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Oh, where, oh where have all the sunspots gone? The fiery orange ball overhead has quieted during the past three years. Quiet in the sense that there have been very few sunspots – those black blotches on the sun’s surface caused by intense magnetic activity. But just how quiet is quiet? Well, so far during the recent solar minimum (a period of low activity during the sun’s typical 11-year solar cycle), we’ve seen 183 sun-spotless days in 2007, 266 in 2008 and 259 in 2009 (as of Dec. 16 2009). Earth hasn’t witnessed a similar three-year stretch (1911, 192, 1913)...

The theory that signs of global warming could be the result of sunspots rather than carbon dioxide emissions caused by humans has come under attack from climate scientists. Sceptics about man-made climate change frequently cite research apparently linking natural variations in solar activity with fluctuations in temperatures on Earth. The alternative explanation was the centrepiece of The Great Global Warming Swindle, a 2007 Channel 4 documentary which provoked fierce argument. It is based on the work of Prof Eigil Friis-Christensen and Henrik Svensmark of the of the Danish National Space Centre, who both published studies in the 1990s appearing to...

INCOMING CME: This morning at 0120 UT, an eruption of magnetic fields around sunspot 1035 produced a long-duration C4-class solar flare and hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) in the general direction of Earth. High-latitude sky watchers should prepare for auroras when the CME arrives on or about Dec. 18th Sunspot 1035 is growing rapidly and it is now seven times wider than Earth. This makes it an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. Yesterday, Rogerio Marcon of Campinas, Brazil, photographed a maelstrom of hot plasma and magnetic filaments connecting the sunspot's dark cores: Solar activity is picking up," he...

New sunspot 1035 is growing rapidly and it is now seven times wider than Earth. This makes it an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. ... The magnetic polarity of the spot identifies it as a member of Solar Cycle 24--the cycle we've been waiting for to end the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. One spot isn't enough to end the lull, but sunspot 1035 could herald bigger things to come.

US Navy Physicist warns of possibly 'several decades of crushing cold temperatures and global famine' By Retired U.S. Navy Physicist and Engineer James A. Marusek 2 Apr 09 – Excerpts: “The sun has gone very quiet as it transitions to Solar Cycle 24. “Since the current transition now exceeds 568 spotless days, it is becoming clear that sun has undergone a state change. It is now evident that the Grand Maxima state that has persisted during most of the 20th century has come to an abrupt end. “(The sun) might (1) revert to the old solar cycles or (2) the...

September 3, 2009: The sun is in the pits of the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. Weeks and sometimes whole months go by without even a single tiny sunspot. The quiet has dragged out for more than two years, prompting some observers to wonder, are sunspots disappearing? "Personally, I'm betting that sunspots are coming back," says researcher Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona. But, he allows, "there is some evidence that they won't." Penn's colleague Bill Livingston of the NSO has been measuring the magnetic fields of sunspots for the past 17 years,...

The sun is in the pits of a very deep solar minimum. Many researchers thought the sunspot cycle had hit bottom in 2008 when the sun was blank 73% of the time. Not so. 2009 is on the verge of going even lower. So far this year, the sun has been blank 75% of the time, and only a serious outbreak of sunspots over the next few weeks will prevent 2009 from becoming the quietest year in a century.

No matter what conclusions one gravitates towards regarding climate change and potential solar impacts, the data is irrefutable: the sun is slowly becoming more active. The 10.7cm radio flux spiked in late September with its highest reading in 18 months; now, and this is very significant compared to the pattern since March 2008, it has spiked again, exceeding the late September number and reaching a Cycle 24 maximum of 76.9. This is still a very low value compared to the solar maximum flux numbers, which routinely exceed 200. However, it is an upward move from the “basement” numbers of the...

