Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

The sun is dead!! Mini iceage???

1246732

Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    The Sunspot Number
    [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]S[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]cientists track solar cycles by counting sunspots -- cool planet-sized areas on the Sun where intense magnetic loops poke through the star's visible surface.[/FONT]

    [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Counting sunspots is not as straightforward as it sounds. Suppose you looked at the Sun through a pair of (properly filtered) low power binoculars -- you might be able to see two or three large spots. An observer peering through a high-powered telescope might see 10 or 20. A powerful space-based observatory could see even more -- say, 50 to 100. Which is the correct sunspot number?[/FONT]

    [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]There are two official sunspot numbers in common use. The first, the daily "Boulder Sunspot Number," is computed by the NOAA Space Environment Center using a formula devised by Rudolph Wolf in 1848: [/FONT]
    [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]R=k (10g+s), [/FONT]
    [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]where R is the sunspot number; g[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] is the number of sunspot groups on the solar disk; s is the total number of individual spots in all the groups; and k is a variable scaling factor (usually <1) that accounts for observing conditions and the type of telescope (binoculars, space telescopes, etc.). Scientists combine data from lots of observatories -- each with its own k factor -- to arrive at a daily value.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]zurich_strip.gif
    Above: International sunspot numbers from 1745 to the present. URL="http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/ssl/pad/solar/sunspots.htm"][COLOR=#0066cc]more[/COLOR][/URL
    [/FONT]
    [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Boulder number (reported daily on SpaceWeather.com) is usually about 25% higher than the second official index, the "International Sunspot Number," published daily by the Solar Influences Data Center in Belgium. Both the Boulder and the International numbers are calculated from the same basic formula, but they incorporate data from different observatories.[/FONT]

    [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]As a rule of thumb, if you divide either of the official sunspot numbers by 15, you'll get the approximate number of individual sunspots visible on the solar disk if you look at the Sun by projecting its image on a paper plate with a small telescope.[/FONT]


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    Prepared jointly by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, NOAA,
    Space Weather Prediction Center and the U.S. Air Force.
    Updated 2009 Sep 22 2201 UTC


    Joint USAF/NOAA Report of Solar and Geophysical ActivitySDF Number 265 Issued at 2200Z on 22 Sep 2009IA.

    Analysis of Solar Active Regions and Activity from 21/2100Zto 22/2100Z: Solar activity was very low. There were two x-rayevents during the past 24 hours, a B3 at 1057Z and a B4 at 2041Z.Both of these events originated from Region 1026 (S29E57) which hasrotated into view as a small, C-type sunspot group with a simplebeta magnetic configuration.

    Region 1027 (N24E31) emerged on thedisk today and appears to be a small D-type region in a simple betamagnetic configuration.IB. Solar Activity Forecast: Solar activity is expected to be verylow for the next three days (23-25 September). There is a slightchance for an isolated C-class event.

    IIA. Geophysical Activity Summary 21/2100Z to 22/2100Z:The geomagnetic field was quiet during the past 24 hours.

    IIB. Geophysical Activity Forecast: The geomagnetic field isexpected to be quiet for the next three days (23-25 September).


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    http://personal.inet.fi/tiede/tilmari/sunspots.html

    28 Sept. 09 spacer.gifmidi163.gif spacer.gifSunspot 1026 is fading away and may be gone by the end of the day. Photo credit: SOHO/MDI
    spacer.gif

    Spotless Days
    Current Stretch: 0 days
    2009 total: 212 days (79%)
    Since 2004: 723 days
    Typical Solar Min: 485 days


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset




  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    oh and the sun is back to being blank again.

    02 Oct. 09 spacer.gifmidi163.gif spacer.gifThe sun is blank--no sunspots


  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    "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 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."

    read all about cosmic rays and their possible effect on creating more cloud in previous post number 43
    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055544236&page=3


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    This cosmic ray debate makes alot of interesting sense,


    Beryllium-10 is an isotope that is a proxy for the sun’s activity. Be10 is produced in the atmosphere by cosmic ray collisions with atoms of oxygen and nitrogen. Beryllium 10 concentrations are linked to cosmic ray intensity which can be a proxy for solar strength.

