The Sun's Odd Behavior

gyrogeerloose writes "Most of us know about the sun's eleven-year activity cycle. However, relatively few other than scientists (and amateur radio operators) are aware that the current solar minimum has lasted much longer than expected. The last solar cycle, Cycle 24, bottomed out in 2008, and Cycle 25 should be well on its way towards maximum by now, but the sun has remained unusually quiescent with very few sunspots. While solar physicists agree that this is odd, the explanation remains elusive."

Comments

Global warming is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

This is clear to everyone except the Denialists.

Re:Global warming is the cause

[binarylarry]

No it's worse than that.

ITS GALACTIC WARMING!

We're doomed, the end is nigh!

Re:Global warming is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Correlation is not causation!!

Our computer models will show causation. Coding starts on Tuesday.

Re:Global warming is the cause

[Bing Tsher E]

Worse yet, it's Anthrogenic Galactic Warming. It's all the fault of Western Civilization.

*pounds on bongo drum in protest*

Re:Global warming is the cause

[shadowbearer]

First off, my last comment was a joke, and quite clearly marked as such (";-)"). That my post was modded flamebait, and quickly, tells me that someone is abusing the moderation system. This isn't the first time I've seen the symptoms, although it is the first time it has happened to me specifically.

Then let me speak up. The standing assumption is that "solar output" only varies by approx. 0.1%, and therefore has almost no effect on global warming and cooling. IOW, they say that the sun has no effect on how warm or cool the earth is. Yeah, right. That is so pathetically wrong, I can barely comprehend the lack of understanding of how the earth is heated that could result in such a ludicrous contention (with apologies for so badly paraphrasing Babbage).

We have extremely good data on solar radiance variation nowadays; it is not an "assumption". People who think that climate scientists don't take our direct measurements of solar variation into account have very little understanding of the science involved. Who are the "they" you are talking about?

so-called "climate scientists"

Oh, please. Your lack of education about the subject is showing.

assume that measured solar irradiance is in one-to-one correspondence with energy transport from sun to earth.

No, they don't.

What about poorly or incorrectly measured wavelengths of solar output?

Which what? Unless you would prefer we invalidate of our current understanding of EM radiation, we have to accept that what we know about energy transport in that realm holds. Since our understanding of the subject also underlies our technology - including the computer you are typing on, the lights you read by, solar cell technology, lasers, etc, it's an incredible stretch to assume that we are that wrong.

What about magnetic coupling from sun to earth? What about other forms of radiation, particles/solar wind streaming from the sun to earth?

The magnetic field interactions between the sun and earth are fairly well known and have already been shown to have a much, much smaller effect on the temperature of the atmosphere than direct radiance does.

If there are other forms of radiation coming from the sun that we can't detect, it's foolish to speculate about their effects.

What about the effect of CMEs hitting or not hitting the earth?

Since we've been observing the effects of CME impacts for nearly a half a century...

I may be _very_ wrong, but in the little reading I've done I've seen no mention of such effects.

Then do some more reading, and get a decent educational background in the hard sciences. I did more than twenty years ago and as an avid amateur astronomer I follow the field rather closely.

One thing that bothers me is it seems (not all, but) a bunch of these "experts" have studied these questions just a deeply as I have, which is to say, hardly at all.

Which "experts" would you be referring to? The tens of thousands of them who have devoted years to decades of their lives studying the subject?

and they all start screaming of the coming Ice Age like back in the '70's

A few papers and a lot of media attention from ignorant journalists? You really do need to do some more reading - this particular part of the subject has been addressed literally thousands of times in the last five years just right here on this website, and given your low UID, you have certainly had the opportunity to read the rebuttals.

Look; I don't know you, and I don't mean to be insulting, but it's obvious to me that you don't have the faintest clue what you are talking about. I've been following this subject for nearly a quarter of a century, I have a good background in physics, chemistry, and mathematics, and I read as many of the papers published in the field as I can find t

Enough data?

[fenring]

I almost know nothing on the subject, but I'm thinking the 11 year cycle was empiricaly determined. One has to wonder do we have enough data on the subject compared to the age of the sun?

Re:Enough data?

[quanticle]

Its a good point, but, ever since Galileo observed that there were sunspots, scientists have observed the sun to be on a fairly regular 11 year cycle of maxima and minima. So, until now, the scientific consensus was that the 11 year cycle was due to some kind of underlying fluctuation in the sun itself. Now that theory has to be revised (or maybe even rejected entirely) as this prolonged solar minimum continues.

Re:Enough data?

[Bobke]

That is not entirely correct. There is a period after Galileo's discovery called the Maunder Minimum where sunspots "became exceedingly rare", from wikipedia:

The Maunder Minimum (also known as the prolonged sunspot minimum) is the name used for the period roughly spanning 1645 to 1715 by John A. Eddy in a landmark 1976 paper published in Science titled "The Maunder Minimum",[1] when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

So, is it really odd behavior?

Re:Enough data?

[The Hatchet]

Well, all this time we have known about different cycles, but we don't know why they happen. That is a problem. The sun is really just a huge fucking fusion reactor, and having any kind of regularity is confusing. When we understand the layers, processes, and everything else about the sun, it might make a bit more sense.

Re:Enough data?

