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Of Late, Fewer Sunspots Than Usual
esocid writes "The sun has been laying low for the past couple of years, producing no sunspots and giving a break to satellites. Periods of inactivity are normal for the sun, but this period has gone on longer than usual. The sun usually operates on an 11-year cycle with maximum activity occurring in the middle of the cycle. The last cycle reached its peak in 2001 and is believed to be just ending now, with the next cycle just beginning and expected to reach its peak sometime around 2012. Today's sun, however, is as inactive as it was two years ago, and scientists aren't sure why. In the past, solar physicists observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots, coinciding with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700." (More below.)
esocid continues: "The Hinode, a Japanese satellite mission with the US and UK as partners, has three telescopes that together show how changes on the sun's surface spread through the solar atmosphere. It orbits 431 miles (694 km) above the Earth, crossing both poles and making one lap every 95 minutes, giving Hinode an uninterrupted view of the sun for several months out of the year. Scientists are not extremely worried, but have added extra ground stations in case of interference from extra solar activity, and are ready for the Sun to resume its activity." (The Little Ice Age is fascinating, full stop.)
No discernible warming since 2000? Then this article from NASA must be all wrong then. Thanks for letting us know! *rolleyes*
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Even if that were true, which it isn't, one would expect *cooling* during this half of the cycle.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
You mean like these graphs from the IPCC which show an increase in global temperatures from 2000 to 2007?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Ok, let's do some science. Physics, to be precise. We'll start from the StefanBoltzmann law.
Radiated energy is proportional to the _fourth_ power of the temperature. For a black body j = sigma * T^4, for a body that's not quite black, you just plug an emissivity factor in too.
A body heated by an external source (e.g., Earth) reaches equilibrium when the radiated energy equals the incoming energy. So the equation works just the same with j being the _incoming_ energy from the Sun.
What I'm getting at is that the average temperature of Earth is in the ballpark of 300K. We had an increase of 1K in a whole bloody century. That's the whole Global Warming. That's an increase of 0.3% or so. Plugging it back into the StefanBoltzmann law, we need an increase of only 1.003^4=1.01205 times in solar output to _fully_ explain it. That's 1.2% btw.
But even that's a bit over-calculated. Being that the same law applies to the Sun's power output, basically we just need the same 0.3% increase in the Sun's temperature to get that effect, all else being equal. You don't need anything spectacular to happen, really.
Yes, sunspots are a cause of short term variations, but we really don't know what the Sun has been gradually doing over that century. If both Jupiter _and_ Mars have been warming up, maybe the Sun is warming up after all.
And finally, well, if you're that concerned about insults to people's intelligence... maybe you should STFU with the "shut up and don't dare question the High Priests" attitude. Just a thought.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Are you perhaps referring to this article from 2001 which suggests that cosmic rays (which are different from emissions from the Sun, btw) intensify the effect of CFCs?
I suggest that you first read through the resources on realclimate.org on solar forcing, where it has been extensively discussed, and if you wish to dispute their findings, then please attack the science, not the scientist.
Rgasuya aata! : I have been coding Perl and cannot tell where my fingers are now!
Try 12,000 years.
... that just happens to coincide with us digging up sequestered carbon and burning it by the megaton, pushing CO2 levels to ever increasing highs.
I'm sure it has nothing to do with the incredibly rapid 2.5C temp increase in the last 50 years.
Nay, my good man, all is well. Continue whistling and dance that little jig you do so well.
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