    One way to capture earth’s record of that proxy data is to drill deep ice cores. Greenland, due to having a large and relatively stable deep ice sheet is often the target for drilling ice cores.

    Isotopic analysis of the ice in the core can be linked to temperature and global sea level variations. Analysis of the air contained in bubbles in the ice can reveal the palaeocomposition of the atmosphere, in particular CO2 variations. Volcanic eruptions leave identifiable ash layers.



    Plotted up and annotated, the Dye 3 B10 data shows the strong relationship between solar activity and climate. Instead of wading through hundreds of papers for evidence of the Sun’s influence on terrestrial climate, all you have to do is look at this graph.

    be10-climate.png?w=510&h=272

    All the major climate minima are evident in the Be10 record, and the cold period at the end of the 19th century. This graph alone demonstrates that the warming of the 20th century was solar-driven.

    The end of the Little Ice Age corresponded with a dramatic decrease in the rate of production of Be10, due to fewer galactic cosmic rays getting into the inner planets of the solar system. Fewer galactic cosmic rays got into the inner planets because the solar wind got stronger. The solar wind got stronger because the Sun’s magnetic field got stronger, as measured by the aa Index from 1868.
    naonew3.gif From john-daly.com

    Thus the recent fall of aa Index and Ap Index to lows never seen before in living memory is of considerable interest. This reminds me of a line out of Aliens: “Stay frosty people!” Well, we won’t have any choice – it will get frosty.

    ap_index_2008-520.png?w=520&h=289&h=289 The Ap magentic index to the end of 2008



    so to cap in my own words, THE MORE COSMIC RAYS YOU HAVE ,THE MORE B 10 THERE IS,AS HIGHLIGHTED AT THE TIME OF THE 3 SOLAR MINIMUMS ON CHART,NOW THATS INTERESTING.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    Spotless Days
    Current Stretch: 6 days
    2009 total: 218 days (78%)
    Since 2004: 729 days
    Typical Solar Min: 485 days

    blank sun.


    i was worried that solar cycle 24 was waking up but she only rolled over in the bed.thats it back to sleep oh great one:D


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    solen_10_12.JPG

    Solar update: 223 sunspot free days in 2009



    The sun is back to its “quiet” ways after a short burst of activity in late September. The most intense solar flux (10.7cm) reading of the past 18 months was logged during the last week of September, but this “spike” lasted only a few days, and it just as quickly returned to the low levels of the past several years.

    As of October 12, there have been 223 sunspot-free days in 2009, ranking it 6th since 1900 in “blank” days. In 2008, there were 266 sunspot-free days.

    If 56% or more of the remaining days in 2009 are sunspot free, then 2009 will replace 2008 as the second highest blank year since 1900.
    What does all of this mean? It means that the deepest solar minimum in modern times (since 1900) continues, with no clear trend of consistent increased activity over the past six months. Rather, there have been several brief increases in sunspot activity followed by very long quiet periods in between.

    This again suggests that the sun has yet to conclusively begin a climb out of this unusually long solar slow-down.


  • Registered Users Posts: 17,825 ✭✭✭✭silverharp


    Been reading the thread, good one btw , David Archibald has a lecture on youtube , 4 parts , 1st attached

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbAe_g41Zl4

    A belief in gender identity involves a level of faith as there is nothing tangible to prove its existence which, as something divorced from the physical body, is similar to the idea of a soul. - Colette Colfer



  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    A must see lecture for all those interested on what i've been posting about sunspots and cosmic ray connection, especially in part 2 but watch it all.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4SN1-vwBVs part 1


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIkQL6K8uY4&NR=1 part 2


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3MIRroP5cA part 3


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 47 hiwayman


    Hello redsunset.
    Although I'm inclined to agree with you, I think I prefare if you were wrong. I was looking forward to a bit of global warming.
    Those videos are interesting, havent seen them before.
    But even Al gore's look convincing at first, so is there a way of clarifying the credibility of the speaker? ie. do you know of other links to the research?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University

    Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development , Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"


    Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.


    Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers collapsing into the sea. "The breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier," says Winterhalter. "In Antarctica the temperature is low enough to prohibit melting of the ice front, so if the ice is grounded, it has to break off in beautiful ice cascades. If the water is deep enough icebergs will form."


    Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden, admits, "Some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like it has done back in time. The temperature in this part of Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change in the position of the low pressure systems."


    But Karlen clarifies that the 'mass balance' of Antarctica is positive - more snow is accumulating than melting off. As a result, Ball explains, there is an increase in the 'calving' of icebergs as the ice dome of Antarctica is growing and flowing to the oceans. When Greenland and Antarctica are assessed together, "their mass balance is considered to possibly increase the sea level by 0.03 mm/year - not much of an effect," Karl»n concludes.
    The Antarctica has survived warm and cold events over millions of years. A meltdown is simply not a realistic scenario in the foreseeable future.


    Gore tells us in the film, "Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap." This is misleading, according to Ball: "The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology."


    Karlen explains that a paper published in 2003 by University of Alaska professor Igor Polyakov shows that, the region of the Arctic where rising temperature is supposedly endangering polar bears showed fluctuations since 1940 but no overall temperature rise. "For several published records it is a decrease for the last 50 years," says Karl»


    Dr. Dick Morgan, former advisor to the World Meteorological Organization and climatology researcher at University of Exeter, U.K. gives the details, "There has been some decrease in ice thickness in the Canadian Arctic over the past 30 years but no melt down. The Canadian Ice Service records show that from 1971-1981 there was average, to above average, ice thickness. From 1981-1982 there was a sharp decrease of 15% but there was a quick recovery to average, to slightly above average, values from 1983-1995. A sharp drop of 30% occurred again 1996-1998 and since then there has been a steady increase to reach near normal conditions since 2001."


    Concerning Gore's beliefs about worldwide warming, Morgan points out that, in addition to the cooling in the NW Atlantic, massive areas of cooling are found in the North and South Pacific ocean the whole of the Amazon Valley; the north coast of South America and the Caribbean; the eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caucasus and Red Sea; New Zealand and even the Ganges Valley in India. Morgan explains, "Had the IPCC used the standard parameter for climate change (the 30 year average) and used an equal area projection, instead of the Mercator (which doubled the area of warming in Alaska, Siberia and the Antarctic Ocean) warming and cooling would have been almost in balance."


    Gore's point that 200 cities and towns in the American West set all time high temperature records is also misleading according to Dr. Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. "It is not unusual for some locations, out of the thousands of cities and towns in the U.S., to set all-time records," he says. "The actual data shows that overall, recent temperatures in the U.S. were not unusual."
    Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science."

    and here is basically that youtube lecture i posted in writing of how the sample cores can show Specifically a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains.

    It shows one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic.






    Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.


    Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.


    My interest in the current climate-change debate was triggered in 1998, when I was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council strategic project grant to determine if there were regular cycles in West Coast fish productivity. As a result of wide swings in the populations of anchovies, herring and other commercially important West Coast fish stock, fisheries managers were having a very difficult time establishing appropriate fishing quotas. One season there would be abundant stock and broad harvesting would be acceptable; the very next year the fisheries would collapse. No one really knew why or how to predict the future health of this crucially important resource.


    Although climate was suspected to play a significant role in marine productivity, only since the beginning of the 20th century have accurate fishing and temperature records been kept in this region of the northeast Pacific. We needed indicators of fish productivity over thousands of years to see whether there were recurring cycles in populations and what phenomena may be driving the changes.


    My research team began to collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords. The regions in which we chose to conduct our research, Effingham Inlet on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and in 2001, sounds in the Belize-Seymour Inlet complex on the mainland coast of British Columbia, were perfect for this sort of work. The topography of these fjords is such that they contain deep basins that are subject to little water transfer from the open ocean and so water near the bottom is relatively stagnant and very low in oxygen content. As a consequence, the floors of these basins are mostly lifeless and sediment layers build up year after year, undisturbed over millennia.


    Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.


    Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a "time series analysis" on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.


    In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun's 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle." The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun's brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly.


    Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.


    However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.


    Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.


    The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.


    In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.


    Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world.




    Finally this thread is a, make your own mind up to what is actually going on.

    in my opinion there's alot of scaremongering going on as i said in a previous post ONLY TIME WILL TELL.;)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 47 hiwayman


    Last winter was very snowy for north America, But already the US is well ahead of 2008 in snow cover.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/14/early-start-to-winter-20-of-usa-is-covered-in-snow-already/#more-11666


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,968 ✭✭✭jkforde


    Where's the option "It's too much man, let it all hang out" in this survey!?

    And I notice the self-centred anthropocentric word 'our' in the posed question. Oh dear, us and our damn conciousness. Listen, every other species will either adapt and survive or will be reduced in population towards extinction, such is Darwin's world. So the question is what impact will solar minima have on Homo sapiens, because the planet will do what a planet does regardless of our temporary infection.

    🌦️ 6.7kwp, 45°, SSW, mid-Galway 🌦️ | Smart Day/Night



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 47 hiwayman


    Ok, so we've had 3 crap summers in a row, where the jet stream was very reluctant to move north and we're in the middle of the deepest solar minimum in 100 years. So what were the summers like (in this part of the world) around 1911? Anyone know where to find out? And if solar cycle 24 continues to ramp up slowly, what's the prospects for next years summer?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    Long, hot summer: The Great British heatwave of 1911


    On 17 July, 1911, most of the country was perspiring in 80F (27C) temperatures. It became too hot to work after midday, so the managers of the cotton mills and stone quarries in Clitheroe, Lancashire, decided to shut down in the middle of the afternoon. To compensate for lost hours, the quarrymen's day would now begin at first light, 4.30am.

    The managers were delighted that the Daylight Savings Bill had not yet been made law, so they were able to take advantage of the early dawn.
    The Times began to run a regular column under the heading "Deaths From Heat". And the weathermen forecast that temperatures would continue to rise.

    By 20 July there had been 20 consecutive days without rain, and Richard Stratton, an elderly farmer in Monmouth, reported gathering his earliest harvest since 1865.
    Schoolgirl Amy Reeves, aged 10, took off her boots and stockings and left them on the grass beside a shallow pond at Longcross near Chertsey in Surrey. She was discovered drowned later that afternoon, her head caught in the weeds beneath the water.

    Two days later fires began to break out spontaneously along the railway tracks at Ascot, Bagshot and Bracknell, and the gorse on Greenham Common in Newbury caught light.
    In London the sky seemed unusually clear, and in King's Lynn in Norfolk a temperature of 92F (33C) broke all previous records for that part of the country.

    Motorised fire-engines tested their water jets for the first time on St Paul's Cathedral. The water reached the 365ft-high dome, well above the cross.
    By the end of July the combined effects of lack of rain and scorching sun had resulted in a dangerous scarcity of grass for herds and flocks. Pastures had turned brown. Farmers were being forced to raise the price of milk.

    On 28 July the nature correspondent of The Times reported that even in the deepest, most sheltered lanes it was impossible to find green leaves and with a note of despair that "the crannies and rifts in walled Sussex hedgerows where one looks for rare ferns and other treasures hold only handfuls of dry dust".
    Nor was that all: "The most sorrowful sign of all is the silence of the singing birds. July is never a very musical month. This year however all the sylvan music has been mute. The silence of a parched countryside."
    At the beginning of August the constitutional health of England was beginning to falter badly in the continuing heat.

    Only at the London Zoo in Regent's Park were there any signs of enjoyment of the oppressive temperatures. Although the keepers' thick uniforms had been replaced with special lightweight jackets, their charges were thriving in the heatwave.
    The lion cubs, cheetahs, leopards and jackals in the King's Collection had become unusually active and the lordly ungulates, the rhinoceros and giraffe, strode round their enclosures happier than they had been since leaving the large sunny plains of their homelands.

    The royal party had arrived at Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, for the Regatta, "an enchanting picture of gleaming sails and gently swaying masts", and the King, George V, and the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII, had taken to cooling themselves with a pre-breakfast swim in Osborne Bay.
    But the press had quickly discovered this secluded place. As cameramen jostled to get their shots of the sovereign and his heir in bathing dress, a statement was issued by Buckingham Palace: "If less objectionable behaviour is not observed by the photographers they are warned that steps will be taken to stop the nuisance."

