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Big Drop In Solar Activity Could Cool Earth
coondoggie writes "Scientists say the Sun, which roils with flares and electromagnetic energy every 11 years or so, could go into virtual hibernation after the current cycle of high activity, reducing temperatures on Earth. As the current sunspot cycle, Cycle 24, begins to ramp up toward maximum, scientists from the National Solar Observatory and the Air Force Research Laboratory independently found that the Sun's interior, visible surface, and corona indicate the next 11-year solar sunspot cycle, Cycle 25, will be greatly reduced or may not happen at all."
Take that Al Gore!
Somebody get Al Gore on the phone to make a powerpoint presentation to these "scientists".
How does the sun know how much greenhouse gas I'm generating to heat or cool the planet?
... the global warming naysayers are going to have a field day with this one...
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
But, but, but...
Don't we all know the Earth is warming up due to human activity ?
P.S. This intended to be sarcastic.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Does this mean that we should be polluting more to compensate?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
And the arctic glaciers too?
For when the world doesn't end. Global warming = fault of man, global cooling = fault of Sun.
Just randomly doing end of the world predictions. Doesn't this sound perfect for Fimbulvetr, or the winter before Ragagnarok to happen?
The Europeans are going to save us by switching from nukes back to coal.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I plan on us having a completely rational and apolitical debate on the science of the causes of solar cooling.
This is what they said about the last solar cycle, especially since we went into a deep solar minimum, and now the sun is waking up and we have had some nice Geomagnetic storms and solar flares already.
Cash for hybrids, anyone?
Not content that the Earth might cool despite ever increasing CO2, the AGW people will warn of "hidden warming" which is the concept of latent CO2 in the atmosphere which will be activated when the Sun comes back up to speed. They will claim we will very suddenly find ourselves in the same position had cooling not occurred.
But it will have occurred despite the CO2, meaning that the Sun, not CO2 is the driving force of climate, thus disproving the CO2 dominance theory of AGW proponents.
I personally am eager to see what the oceans do. It would be a major to discover that the oceans have been releasing the CO2 in response to an active Sun. The oceans could even revert to CO2 sinks if the cooling is severe enough. Interesting times are ahead...
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
The networkworld (why are we posting a solar/space article from there?) article links to a much better Cosmic Log article: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/14/6857473-solar-forecast-hints-at-a-big-chill
Indeed, I haven't followed it closely, but wasn't the last cycle supposed to be exceptionally weak already? Any astrophysicist around to give us some information here?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Hopefully this balances out all the environmental stuff. The question then is do we call it Global Luke-Warming, or Anthropoheliogenic Climate Constancy?
this just in: scientists' objective observations and speculations should be taken as fact. they ALWAYS define reality with a wholesome and complete explanation
..for all of this intense activity. It needs more time to rest between cycles these days.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
From the article:
The forecast is based on three indicators thought to be tied to long-range solar activity, the comparative rise and fall of sunspots over the activity cycle, as well as the brightness of those sunspots; patterns in the sun's internal "jet stream" of superheated plasma; and the pace of migration in the sun's magnetic field toward the poles, as seen in the sun's corona.
An unusually low number of sunspots have been observed during the current cycle, and the spots are fainter than average. Scientists say they have seen no sign of a characteristic east-west flow of internal plasma, which usually sets the stage for future increases in activity. And the magnetic "rush to the poles" allears to be slowing down.
The current cycle is still below average compared to what was seen recently.
...the hot air from the 2012 US election cycle will cancel this out.
1816 was "The Year Without A Summer".
Only a third to a fourth of the hay was cut with only 10 percent of the crop harvested in some areas. Orchard yields ranged from barren to moderate but enough grains, wheat, and potatoes were harvested to prevent a famine but hardships did occur. Farmers ended up selling their livestock as their crops didn't yield enough. There were reports of people eating raccoons and pigeons.
And this is when the global population was low. Now we are close to the breaking point of what we can produce versus how many mouths to feed. Remember the 2008 Rice Shortage?
