Posted on 06/28/2016 6:43:48 PM PDT by rickmichaels
Astonishing images from NASA reveal no visible sunspots are currently visible on its surface.
This has caused the star to go into "cue call" mode having entered its quietest period for more than a century, Vencore Weather claims.
Decreased activity is not unusual as solar activity changes the volatile star's surface in 11-year cycles, astronomers say.
But researchers are warning this current cycle could have a devastating impact on Earth's atmosphere, possibly ushering in a second ice age, similar to the one which began in 1645.
Paul Dorian of Vencore Weather says the blank Sun is a sign that the next solar minimum is approaching.
He said: "At first, the blankness will stretch for just a few days at a time, then it’ll continue for weeks at a time, and finally it should last for months at a time when the sunspot cycle reaches its nadir.
"The next solar minimum phase is expected to take place around 2019 or 2020."
The Sun went completely spotless on June 4 with activity remaining low for several days.
It came after another period of low activity in February when NASA images showed the sun in "cueball mode".
(Excerpt) Read more at dailystar.co.uk ...
“Doomsday Looming”? Egad. Well, I’m a believer. Let me make my prediction: in about two months it is going to start getting progressively cooler, until the very water freezes on the ground and you see your breath in the air! Then crystallized water will begin falling from the clouds and accumulate on the ground, paralyzing cities and isolating people in their dwellings. Panicked cultists will roll this icy material into balls and stack them into idols with carrots for noses. Some will even pelt others with little balls of the stuff. We can call this...”winter”...
Persis Khambatta - only 49 yrs. old, of a heart attack ... yeah I looked it up, but she sure was a looker...
Arya should have told Walder Fey: “House Stark sends its regards.” But telling him the last thing he would see is a smiling Stark staring down at him was good enough.
The sun? They finally noticed it, did they?
Is it time to build more coal fired power plants to save the planet from the impending ice age?
1645??????
Jeez, the sun must be pretty powerful to overcome globull warming effects.
Methane delivered
But researchers are warning this current cycle could ushering in a second ice age, similar to the one which began in 1645.
Horsetacos.
1645-———Remember that a journalism major wrote that.
So, they’re saying we’re looking at an era of global warming cooling?
No, no, no. Higher taxes are the way to correct this.
Much higher income taxes and a new Sun tax so people will
will stop using so much solar energy. Get rid of those solar
panels! Tax the hell out of them! And a new government agency
to take control of the Sun. Federal swat teams will raid beaches
and homes with outdoor swimming pools and arrest sunbathers for violating the rules. More power to the Feds!!
Damn you mean now it’s going to be global cooling not warming? I gotta buy all new coats. Thanx NASA
The vacuum UV output is strongly coupled to the sunspot activity level. The UV couples extra energy into the atmosphere at times of high spot activity.
The solar winds also are increased with high sunspot counts present. The pressure of increased solar wind expands an imbedded magnetic field bubble a greater distance from the sun; and, reduces the cosmic ray count able to reach the Earth. The reduced cosmic ray count is implicated with less cloud cover available to reflect sunlight away from the surface.
The sun doesn’t vary overall output to any great extent; but, changes of form in which the energy is released do have a measurable impact on the Earth.
The nearest balck hole, a micro quasar type, is 1600 light years away. So, since the other two options are non-starters, the burn rate will remain the same
You mean global warming is horse hockey?
You should have heard the reaction to Sarah Palin at Politicon, yesterday. She received a huge round of booos when she told them that Man Made Global Warming was a hoax. Now we are learning about the cycles of the sun. Anyone with commons sense would have known it was the sun. It is only the hucksters who blame man, who they use to line their pockets.
Go read up on the "Maunder Minimum" and the "Little Ice Age".
Low sunspots = less solar wind.
Less solar wind = more high-energy radiation from space reaching the upper atmosphere, which acts to increase certain types of clouds.
These clouds lower the amount of the Sun's radiation reaching the earth, resulting in cooling trends.
The correlation between changes in sunspots and temperature, has been pretty well measured going back several hundred years.
The *other* factor has to do with the mechanism inside the Sun which produces sunspots in the first place: there are articles which show a drop in the sun's magnetic field, to the point that within a couple of years, the Sun might stop producing sunspots altogether.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627640-800-whats-wrong-with-the-sun/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627640-800-whats-wrong-with-the-sun/#bx276408B1
http://www.mrctv.org/blog/new-study-warns-ice-age-way
Thanks for saving me some typing. I was reading along wondering if anyone would introduce actual facts into this discussion. Mind you, the author was not displaying much mastery of the subject.
