What's Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing)
July 11, 2008
The solar cycle, 1995-2015. The "noisy" curve traces measured sunspot numbers; the smoothed curves are predictions. Credit: D. Hathaway/NASA/MSFC.
Stop the presses! The sun is behaving normally. So says NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. "There have been some reports lately that Solar Minimum is lasting longer than it should. That's not true. The ongoing lull in sunspot number is well within historic norms for the solar cycle."
This report, that there's nothing to report, is newsworthy because of a growing buzz in lay and academic circles that something is wrong with the sun. Sun Goes Longer Than Normal Without Producing Sunspots declared one recent press release. A careful look at the data, however, suggests otherwise.
But first, a status report: "The sun is now near the low point of its 11-year activity cycle," says Hathaway. "We call this 'Solar Minimum.' It is the period of quiet that separates one Solar Max from another."
During Solar Max, huge sunspots and intense solar flares are a daily occurance. Auroras appear in Florida. Radiation storms knock out satellites. Radio blackouts frustrate hams. The last such episode took place in the years around 2000-2001.
During Solar Minimum, the opposite occurs. Solar flares are almost non-existant while whole weeks go by without a single, tiny sunspot to break the monotony of the blank sun. This is what we are experiencing now.
Although minima are a normal aspect of the solar cycle, some observers are questioning the length of the ongoing minimum, now slogging through its 3rd year.
"It does seem like it's taking a long time," allows Hathaway, "but I think we're just forgetting how long a solar minimum can last." In the early 20th century there were periods of quiet lasting almost twice as long as the current spell. Most researchers weren't even born then.
Hathaway has studied international sunspot counts stretching all the way back to 1749 and he offers these statistics: "The average period of a solar cycle is 131 months with a standard deviation of 14 months. Decaying solar cycle 23 (the one we are experiencing now) has so far lasted 142 months--well within the first standard deviation and thus not at all abnormal. The last available 13-month smoothed sunspot number was 5.70. This is bigger than 12 of the last 23 solar minimum values."
In summary, "the current minimum is not abnormally low or long."
The longest minimum on record, the Maunder Minimum of 1645-1715, lasted an incredible 70 years. Sunspots were rarely observed and the solar cycle seemed to have broken down completely. The period of quiet coincided with the Little Ice Age, a series of extraordinarily bitter winters in Earth's northern hemisphere. Many researchers are convinced that low solar activity, acting in concert with increased volcanism and possible changes in ocean current patterns, played a role in that 17th century cooling.
For reasons no one understands, the sunspot cycle revived itself in the early 18th century and has carried on since with the familiar 11-year period. Because solar physicists do not understand what triggered the Maunder Minimum or exactly how it influenced Earth's climate, they are always on the look-out for signs that it might be happening again.
The quiet of 2008 is not the second coming of the Maunder Minimum, believes Hathaway. "We have already observed a few sunspots from the next solar cycle," he says. "This suggests the solar cycle is progressing normally."
What's next? Hathaway anticipates more spotless days, maybe even hundreds, followed by a return to Solar Max conditions in the years around 2012.
Source: Science@NASA, by Dr. Tony Phillips
Nov 11, 2009 |
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Thats why 1910 was the coldest year in the 20th century.
http://en.wikiped...cord.png
http://en.wikiped...ar_cycle
Unpublished work by Solar Astronomers in New Mexico shows that the mean magnetic field strength in the umbras of solar sunspots have been decreasing linearly at ~ 88 gauss per year
since the late 1990's. If this trend continues until 2015, it will mean that sunspots will disappear after that date (stong magnetic fiels are need to cool the centre of sunspots).
The polar magnetic field strength has also decrease significantly starting in the late 1990's.
Both of the indocators DO imply that the Sun is not behaving as it should.
http://www.quazen...gy.21176
Solar Power, Source of Endless Energy
The scientific evidence is now starting to filter in that the earth will actually cool over the next 30 years rather than warm. This will leave a large number of media "experts", government pundits, and environmental loonies witha large amount of egg all over their collective faces.
Yes, first end a question with a question mark but aside of that, quit focusing on a nonscientific hypothesis. I would suggest the same thing for those that hypothesize that a world ending meteor is surely going to hit the planet any second now.
If we're changing the climate, then at least if we stop the change eventually stops. But if climate change is being done unto us, then we'd better take control as much as we can, as neither global warming nor another ice age would be benign.
Information like this that isn't published usually has a reason why it isn't published. Either the methodology is questionable (and the authors know it) OR the authors are questionable (and the peer review boards know it). If you can find something that is peer reviewed that shows this, please post it up or the link to it on http://arxiv.org/ if it is going to be in print.
Regardless, while I agree that there is a warming trend on earth (which can't be denied by anyone that actually looks at the data), the cause is a bit dubious. One, if you look at the overall warming trend for earth based off of ice core samples, we are currently in a warming trend at the tail end of an ice age.
http://en.wikiped...ture.png
(I know wikipedia isn't the best source, but for here it should suffice. We are currently on the left in the graph)
According to this graph, the earth warming another 3 C or so wouldn't be too terribly out of the question. Fluctuating global temperatures over the last 5000 years has had heavy and relatively rapid swings of /- 1 C. This leads me to believe that we should EXPECT a slow and gradual warming of the earth for the (geologically) near future and possibly a very sudden and rapid cooling event that will likely wipe out species in massive numbers.
While I believe that we are contributing (at least a somewhat) to global warming with green house gases, I'm REALLY surprised that there hasn't been more of an outcry over continued deforestation. The planet has it's own CO2 regulating method (jungles/forests) and we (man) has been cutting it down in industrial style ever since europeans decided to start clear cutting their own forests in the 19th century (of which North America, South America, Africa, and Asia quickly followed). This has to have an effect every bit as much as cumbustion engines.
Oh, and don't forget that unless people want next to zero change in CO2 output coupled with huge, massive habitat loss, to make significant amounts of energy (like what is required to charge 800 million vehicles every day or two) [number of global vehicles NOW i.e. this number will only go up, from a lecture abstract by John Heywood, found at: http://mitworld.m...deo/350/ ] will require copious quantities of nuclear reactors and places to put the resulting nuclear waste (see Yuca Mountain).
One of the authors on this research is a Professor Emiratus who has hundreds of peer reviewed publications. The only reason that this research has not hit the airwaves is the time-delay in peer-reveiw. Just hold your breath for a second or two and you will read it in the hallowed halls of published research.