<p>Global Warming: President Obama warns of planetary doom at the U.N. if we fail to pass cap-and-trade legislation. Meanwhile, a former warm-monger predicts decades of cooling as the sun stays nearly "spotless."</p> <p>The president had hoped to address Tuesday's United Nations climate change summit in New York with a finished cap-and-trade bill. Failing that, he hoped he'd at least have a version of the Waxman-Markey bill that has passed the House on his desk before the Copenhagen talks in December to cobble together a follow-up to the failed Kyoto Protocol.</p>

"We're experiencing the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, "so it is no surprise that cosmic rays are at record levels for the Space Age [i.e. past 50+ years or so -etl]." Galactic cosmic rays come from outside the solar system. They are subatomic particles--mainly protons but also some heavy nuclei--accelerated to almost light speed by distant supernova explosions. Cosmic rays cause "air showers" of secondary particles when they hit Earth's atmosphere; they pose a health hazard to astronauts; and a single cosmic ray can disable a satellite if it...

Better dig out that wool hat and earmuffs. At the UN's World Climate Change Conference in Geneva over two weeks ago one of the worlds top climate change scientists, predicted that we are facing 10-20 years of global cooling. The Scientist, named Mojib Latif said the cooling would be the result of changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Latif also said that the NAO may be partly the cause of warming during the past 30 years. Latif says that he is not a global warming skeptic, and...

Global Warming: President Obama warns of planetary doom at the U.N. if we fail to pass cap-and-trade legislation. Meanwhile, a former warm-monger predicts decades of cooling as the sun stays nearly "spotless."The president had hoped to address Tuesday's United Nations climate change summit in New York with a finished cap-and-trade bill. Failing that, he hoped he'd at least have a version of the Waxman-Markey bill that has passed the House on his desk before the Copenhagen talks in December to cobble together a follow-up to the failed Kyoto Protocol. Not only did that not happen in the cool summer of...

The average person doesn't associate coolness with the sun. The sun releases energy through deep nuclear fusion reactions in its core and has surface temperatures as hot as 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to NASA's Web site. Not cool at all. But the sun's recent activity, or lack thereof, may be linked to the pleasant summer temperatures the midwest has enjoyed this year, said Charlie Perry, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Lawrence. The sun is at a low point of a deep solar minimum in which there are little to no sunspots on its surface.

The '2010 Old Farmer's Almanac,' which is now on store shelves, says it's going to be colder in the coming months, with more moisture for the spring. "We're looking for colder-than-normal temperatures through most of the winter," Janice Stillman, editor of this year's edition, said. "But, indeed as the days lengthen, the cold will strengthen, and we're looking for more wet than white before Christmas, and after that, come January - a snowstorm; February - a snowstorm; well-below normal temps, and snow right up through April, which I know will make a lot of folks happy that go skiing," she...

Last week there was a recommendation for Al Gore to buy a new winter coat. At the UN's World Climate Change Conference in Geneva last one of the worlds top climate change scientists, predicted that we are facing 10-20 years of global cooling. The Scientist, named Mojib Latif said the cooling would be the result of changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Latif also said that the NAO may be partly the cause of warming during the past 30 years. Today more interesting news National Center for...

Climate Change: A team of international scientists has finally figured out why sunspots have a dramatic effect on the weather. It shows the folly of fearing the SUV while dismissing that thermonuclear furnace in the sky.Mankind once worshiped the sun. Now the world studiously ignores it as nations prepare to hammer out a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, in Copenhagen in December. Something is indeed rotten in Denmark. Our own government is committed to fighting climate change whether it be though Son of Kyoto or our own growth-capping, job-killing cap-and-trade legislation known as Waxman-Markey. Despite...

SOLAR MINIMUM VS. GLOBAL WARMING: From 2002 to 2008, decreasing solar irradiance has countered much anthropogenic warming of Earth's surface. That's the conclusion of researchers Judith Lean (NRL) and David Rind (NASA/GISS), who have just published a new analysis of global temperatures in the Geophysical Research Letters. Lean and Rind considered four drivers of climate change: solar activity, volcanic eruptions, ENSO (El Nino), and the accumulation of greenhouse gases. The following plot shows how much each has contributed to the changing temperature of Earth's surface since 1980: Volcanic aerosols are a source of cooling; ENSO and greenhouse gases cause heating;...

