Slashdot Mirror
Mystery of the Missing Sunspots, Solved?
PRB_Ohio writes "The sun is in the middle of a century long solar minimum, and sunspots have been puzzlingly scarce for more than two years. Now, for the first time, solar physicists might understand why.
The gist is that there is a 'jet stream' like phenomenon about 7,000km below the surface of the sun. The streams migrate slowly from the poles to the equator and when a jet stream reaches the critical latitude of 22 degrees, new-cycle sunspots begin to appear.
Scientists at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona, used a technique called helioseismology to track and analyze the streams."
My theory is way simpler. The Sun simply got out of puberty, and obviously acne started to disappear...
So I guess this is what happens when you cross the streams...
Here is a neat article explaining more about sunspots http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm?list56376/ It talks about the cycle in sunspots.
Doctors do Massage in Longview WA now, who knew?
... that at least some climate activity isn't and can't be affected by humans.
I'm hoping the missing sunspots has contributed to the extended drought in Australia. "The driest *insert month or time period* on record" is getting tiresome.
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
I figured the Hardy Boys would be long dead by now! Great job, boys!
This is old news. Its been known for a few years now that the solar conveyor belt has slowed. The question is how long solar activity will remain weak.
During the Maunder minimum it remained weak from about 1645 to 1710. Other minimums also occurred over a fairly long duration. During these minimums the earth tends to be quite cold. Read the wikipedia article on the maunder minimum and related minimums.
Thing is we may face many decades of reduced agricultural output at a time when we have many mouths to feed.
Its too early to tell yet, but cycle #24 is over 2 years late and cycle #25 is expected to be weak as well. So we could be looking at 22+ years of cold cold weather.
NASA's logo is attached to the article, but the National Solar Observatory is funded by the National Science Foundation. Different agency entirely. http://www.nso.edu/
So those coronal mass ejections we hear about were the Sun exploring . . . mmmnnnn never mind, I won't go there.
... I call them freckles. If a sunspot moves or grows the dermatologist deals with it.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
On a different not, how depressing that I have been pushed into resenting several forms of science. When I saw the headline, my first thought was, "Crap. More data to cherry pick to justify central control over individuals." And I say this as someone who has actually published in peer reviewed journals. Gloom.
i know the upper part of the HF spectrum has been acting like the next solar cycle has already started, the DX/Skip has been incredibly good and dependable and any HF enthusiast knows that by now if they have a HF rig handy.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Of course, the fact that we have the worst global recession in 70 years at the same time as a low in sunspot activity is Entirely Coincidental. Seriously, I haven't studied this in depth, so I don't really know, but it sure seems suspicious, and it's certainly been proposed in the past that the sunspot cycle affected the economy.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Solar minimum refers to both sunspot counts and overall solar energy output. The earth is being hit by the least solar energy in a long time currently.
We are fortunate that the solar cycle is a relatively minor factor in the climate, or we'd be in a serious world of hurt (as in deaths due to famine on the order of a billion) within a decade.
And all this time I thought the lack of sunspots was caused by global warming.
:)
Back to the drawing board.
The mice wanted to recoup the cost of getting Earth built and were wagering the sunspots at Las Vegas.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well, given that the minimum started a few years ago and the earth has been on a cooling trend for the past few years, ending a period of high solar activity in which we were on a warming trend, it would be quite a coincidence that the warming trend happened to end just when the sun had a drastic decrease in solar activity.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Well, unless these guys are wrong (or lying, paid for by big oil and coal of course!), our carbon emissions are heating Mars and Jupiter...
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
This week is the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division, which explains the timing of the press release.
There have been a number of talks regarding the long solar minimum, and although I've been avoiding most of the oral sessions, there was one by Frank Hill (another NSO person) yesterday showing that um ... okay, I can't remember what the axii on the graphs were, but that the general activity below the 'surface' of the sun was showing a more gradual ramp up than the last solar minimum, but we're roughly at the same level of activity as when we started cycle 23.
(disclaimer -- I'm not a solar physicist, but I am an affiliate SPD member ... I'd link to the abstract, but the system won't give me a useful URL)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
No true.
We can take the sulphor filters out of the coal fired power stations and cause more reflection of sunlight in the upper atmosphere.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The solar cycle is eleven years long isn't it? The solar minimum started in 2001 and will switch in 2012 (probably on December 21). Coincidence, I think not.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
It seems that our carbon emissions are also cooling Venus and Uranus.
Or it could be that these planets temperatures are changing independently of both the Sun and our carbon emissions?
There's nothing like some cherry picked data to prove a point.
NASA knows about the 11 year solar cycle, and attributes 2008 being the coolest year since 2000 to this and the La Nina cycle:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36699
2008 was still the 10th warmest year on record, 2007 the second warmest. Even discounting the varying solar activity, there is still a strong underlying warming trend, and it's a big worry that the temperatures around the poles have increased so much.
Those natuaral variations include solar flux but not susnspots, the reason being is that there is not a scrap of hard evidence that sunspots affect Earth's climate but there is plenty of evidence they affect book sales.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The 11 year cycle is superimposed on another signal, with a lower frequency, whose amplitude is currently increasing. That's the one that smart people are worried about.
The people who look at the 11 year cycle are simply examining the wrong component of a compound waveform and declaring victory. They are wrong.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
So why aren't "these guys" showing us that Mars and Jupiter are cooling, because the GW denier's latest claim is that Earth is in a cooling spell because of the Sunspot minimum?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
It was Carmen Sandiego. Seriously, wasn't anyone paying attention?
Killing all trees with acid rain in the process...
Because that wouldn't be as funny. :P
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
You're right. We should be worried !
Look at the signal 100-150 years back. Oh no ! Massive (well ... almost 1.2 degrees) warming.
Lower that amplitude another few thousand years ? Oh no ! The earth is cooling.
Lower that amplitude a few tens of thousands of years ! Oh no ! We're close to the start of a new ice age, temperature is about to drop some 5-15 degrees.
Lower that amplitude a few hundreds of thousands of years ! Hmmm, mildly warming earth ... about 0.1 degree per ten millenia
Lower that amplitude a few million years ! Oh no ! The earth is cooling and has already lost several dozen degrees of heat. It does look like it will warm up a bit in the next, oh, 600000 years or so.
So please tell me, which of these should I be worried about ? To be honest I find the 3rd (about the new ice age that's obviously getting ready to start) the most convincing. But don't let me tell you what to think. Look at the data yourself. No matter which interpretation of the data you accept, on thing is absolutely certain : the IPCC is either beyond stupid, or lying.
The simple truth is the IPCC models predict a monotonically increasing temperature, which tends toward infinite. It not only tends toward infinite, it has quite a steep slope. If their models are correct, life on earth would become impossible before the year 3000 (avg. temperature above 52 degrees celcius would mean the end of life on earth). Worse, if their models are started, not at 1900 but at -10000 they predict life on earth to be impossible today (avg. temperature over 200 degrees celcius).
(note that the fluctuations in the graph are not a phenomena, but merely a result of increasing margins of error as we go further back. Data tends to get smoothed the further back in time you go)
I agree so much ...it hurts....!
Not only if something like an asteroid was coming to Earth would the world not know about it because the gov. would not want to cause panic...so too about the earth going into a disaster like an ice age in the next year...or say the sun exploding etc...etc..
I for long always thought there was a 3rd axle we did not see or think about in terms of orbit, thereby affecting our climate and atmosphere, much like a coin being put on its side on a coffee table and spun, at some moments you can see 3 differing axles.
I do know we will not be made known if a disaster approaches, therefor, if someone is lying I would think this is the more probable of the 2 options you mention. If you look at the cycle you preceded with though, it is tough to guesstimate seeing as we are minute in the timeline you depict.
Our calculations are most probably wrong, but the overall jist is the same. Another ice age is definitely coming soon (in terms of timeline) but to use we might be extinct before this happens.
If the 3rd axle I declare (and want credit for when everyone realizes what I am talking about) ...
they will see this as a sort of twisting on the current axle thereby making something like Canad be turned on its side so that north is not pure north any longer, but the eastern Canadians have now warmer climates and the western have more brisk winters...
This can be calculated on all continents, coupled with the fact that continents are still changing, reefs expanding and faults collapsing and breaking...this is the earth expanding/changing its form based on the equator having a bigger mass of water to deal with.
Just my 2 cents
The simple truth is the IPCC models predict a monotonically increasing temperature, which tends toward infinite.
When someone who is dumber than an ape interprets the models, that is indeed what they get.
However, when a SCIENTIST interprets the models, something much more reliable emerges.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Not sure how you are coming to that conclusion... using a simple linear fit for the last n months of the most recent HADCRUT3 global data, you end up with the following trends:
144 months = -0.17 deg C / century
132 months = +0.14 deg C / century
120 months = +0.60 deg C / century
108 months = -0.11 deg C / century
96 months = -1.5 deg C / century
We've got so many sources of historical temperature data that even if one source is unreliable, you've got access to so many others.
Every tree, every sedimentary rock, every body of water with sediment at the bottom, every ice formation, has information on the historical temperatures in that region. You've also got many human temperature readings from a variety of sources.
When you have that much data, it's not hard to build up an accurate estimate of the historical temperature.