HERE COMES THE SUN - (WITH A Vengeance)

The sun has been quiet for the past couple of years. Too quiet. Normally, our home star goes through a sort of rising and falling sleep-wake cycle that lasts 11 years, on average. At the so-called solar maximum, magnetic storms roil its outer layers and sunspots dapple its surface; solar flares arc magnificently into space; and clots of charged particles spew outward in bursts of plasma that can reach to Earth and beyond. At the solar minimum — the stage we've been experiencing lately — all of that drops off dramatically.

The recent solar minimum has been unnaturally calm, though, with literally no sunspots at all for extended periods, and the eerie silence has gone on for about two years — about twice as long as the typical minimum. "People began to get nervous," says solar astronomer Leon Golub, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, "that the sun would never come out of it."




But on Aug. 1, the sun woke up with a vengeance: there was, in the breathless words of the website SpaceWeather.com, "a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, multiple filaments of magnetism lifting off the stellar surface, large-scale shaking of the solar corona, radio bursts, a coronal mass ejection and more." The event was captured in spectacular video by NASA's new Solar Dynamics Observatory, launched in February.


For the average person, it's the mass ejection that's most immediately relevant. A giant solar burp has sent a cloud of charged particles racing toward Earth. When the particles, which were predicted to arrive on Tuesday night, slam into Earth's magnetic field, the resulting electromagnetic storm is likely to trigger a spectacular show of northern lights across Russia, North America and northern Europe. It could also scramble communications between orbiting satellites and receivers on Earth, but the relatively modest size of the ejection has led experts to consider a major disruption unlikely. Still, says Golub, "we have no way of predicting this with any certainty."


Solar physicists also haven't got a good handle on why the sun sometimes goes quiet for extended periods. The most recent episode happened about a century ago, but back in the 1600's and early 1700's, the sun sank into a dead calm, known as the Maunder Minimum, that lasted for decades. At its lowest ebb, sunspot activity was about 0.1% of normal for some 30 years.


As it happens, the Maunder Minimum overlapped a period called the Little Ice Age, a time when the Thames River routinely froze over in winter and widespread famines, due to shorter, colder growing seasons, affected much of Europe. That coincidence has led to suggestions that reduced levels of solar energy caused the Little Ice Age — and indeed, a slight dimming of the sun does go along with solar minima. But it isn't enough to explain such a dramatic change in climate, and, says Golub, "the timing isn't quite right. The cooling started before the sunspots went away."

The same is true today. Solar variability can account for about 10% of the variability in worldwide temperatures, says Golub — which means that even if we were entering a modern-day Maunder Minimum, it wouldn't be remotely enough to counteract the warming effect from increasing levels of greenhouse gases.

And despite the sun's newfound wakefulness, we could well be entering another long period of reduced activity. "There are predictions," Golub says, "that the coming solar maximum will be a weak one." That's how it began last time: the peaks of solar activity got weaker and weaker, and then they went away altogether for 30 or 40 years. Or maybe this is just a false alarm. "People are predicting all the possibilities you could imagine," he says. "Somebody's going to end up being right."

 

Weak Solar Cycle 24

.....And despite the sun's newfound wakefulness, we could well be entering another long period of reduced activity. "There are predictions," Golub says, "that the coming solar maximum will be a weak one." That's how it began last time: the peaks of solar activity got weaker and weaker, and then they went away altogether for 30 or 40 years. Or maybe this is just a false alarm. "People are predicting all the possibilities you could imagine," he says. "Somebody's going to end up being right.....


I began producing a prediction for solar cycle 24 in January 2008.

http://www.wcflunatall.com/nz4o4.htm

 

The sleeping giant awakens.
Bring it on!


W5TXR
Mark A. Lacy

"There are three kinds of men: Those that learn by reading. Those that learn by observation. And the rest of us, that have to pee on the electric fence for ourselves" -MAL

 

Could not agree more. Bring it on !