    Many miles from the seashore, an infinitely more newsworthy if less obviously photogenic sequence of events was taking place.
    In London on the first day of the month the temperature maintained a steady 81F, and just as the dock owners were hoping that the strike action of earlier in the summer was a thing of the past, between four and five thousand men employed in the Victoria and Albert Docks stopped work, and the place was at a standstill.

    That August the striking men were at least relieved to be out in the open wider streets of central London. With its narrow alleys, cramped and airless at the best of times, the East End had become intolerable in the August weather.
    In filthy six-storey tenement buildings with narrow stone staircases, four or five people might share not just one room but one bed, crammed into a 12ft by 10ft space, a baby squashed in one corner, a banana crate for its cot. The air was thick with the rankness of unwashed bedding and stale food.

    Even during the stifling summer nights there was little chance of rest, according to one exhausted mother, for "throughout the hours of darkness - which were not hours of silence - the sleepless folk talked incessantly."
    Across the country the sun continued to burn down, and the hum of activity in meadow and field ceased. The water pump and the well in the village of High Easter in Dunmow, Essex, both ran dry.

    Taking advantage of cloudless skies, many keen but inexperienced car drivers had saved up their petrol and took their chance on the roads.
    Mr and Mrs George Cain from Yarmouth, Norfolk, skidded on the hot slippery tarmacadam surface of the Yarmouth streets and struck an electric cable. The car was hurled across the pavement and Mrs Cain's sister, Miss Smith, was impaled on the adjoining railings.

    At Ditchling in Sussex a newspaper delivery boy drove into an oncoming horse, his van crumpling on impact as the horse was crushed to death on the bonnet.
    By late August lassitude had begun to further weaken the nation's energy, as the hot weather hung over England like a brocade curtain. The relentless sunshine seemed to have bleached the colour from life, replacing it with an oppressive haze.

    City dwellers were worst affected, and that year holidays as a means of escape were in fashion as never before. Summer holidays had been increasing in popularity over the years since the 1871 Bank Holiday Act had entitled everyone to a day off on Whit Monday in May and another in early August, just as everyone was due days off at Christmas and Easter. But these new work-free days were intended for unrestricted freedom in the sun, rather than for religious contemplation.

    In 1911, 55 per cent of the British population were taking the minimum of a one-day trip to the sea in the summer. Some work places, including paradoxically the railway companies themselves, had begun to introduce paid holidays longer than the customary half-day, and the double advantages of good weather and financial security for sometimes as much as a week combined with the ever-improving transport services to make England's coastline a crowded place that August.

    There, in the simple, cost-free pleasures of sunshine, sand and water, a fleetingly realisable equality was to be found by the poor, the suffragettes, the trade unionists, and even the parliamentarians.
    Sun-darkened skin was still considered most undesirable, the give-away sign of an outside labourer, and special creams to counteract accidental tanning were advertised in the women's magazines. The Lady helpfully advised the use of "Sulpholine" lotion, "a simple remedy for clearing the skin of eruptions, roughness and skin discoloration."

    A greater hazard even than sunburn was the risk of exposing naked flesh in public. On many bathing beaches the sexes were still segregated, although at Bexhill in Sussex the experiment of mixed bathing had attracted much excited comment.

    A cautious entry from a bathing-machine was the recognised means of making bodily contact with the sea, though at a shilling a time it was not cheap. In the town hall at Broadstairs, Kent, a conservative-minded town (in 1911 it was still being promoted in the South Eastern and Chatham Railway Handbook as Charles Dickens's favourite resort), a large unmissable notice in the hall cautioned that "No female over eight years shall bathe from any machine except within the bounds marked for females." It hung next to a second poster warning that "Bathing dresses must extend from the neck to the knees."