A new sunspot is emerging about 15o north of the sun's equator: map. Pete Lawrence sends this picture from his backyard observatory in Selsey, UK: "It is small, but a welcome sight, especially after the current long run of no surface activity," he says. Indeed, if this active region consolidates into a true dark-cored sunspot, it will break a string of nearly 52 spotless days, one of the longest quiet spells of the current solar minimum. Readers with solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor developments.

A new study in the journal Science by a team of international of researchers led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research have found that the sunspot cycle has a big effect on the earth's weather. The puzzle has been how fluctuations in the sun's energy of about 0.1 percent over the course of the 11-year sunspot cycle could affect the weather? The press release describing the new study explains: The team first confirmed a theory that the slight increase in solar energy during the peak production of sunspots is absorbed by stratospheric ozone. The energy warms the air in...

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 [snip] 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. ... Extrapolating their data into the future suggests that sunspots could completely disappear within decades. [snip] "Whether this is an omen of long-term sunspot decline, analogous...

This image of the sun shows no sunspots continuing to be the case The sun seems to be back to its slumbering ways as we head towards the fall 2009. During the spring and summer months, sunspot activity, one measure of the sun’s energy output (another is the 10.7cm radio flux), was quite active. In July, the strongest flare in two years erupted from a spot that was rotating across the face of the sun. July was the third month in a row with heightened activity; this suggested a trend which would at last fall in line with projections...

Courtesy spaceweather.com The year 2009 has moved into 8th place in the rankings of years with the most sunspot-free days since 1900.The top 10 are shown in the accompanying graph; three of these have been in the past three years.In fact, 2008, which was the quietest solar year in a century, could be bettered by 2009. If 70% of the remaining days in 2009 are sunspot free, we’ll pass 2008, bumping it into 3rd place. The greatest number of sunspot free days since the year 1900 was in 1913, with approx. 320. The math shows that this record at least...

NASA’s David Hathaway has adjusted his expectations of Solar Cycle 24 downwards. He is quoted in the New York Times here Specifically, he said: ” Still, something like the Dalton Minimum — two solar cycles in the early 1800s that peaked at about an average of 50 sunspots — lies in the realm of the possible.” NASA has caught up with my prediction in early 2006 of a Dalton Minimum repeat, so for a brief, shining moment of three years, I have had a better track record in predicting solar activity than NASA. Hathaway-NYT

Climate Change: NASA predicts the lowest sunspot activity since 1928. Is a major solar storm in the offing? While we worry about man-made warming, the sun may soon show us who's boss. It's the sort of news that makes one's eyes glaze over. "If our prediction is correct, Solar Cycle 24 will have a peak sunspot number of 90, the lowest of any cycle since 1928 when Solar Cycle 16 peaked at 78," said Doug Biesecker of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center. Yes, space has weather, in the form of solar radiation that varies with...

Climate Change: The Earth has been warming ever since the end of the Little Ice Age. But guess what: Researchers say mankind is to blame for that, too.s we've noted, 2008 has been a year of records for cold and snowfall and may indeed be the coldest year of the 21st century thus far. In the U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month of October. Global thermometers stopped rising after 1998, and have plummeted in the last two years by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius. The 2007-2008 temperature...

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate

Climate Change: Channeling King Canute, G-8 leaders agree to wreck the world's economy, and ours, by pledging to prevent temperatures from rising more than 4 degrees by 2050. What if the Earth has other plans?Canute was the legendary king whose sycophantic followers praised his power and wisdom. He was The One of his time. He once stood on the shore and commanded the waves to halt. As the story goes, he was exercising his ego when in fact he was giving his followers a dose of reality — the power of man over nature is finite and inconsequential. We were...

A sluggish, jet stream-like flow deep inside the sun could be to blame for the delay in increased solar activity that has been stumping astronomers. (Read "Sun Oddly Quiet—Hints at Next 'Little Ice Age'?") The jet stream, which is actually a plasma current called a torsional oscillation, has been migrating more slowly than usual through the star's interior, according to a team led by Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. Every 11 years the sun generates new jet streams near its poles. These streams slowly shift from east to west toward the solar equator over...

