solar cycle 24

baldieman

Solar cycle 24 is the new or current 11 year sunspot cycle. It may become a household name by late next year if it does'nt become more active. The general belief amongst some scientists, is that solar cycle 24 is to be 20% to 30% stronger than cycle 23 and the most active in a 100 years.


http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/21dec_cycle24.htm

Some scientists were not so sure, according to 2 Astronomers, Livingston and Penn, sun spots would disappear by 2015, at the time they were not taken seriously, that may be changing. By now we should be seeing lots of sunspots, but they're still few and far between.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/livingston-penn_sunspots2.pdf

Historically, low sun spots have been connected with very cold weather.
So this is one to watch!

Kevster

I want more sunspots... ...much more. I can't bare this damn cold. My feet and hands are numb (and I have three pairs of socks on). Thanks for the article - I'm going to have a read of it.

Gareth37

Kevster wrote: »

I want more sunspots... ...much more. I can't bare this damn cold. My feet and hands are numb (and I have three pairs of socks on). Thanks for the article - I'm going to have a read of it.

*Post Deleted*

This is a science sub forum. please keep ridiculous comments out of it

cherryghost

our saviour of global warming is here!

AtomicHorror

Gareth37 wrote: »

Don't worry, there is plenty more fire on the way, let this increased solar activity be a warning to the very tiny control that science has over the earth.

Keep the religion to the religious forums Gareth, assuming you get un-banned from them. This isn't the place for it.

baldieman

2008 has just become just become the longest spotless year since 1913
and still the sun is blank.

bogman

Very slow to kick off, been watching the sunspot number for months and its terribly low, hovering around 69
Ham radio conditions on the HF and VHF bands around 50mhz depend a lot on the conditions inproving

baldieman

bogman wrote: »

Very slow to kick off, been watching the sunspot number for months and its terribly low, hovering around 69
Ham radio conditions on the HF and VHF bands around 50mhz depend a lot on the conditions inproving

Tell me, how does solar activity effect radio signals and does it effect FM?

slade_x

baldieman wrote: »

Tell me, how does solar activity effect radio signals and does it effect FM?

The simplest explanation:

Question - How does sunspot activity affect radio reception?

Answer - The sun emits light waves of all frequencies, even as low as radio waves and as high as gamma rays. Our eyes only see the visible light, but it is all there. The sun also emits many charged particles. When sunspot activity increases, solar flares result. These are extra bursts of x-rays and electrically charged particles. When this extra activity reaches the earth, it interferes with all electromagnetic waves. It is most noticeable in the low frequency radio waves.

Dr. Ken Mellendorf

Source

baldieman

Here's an interesting article from NASA.

GREENBELT, MD /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Observations made by NASA instruments onboard an Air Force satellite have shown that the boundary between the Earth's upper atmosphere and space has moved to extraordinarily low altitudes. These observations were made by the Coupled Ion Neutral Dynamics Investigation (CINDI) instrument suite, which was launched aboard the U.S. Air Force's Communication/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite on April 16. The CINDI suite, which was built under the direction Principal Investigator Rod Heelis of the University of Texas at Dallas, includes both ion and neutral sensors and makes measurements of the variations in neutral and ion densities and drifts.
CINDI and C/NOFS were designed to study disturbances in Earth's ionosphere that can result in a disruption of navigation and communication signals. The ionosphere is a gaseous envelope of electrically charged particles that surrounds our planet, and it is important because radar, radio waves, and global positioning system signals can be disrupted by ionospheric disturbances.
CINDI's first discovery was, however, that the ionosphere was not where it had been expected to be. During the first months of CINDI operations, the transition between the ionosphere and space was found to be at about 260 miles (420 km) altitude during the nighttime, barely rising above 500 miles (800 km) during the day. These altitudes were extraordinarily low compared with the more typical values of 400 miles (640 km) during the nighttime and 600 miles (960 km) during the day.

http://www.sensorsmag.com/sensors/Sensor+News/Boundary-Between-Ionosphere-and-Space-Contracts/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/572251?contextCategoryId=34296

silverharp

Why do solar cycles occur? I was reading a piece about cycles in general and a comment was made to the effect that "cycles extend life" , and that in the Sun's case it would be more liable to be very unstable if it didnt have a built in cycle. Is there anything to back this assertion up?

