What’s all that mean? Maybe the sun is causing some cyclical warming on the earth?
Not my SUV?
Seriously, what is going on? Thanks
“What’s all that mean?”
Two months ago I had a long talk with a solar scientist. He said that with few sunspots, we may have a couple of years with slightly lower temperatures, then as the sunspots increase, the temperature will go back up.
Each solar cycle is about 11 years in length. What determines the cycle is the sunspots. The are very low in solar MINIMUM and very active (numerous) in solar MAXIMUM. Each cycle has its own ‘signature’. That is the spots have a specific polarity. Cycle 23 have one polarity and cycle 24 have the OPPOSITE polarity. That is why people who study the sun will say the sunspot currently visible is from CYCLE 23. It is because of the polarity of the spot. We have already had cycle 24 sunspots, but very, very few. Last month there was a small cluster of spots, but they were cycle 23 variety.
Cycle 24 does not really start until the smoothed average of visible spots for a speciifc period (3 months I believe) OUTNUMBER the average of cycle 23 spots during the same time. Right now, the majority of spots are still cycle 23 spots, not cycle 24.