    These rules were accepted unquestioningly and were clearly not seen as restrictions, for the editor of the Handbook felt able to boast that Broadstairs was "one of the freshest and freest little places in the world".
    The fully enclosed bathing machine was a sort of garden shed with wheels at one end, its walls and roof made either of wood or canvas. Men and women would enter the machine from the back, while it was parked high up from the water line on the gender-segregated beach.

    In the pitch-black hut, windowless in order to discourage any peering in, bathers would remove their clothes and put them up high on a shelf inside the machine to keep them dry, before struggling in the dark with the elaborate costume required for swimming.
    A sharp tap from inside was the agreed signal for a horse, a muscly man or even occasionally a mechanical pulley contraption to drag the whole machine and its human contents to a line just beyond the surf.

    There the bather could slip discreetly into water up to the neck, with no chance of any part of the body being exposed to the view of those who remained on the beach. At the point of entry there was usually an attendant, irrationally sometimes of the opposite sex. Some ladies looked forward to the moment of being lifted into the sea by strong local arms more than any other part of their holiday.
    By early September, summer was not quite ready to release its long hold on the year.

    There was a feeling that month of a youthful boldness, a feeling which stretched beyond the school walls. On 6 September Thomas W Burgess, aged 37, covered in lard and stark naked except for a pair of thick motorist's goggles and a black rubber bathing cap, stepped into the sea at Folkestone to make his 16th attempt to reach France by swimming across the Channel.

    Despite numerous attempts over the last 36 years, no one had succeeded in this since Matthew Webb reached Calais in August 1875. Webb was not there to wave Burgess into the water; he had been killed in 1883 trying to swim the Niagara Falls in Canada.

    Averaging a mile and three-quarters an hour and accompanied by a boat whose crew fed him a grape from time to time and 11 drops of champagne every 30 minutes, Burgess followed the irregular course dictated by the tide, a route he described as "a figure of a badly written capital M with a loop on first down stroke".

    After 37 miles and with only two and a half left to swim he sensed himself entering foreign waters, and was promptly stung badly by a cluster of poisonous pink French jellyfish. To show he was in no way offended, he asked the boat crew to start singing "La Marseillaise", and to their accompaniment he landed on the beautiful deserted beach at Le Chatelet near Sangatte.

    On the day of the swim the temperature recorder at South Kensington registered 92F, and people found themselves crossing over to the shady side of the street. There was still a severe water shortage in pockets of the country, wool workers in Bradford Mills being laid off because there was no water for the night-time cleaning of the wool.

    On 11 September the average temperature suddenly dropped by 20 degrees and The Times forecast good news: "The condition over the kingdom as a whole is no longer of the fine settled type of last week and the prospects of rain before long appear to be more hopeful for all districts."


  • Registered Users Posts: 300 ✭✭TheGreenGiant


    be gob, wouldn't mind that next summer. Beats heading abroad for a bit of sun and after this Christmas Budget, it doesn't look likely many will be able to head for a forign holiday next year :(


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    some info for you

    BEST SUMMERS

    1887
    The driest year of the 19th century. A quarter of the average rainfall fell in parts of the country in June with none in Devon and Cornwall. But the drought meant streams and rivers dried up and crops suffered.

    1893
    Mile End in East London clinched the record for the longest run of days without rain. From March 4 to May 15 - 73 days.

    1911
    July was hot and constantly sunny with Epsom notching up 36C and Hastings enjoying 384 hours of sun. August saw Raunds, Northamptonshire notch up 36.7C and even on September 8 it reached 34.6C.

    1976
    Standpipes in the street and adverts telling us to share a bath. The hottest summer since records began brought drought but a glorious summer. From June 23 to July 17 there were 15 days of 32C.
    Heathrow saw 52 days above 25C. There was little rain until the end of August.

    2003
    The hottest day in British history was notched up six years ago today in Faversham, Kent, when 38.5C was recorded. But a dispute over the reading means that the 38.1C at Kew Gardens on the same day stands as the official record. Scotland notched up a new record high, too, with 32.9C set at Greycrook in the Borders, beating a record set in 1908.


    WORST SUMMERS

    1816
    There were no bikinis on the beaches of Worthing this year (not that they had been invented, mind). 1816 saw temperatures that would make a penguin reach for a muffler. Averages were 12.8C for June, 13.4C for July and 13.9C for August. Cold spells around the world were thought to have been triggered by low solar activity and volcanos spewing ash into the atmosphere.