Cheers

baldieman

silverharp wrote: »

Why do solar cycles occur? I was reading a piece about cycles in general and a comment was made to the effect that "cycles extend life" , and that in the Sun's case it would be more liable to be very unstable if it didnt have a built in cycle. Is there anything to back this assertion up?

Cheers

Haven't heard that one before, but from what I'm reading, it's anyone's guess. They really don't understand much about it. Although there is intense interest in the solar cycle right now as it appears not to be behaving as its usual self, not only are the sunspots weak but the solar wind and flux have also declined significantly. This can have an impact on our communication and electric power systems.
There is one theory that suggests it's caused by the gravitational effect of the bigger planets.

baldieman

And still the sun remains blank, some of the spots (specks) seen lately including some from SC23, were so small and short lived, would not have been seen with technology from 100 years ago. Solar wind and flux are also still historically low. And, It's getting cold!

baldieman

NASA announce deepest solar minimum in a century

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm?list196994

Kevster

Gareth37 wrote: »

*Post Deleted*

This is a science sub forum. please keep ridiculous comments out of it

I don't see it as ridiculous, nor was it meant to be humerous. Your reaction to my comment was, however, ridiculous. You're probabaly a guy who doesn't get out too much and who never follows his dreams. You sit by your computer all day criticising people to make yourself feel as if you have worth. Anyway, don't worry - Continue to park your ass in front of the computer all day and things will get better for you.

Kevin

Thrill

NASA say that SC24 will begin to pick up around September 09.

Other NASA/NOAA predictions/announcements about SC24........

NASA May 20, 2003:
Hathaway predicts cycle 24 to begin Dec 2006

NASA Oct 2004:
"Hathaway and colleague Bob Wilson, both working at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, believe they've found a simple way to predict the date of the next solar minimum. "So, using Hathaway and Wilson's simple rule, solar minimum should arrive in late 2006.

NOAA Jan 6, 2006:
The next sunspot minimum is forecast to occur in late 2006 through mid 2007.

March 6, 2006:
For almost the entire month of February 2006 the sun was utterly blank. What's going on? NASA solar physicist David Hathaway explains: "Solar minimum has arrived."

NASA March 10, 2006:
"Like most experts in the field, Hathaway [NASA] has confidence in the conveyor belt model and agrees with Dikpati that the next solar maximum should be a doozy [30% to 50% stronger than the previous one].

NASA August 15, 2006:
"We've been waiting for this," says David Hathaway, a solar physicist at the Marshall Space Flight in Huntsville, Alabama. "A backward sunspot is a sign that the next solar cycle is beginning." The next cycle, Solar Cycle 24, should begin "any time now," returning the sun to a stormy state.


One year and four months later.....

Dec 14, 2007 NASA:
It may not look like much, but "this patch of magnetism could be a sign of the next solar cycle," says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. For more than a year, the sun has been experiencing a lull in activity, marking the end of Solar Cycle 23, which peaked with many furious storms in 2000--2003. "Solar minimum is upon us," he says.

NASA March 28, 2008:
"Barely three months after forecasters announced the beginning of new Solar Cycle 24, old Solar Cycle 23 has returned."

NOAA & NASA June 27, 2008:
"The panel expects solar minimum to occur in March, 2008. {obviously this must be a typo and should read March, 2009}

NASA July 11, 2008:
"The sun is behaving normally. So says NASA solar physicist David Hathaway."
"There have been some reports lately that Solar Minimum is lasting longer than it should. That's not true. The ongoing lull in sunspot number is well within historic norms for the solar cycle."
"some observers are questioning the length of the ongoing minimum, now slogging through its 3rd year."

"It does seem like it's taking a long time," allows Hathaway, "but I think we're just forgetting how long a solar minimum can last."

November 7, 2008, NASA:
"After two-plus years of few sunspots, even fewer solar flares, and a generally eerie calm, the sun is finally showing signs of life. "I think solar minimum is behind us," says sunspot forecaster David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center."

November 7, 2008, NASA:
"From January to September, the sun produced a total of 22 sunspot groups; 82% of them belonged to old Cycle 23. October added five more; but this time 80% belonged to Cycle 24. The tables have turned. Even with its flurry of sunspots,the October sun was mostly blank, with zero sunspots on 20 of the month's 31 days."

