"All Quiet Alert" Issued For the Sun

radioweather writes "The phrase sounds like an oxymoron, and maybe it is, but the sun is extremely quiet right now, so much in fact that the Solar Influences Data Center in Belgium issued an unusual 'All quiet alert' on October 5th. Since then the sunspot number has remained at zero — solar cycle 24 has not yet started. There are signs that the sun's activity is slowing. The solar wind has been decreasing in speed, and this is yet another indicator of a slowing in the sun's magnetic dynamo. There is talk of an extended solar minimum occurring. There are a number of theories and a couple of dozen predictions about the intensity solar cycle 24 which has yet to start. One paper by Penn & Livingstonin in 2006 concludes: 'If [trends] continue to decrease at the current rate then the number of sunspots in the next solar cycle (cycle 24) would be reduced by roughly half, and there would be very few sunspots visible on the disk during cycle 25.' We'll know more in about six months what the sun decides to do for cycle 24."

Comments

Sunspot numbers

[lecithin]

Here is a nice graph that shows sunspot data from 1620 to 2000

http://spaceweather.com/glossary/sunspotnumber.html

We can see that this isn't anything new.

BTW - If you are interested in Auroras, keep watch on the 18th-19th. We are about to get hit with a solar wind stream.

Re:Sunspot numbers

[srmalloy]

However, since the historical record shows that the worst part of the Little Ice Age occurred during the Maunder Minimum, when the sunspot level was also atypically low for a protracted period, then if the current conditions on the Sun continue for long enough, it should provide evidence that would either confirm or debunk the premise that global warming is a function of fluctuations in solar activity. Unfortunately, as the controversy has assumed the status of a holy war, regardless of what happens, both sides will accuse the other of misinterpreting the data and persist in their claims.

Re:Sunspot numbers

[Surt]

Technically, only the global warming believers can persist in their claims in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The other side would be dead.

no sunspots huh?

[moderatorrater]

The number of sunspots hits a minimum as the globe warms up. Denials at 11.

Re:no sunspots huh?

[N3WBI3]

Right.... The lesser greenhouse gas (both in amount and effectiveness) being the thing driving temperature is not absurd but the sun doing it is absurd? Lets wait and see what happens over a protracted period of time... I'm not sold on one theory or the other but to swear off either at this point it the equivalent of a blinding religious crusade.

Re:no sunspots huh?

[CorSci81]

Water vapor tends to be rather self-regulating on a very short timescale. It has this tendency to saturate and condense out of the atmosphere during a phenomenon we call "rain". It also can form clouds which may or may not increase albedo and lead to cooling. It can also form snow cover and increase albedo and lead to cooling. Additionally, owing to it's very short mean lifetime in the atmosphere, it tends to have very localized effects on weather.

To put it simply, water vapor tends to track the global climate rather than set it. If there were no other greenhouse gasses the Earth would have frozen into a snowball long ago (and it actually has done this before in Earth's history). Research tends to show water definitely provides feedback mechanisms which can amplify the effects of other forcings, but it is too volatile to be the driving factor all on its own.

Really, the other major greenhouse gas is methane, which is also increasing in the Earth's atmosphere (albeit not as quickly). It has a much shorter lifetime than CO2 does, so it tends not to accumulate without a constant source (which is a good thing). There is some evidence that the rise of agriculture may have had some impact on global climate thousands of years ago. Essentially the cultivation of rice and domestic animals are both non-negligible sources of methane which is extremely potent as a greenhouse gas, but in this case the warming was likely much more moderate than the current trend.

Re:no sunspots huh?

[CorSci81]

Yes, and yet no. CO2 sources/sinks are not purely temperature dependent, unlike water. Yes, the ocean is a huge temperature sensitive repository of CO2, but carbonate rocks and volcanos, not so much. Many of the large changes in CO2 concentration that correlate with climate tend to also correlate with other events in the geologic record (i.e. periods of increased volcanic activity, snowball earth, mountain uplift, etc.). So to answer you and the first response to you, CO2 is both the cause and the effect. If you could magically raise the temperature of the oceans by 10 degrees, yes, you'd release a lot of CO2 and the opposite if you lowered it. However, the total amount of CO2 the ocean can dissolve is rather small compared to the total amount of potential CO2 contained in the geologic carbon cycle (i.e. not just the highly mobile part contained in biomass and oceans).