          Solar awakening: Two sunspots shown / July 4, 2009 / Dave Tyler During the past four years, the sun has been in a prolonged quiet phase which has led some to claim this signals a period of global cooling. The number of “blank� sunspot days, a measure of overall solar energy output, has been more than 30% above the long-term average.The year 2008 saw the sun with its lowest number of sunspots for any year in a century. This only fueled the speculation of an impending global cooling scenario.In fact, slight cooling has been observed since the year 2001, but the...

"Yesterday, a sunspot emerged in the circled region, but it disappeared so fast that it did not receive an official number."

Enlarge ImageWake-up call. The sun's jet streams (in red, right) have reached their critical position, and soon the first sunspots of the new solar cycle may mar the star's currently placid-looking surface (inset).Credit: National Solar Observatory/GONG (main image); SOHO/MDI (inset) Maybe old Sol didn't hear the alarm clock. After a mysterious 2-year delay, the next 11-year solar cycle seems ready to begin, scientists say. That means the reemergence of sunspots, and with them periodic electromagnetic assaults on global navigation, communications, and power supplies--as well as brilliant auroras in the polar regions. For unknown reasons, the sun goes through cycles...

Inside the sun: more than just a glowing ball The unusually long quiet period of the Sun’s present activity may be due to the motion of “sluggish� jet streams beneath the solar surface, according to scientists at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Arizona, US. The scientists’ observations, which show an east–west jet stream has taken a year longer to migrate south by 10° than in the previous solar cycle, also indicate that the sun is moving into its next cycle. “We need to continue these observations for many, many more years to fully understand what is going on,� said...

Climate Change: NASA predicts the lowest sunspot activity since 1928. Is a major solar storm in the offing? While we worry about man-made warming, the sun may soon show us who's boss... But this dry statistic has more significance for the earth and its climate than all of Al Gore's gloom and doom about tailpipe emissions and rising sea levels. Whether the warm-mongers like it or not, the sun rules earth's climate — always has and always will.

An international panel of experts led by NOAA and sponsored by NASA has released a new prediction for the next solar cycle. Solar Cycle 24 will peak, they say, in May 2013 with a below-average number of sunspots.

Saudi Arabia just announced it was shutting down half of its oil production. It also says it will keep the capacity shut down for at least a year – maybe longer. The move would wipe out about five percent of the world’s oil supply overnight. What do you expect to happen? It would be bedlam. Oil prices would skyrocket. The price would jump to $100 or more within minutes. Prices would spike even if demand continued to dip and oil stockpiles stayed high. Gasoline prices would climb too. Every politician would vow to do something about it. Every major media...

Enlarge ImageFickle. The predicted coming solar maximum (red line) compared with the past three solar maxima (blue line). Inset: The sun's face, showing dark sunspots. Credit: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center Fans of solar storms and power failures are in for some bad news. Today, a panel of the world's solar scientists announced that the next solar maximum--when the sun's irradiance, solar wind, and sunspots are most volatile--is not coming as soon and will not be as strong as predicted. That means fewer solar storms, which can cause power outages here on Earth. For the past 3 centuries, the...

MONDAY, May 11 (HealthDay News) -- Climate change isn't only bad for the Earth, it may be bad for your health -- especially if you have allergies or asthma. Global warming is making pollen seasons last longer, creating more ozone in the air, and even expanding the areas where insects flourish, putting more people with bee allergies at greater risk, experts say. [snip] Those changes will mean more people with allergies and asthma will suffer.

Washington, May 5 (ANI): Some scientists say the prolonged lull in solar activity hints towards the next “Little Ice Age”, which could occur in the near future. The sun is the least active it’s been in decades and the dimmest in a hundred years. The lull is causing some scientists to recall the Little Ice Age, an unusual cold spell in Europe and North America, which lasted from about 1300 to 1850. The coldest period of the Little Ice Age, between 1645 and 1715, has been linked to a deep dip in solar storms known as the Maunder Minimum. During...

