimes it works, other times you wonder what the heck the poster is talking about. There were 3 threads in an hour yesterday morning like that.
Anyone who took 8th grade Science should not be surprised.
But I'm a boomer. What the hell do I know?
If the pattern repeats, be prepared for winters that are colder and more snowy than prior averages over the next few years, with impacts on fuel prices (due to increased heating demands) and food prices (due to reduced growing seasons).
I’ve been an amateur radio operator for just over 2 years. I want those sun spots!!!!
I’m not holding my breath. The spots are always looming, never dooming.
The trouble with too many scientists is they don’t say “we think” something will happen. They state things like they are ironclad facts, and then when they don’t turn out, their credibility gets shot.
And it’s instructive that the middle line, which shows the actual number of sunspots, has been moving straight to the right, rather than curving up, since early 2008. NASA predicted that the number of sunspots would start increasing at the end of 2007, because that’s what had happened for the previous 10 cycles, or so. They had to keep moving that ‘trending up’ line to the right, every month that the sunspots didn’t return. We’ve gone almost two years without any appreciable amount of sunspots, and though this new cycle has begun, the number of sunspots has been anemic, at best. That ‘trending up’ line, might stay more level, than not, for a while, in which case, this could mean a Solar Minimum.
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