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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”
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...
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
And all this time I thought the lack of sunspots was caused by global warming.
:)
Back to the drawing board.
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.
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.
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!