On short time scales you can ignore the long timescale sources/sinks and just consider the ocean/biosphere/atmosphere CO2 cycle as oscillating about some equilibrium. What's happening here is the long timescale sources/sinks are slowly nudging the equilibrium of the system. What we're currently doing at the moment is releasing massive quantities of trapped carbon that had been removed from the system over millions of years. As a byproduct we're nudging up temperatures globally which are in turn altering the equilibrium states of the highly mobile parts of the system.

If you look at it purely from a standpoint of carbon budgeting it becomes pretty clear we have to be having some impact with the amount of carbon we've returned to circulation over the past 150 years. The greater sources/sinks operate on much slower timescales, and we've effectively put more carbon in circulation. Arguing over whether CO2 is a cause or an effect is kind of a moot point. It's both.

Obviously

[CodeMunch]

Obviously this is due to global warming on Earth caused by humans.

Re:Obviously

[BlueParrot]

Obviously this is due to global warming on Earth caused by humans.

Nice flamebait. In response I'd like to point out the following.
a)There are direct measurements of incoming solar radiation, making all questions as to if we understand the sun irrelevant. We know that the incoming energy has not changed enough to continuously accelerating warming ( in fact, even while incoming radiation has decreased the earth has kept warming quicker and quicker).
b)Satelites sweep out the entire earth's surface measuring incoming and outgoing radiation. This has been going on for some time now. Surprise surprise, the main change is a major reduction in light leaving the earth at wavelengths which correspond to the fringes in CO2's absorption spectrum ( the peaks have saturated already ).
c)Analysis of the ratio of C14 to C12 has confirmed that a huge fraction of the increased CO2 concentration is from a fossil origin. The remainder is believed to be due to deforestation.
d)The oceans have been absorbing more and more CO2 which lowers the sea water pH, leading to "ocean acidification". This is a well documented problem, so the oceans emitting CO2 due to increased solar radiation is ruled out as a cause of recent warming.
e)We know to great detail how much CO2 ( and other greenhouse gases) we have emitted. Since the only other fossil source of carbon is volcanic and geological activity, this together with the C12/C14 analysis tells us volcanos are not to blame. This is also in agreement with our present understanding of geology.

So, in summary:
a)We know the change in radiative forcing is due to greenhouse gases.
b)We know the major amount of extra CO2 is from fossil sources.
c)We know we emit CO2 much more rapidly than volcanos and geologic activity.

You are arguing against the facts, I imagine that is why you insist on resorting to sarcasm and bad jokes rather than addressing the issue at hand.

Re:Obviously

[BlueParrot]

A) The temperature of the earth mimics closely the sunspot cycle.

Previously, when humans had little impact, the earth's climate did indeed vary according to solar cycle variations. That, however, does not appear to be the cause now. In particular, the earth has continued to warm at accelerating rates even while solar output has decreased. While being at a high solar activity as compared to a long time before today could perhaps explain some warming, it cannot explain why this warming is accelerating even while solar input decreases. Rather one would expect the rate of warming to decrease as the earth gets hotter, since higher temperatures should result in a greater amount of radiation being emitted by the earth.

B) The CO2 levels are a lagging variable when compared against the temperature of the earth. (ie, it increases only after earth's temperatures increase).

The present theory is roughly as follows:
1)Warming from increased solar output causes increased CO2 release from the oceans.
2)The extra CO2 blocks outgoing infrared radiation
3)The shift in radiative forcing gives rise to more warming, resulting in ice-age termination.
It is worth noting that the oceans are presently absorbing a lot of CO2, leading to ocean acidification. Thus while oceans warming due to increased solar activity causes the CO2 spike under ice-age termination, this is not what is happening today.

C) The human imprint of C02 is immaterial - I think something like 6% of all CO2 released? (most of it being released by the Oceans). On top of which, there are other green house gases that have major affect like Methane.

As I mentioned above the oceans are net-absorbers of CO2 at the moment, leading to ocean acidification as the CO2 is transformed into carbonic acid when it dissolves in water. This is in contrast to ice-age termination where oceans are believed to emit a lot of CO2 due to solar cycle variations. In shallow waters this is actually causing a lot of problems since many marine habitats are sensitive to changes in the pH of the water, and the acidification could kill important parts of the ecosystem.