NOAA released its prediction for sunspot cycle 24 this past Friday, May 8 - - normally a droll affair, attended by few and hardly worthy of politics. No more. Like eveything else coming out of Washington, D.C., this NOAA report has a "spin" attached, in the form of a sensationalized tale of solar-storm damage. Well, NOAA is a Federal government agency, and the Federal government these days operates on the basis of crisis!!!, be it real, imagined, or manufactured.

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. Even so, Earth could get hit by a devastating solar storm at any time, with potential damages from the most severe level of storm exceeding $1 trillion. NASA funds the prediction panel. Solar storms are eruptions of energy and matter that escape from the sun and may head toward Earth, where even a weak storm can damage satellites and...

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 low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity. Evidence from tree trunks and ice cores suggest that the Sun is calming down after an unusually high point in its activity. Professor Mike Lockwood,...

Sunspots could be seen by the Soho telescope in 2001 (l), but not this year (r) 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...

Harvard astrophysicist says recent cooler temps are a result of fewer sunspots Sunspot activity may be a primary factor in climate fluctuations, according to Willie Soon, a researcher affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Harvard College Observatory, who offered the hypothesis in an interview with TG Daily, an online news source. Although many climatologists have cited increases in carbon dioxide as the primary cause of the temperature increases associated with global warming, Soon maintained that solar radiation from sunspots also has a great effect. “The sun is a great driving force to climate change,” Soon said in...

Boston (MA) - Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon tells us that Earth has seen a reduced level of sunspot activity for the past 18 months, and is currently at the lowest levels seen in almost a century. Dr. Soon says "The sun is just slightly dimmer and has been for about the last 18 months. And that is because there are very few sunspots." He says when the sun has less sunspots, it gives off less energy, and the Earth tends to cool. He notes 2008 was a cold year for this very reason, and that 2009 may be cold...

Associated Press WASHINGTON — The sun has been unusually quiet lately, with fewer sunspots and weaker magnetic fields than in nearly a century. A quiet sun is good for Earth: GPS systems are more accurate, satellites stay in orbit longer; even the effects of manmade global warming are marginally reduced, though just by three-tenths of a degree at most...

The sun is in the pits of the deepest solar minimum in almost 100 years. At such a calm time, even a little solar activity is remarkable.

Brrrr! It’s been a cold week, in a cold month, in a cold winter. And it shows no sign of letting up. Last week the Northwest was gripped by unseasonably cold weather. Areas west of the Cascades saw temperatures dip into the 20s. Locally we dropped as low as 27 on the 13th. Eugene was even colder (24 on the 11th). Two days later, Eugene’s 25 degree-low broke the daily record (26) set in 1944. So far in March our local Hyslop Experiment Station has seen nine days with lows of 32 or below. The month of March averages 5.7...

Cliff's Weather Gems By Randy Mann Since early in 2008, sunspot numbers (storms on the sun) have greatly decreased. Some scientists are concerned that the recent decline in our sun's activity is unusual and could persist. Others say that our sun is expected to start seeing an increase in sunspots based on previous long-term cycles, but those numbers were earlier predicted to pick up by the fall of 2008, which didn't happen. In August of 2008, there were no sunspots. Since that time, there has only been a slight increase in solar activity. Within the last 30 days, there were...

UK Telegraph -- The NSIDC somewhat shamefacedly admitted that a problem had developed with one of its satellites. The data for the previous 45 days was found to be so faulty that it had been withdrawn. But inevitably this provoked the question as to why quality control seemed to be so poor on one of the world's leading official sources of climate data that it had taken an outside observer to point out that something was wrong. This is by no means the first time that data on which the official case for global warming rests have had to be...

More amazing images from the largest mass civil disobedience for the climate in U.S. history where thousands of activists shut down the Capitol Power Plant. The only way we’re going to solve the climate crisis is by coming together and taking action. Like this: