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Scientists have demonstrated a clear link between the 11-year sun cycle and winter weather over the northern hemisphere for the first time. They found that low solar activity can contribute to cold winters in the UK, northern Europe and parts of America. But high activity from the sun has the opposite effect. The study helps explain why the UK has been gripped by such cold winters over the last few years: the sun is just emerging from a so-called solar minimum, when solar activity is at its lowest. 'Our research establishes the link between the solar cycle and winter climate...

Old and busted: global warming. New hotness: coldness. Reports from three different studies released yesterday point to the possibility of an extended period of solar inactivity not seen for three hundred years, and one that could bring a new mini-Ice Age: According to three studies released in the United States on Tuesday, experts believe the familiar sunspot cycle may be shutting down and heading toward a pattern of inactivity unseen since the 17th century.The signs include a missing jet stream, fading spots, and slower activity near the poles, said experts from the National Solar Observatory and Air Force Research Laboratory.‘This...

Astronomers will unveil a "major result" on Tuesday (June 14) regarding the sun's 11-year sunspot cycle. The announcement will be made at a solar physics conference in New Mexico, according to an alert released today (June 10) by the American Astronomical Society. The discussion will begin at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT). Sunspots are blotches on the sun that appear dark because they are significantly cooler than the rest of the solar surface. While they look small from our vantage point on Earth, these enigmatic structures can be huge — up to 30,000 miles (48,280 kilometers) across, or as wide...

Some unusual solar readings, including fading sunspots and weakening magnetic activity near the poles, could be indications that our sun is preparing to be less active in the coming years. The results of three separate studies seem to show that even as the current sunspot cycle swells toward the solar maximum, the sun could be heading into a more-dormant period, with activity during the next 11-year sunspot cycle greatly reduced or even eliminated. The results of the new studies were announced today (June 14) at the annual meeting of the solar physics division of the American Astronomical Society, which is...

FAST CORONAL MASS EJECTION: A coronal mass ejection (CME) exploded from the vicinity of sunspot 1164 during the late hours of March 7th. It lept away from the sun traveling some 2200 km/s, making it the fastest CME since Sept. 2005. A movie of the cloud prepared by Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab seems to show a small but non-negligible Earth-directed component. This CME and at least one other could brush against Earth's magnetic field on March 9th or 10th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.

From NASA JPL:  Solar flares – they’re big and they’re fast. They can knock out a satellite or create a beautiful aurora. And the jury is still out on what causes these explosions.Flares, and the related coronal mass ejection, shoot energy, radiation, and magnetic fields out into space that can harm satellites or humans in space. Current observations aren’t precise enough to determine whether the eruptions are driven by energy surging through the sun’s surface, or by the sudden release of energy that has slowly accumulated in the atmosphere. › View larger This aurora over Valkeakoski, Finland on September 15,...

BOULDER—A new analysis of the unusually long solar cycle that ended in 2008 suggests that one reason for the long cycle could be a stretching of the Sun’s conveyor belt, a current of plasma that circulates between the Sun’s equator and its poles. The results should help scientists better understand the factors controlling the timing of solar cycles and could lead to better predictions. The study was conducted by Mausumi Dikpati, Peter Gilman, and Giuliana de Toma, all scientists in the High Altitude Observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and by Roger Ulrich at the University of...

The sun's temper ebbs and flows on what scientists had thought was a pretty predictable cycle, but lately our closest star has been acting up. Typically, a few stormy years would knock out a satellite or two and maybe trip a power grid on Earth. Then a few years of quiet, and then back to the bad behavior. But an extremely long stretch of low activity in recent years has scientists baffled and scrambling for better forecasting models. An expected minimum of solar activity, between 2008 and 2009, was unusually deep. And while the sun would normally ramp up activity...

March 12, 2010: What in the world is the sun up to now? In today's issue of Science, NASA solar physicist David Hathaway reports that the top of the sun's Great Conveyor Belt has been running at record-high speeds for the past five years. I believe this could explain the unusually deep solar minimum we've been experiencing," says Hathaway. "The high speed of the conveyor belt challenges existing models of the solar cycle and it has forced us back to the drawing board for new ideas." The Great Conveyor Belt is a massive circulating current of fire (hot plasma) within...

If we get hit with a once-in-a-century solar storm, we’re history.  Had the earthquake that hit Haiti shaken Florida instead, the death toll would not have been so tragically high — over 150,000 at last count. In Haiti, as in other impoverished countries, buildings are often shoddily constructed, infrastructure is weak, and governance is incompetent. The primary response to disaster: Wait for help from abroad. It’s a well established rule: Rich nations endure natural disasters better than poor nations. But there may be an exception. Stay with me for a moment and you’ll see what I mean. In recent years,...

No matter what conclusions one gravitates towards regarding climate change and potential solar impacts, the data is irrefutable: the sun is slowly becoming more active. The 10.7cm radio flux spiked in late September with its highest reading in 18 months; now, and this is very significant compared to the pattern since March 2008, it has spiked again, exceeding the late September number and reaching a Cycle 24 maximum of 76.9. This is still a very low value compared to the solar maximum flux numbers, which routinely exceed 200. However, it is an upward move from the “basement” numbers of the...

We have observed spectroscopic changes in temperature sensitive molecular lines, in the magnetic splitting of an Fe I line, and in the continuum brightness of over 1000 sunspot umbrae from 1990-2005. All three measurements show consistent trends in which the darkest parts of the sunspot umbra have become warmer (45K per year) and their magnetic field strengths have decreased (77 Gauss per year), independently of the normal 11-year sunspot cycle. A linear extrapolation of these trends suggests that few sunspots will be visible after 2015.