Plants also release a lot of CO2 when they die, but they also absorb the same amount as they grow, so unless you permanently kill them and prevent new ones from growing, the overall emission will be nil. I can't comment on the 6% figure as it doesn't say what it is talking about. Is it perhaps gross CO2 emitted before reabsorption is taken into consideration? Both the oceans and plants emit a lot of CO2, but they absorb even greater amounts, so if you fail to account for the absorption you may arrive at very low amounts of CO2 emitted by humans, while in reality the net emission is largely due to human activities. Methane is indeed an important greenhouse gas, but we emit CO2 in much larger quantities, making it overall more important as far as emissions are concerned.

As I mentioned before, we have satelite measurements of outgoing radiation, and detailed measurements of the CO2 and Methane absorption spectrum, and this tells us that CO2 is by quite a large margin the most important of our emissions as far as warming is concerned ( thou the other gases have an impact as well ). Also, as C-14 decays with a very long half-life fossil carbon contains significantly less C-14 than carbon from plants and the oceans, and this shows up in CO2 concentration measurements. Following nuclear bomb tests inthe 60ies the overall C-14 concentration spiked. This concentration has rapidly declined, despite C-14's very long halflife, suggesting that large quantities of C-14 has been absorbed while C-12 has been emitted. The C-14 concentration, in combination with the records of our fossil emissions, therefore allows one to estimate how much of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is from fossil sources and how much is from plants and the oceans. It appears the vast majority is caused by humans.

Simple

[jellomizer]

Fusion has just finished its 6 sigma training after 5 billion of years. Which is good time considering that it was only hydrogen taking the training.

Re:Simple

[jellomizer]

Six Sigma is used by a lot large Companies usually in manufacturing process. It is basically a method to insure their product meet a particular quality level. So you make your process in a way that the variation in your products is so tight that the probability that there will be a defective product is 6 standard deviation from the mean. Unfortunately a lot of companies with PHB usually who left GE tried implement it in other segments of business and cause huge overhead massive training cost and benefited nothing because the process is only good for manufacturing, not things that deal with people like service. Six Sigma Training usually takes a good amount of work to become certified, and more work for it to be implemented. The joke was attended that sun spots (which are cooler areas of the sun) are caused from errors occurring the fusion. So by taking 6 sigma training they will reduce the number of errors thus relieving sun spots. At the time I thought it was funny... But I was working in a company that was use to be GE a couple months ago.

Quick! Alert the scientific community!

[winkydink]

And get Al Gore on the phone, now!

We must take immediate and drastic steps to fight Global Darkening!

Maybe we can get that Kim Stanley Robinson person to write a book? 70 Days of Night?

Re:Quick! Alert the scientific community!

[Hardhead_7]

I see you, and several others in the comments, making connections to sunspots and global warming. There really isn't one, or rather, it's the opposite of what you'd think. The more sunspots the sun has, the hotter it gets. Indeed a prolonged period of low sunspot activity is one of the (unproven, competing) theories on what caused the Little Ice Age.

So, if you want to draw a conclusion on this, if the sunspots are low, and the earth is still getting hotter... that means we really are getting hotter (disclaimer: sunspot numbers go up and down all the time in regular cycles. Global Warming is a very long term trend that is going up over several sunspot cycles. You can't really draw a conclusion on global warming based on a short term sunspot activity. I'm just saying, if you really wanted to draw one, that'd be it).

Sum it up for me

[chill]

Is this a GOOD thing or a BAD thing? Inquiring minds want to know.

Layman's terms?

[iceyone]

Can someone explain what this means to us in laymans terms? I'm just a software geek. I know nothing of this "sun" you speak of.

Re:Layman's terms?

[YanceyAI]

The sun is a large celestial fusion-driven orb found on a westward trajectory by day. No need to concern yourself with it since as a software geek you will never see it. The low activity will be good for you since it won't interfer with your electronic devices. Cheers.

Re:Layman's terms?

[Salsaman]

You know the really big room with the green floor and the blue ceiling ? The "sun" is apparently the big light in it that gets switched off at night.

Re:Layman's terms?

[jonadab]

> Can someone explain what this means to us in laymans terms?
> I'm just a software geek. I know nothing of this "sun" you speak of.

It's another name for the NYF, i.e., the Nasty Yellow Face that appears periodically in the Really Big Room. It's also called the "Burning Face", the "Great Yellow Disc", "Sol", "Masaka", or "Daystar".