April 1, 2009:
"We're experiencing a very deep solar minimum," says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center.

"This is the quietest sun we've seen in almost a century," agrees sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

In 2008, the sun set the following records:

A 50-year low in solar wind pressure: Measurements by the Ulysses spacecraft reveal a 20% drop in solar wind pressure since the mid-1990s—the lowest point since such measurements began in the 1960s.

A 12-year low in solar "irradiance": Careful measurements by several NASA spacecraft show that the sun's brightness has dropped by 0.02% at visible wavelengths and 6% at extreme UV wavelengths since the solar minimum of 1996.

A 55-year low in solar radio emissions: After World War II, astronomers began keeping records of the sun's brightness at radio wavelengths. Records of 10.7 cm flux extend back all the way to the early 1950s.Radio telescopes are now recording the dimmest "radio sun" since 1955.

As for now, the sun remains blank, with no sunspot activity.

Thrill

SLOW-MOTION EXPLOSIONS: How deep is solar minimum? Consider this: The most powerful solar explosions are now moving in slow motion. "Lately, coronal mass ejections (CMEs) have become very slow, so slow that they have to be dragged away from the sun by the solar wind," says researcher Angelos Vourlidas of the Naval Research Lab. Here is an example from April 11th:

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2009/11apr09/cme_c3_strip2.gif?PHPSESSID=lj6jlureahg67ucefvsdjkch55

Each second in the SOHO animation corresponds to an hour or more of real time. "The speed of the CME was only 240 km/s," says Vourlidas. "The solar wind speed is about 300 km/s, so the CME is actually being dragged."
Vourlidas has examined thousands of CMEs recorded by SOHO over the past 13 years, and he's rarely seen such plodding explosions. In active times, CMEs can blast away from the sun faster than 1000 km/s. Even during the solar minimum of 1996, CMEs often revved up to 500 or 600 km/s. "Almost all the CMEs we've seen since the end of April 2008, however, are very slow, less than 300 km/s."
Is this just another way of saying "the sun is very quiet?" Or do slow-motion CMEs represent a new and interesting phenomena? The jury is still out. One thing is clear: solar minimum is more interesting than we thought.

While it would be interesting to know whether deep solar minimums do indeed cause cold weather, I prefer the heat.


Come on sun, wake up.

Thrill

A BBC report today.......

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8008473.stm

'Quiet Sun' baffling astronomers

The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.

There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time.

The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting.

The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period.

Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.

According to Prof Louise Hara of University College London, it is unclear why this is happening or when the Sun is likely to become more active again.

"There's no sign of us coming out of it yet," she told BBC News.

"At the moment, there are scientific papers coming out suggesting that we'll be going into a normal period of activity soon.

"Others are suggesting we'll be going into another minimum period - this is a big scientific debate at the moment."

In the mid-17th Century, a quiet spell - known as the Maunder Minimum - lasted 70 years, and led to a "mini ice-age".

This has resulted in some people suggesting that a similar cooling might offset the impact of climate change.

According to Prof Mike Lockwood of Southampton University, this view is too simplistic.

"I wish the Sun was coming to our aid but, unfortunately, the data shows that is not the case," he said.

Prof Lockwood was one of the first researchers to show that the Sun's activity has been gradually decreasing since 1985, yet overall global temperatures have continued to rise.

"If you look carefully at the observations, it's pretty clear that the underlying level of the Sun peaked at about 1985 and what we are seeing is a continuation of a downward trend (in solar activity) that's been going on for a couple of decades.

"If the Sun's dimming were to have a cooling effect, we'd have seen it by now."

'Middle ground'

Evidence from tree trunks and ice cores suggest that the Sun is calming down after an unusually high point in its activity.

Professor Lockwood believes that as well as the Sun's 11-year cycle, there is an underlying solar oscillation lasting hundreds of years.

He suggests that 1985 marked the "grand maximum" in this long-term cycle and the Maunder Minimum marked its low point.

"We are re-entering the middle ground after a period which has seen the Sun in its top 10% of activity," said Professor Lockwood.

"We would expect it to be more than a hundred years before we get down to the levels of the Maunder Minimum."