    1879
    One of the coldest summers for the previous 160 years, the warmest it got was 26.8C in Norfolk. It was also the wettest summer in the North East until just two years ago.

    1903
    London suffered the wettest month on record with a third of its rainfall dropping in two weeks in June. In Camden, rain fell continuously from 1pm on the 13th to 11.30pm two days later - 58 hours and 30 minutes. The record still stands.

    1909
    The coldest June for 230 years, dropping to 10C. July wasn't much better and from May 23 to August 6 temperatures didn't climb above 27C.

    1954
    At Tynemouth not a single ray of sun was seen from August 16 to 24.

    WEIRDEST SUMMERS

    1906
    A scorching day on September 1 saw Manchester City take on Woolwich Arsenal in 32C heat. The part-time players, on a diet of beer and cigarettes, soon began to wilt under the heat and three City players were out of the game before half-time. The team finished with just six players - but sporting Arsenal kept the score low at just 4-1.

    1913
    The saying goes that the weather on St Swithin's day, July 15, will set the tone for the next 40. But in 1913 15 hours of rain was followed by 31 days of sun from 40 in London.

    1936
    The temperature dropped to 1.1C overnight on August 29 in Rickmansworth, Herts. But by the middle of the afternoon the thermometer had soared to 29.4C.

    1975
    The latest snow storms recorded fell across Britain in early June, as far south as Surrey. The Derbyshire v Lancashire cricket match at Buxton was cancelled due to snow.

    1982
    Newcastle managed to go from June 17 to 26 with just 20 minutes of sun.

    STORMIEST SUMMERS

    1843
    One of the worst storms to batter Britain happened on August 9. Hail stones as big as pigeon eggs fell, forming huge drifts. Small tornadoes uprooted trees and wrecked roofs. Crops were flattened which led to a poor harvest.

    1906
    Britain basked in a heatwave during July. But on August 2 the weather broke in Guildford and the storm saw almost continuous lightning and fierce wind, uprooting trees, knocking holes in the bridge and demolishing houses. At the station trains were lifted off their tracks.

    1912
    A devastating flood hit Norfolk when a quarter of average annual rainfall fell on August 25. The previous high water mark in Norwich was exceeded by 15ins. Three drowned. 8,000 made homeless.

    1939
    Lightning killed seven people and injured 19 when storms swept London. The dead were on a day out in Ilford's Valentines Park when they sheltered in a hut. But lightning struck the iron roof with devastating consequences.

    1958
    The biggest hailstone recorded hit West Sussex in Horsham, creating a 60 mm crater. It weighed nearly five ounces and was 10cms across.



    norwich readings 1913-1942


    temp%5B2%5D.jpg





    weatherwise%20rain%20g_001%5B1%5D.jpg




    weatherwise%20Meantemp%203_001%5B1%5D.jpg





    weatherwise%20sun%2055_001%5B1%5D.jpg


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    update

    Spotless Days
    Current Stretch: 18 days
    2009 total: 229 days (79%)
    Since 2004: 740 days
    Typical Solar Min: 485 days


  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    bfly.gif



    Detailed observations of sunspots have been obtained by the Royal Greenwich Observatory since 1874.

    These observations include information on the sizes and positions of sunspots as well as their numbers. These data show that sunspots do not appear at random over the surface of the sun but are concentrated in two latitude bands on either side of the equator.

    A butterfly diagram (updated monthly) showing the positions of the spots for each rotation of the sun since May 1874 shows that these bands first form at mid-latitudes, widen, and then move toward the equator as each cycle progresses.


    Notice too how sunspot numbers have increased alot from solar cycle 15.





    Today's sun




    mdi_sunspots_1024.jpg


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    a little spoilsport.