In some ways it's a very powerful monster, but in practice it's not a very important one, because there's no need to ever defeat it (if that's even possible). Mostly you can just avoid it, by staying out of the RBR or by sneaking through while the NYF is absent/sleeping. If you do enter the RBR during a time when the Nasty Yellow Face is awake and present, it has various negative effects, although none are immediately fatal. You can't really do anything to it, because it will never approach to within melee range, and it's not vulnerable to arrows. Given enough time it will scorch your skin with its gaze attack, but the effect accrues slowly enough that you can easily get away before the burning becomes unbearable (as long as you are aware of the issue and don't do something completely idiotic, like go to sleep under its gaze or wander so far out into the RBR that you get lost in it). The greater danger is to your eyes, which can be quickly blinded by the Face's intense burning gaze attack, so you should always use eye protection, and even then don't look directly at the NYF. (In this respect it is similar to anything else with a dangerous gaze attack, e.g., a gorgon. Keeping your face aimed down toward the floor is a standard tactic.) The NYF has never been known to follow anyone out of the RBR. Frankly I don't think it would even fit through the doors to most other rooms. It *will* use its gaze attack through a door or window into an adjascent room, but as long as you're at least two or three rooms away from the RBR you should generally not have to worry about the NYF at all.

HTH.HAND.

Re:Quick! Alert the scientific community!

[winkydink]

No, I am drawing a link between the article and humor. Try and keep up.

ZOMGS!

[TheGeneration]

The sun is going to burn out and I never even got to post a "first" post on Slashdot. I'm going to die cold and unfulfilled! (Not by sharks with lasers thank god. That's a plus.)

That's the Maunder Minimum

[Kadin2048]

We think of sunspots as following a fixed, 11-year cycle, but this may only be one part of the story.

I don't think the 'experts' necessarily know anything more at this point, either; just a few years ago, NASA was predicting that the next cycle would be the strongest ever, and that got a lot of people (especially folks that do a lot of shortwave/HF radio) very excited. Now, it looks like we may have a very small cycle, or no cycle at all -- it's anybody's guess.

The dead spot on some sunspot charts from 1650-1700 is called the "Maunder Minimum". During that period, rather than talking about sunspots, observers of the day would write about the appearance of a particular sunspot (very much singular!). Unfortunately, the data prior to the beginning of the minimum is pretty sparse, and exactly when it started is under some dispute.

There was also another minimum in the early 19th century, called the Dalton Minimum, although it wasn't as severe and it only lasted about 25 years.

So that's two minima separated by a 150-year gap. But at 150 years after the 1800 minimum, rather than another minimum, we actually get a maximum in 1950. There's just not enough historical data to make a good prediction, because we don't know how complex the cycle is. But it's clearly more complex than just 11 years.

I can't find a link to it online, but I heard a talk recently about a group that was using geological evidence to try and track the sunspot cycle further back than we have human observations. Not sure quite what the method is, or if it's yielded any results. But that would certainly be interesting, if you could get some real historical perspective instead of the piddling 7 centuries (at most) that you can find written records of. That might give us some idea of what's been going on, on very long timescales, as well as perhaps filling in the gaps in the historical record in more recent times (not sure what kind of resolution you can get).

To use a water analogy, the 11-year cycles might be waves lapping at the shore, but there might be scores of other forces acting on them at higher levels, like tides, wind, and the seasons, all on vastly different time-scales.

All in all, for something that we spend the majority of our waking lives under, our understanding of the sun is surprisingly poor. Particularly given how much modern technology (radio communications is the obvious one, but there are others) can be affected by the solar cycle, it seems to be ignored until it does something unexpected.

Re:That's the Maunder Minimum

[missing000]

So, uh... are we or aren't we all going to die?

yes.

Re:That's the Maunder Minimum

[HarvardAce]

So, uh... are we or aren't we all going to die? I think it's pretty safe to say that we're all going to die, although statistics would indicate it probably won't be from sunspots.

Re:That's the Maunder Minimum

[ZombieWomble]

I don't think anyone even remotely considers the 11-year cycle to be the be-all and end-all of sunspot measurement any more - it's sufficient for projects which won't last much longer than that timeframe, but there are myriad cycles which are potentially demonstrated by the data (Wikipedia lists more than a dozen purported cycles with citations to various bits of scientific literature, and I'm sure the list is far from exhaustive).

The problem is, of course, trying to model this in a meaningful way - thanks to Fourier transforms we know that you can build any given pattern out of a sufficiently large collection of cyclic processes, which makes these cycles upon cycles upon cycles feel a bit iffy to me. Feels much more like a chaotic process with long periods of stable equilibrium, which means that while cycles may be useful for general short-term work, their predictive power is always hampered by the fact that the system may abruptly change in unpredictable ways.