He added that the current slight dimming of the Sun is not going to reverse the rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

"What we are seeing is consistent with a global temperature rise, not that the Sun is coming to our aid."

Data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows global average temperatures have risen by about 0.7C since the beginning of the 20th Century.

And the IPCC projects that the world will continue to warm, with temperatures expected to rise between 1.8C and 4C by the end of the century.

No-one knows how the centuries-long waxing and waning of the Sun works. However, astronomers now have space telescopes studying the Sun in detail.

According to Prof Richard Harrison of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire, this current quiet period gives astronomers a unique opportunity.

"This is very exciting because as astronomers we've never seen anything like this before in our lifetimes," he said.

"We have spacecraft up there to study the Sun in phenomenal detail. With these telescopes we can study this minimum of activity in a way that we could not have done so in the past."

Thrill

Well, no sooner have the BBC reported on the Suns inactivity, then along comes..........

NEW SUNSPOT: Breaking a string of 25 consecutive spotless days, a new sunspot is forming near the sun's northwestern limb. The magnetic polarity of the spot identifies it as a member of new Solar Cycle 24.

Extreme ultraviolet image........

http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t136/hogworth/sun/latest_eit_171.gif



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bennyblanco

Thanks for those posts Thrill.
Jeez that guy David Hathaway is pretty flathúileacht with the quotes.
What's the story with a backward sunspot?What does that mean can someone tell me?

Thrill

bennyblanco wrote: »

What's the story with a backward sunspot?What does that mean can someone tell me?

I hope these articles explains it.


http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/15aug_backwards.htm

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_701879658/sunspots.html



As for yesterdays sunspot, well.......

FADING SUNSPOT: New sunspot 1015 emerged yesterday to break a string of 25 consecutive spotless days. A new string of spotlessness is about to begin. Less than 24 hours after it appeared, the tiny sunspot is already fading away.

baldieman

Prominent solar scientist Dr Isvalgaard considers the theory of Livingston and Penn.

lsvalgaard
Level 4 Rank

member is offline





Joined: Sept 2008
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Posts: 348
Re: Do you feel that sunspot 1015 is a real sunspo
« Reply #7 Today at 12:34am »

Today at 12:13am, poitsplace wrote:[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]Obviously it wouldn't have been counted in the past...so I don't consider it a spot. A better question (especially for those of us that happen to actually deal with this sort of thing)would spots like these runts have even been counted during the previous minimum? During the previous maximum? I get the feeling a lot of these so-called "spots" would have been ignored even by our current standards.

Leif is (in my very unqualified opinion) largely correct about much of this "was it a spot?" stuff being somewhat misplaced. HOWEVER, I feel it does kind of change the perception of the minimums in the stretches of "spotless" days. Using older methods we would have already had quite a few spotless months and at least one (probably more) stretch of over two months. It doesn't really change that we're in for a very low cycle...but it makes some point back at the others and say "see, this is nowhere near as bad"[/FONT]

What may be happening is that Livinston&Penn are right. If we look at the F10.7 radio flux [it was 71.8 today] the present minimum is not significantly lower than the previous several minima. Other solar indicators are not significantly lower either, although there is a somewhat lower interplanetary magnetic flux (reflecting a weak dependence on the polar fields) [but not much, 1965: 5.06 nT, 1976: 5.45 nT, 1986: 5.74 nt, 1996: 5.11 nT, 2008-2009: 4.16 nT]. So, the current minimum is not grossly different. What will be interesting is what the next maximum will be.[/qoute]

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/164199-Livingston-and-Penn-paper-Sunspots-may-vanish-by-2015-

Thrill

A sunspot is struggling to emerge at the circled location. The magnetic polarity of the proto-sunspot identifies it as a member of old Solar Cycle 23.

EDIT:

Yesterday's proto-sunspot failed to coalesce into a durable sunspot. The sun remains blank.

baldieman

Space.com are now listing invisible sunspots, as there's nothing else to be seen!
http://www.spaceweather.com/

Iridium

There was a bit of a solar flare or prominence (I'm not sure which is which) on the limb of the Sun over the weekend, near where Space Weather is showing those sunspots. It's the first bit of anything resembling activity I can remember for ages.