It could be that without a continuous good harvest, there will be populations that will simply starve to death if there's not enough solar activity to grow crops.
Industrialization has already wiped out many species of plants and animals. A worldwide famine could also present a huge danger to species on the endangered list. At some point, we will chew up enough resources that the planet will not recover.
When we have fished the oceans to empty sea, and the land will no longer sustain crops, only then will we discover how foolish we've been.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Al got really concerned and made a movie
about 2 years AFTER he started his carbon trading business.
wake up.
jr
winter is coming?
Crisis is the rule, not the exception.
Decreased solar output will have an impact on global temperatures, but it will take time.
Greenhouse gasses (Water, CO2, CH4, etc) do not directly interact with incoming shortwave radiation from the sun. Rather, they interact with the longwave radiation coming from the surface of the Earth. With no greenhouse gasses, the Earth would radiate (based on its temperature) and this radiation would be lost to space. What greenhouse gasses do is absorb the emitted longwave which adds energy to the molecule absorbing it. The excited state either results in a temperature increase of the molecule, or the emission of radiation. Some of this re-emitted radiation is directed downward, toward the Earth. The net result is that some energy that would be lost to space is absorbed by molecules in the atmosphere, warming it, and some is redirected back to the Earth, increasing the net incoming radiation.
The effect can be directly observed. If you look at the measured longwave radiation emitted at the top of our atmosphere, the global average temperature you would calculate would not support life as we know it (much too cold). The difference from that and our directly observed average surface temperatures are due to the greenhouse effect (the energy based on those temperatures is not making it to the top of the atmosphere).
Decreasing solar input would change part of the energy budget, but the greenhouse effect will act as a buffer (from absorbing and re-emitting longwave radiation) that would cause a delayed response.
Note that I am not a climate scientist, just a regular meteorologist who has taken a few classes in radiative transfer.
Slight changes in Earths orbit over the Millennia have the best correlation of any factor. These are called the Milankovitch Cycles . This does not rule out a co-factor like a series of large eruptions pushing the climate over the edge. There is about 20K years until the next Milankovitch susceptibility.
Soylent Green
It's freakin' 107.1F (41.7C) in North Texas... Come on sun, cool us off!
...hmmm why does that not sound right..
What the what? I know I have heard that line somewhere before......
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your politician, and hitting them?"
Winter is coming.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
that our shit is fucked?
If you kill yourself now, you'll remove the burden of you and your future generations. Reduce your carbon footprint the ultimate way!
"do not mess with complex systems you don't fully understand"
You might as well kill yourself now, if you believe that.
There's not much we can do about it except live with it. The AGW people will say the Earth really would have warmed up if only the sun had not done its cooldown thing. The anti-AGW people will say that the Earth never would have warmed up anyway and that the sun is the real driver of the global climate, not the atmospheric co2 concentration.
Wow...
Just because it's been cooler at your house for the last two years, does not mean the earth, as a whole, is not getting warmer in general.
It's perfectly plausible that the average temperature on the planet could rise significantly while a region, like Europe, gets colder. For instance, general warming could result in polar warming diminishing the northern ice caps (as we're seeing). Should those ice caps melt enough, the iceberg melting in the north atlantic would dramatically lesson since no glaciers would spawn them. The atlantic currents would be disrupted, lessening the gulf stream. Winds flowing over those warm waters would no longer carry that extra heat to Europe and slowly the weather in Paris starts to resemble Winnepeg (about the same latitude). The good news for Winnepeg is that it's likely to warm up a little.
That's climate change in a nutshell. General warming. Local cooling. Some areas get dryer. Others wetter. Very, very complicated interplay between systems makes predicting winners and losers extremely difficult.
And I swear, the next time there's a snowstorm and people use that as evidence that there isn't global warming, I'm going to punch someone in the face.
and keep trashing the planet for profit.
i wonder if there is ANYthing these private think thanks WONT use for furthering their leash holders' agendas.