Re:That's the Maunder Minimum

[geekoid]

NASA prediction was solid based upon the data they had. As more data came in, predictions(forecasts, actually) were adjusted. Welcome to science, please stay for the ride.

Re:That's the Maunder Minimum

[localman]

Statistically, less than half the humans who have been born have died. So chances are you'll live forever.

This message brought to you by the Society for the Brutal Abuse of Misleading Statistics.

Re:Holy crap goreman!

[TheGeneration]

HOLY CRAPOLA I think you've got a reasonable solution to the global warming problem!!!! Mars is too cool for humans, and Earth is starting to get too hot. So, let's send SUV/Factory Emission worshiping Republicans to Mars to warm that planet while we keep all the intelligent people here on earth to relive the dark ages of human history without incandescent bulbs and 18 wheeler trucks. It's brilliant I tell ya! We simultaneously solve the religious war of Global Warming while ridding Earth of Rush Limbaugh fans!

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Hoi Polloi]

On a side note I find it interesting that people keep track of this sort of thing. Sunspots and such. And I thought some of the databases _I_ parse through all day were boring. Keeping an eye on a 870,000 mile wide ball of fusing hydrogen near us sounds pretty interesting to me.

Re:Quick! Alert the scientific community!

[Hardhead_7]

Since sunspots are dark it might be expected that more sunspots lead to less solar radiation and a decreased solar constant. However, the surrounding areas are brighter and the overall effect is that more sunspots means a brighter sun. The variation caused by the sunspot cycle to solar output is relatively small, of the order of 0.1% of the solar constant (a peak-to-trough range of 1.3 W m-2 compared to 1366 W m-2 for the average solar constant)[2][3]. This range is slightly smaller than the change in radiative forcing caused by the increase in atmospheric CO2 since the 18th century[4]. During the Maunder Minimum in the 17th Century there were hardly any sunspots at all. This coincides with a period of cooling known as the Little Ice Age. It has been speculated that there may be a resonant gravitational link between a photospheric tidal force from the planets, the dominant component by summing gravitational tidal force (75%) being Jupiter's with an 11 year cycle[5]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot

Re:Quick! Alert the scientific community!

[ZombieWomble]

Sunspots are local areas of cooling on the solar surface. However, a less immediately obvious but highly significant factor is that the area around sunspots is warmer than the natural solar temperature. The net result is an increase in total solar output during times of high sunspot activity. Thus there is a positive correlation between sunspot activity and the energy which is delivered to earth. I'm lazy and can't immediately find a better reference than the relevant Wikipedia page, but I'm sure someone with more diligence could dig up something better.

Re:Oh really?

[spun]

Don't anthropomorphize climate change either. It really hates that.

try to keep on its good side

[tabby]

"what the sun decides to do "

Please stop anthromorphising astonomical bodies. It just makes them angry.

Re:So in other words..

[Tango42]

Given that you say 18 years, not (for example) 21, and are on an English language website gives a good chance that you are British (there are plenty of other options, but it's a pretty good guess). Given that your username is "smoker2", there is a good chance you smoke. Since smoking is banned in British pubs, I am going to guess that you are *not* in the pub right now - you may, however, be sitting outside it.

Re:Quick! Alert the scientific community!

[iluvcapra]

Global Darkening is actually a moderate problem, though it's actually caused by particulate pollutants in the atmosphere, not sunspots. The amount of light energy reaching the Earth over the last hundred years has been dropping slowly, until recently, when it started going up again -- as dirty pollution has been regulated and replaced with "cleaner" CO2 pollution.

There's a lot of concern among climatologists that global darkening has been masking the effects of global warming, and that as solar radiation on the surface goes up again, the effects of global warming might come upon us more severely and faster than our previous estimates.

Re:Quick! Alert the scientific community!

[rpseguin]

Sunspots are areas of intense magnetic field concentration that suppress local convection in the area, and are thus are relatively cooler and darker than the surrounding area.

Sunspots correspond to the amount of magnetic activity, which is the major driving force behind activity (flares, CMEs, filament eruptions, ...).

(I work in the field)

Maybe the Sun is confused...

[megazoid81]

Q: How many days between this all-quiet alert and Sun changing its ticker symbol to JAVA?

A: 42!

It cannot be a coincidence that this magical number popped up here as well. The Sun needs some time to find itself before it decides what to do for the next quart^H^H^H^H^H solar cycle.