Thrill

This is a recent announcement from the NOAA.........

http://www.spaceweather.com/headlines/y2009/08may_noaaprediction.htm

May 8, 2009: A new active period of Earth-threatening solar storms will be the weakest since 1928 and its peak is still four years away, after a slow start last December, predicts an international panel of experts led by NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center.


The panel predicts the upcoming Solar Cycle 24 will peak in May 2013 with 90 sunspots per day, averaged over a month. If the prediction proves true, Solar Cycle 24 will be the weakest cycle since number 16, which peaked at 78 daily sunspots in 1928, and ninth weakest since the 1750s, when numbered cycles began.

This is a far cry from earlier predictions that it was going to be one of the most active.

baldieman

Very good article from Dr Isvalgaard on the possible changing nature of the sun

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/14/the-solar-radio-microwave-flux/#more-7843

Thrill

SC24 seems to be coming alive a little. Sunspot group 1017 has just faded away and a new SC24 sunspot is forming now.......










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Thrill

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/05/27/solar-minimum.html

Dormant Sun Spills Secrets in Its Sleep


May 27, 2009 -- With the sun at its lowest activity level in nearly 100 years, scientists are taking advantage of its quiet state to ferret out some of the more subtle -- and occasionally insidious -- ways the sun impacts Earth's climate and atmosphere.
Solar flares and other geomagnetic events on the sun vary in frequency over an 11-year cycle. Now at an unusually low "minimum" in that cycle, the sun is expected to peak in activity in 2013.

"If you thought that the globe was going to warm up because there was more solar activity, you might perhaps expect it to get warmer everywhere, and this is not the case," said Joanna Haigh, an atmospheric physicist with Imperial College in London.

Haigh and her colleagues, who have been studying the sun in its relatively dormant state, have found an apparent connection between solar activity and regions of warming around Earth's midsection.

She is quick to point out that the phenomenon cannot account for the rise in global temperatures seen over the past 50 years. "The point is there is a significant effect of the sun on local climate, not global," said Haigh.

In an upcoming paper, Haigh's team provides evidence that when the sun is more active, Earth's jet streams weaken and shift toward the poles, taking with them storm tracks and weather systems that carry heat. The result is a subtle warming around Earth's mid-latitudes.
"We're beginning to understand how these processes take place," Haigh said.

The sun's quiescence also has enabled researchers to figure out that ozone-depleting nitric oxide can pass from the upper atmosphere to the stratosphere below without the geomagnetic effects of solar storms, which were once given credit for the phenomenon.

Scott Bailey, an associate professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute's Center for Space Science and Engineering, and colleagues found that twice during the sun's quiet period, significant amounts of nitric oxide -- enough to consume 30 percent more ozone than expected -- have been transported to the lower atmosphere.


Rather than solar activity, the researchers credit atmospheric winds and temperature shifts.
"This is not an effect that will change the amount of ozone in some significant way that would impact life," Bailey said at the American Geophysical Union conference in Toronto this week. "It's not going to cause large increases in skin cancer or other things like if you were to totally remove all the ozone, but it is enough to change some properties of the stratosphere."

Nitric oxide is produced in the upper atmosphere along with beautiful auroras when charged particles from the sun interact with Earth's magnetic field. Most of the molecules are quickly destroyed by sunlight, but due to long, dark winters at Earth's poles, supplies of nitric oxide can hang around there for as long as 20 years.

Researchers previously believed the molecules would only reach the lower atmosphere during solar storms. That turned out not to be the case.

"It's very useful to have a long period of quiet in order to understand these long-period changes in the atmosphere that might take a year or two to develop," said Christopher Russell, a professor of geophysics and space Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We need the sun to shut up for a few years and allow us to probe that."

Thrill

SUNSPOT 1019: New-cycle sunspot 1019 burst through the surface of the sun on May 31st
and it has been growing rapidly ever since. This movie from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) shows the progress of the activeregion over a two-day period:

The sunspot's two dark cores are each about the size of Earth,
and they are crackling with A-class solar flares. During years of Solar Max (e.g., 2000-2002) we would consider such activity minor, but now, during the deep solar minimum of 2008-2009, it merits attention. The magnetic polarity and high latitude of the sunspot identify it as a member of new Solar Cycle 24, expected to peak in 2013. This makes sunspot 1019 a sign of things to come.