Read radical news here
...humans are arrogant to think that our presence on this planet for, what, 200,000 years or so, compared to how long the planet has been around, several billion years....
Carlin on saving the earth
No, science is about "testability". You have a hypothesis and you test it. It can be confirmed, rejected or inconclusive.
The problem for the global warming hypothesis is that when all tests confirm it without any possibility of rejection, then we are living in a world that is no longer capable of sustaining us humans as a species on the scale we have now.
All controversy is based on the shortsightedness of mankind. Whether that is good or bad does not matter. When the climate wanders too far off the current balance, then we will go extinct. Maybe that is a good thing. You might though have some reservations whether you want to get to the point where your offspring is doomed...
An examination of sunspots over the last 10+ years by looking at Fe lines shows that the magnetic fields and temperatures in the sunspots are decreasing. There is apparently a "minimum" value for the magnetic field for a sunspot to form. The average value has been decreasing rather rapidly of late (10 years or so). This leads to smaller and less intense sunspots. If the magnetic values generated are no longer strong enough to generate sunspots, how is the magnetic field of the sun affected? Will it still go through a 22-year cycle (I suspect yes, the lack of sunspots should not affect that cycle)? So simply the 11-year SUNSPOT cycle will be affected.
Further to this, I (as an actual real life scientist) have been looking at the activity of the solar magnetic field. Specifically the transition from a dipolar field (at solar minimum) to a non-dipolar field (near solar maximum) and back again. Given the long relationship the Sun and Earth have had (some 4 billion years) I thought I'd throw in some macroscale effects seen on the Earth for comparison. Very surprisingly, the sunspot cycle and the El Nino/La Nina cycle is actually reasonably correlated (remember, correlation does not equal causation). There is a bit looser relationship better the solar cycle and Typhoons (though this may be more related El Nino) and monsoon rains (very likely correlated to the El Nino cycle).
However, solar variation in radiation is not the cause (this is what is taken into account in climate models) but the magnetic fields and the solar wind appear to play a much larger role (See multiple articles by Scafetta and West for example). The solar wind interacts with polar atmosphere and there is a suggestion (questionable) that is may link the Quasi-biennial ocsillation to solar activity. There seems to be relationship, however, it is not clear what it is or how a lack of solar activity would affect the Earth (or what the "lag time" might be).
Will it get cooler if there is an extended period of low to no solar activity? Yes, there is strong evidence of that based on previous examples (Maunder and Sporer minimums for example). Will the cooling completely counteract the greenhouse gas warming? Good question.
has unlocked billions of tonnes of carbon that was underground into the atmosphere as CO2 over the last few hundred years.
Now only the extreme optimists would think that this has no effect on the planet (all scientific modelling shows signifcant effect to air and sea currents and their stability)...now all the models that people have used could be wrong and you are right.
it might be countered a bit by the sun cooling off (lucky us)...there is very little probability that the planet would be behaving climatically like it is today without us.
Worse than Goatse. Far far worse.
That doesn't sound right.. wait.. I know!
Slashdot has been overrun by anti-science dillitants that wouldn't know the difference between the scientific method and a poorly thought out blog if their life depended on it.
Correct, this is not a theory, like the theory of gravity.
It is an attempt to understand the steady increase in global temperatures over the years. There's plenty of refutable science at work. Researches uncover trending data of global temperatures. Other researchers could show problems in approach, or show data that disagrees.
Modelers make predictions of change over the course of years. The accuracy of their predictions speaks to the quality of the models.
Fundamentally, though we have a problem. It would be great if we had two planets. One where we toss as many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and another where we do everything the super enviro-crazy vegan wants us to do. Then a hundred years later, we compare temperatures. The problem is that we don't have spare planets to play with. So we have a relatively high stakes game where we work with models, and do a lot of falsify-able detailed science to help inform those models. Only in the models can we run the data for 100 or 1000 years quickly and without much consequence.
