Saturday, December 11, 2010

The Longest & Quietest Solar Magnetic Minimum in Recorded History

Although solar cycle 24 began almost 3 years ago (officially on January 4, 2008), the sun continues to be unusually quiet at this point in the solar cycle with predictions of maximal sunspot activity repeatedly adjusted downward. A key indicator of solar magnetic activity, the Ap Index (average planetary magnetic index) has reached the lowest absolute values, lowest 5 year moving average values, and by far the highest number of continuous months ≤ 10 since record keeping by NOAA began in 1932:
Monthly Average Ap Index and 5 yr Running Average
In prior solar cycles, the Ap Index has been noted to lag the beginning of the sunspot cycle by up to one year. Solar cycle 24 continues to exhibit unique behavior compared to the 7 previous solar cycles recorded by modern instrumentation and offers more evidence the sun is undergoing a significant state change. Global temperature changes typically lag reduced solar activity due to moderating effects of heat storage in the oceans. Solar state changes in the past such as the Sporer, Maunder, and Dalton minima coincide with the colder periods of the Little Ice Age, which lasted from about 1300 to 1850. The HADCRU global thermometer record coincidentally began in 1850 and shows a mere 0.7C recovery from the frigid temperatures at the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850.

4 comments:

  1. Current cooling is a product of low solar activity more than 2 years ago. The projections of global cooling for the next 20 years or more is getting more realistic.

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  2. In 2006 NASA scientists predicted a massive solar storm in 2012 not seen since 1858 - then it knocked out telegraph. the current low level solar activity could be the calm before the storm - a storm that could be devastating to the electrical grid and electronics in general.
    see: http://space.about.com/od/sunsol/a/Solar_Flare_2012_Conspiracy.htm

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  3. I get in arguments about all the volcanic dust that went in the atmosphere this year. The official story is that all of it only made it as high as the Troposphere and not the Stratosphere where it would have a cooling effect on the weather. I still think some of that ash made it to the stratosphere.

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  4. The sun and our orbit around it far more causal on the weather than CO2. However, man has had an effect on the weather by disrupting the gulf stream with a rather massive oil spill. There is some fairly conclusive evidence of that available about that for those that care to look.

    Man made global warming pales compared to sun made global cooling.

    The masses ignorant of mathematics and science and robbed of critical thinking skills by schools designed to do just that, are easily fooled by bankers and globalists who must chuckle like giddy children that they are able to get hippies and large numbers of environmentalists to tax themselves and hand the money over to the bankers so they can fix the problem via carbon trading.

    The sun, the sun, the sun.

    BTW we just had a HUGE solar flare, happily we were on the opposite side of it. Research CME's and we again find we know very little about the universe or even solar system we live in. Sun may have effect on earth quakes via magnetic or other mechanisms of which we are currently unaware. We also OBVIOUSLY have a lot to learn about how the planet we live on works and it's relationship to the sun and moon and other planets and what effects these may or may not have on the planet, us and the weather.

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