    Daily Sun: 21 Oct. 09
    spacer.gif
    midi163.gif
    spacer.gif
    Tiny new-cycle sunspot 1028, which emerged yesterday for a few hours, is already fading away.


    i wonder would a spot like that have even been noticed in times of the maunder and dalton minimums to break a lenghty spotless sun.

    i seriously doubt it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    Saw this report on sky news in august,only came across it now on youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09h48RJiQM0


  • Registered Users Posts: 17,825 ✭✭✭✭silverharp


    redsunset wrote: »
    Saw this report on sky news in august,only came across it now on youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09h48RJiQM0


    lost me on the odd and even cycles , can you explain the point he was trying to make

    A belief in gender identity involves a level of faith as there is nothing tangible to prove its existence which, as something divorced from the physical body, is similar to the idea of a soul. - Colette Colfer





  • silverharp wrote: »
    lost me on the odd and even cycles , can you explain the point he was trying to make


    I think it's something to do with magnetic fields co-inciding and opposing on alternate cycles. Must read up on it again in one of the links further up this thread.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    silverharp wrote: »
    lost me on the odd and even cycles , can you explain the point he was trying to make
    This video from piers should help you understand that better.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qi8oZ2vG0c



    im also gonna email piers and ask alot of questions,so hopefully he'll respond so i can share it with you all.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    All-time October low recorded in Bavaria

    Published: 20 Oct 09 16:36 CET
    Online: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20091020-22693.html
    Meteorologists on Tuesday morning recorded the lowest ever October temperature in Germany, as the mercury dipped to a chilly -24.3 degrees Celsius in Bavaria’s Berchtesgaden national park.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset


    Sunspot activity has shown an increase since the long quiet spell of July-September 2009 (51 days in a row with a blank solar surface), but it’s certainly nothing to crow about just yet.
    A pronounced sunspot group helped push the solar 10.7cm radio flux to its highest level in 18 months in late September; since then, a 19-day blank streak resumed the march of sunspot-less days which now ranks 6th for any year since 1900.
    A weak sunspot briefly formed for only a matter of hours on October 21st ; but there’s an indication of another very minimal one forming.
    None of these events signal any type of dramatic uptrend in solar activity; in fact, the sun was far more active as to sunspot counts in October 2008 than observed thus far in October 2009 (thru Oct 21).
    sunspot_list_10_21_09.JPG
    As I have stated in numerous previous sunspot posts, trends make or break either an ending or continuance of this deep solar minimum.
    The radio flux “spike” in late September was significant, but until the overall solar flux and sunspot activity holds a consistent trend for a few months, we are still placed in the position of “hide and watch”.


  • Registered Users Posts: 17,825 ✭✭✭✭silverharp


    just listening to this now, seems interesting

    http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2009/Plimer.html


    Ian Plimer
    Author


    Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science



    Climate, sea level, and ice sheets have always changed, and the changes observed today are less than those of the past. Climate changes are cyclical and are driven by the Earth's position in the galaxy, the sun, wobbles in the Earth's orbit, ocean currents, and plate tectonics. In previous times, atmospheric carbon dioxide was far higher than at present but did not drive climate change. No runaway greenhouse effect or acid oceans occurred during times of excessively high carbon dioxide. During past glaciations, carbon dioxide was higher than it is today. The non-scientific popular political view is that humans change climate. Do we have reason for concern about possible human-induced climate change?

    This book's 504 pages and over 2,300 references to peer-reviewed scientific literature and other authoritative sources engagingly synthesize what we know about the sun, earth, ice, water, and air. Importantly, in a parallel to his 1994 book challenging creation science, Telling Lies for God, Ian Plimer describes Al Gore's book and movie An Inconvenient Truth as long on scientific misrepresentations. Trying to deal with these misrepresentations is somewhat like trying to argue with creationists, he writes, who misquote, concoct evidence, quote out of context, ignore contrary evidence, and create evidence ex nihilo.

    Ian Plimer, twice winner of Australia's highest scientific honor, the Eureka Prize, is professor in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at The University of Adelaide and is author of six other books written for the general public in addition to more than 120 scientific papers.

    A belief in gender identity involves a level of faith as there is nothing tangible to prove its existence which, as something divorced from the physical body, is similar to the idea of a soul. - Colette Colfer



  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,693 ✭✭✭Redsunset




Advertisement