Oh, and anyone who would blame Bush for climate change is a nut job. Most of the damage done so far was done before his birth, while he was a child, or while he was a drunk and playboy. It's hard to blame him for any of that. But to argue only against the nut jobs is strawman bullshit. You're right though, czars aren't going to help. A carbon tax might (and might help balance budget or free money for other tax cuts). Helping China build cleaner coal plants might (and would be cheaper than retrofitting ours). But yeah, czars won't help much.
"Electrical Circuit Between Saturn and Enceladus"
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia13765.html
With this example in mind, consider Saturn having an electric circuit between every single body within its field.
Replace Saturn with the Sun and the moon with Saturn.
Replace the Sun with "black hole" of our galaxy and Saturn with our Sun.
There are most likely intermediate steps between our Sun and the black hole...
Regardless, with this model, it is assumed that as the Sun moves through it's parents variable EM field, and the differences are moderated down to us through the Sun, electrically, back to Earth. And Saturn.
Yep, maybe now the government will give oil companies subsidies. Imagine that!
I thought there was a paper that said something like solar activity doesn't contribute to global warming which was one of the arguments against human-made global warming naysayer and somehow reduce in solar activity cool the earth?
Solar activity had nothing to do with "The Year Without a Summer". It was the eruption of Tambora that caused that.
Indeed. Tekrat (the GP) is quite confused.
More about Mount Tambora, which blew its top in April 1815 with enough ejecta to darken skies worldwide and reduce agricultural yields.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Solar scientists have raised the prospect of a new maunder minimum before, and they were mistaken. But they could easily be correct this time. What happens in the sun is apparently still theoretical.
Because 'coondoggie' posts summaries of all of blog articles on here, it seems, with only links back to his blog.
At least Roland Piquepaille learned, and started linking to places other than his blog ... especially as coondoggie's blog spam tends to just be regurgitated press releases with mostly self-referrential links or broken links when he does link externally (eg, whenever he tries linking to the SDO website).
Check Google News -- there have been well over a hundred groups responding to the press -- NatGeo, Space.com ... all are better informed than coondoggie's recycled crap with his own conjecture inserted. (maybe that's why Slashdot likes posting his stuff so much ... because they get more people responding to how mis-informed he is)
http://news.google.com/news/more?hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&q=frank+hill&biw=1169&bih=793&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=d-UvhPYxunMkI0MlB6BfoT_DWec-M&ei=1OL3TZfwLoKisAPG2LzxDA&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-results&resnum=1&ved=0CC4QqgIwAA
Discover Magazine had a good article -- http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/06/14/the-sun-may-be-headed-for-a-little-quiet-time/
And let me quote them:
(disclaimer ... I'm actually at the SPD meeting, and I've co-authoried with Frank Hill, but I didn't go to his talk today)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I for one do not welcome our mini ice-age overlords...
So what will the "naysayers" response be to continued warming despite reduced insolation?
I can make a guess:
The stupid scientists were afraid we'd find out they were frauds, so they ever-so-conveniently predicted things would cool down, and then they didn't even get *that* right! Proof that it's all an ecohippiefascist conspiracy!!1111one
We've already increased greenhouse gas 40% over preindustrial levels.
What's a little more?
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
about a year ago they said danger was coming in solar storms now they say its not and net year what will they say? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7819201/Nasa-warns-solar-flares-from-huge-space-storm-will-cause-devastation.html No they cannot make up their mind, they are scientist looking for an answer and every time they get a new bunch of info... its like playing Reversi...
So if the sun does indeed miss its next cycle entirely, can we look forward to one or two new smaller suns joining our solar family?
...but you may not like it :)
the only thing that will save us from global warming is global catastrophe...the kind that kills billions and brings economies to their knees.
The sun's output is constant, always has been, and even if it weren't, the effect on the climate wouldn't be noticable, and even if it were, it could only be warming.
I'm not a coward by any name.
Pollution here on earth and the resulting global warming are to blame for the Sun cooling down. The Sun only generates as much heat as we need, so now that we have caused Global warming, the Sun is cooling down in order to try to compensate. It is a scientific fact because I said so and because I invented the internet.