It is completely and utterly unpredictable. Not up to speed with all the various sites that deal with solar physics but I have this gem of a book, a collection of papers from a symposium 30 yrs ago, "Growth rhythms and the history of the Earths rotation" . It includes a graph showing sunspot activity going back to the first records. with some predictions to the year 2000. (page 423, Wood,K.D, (1972) Nature 240,91)
It also shows the variations in the hight of tides raised on the sun by the combined effects of Venus, Earth, Mercury and Jupiter, and a possible relationship with sunspot activity.
CO2 my butt, eat your heart out Al, It is the sun and there is nothing anyone can do about that !
Anyone remember Voyagers 1 & 2, and the slingshot opportunity that only happens every 176 yrs or so ? We have not been observing for long enough
across the spectrum.

Good DX ! Ken MM0RZZ

 

The Sun spot activity has very little to do with Global Warming, the summers are getting hotter or have you not noticed? And thats during a period of low solar activity, I assume you believe that more solar activity would mean even hotter weather.

CO2 is a fact, the only question is what is causing it. BTW the only reason we have not even had worst problems is because the Ocean is a great natural CO2 absorber, the problem is the Ocean is becoming saturated and the pH of the ocean has actually decreased in response.

 

Bring on the 'spots! Ignore the political agenda.

 

Sun spots & global warming

Alas, KD8MJR seems to have solved the great global warming mystery along with Al Gore, CO2 is the culprit.
Maybe HARRP is to blame or all of the ham stations radiating RF for all of these years or maybe your favorite FM broadcast station.

Now that the EPA is about to regulate CO2 perhaps their next task should be regulation of RF ,we could shut down all RF generators and return to the stone age.

 

I don't believe that CO2 has anything to do with global warming, because the earth has warmed and cooled dozens of times. I like the way writers talk of "our sun" ! Is there another one belonging to somebody else ? The only one which is of any use to us is the Sun.

I read an article some years ago where the writer stated he believed the Sun has periods of high intensity and low intensity and this is spread over a five thousand year period. He suggested that the Sun is now at about 3.5-4.0 thousand years towards the 5.0 and that is why its losing its power. Is he right ? Who knows ?

Interesting to know that during the 11th-12th century the Vikings settled on Greenland and took cows and established smallholdings until the Ice Age comethed ! It got so cold, nothing grew, everybody died and that was the end of farming on Greenland. Farming has now started up again because the temperature is increasing and they are now starting to grow spuds !

G0GQK

 

The summers have been getting cooler here. We used to have at least a few 100+ degree days each summer, but we have been seeing fewer and fewer of those each year.

 

CO2 The problem, not in my experience.

I had a Great Uncle, that raised Prize Winning Orchids. He also Bred several Hybrids of Orchids. He Wrote a Book on Orchids. His name was John Bevell, not sure of the spelling of the last name. Might have had an i in there.

Now What does that have to do with anything, back in the 1950's in Fort Worth, Tx. he had several Green Houses with all sorts of monitors for Temp., Humidity, O2/CO2 level indicators. He taught me that in Summer, if you Flood the Green House with CO2 to a 40% level or greater, it would stay 5 to 15 degrees cooler, than an identical Green House that contained normal atmosphere.

Just an observation, I witnessed with my own eyes. I monitored the Graphs as they turned on the drums and the pencils scribed the lines for seven days on the two seperate Green Houses.

Leads me to believe, It's 1. God, and 2. by His Decree, The Sun.

73
KB5SXC
Leo

 

Sunspot number up to 54 today www.spaceweather.com


Let's just hope this isn't the peak of Cycle 24!

 

Latest research has 95% correlation of earth's temperature with past solar activity and around 4% to CO2. Nuff said for me. Don't drink the cool aid and do your own research. I want the sun back tho! C'mon DX!

Chris
wx7b
Mead, WA

 

Same here in Northern California. This summer, especially

 

Its really Bush's fault

 

Agree!!
First time in Cycle 24 that there has been 4 numbered
sunspot regions.....and, what is even more promising
is how active the Stereo (behind)shot of the Sun is....
very active..
Maybe ol Sol can string some decent SS numbers
together, Finally...