The Maunder minimum was a period that set in after two rather weak solar cycles that peaked in 1649 and 1659. This was ironically about half a century into the period when European scientists were aware of sunspots and could track them with safe devices that we don’t need to discuss here.
So from about the mid-1660s to a set of very weak cycles that peaked in 1693 and 1705, there was almost no solar activity. Then it resumed to levels that had been noted in the first half of the 17th century, and that lasted through most of the 18th century, in fact some quite strong solar activity developed with peaks in 1778 and 1787-89.
That was followed by weaker activity with minor peaks around 1801 and 1816 and finally 1830 — this period is known as the Dalton minimum. Many solar researchers say that the current levels appear similar to that data if you assume that the recent weak peak of 2012-13 was the analogue of 1816. The Dalton minimum also produced colder weather as was noted in the Maunder. In Britain, several of the coldest winters on record fall in the Dalton minimum, for example 1814 and 1820.
The sun then became very active again starting with a very strong peak in 1837-38 and displayed a regular cycle of strong activity for four cycles ending with the 1870 peak. During that period came the “Carrington event” of September 1859 when a huge solar flare fried the telegraph technology of that time. Despite the stronger solar activity, the climate did not warm up very much especially in North America.
Another weaker solar period then followed with more modest peaks in 1883, 1893 and 1905. Here again, the current situation reminds some of that interval. This was a period of notably cold winters once again, folks may have read about the Blizzard of 1888 in New England and also the very harsh conditions in other regions in that decade.
Oddly enough, the two most notable volcanic cooling episodes occurred near weak sunspot peaks in these intervals, namely Tambora in 1815 and Krakatoa in 1883. There is no recognized science to explain this coincidence and it may well be just that, but these large volcanic dust veils certainly intensified the cold tendencies already evident before they happened.
Most of the 20th century had strong and regular solar activity starting with a peak in 1917, and then every 10 or 11 years until the 1989 peak. In that run, the 1947 and 1957 peaks are among the all-time strongest, and 1979/1989 were also quite strong.
Then we come to the current situation, where 2001 produced a more moderate peak and 2012-13 a weak cycle. When you have weak cycles, you tend to see longer intervals of zero sunspot activity on both flanks. This showed up around 2006 to 2010 and is starting to show up again now. The numerical index values for the past cycle are very similar to the weak peaks in 1816 and 1883, all that’s missing is a major volcanic eruption event.
None of this can be taken very seriously for prediction because we have no established science of exactly what causes these longer-term variations or how long they might be. The record has been extended back into the pre-observational past by collecting records of auroral sightings, mostly in China and Korea where they were better recorded, with the assumption that the more frequent and intense the auroral sightings, the stronger solar activity otherwise unseen. What that longer record reveals is that the Sun has generally speaking been quite active about two thirds of the time, and rather inactive the other one third (over periods of about 100-200 years). There was apparently another minimum almost as weak as the Maunder in the 15th century. Other weak periods further back in the record look more like the briefer Dalton.
It has to be realized that the Maunder minimum was much longer than the Dalton or the more recent 1880-1910 downturn so we are nowhere near being into a second Maunder minimum yet. As to entering a new “little ice age” (and the author really missed the important qualifier, little, there was nothing like a major glacial event in the 17th century) even that is far from assured. Ironically, the much debated human influence on climate might be a wild card that is strong enough to prevent any such outcome — but even so, it is fairly obvious that the warmer times that occurred in the 20th century are being replaced by a more variable regime that allows for the occasional harsh winter as we saw in Europe in 2010 and in North America in 2014-15. By the numbers, we are not quite down to levels that were observed in the past, but many think that we may see more frigid winters in the future if the Sun remains quiet. These weak periods are associated with quite long intervals between peaks. Note that from 1801 to 1816 is 15 years and from 1816 to 1830, 14 years. Those were both much longer intervals than the normal 10-11 years. And the cycles averaged 12 years from 1870 to 1917. This is about where we seem to be now so that the next peak, which may also be quite small, won’t happen until the mid-2020s. But the way that the Dalton minimum ended very suddenly, we have to be very cautious about making definitive statements that quiet sun conditions will go on for very long.
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