"do not mess with complex systems you don't fully understand
Where will I get the energy for smithore mining?!
Thank goodness for Global Warning! Might get cold around here!
What idiot wrote that title? Sunspot activity isn't related to climate, and not even the article linked makes such a stupid claim. I suspect a troll.
and bought 5 acres in Patagonia, AZ as well as 5 acres on Whidbey Island, WA. And just in case the Cascadia fault line breaks I have property on the eastern side of the Cascades as well. All I have left to worry about is an asteroid strike, an eruption of Mt. Rainier or Yellowstone, and the impending energy crisis.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
But we already have the two planet model you were looking for. Venus is a planet with carbon dioxide atmosphere and look at the state it's in. High temperatures, no water, no life, and that's what the early AGW adherents were claiming was in store for the Earth as a result of our use of fossil fuels. The joke now is that we're not supposed to use fossil fuels, everyone's getting ready to shut down their nuclear reactors but I don't see enough windmill farms, sea current turbines, solar cells or solar thermal power generating station coming online to make up the loses.
Of course, under UN Agenda 21 there won't be as many people about at the end of the century anyway so there won't be the need for so much energy.
I want to QFT some part of your post, but I'd just be copying the whole thing. Thank you calling the PP's attitude what it is: sociopathy, or the force most corrosive to a stable society.
It will get warmer.
It will get colder.
Repeat.
It is irrefutable.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
As long as it doesn't affect the value of my bitcoin collection, I don't see why slashdot is posting this.
Wow...
Just because it's been cooler at your house for the last two years, does not mean the earth, as a whole, is not getting warmer in general.
It's perfectly plausible that the average temperature on the planet could rise significantly while a region, like Europe, gets colder.
Except we are getting cooler, overall, for the last 12 years. The trend is unmistakable and now well outside the bounds of the IPCC report. The fact that recent global data does not match the models would indicate the models are wrong and need to be modified.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
"At some point, we will chew up enough resources that the planet will not recover."
As near as we can tell, that's simply not true. There have been what... five mass extinctions for life on this planet? The Great Dying was about a quarter billion years ago, wiping out 90% of all species. We don't have the power of taking the whole show down forever. Even if we made the environment so bad that we died off, life would shake itself off and start rebuilding.
To quote the late Mr. Carlin, "The planet isn't going anywhere. We are."
ask for their money back? ...
When a 1 km thick ice sheet sits above the head of the head of the IPCC will his brain stem still register the thought ... "IT IS VARMING GOD DAMN YOU TO HELL."
--
Since we can't even predict a 5 day weather cycle anymore, I would hazard to guess the predictions laid here based on the existing science that said this sun spot cycle was going to be "huge", me thinks I will wait and see.
Oh and for you man made global warming proponents out there, looks like Al Gore and the elites won't be making profits off your carbon credits tax scam.
So you are going to have to figure out some other way to kill off 4 billion people.
So sorry, but the Sun trumps anything man can do.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
"You are completely right. We can burn all the fossil fuels we want forever and it will never change the temperature of the planet by a single degree."
Being a skeptic about global warming/climate change/whatever you're calling it today does NOT necessarily mean a person has a selfish reason, such as wanting to burn more fossil fuels with a clean conscience. I think we need to burn less gas at least for the pollution since I've seen the effects, having had to live through smog alerts before.
"However, unless you believe that the Earth is some sort of oil factory that we can crank up at our convenience, you must know that eventually there won't be anymore."
True, but we've become jaded by the false predictions of the chicken littles. We were supposed to have run out of oil by now -- run out of food too. We were supposed to be doing a Soylent Green by now according to them.
That's what's been happening. Solar output has dropped and warming has continued. You can see the solar cycle variations and instrumental temperature record for yourself. It's as if something besides the sun is causing warming. What could it be?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Big Drop == 0.1% Is that enough to cause an Ice age? Is that even enough to mask CO2 based warming? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar-cycle-data
Reminded me of a book where the environmental movement over-reacts so drastically they cause an ice age, yet still blame human activity (specifically technology, iirc).