Its taken a while to get going but recent activity seems to suggest that SC24 is starting to get under way. It is expected to peak in 2013 with an average of around 90 sunspots a day.

This is an image of the rise towards maximum of SC23





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Kevster

Sorry to just jump in here guys but I have a question that I think is quite relevant: Considering we are soon to be heading to a solar max, don't you think that Global Warming sceptics will use this to justify their scepticism? ...and people will be ill-informed enough to believe them.

Kevin

baldieman

Kevster wrote: »

Sorry to just jump in here guys but I have a question that I think is quite relevant: Considering we are soon to be heading to a solar max, don't you think that Global Warming sceptics will use this to justify their scepticism? ...and people will be ill-informed enough to believe them.

Kevin

skepticism is healthy, just because one is sceptic, does'nt necessarily mean a non believer, but keeping an open mind.
It will be interesting to see how this solar cycle develops and what effect if any, there is on global or local temperatures over the next few years?

Kevster

Is the past few days any indication of the future? I mean, I've never experienced such heat before. Are we going to be going into extremes of climate like that? - i.e. severely hot summers; severely cold winters.

Thrill

After a flurry of sunspots in July that included the large sunspot 1024, which prompted experts to announce that the solar minimum was all but over, the sun has gone on strike again. SC24 continues to stall. It is now 41 days since the last sunspot.


Sunspot 1024...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7zdlcHCshc

This video is the complete history of Sunspot 1024 of Solar Cycle 24. This was the largest and best defined Sunspot in over 2 years . This area was able to kick off 2 decent C-class flares. There was a total of 38 noteable flares while this area as it crossed the face of the Sun . This active area first emerged on the Eastern Area of the Sun on 6--30-2009 where it quickly formed and faded in less then 24 hours. Then on 7-3-2009 it rapidly reformed. It moved beyond viewing crossing the Western Limb on 7-10-2009 giving us a faster then normal transit in this latitude

---

QUIET SUN: According to NOAA sunspot counts, the longest stretch of spotless suns during the current solar minimum was 52 days in July, August and Sept. of 2008. The current spate of blank suns is putting that record in jeopardy. There have been no sunspots for almost 42 days and there are none in the offing. Deep solar minimum continues.

Thrill

Are sunspots on the way out? According to a study by Bill Livingston and Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, they will disappear altogether in by 2015.

ARE SUNSPOTS DISAPPEARING? Sunspots are made of magnetism. The "firmament" of a sunspot is not matter but rather a strong magnetic field that appears dark because it blocks the upflow of heat from the sun's fiery depths. Without magnetism, there would be no sunspots.
That's what makes the following graph a little troubling:

According to Bill Livingston and Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, sunspot magnetic fields are waning. The two respected solar astronomers have been measuring solar magnetism since 1992. Their technique is based on Zeeman splitting of infrared spectral lines emitted by iron atoms in the vicinity of sunspots. Extrapolating their data into the future suggests that sunspots could completely disappear within decades. That would be a bummer for Spaceweather.com.
Don't count out sunspots just yet, however. While the data of Livingston and Penn are widely thought to be correct, far-reaching extrapolations may be premature. This type of measurement is relatively new, and the data reaches back less than 17 years. "Whether this is an omen of long-term sunspot decline, analogous to the Maunder Minimum, remains to be seen," they caution in a recent EOS article.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/02/livingston-and-penn-paper-sunspots-may-vanish-by-2015/



http://climatedepot.com/a/2452/Astronomers-Suns-output-may-decline-significantly-inducing-another-little-ice-age-on-the-Earth

Thrill

There have been three sunspots during this month, 1025 appeared at the start of September but faded away after about 24 hours. Recently, and for the first time in more than a year, two sunspots (1026 and 1027) were on the face of the sun at the same time. 1027 is still active.

---

http://spaceweather.com/

COSMIC RAYS HIT SPACE AGE HIGH: NASA spacecraft are measuring record-high levels of cosmic rays--a side-effect of the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. This development could have implications for the amount of shielding astronauts need to take when they explore deep space.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/29sep_cosmicrays.htm

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we've seen in the past 50 years," says Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. "The increase is significant, and it could mean we need to re-think how much radiation shielding astronauts take with them on deep-space missions."[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The cause of the surge is solar minimum, a deep lull in solar activity that began around 2007 and continues today. Researchers have long known that cosmic rays go up when solar activity goes down. Right now solar activity is as weak as it has been in modern times, setting the stage for what Mewaldt calls "a perfect storm of cosmic rays."[/font]

.............