[techno-vampire]

Given that the Maunder minimum led to global cooling, killing off (every last man, woman and child) in the -then- populated Greenland, almost a million people, and caused a number of famines everywhere else, I sure hope so

That's not only wrong, it's nonsense! First, the Norse Settlement died out in the early to middle Fifteenth Century, two hundred years before the Maunder Minimum or the journal you cite. Second, the colony never exceeded a population of about 4500 or so. Not only couldn't the land have supported the million you claim, if you tried to stuff that many people into the sites of the two settlements, they'd be standing on each other's toes.

Re:Enough data?

[x_IamSpartacus_x]

The journals literally end mid-sentence with the author describing how it's "suddenly warm", after having lost animals, the city, his family and finally his life, in a process taking years.

Sheesh how slow did this guy write?

Re:Enough data?

[AliasMarlowe]

...ever since Galileo observed that there were sunspots, scientists have observed the sun to be on a fairly regular 11 year cycle of maxima and minima...

Where did that "fairly regular" assertion come from?
The cycle is on average just under 11 years in duration, but is somewhat irregular. Individual cycles have varied between 9 and 14 years in duration in the couple of dozen cycles for which adequate observations are available. See http://www.infiniteunknown.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/sunspot-observations.png or http://odin.physastro.mnsu.edu/~eskridge/astr102/bfly.gif for example. The variations in sunspot cycle duration do not appear to be related in any simple way to the variations in amplitude.

Anthropomorphic

[Anonymous Coward]

All these solar power devices are using the sun up.

Okay, who broke the Sun?

[TheRaven64]

I don't know, you'd think a massive ball of fusion fire wouldn't need warning signs, but apparently some joker still managed to break it. For future reference, the Sun does not contain any user-servicable parts. Please try to remember this, or you will invalidate the warranty.

Re:Okay, who broke the Sun?

[TubeSteak]

I don't know, you'd think a massive ball of fusion fire wouldn't need warning signs, but apparently some joker still managed to break it.

And to think that Consumer Reports told me the 3 billion year warranty was a scam.
It was only $5 a month!

Conspiracy!

[ultranova]

The explanation is simple: the Sun is actually getting hotter, but the climatologists, in their conspiracy to frame things like the Earth was getting warmer due to greenhouse gasses, have forged all records to make it seem like the Sun was at low activity instead. That way the warming climate is blamed on human activity.

I will consider all replies and downmods to this post as further evidence of the Anthropogenic Global Warming Conspiracy. If you disagree with me, you're obvilously a paid chill or a poor, deluded fool. Or maybe you're just an evil ecoterrorist who wants to destroy our economy despite knowing better.

Go on, conspirators! Give me your best shot!

The release cycle has changed

[Anonymous Coward]

because Sun was acquired by Oracle.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[binarylarry]

Actually, I think this might just be Captain Larry Ellison closing the deal with the Sun.

Solar cycles have always varied

[Alrescha]

Over the past few hundred years, the solar cycle has regularly varied from as short as 9 years to as long as 14*. The tone of the summary (and the S.A. article) make this sound as if it is a new thing.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_cycles

A.

Preggers?

[Ogive17]

If the sun missed it's last "cycle", maybe one of the "probes" used to "explore" forgot to use adequate "shielding" and now the sun is pregnant.

Re: Plants are the cause

[clarkkent09]

Don't you know that plants have been using the Sun's energy for millions of years, no wonder there is nothing left! The solution is simple: burn the forests.

Effects on the weather

[Retron]

One of my hobbies is meteorology and as I'm in the UK there's no shortage of discussion about the weather!

Over on the various weather forums we've been discussing the solar minimum for the past couple of years, as in the UK at least there's a strong correlation between climatic cold spells and low sunspot activity (the Little Ice Age a few hundred years ago coincided with the Maunder minimum, for example). There was another minimum in the early 1800s, again coinciding with a colder period in the UK climate. It was during this time that Charles Dickens popularised the idea of a White Christmas, something which hasn't occured in 40 years here (30 miles east of London).

The effects are pretty immediate in climating terms, with an onset of years rather than decades. Although yes, the Sun's becoming more active there's been a lot of discussion as to whether the low solar activity was responsible for the coldest winter in 17 years in England (and longer than that in Scotland).

The Sun's effect on the climate is probably beyond any numerical weather prediction models at the moment but it'd be fascinating to see what the effects would be if we were to experience a prolonged period of much lower solar activity than normal!

Two Techniques

[Roger W Moore]

Off the top of my head I can think of two ways to put a firm upper and lower boundary on the sun's age:

• Upper bound from the ratio of U235 and U238. In supernovae these are produced in roughly equal quantities and each has a half life measured in billions of years. Currently the Uranium on Earth is about 99.3% U-238 and 0.7% U-235 so, using the different half-lives, you can calculate the age of the supernovae which preceded the solar systems formation as about 6 billion years ago so the sun must be younger than this.
• Lower bound from the age of the Earth itself. Again radio dating techniques used on rocks put the age of the planet as about 4.5 billion years so the sun must be older than this.

Combine this with simulations about how long it would take an Earth sized mass to form an cool and you can probably come up with reasonably accurate value for the age of the sun. Of course this is just off the top of my head - there may be better and more accurate techniques which geologists and astophysicists have developed.