Burn moar coal to get CO2 now!
It's too hot!!! I'd love for all this to happen soon, so that there is global cooling, and we can in the interim emit more greenhouse gases.
solar input has done this for billions of years. it goes from a stable not doing mutch state aka less input to its unstable massiv flare tossing state every 11 years. this is just a normnal cycle of the sun written up to be news.
Or better still, have computer motherboards w/ huge heatsinks (preferably running some of those ragingly fast microprocessors) outdoors, and get cooled by the circulating cold air. But such a think should be put in Alaska, or in Russia's Sakha Republic, which has the worlds temperature North poles.
Sometimes, I just wish the earth could flip, and that somewhere like the Caribbean could be the North Pole, and somewhere like India the South Pole. let the earth spin the way it does, and let the original Arctic & Antartic melt. That way, the most populated places on earth could be cold, while the hottest places on earth would be the oceans. Oh, and the Sahara would get flooded as well, and no longer remain a desert. ;)
Thus solving the problem once and for all!
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
If it were absolutely permanent it would merely delay the result by 7 years.
Big woo!
But when it reverses, you'll get 7 years of effects added on again.
Bugger.
Oddly enough, the most extreme actions to mitigate AGW would delay the GDP values for the earth by about 7 years according to the Stern Report and that case was expected to cause devastation by the alarmists denying AGW.
The only way a cooling sun could undo the changes is if it dropped by 0.03% per year and, after 100 years our sun would be regressed back about 0.3 billion years of main sequence evolution. Oddly enough, the paper doesn't seem to suggest that stellar physics is that broken.
The sun is more than a billion earth years old it orbits the milky way in 200 million earth years and we are statistically calculating minimums and maximums in a 100 year period ?? small minded humans
as it is eaten so it shall pass
Well *I* laughed.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
The REAL effect is more rapid growth of plant life. In my lifetime, I've seen much faster growth of vines, weeds and undergrowth, as well as trees. This is the greatest effect of the CO2 increase, and it's a good thing which -- provided all the (rain) forests aren't cut down and burned -- provides feedback to help limit increasing temperatures and CO2 in the atmosphere.
sigfault (core dumped)
Solar flares lead to more cloud formation which leads to more reflection of regular light, which leads to colder temperatures.
You may laugh, but this will be a Republican talking point a year from now.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ah ya beat me to it.
If only we had some method of regulating temperature on earth... to use a farming analogy, when winter comes, have some sort of greenhouse like ability...
I wonder what sort of effect a maunder minimum would have on the potential energy that can be harvested from solar panels? Any ideas?
That would be great if the next time there is a hurricane, or drought, or flood, we don't have to hear that is is proof of global warming.
Venus might be usable as a model to prove that CO2 follows warming from the sun, but not the other way around.
Ah, yes. "Flamebait". "I don't agree with you, so I will mod you down so that your opinion is never heard.".
Climate change is not a theory. It's a religion, and it demands its tithe of obedience, it's tithe of cash, and silence from the unbeliever. It is structured as a church, with its priests, its enforcers, and its inquisitioners. I'd almost rather deal with jihadists; at least they're honest about their hatred and have the balls to sacrifice themselves in the fight instead of dispatching lawyers and cops to take the risks.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
It's also on the free book list over at Baen books. Not a bad read - decent story though a little (well, a lot) contrived.
The trick to seeing the higher frequency temperature responses is to use higher frequency solar forcing; I call this "DAY" and "NIGHT".
"You'll be a much better skeptic if you learn a little about the subject"
Automatically claim your opponent is ignorant, check.
"Then people will point to the fact that we still haven't run out as if that proves we never will"
Falsely portray your opposition's opinion, check. I just stated it will definitely run out, yet you post that.
Do you seriously expect anyone to read all that text?
Yes. Save the planet - burn a tire! ~
Neither that nor the sunspots have anything to do with the global temperature. It's clear this cooling is directly correlated to the increase in piracy thanks to Somalia.