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Earth is in no great peril. Our planet's atmosphere and magnetic field provide some defense against the extra cosmic rays. Indeed, we've experienced much worse in the past. Hundreds of years ago, cosmic ray fluxes were at least 200% to 300% higher than anything measured during the Space Age. Researchers know this because when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, they produce an isotope of beryllium, 10Be, which is preserved in polar ice. By examining ice cores, it is possible to estimate cosmic ray fluxes more than a thousand years into the past. Even with the recent surge, cosmic rays today are much weaker than they have been at times in the past millennium.

[/font][font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"The space era has so far experienced a time of relatively low cosmic ray activity," says Mewaldt. "We may now be returning to levels typical of past centuries."[/font]

Mozart1986

Thrill wrote: »

Are sunspots on the way out? According to a study by Bill Livingston and Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, they will disappear altogether in by 2015.




http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/02/livingston-and-penn-paper-sunspots-may-vanish-by-2015/



http://climatedepot.com/a/2452/Astronomers-Suns-output-may-decline-significantly-inducing-another-little-ice-age-on-the-Earth

Bill Livingston got a measurement on sunspot 1027 and it's just below 2000 gauss which is right on target for his predictions. If this continues, the sunspots will disappear by 2015. But this must be part of a bigger cycle and sooner or later the gauss will begin to recover. The only question is when and what effect could it have on the Earths climate?

Thrill

Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Solar Max has arrived."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ha7X6dWVQE

"Solar Maximum is here …. Finally." According to an analysis Bieseker presented at NOAA's Space Weather Workshop in April, the sunspot number for Solar Cycle 24 is near its peak right now.

They agree on another point, too: It is not very impressive.


"This solar cycle continues to rank among the weakest on record," comments Ron Turner of Analytic Services, Inc. who serves as a Senior Science Advisor to NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program. To illustrate the point, he plotted the smoothed sunspot number of Cycle 24 vs. the previous 23 cycles since 1755. "In the historical record, there are only a few Solar Maxima weaker than this one."

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/10jun_solarminimax/

Thrill

The Sun goes blank. Solar max has brought the first spotless day in nearly three years.

Solar activity is very low. July 17th brought the first spotless day in nearly three years. The face of the sun was completely blank and the sunspot number dropped to zero. Now, however, two small sunspots are emerging, circled in this image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Neither of these small spots has the kind of complex magnetic field that harbors energy for strong flares. The quiet is therefore expected to continue through the weekend.


Before July 17, 2014, the previous spotless day was August 14, 2011, a gap of nearly 3 years. What happened then provides context for what is happening today. Overall, 2011 was a year of relatively high solar activity with multiple X-flares; the spotless sun was just a temporary intermission. 2014 will probably be remembered the same way. As new sunspots emerge and grow, the Solar Max of 2014 will pick up where it left off a couple weeks ago when sunspots were abundant. However, because no one can predict the solar cycle, this "All Quiet Event" is worth monitoring.

http://behindtheblack.com/tag/blank-sun/


Large image

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2014/18jul14/hmi1898.gif?PHPSESSID=1lnk1hiahulksigom8v8rd6j45




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Thrill

The sun is blank today as the weakest cycle in almost 200 years could be coming to an end.

The last blank day occurred on July 17 2014. (see above post)

This is a sign that Solar Cycle 24 is waning and that a new Solar Minimum is on the way. The last time the solar cycle bottomed out in 2008-2009, spotless days were commonplace. Whole months passed without a single sunspot, and solar flares became rare.

The spotless state of today's sun, however, is probably just temporary. Underneath the visible surface of the sun, the solar dynamo is still churning out knots of magnetism that will soon bob to the surface to make new sunspots. Solar Cycle 24 is not quite finished. It is, however, coming to an end.

Forecasters expect the next solar minimum to arrive in 2019-2020. Between now and then, there will be lots of spotless suns. At first, the blank stretches will be measured in days; later in weeks and months

http://www.spaceweather.com/

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