Posted on 04/11/2009 7:00:44 PM PDT by gondramB
The cool spell we're experiencing could be related to the record low levels of solar activity at the current solar/sunspot minimum we are in. Solar Cycle 24 has begun (Jan 2008), but there has been an incredible lack of activity so far. SC-24 isn't expected to get going onto 2011 or 2012, and maybe even later given the especially deep minimum we are in now.
From NASA.gov, September 30, 2008:
Coinciding with the string of blank suns is a 50-year record low in solar wind pressure, a recent discovery of the Ulysses spacecraft. (See the Science@NASA story Solar Wind Loses Pressure.) The pressure drop began years before the current minimum, so it is unclear how the two phenomena are connected, if at all. This is another mystery for SDO and the others.
...
"There is also the matter of solar irradiance," adds Pesnell. "Researchers are now seeing the dimmest sun in their records. The change is small, just a fraction of a percent, but significant. Questions about effects on climate are natural if the sun continues to dim."
Article:
Spotless Sun: Blankest Year of the Space Age [50 years]
______________________________________________________
Astronomers who count sunspots have announced that 2008 is now the "blankest year" of the Space Age
As of Sept. 27, 2008, the sun had been blank, i.e., had no visible sunspots, on 200 days of the year. To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go back to 1954, three years before the launch of Sputnik, when the sun was blank 241 times.
"Sunspot counts are at a 50-year low," says solar physicist David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. "We're experiencing a deep minimum of the solar cycle."
And it is a very quiet time. If solar activity continues as low as it has been, 2008 could rack up a whopping 290 spotless days by the end of December, making it a century-level year in terms of spotlessness.
Hathaway cautions that this development may sound more exciting than it actually is: "While the solar minimum of 2008 is shaping up to be the deepest of the Space Age, it is still unremarkable compared to the long and deep solar minima of the late 19th and early 20th centuries." Those earlier minima routinely racked up 200 to 300 spotless days per year.
Some solar physicists are welcoming the lull.
"This gives us a chance to study the sun without the complications of sunspots," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Right now we have the best instrumentation in history looking at the sun. There is a whole fleet of spacecraft devoted to solar physics--SOHO, Hinode, ACE, STEREO and others. We're bound to learn new things during this long solar minimum."
As an example he offers helioseismology: "By monitoring the sun's vibrating surface, helioseismologists can probe the stellar interior in much the same way geologists use earthquakes to probe inside Earth. With sunspots out of the way, we gain a better view of the sun's subsurface winds and inner magnetic dynamo."
"There is also the matter of solar irradiance," adds Pesnell. "Researchers are now seeing the dimmest sun in their records. The change is small, just a fraction of a percent, but significant. Questions about effects on climate are natural if the sun continues to dim."
Pesnell is NASA's project scientist for the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a new spacecraft equipped to study both solar irradiance and helioseismic waves. Construction of SDO is complete, he says, and it has passed pre-launch vibration and thermal testing. "We are ready to launch! Solar minimum is a great time to go."
Coinciding with the string of blank suns is a 50-year record low in solar wind pressure, a recent discovery of the Ulysses spacecraft. (See the Science@NASA story Solar Wind Loses Pressure.) The pressure drop began years before the current minimum, so it is unclear how the two phenomena are connected, if at all. This is another mystery for SDO and the others.
Who knew the blank sun could be so interesting?
More to come...
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/30sep_blankyear.htm
Related article:
Solar Wind Loses Power, Hits 50-year Low - Sept. 23, 2008
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/23sep_solarwind.htm
Didn’t that use to be called spring
I don’t take it as giving me a hard time.
On graphs it does look like CO2 lags warming.
As I understand it, CO2 continues to rise after warming has stopped because there is a feedback loop. CO2 causes warming which causes release of more CO2 until something breaks the cycle. This is one of the signs that there are other very important factors that the Al Gore wing likes to not address.
“The last two years, huh? You mean the last two years that have experienced precipitous drops in world temperatures? The last two years that have set numerous cold and snowfall records?
Those last two years?”
Yeah - I’m with you....I WISH there had been a little more warming in my neck of the woods.
I say bring on the global warming. It can't happen fast enough.
We actually have computer models from as far back as 1981 and every single one of them has been wrong. Not once in 27 years have the computer models been correct in their prediction of the temperatures. They have all been way too warm when compared with actual temperatures measured.
Could you point out on the graph where additional temperatures rises occurred?
ie, first some natural cycle heats the Earth and its oceans (every approximate 100,000 years), then CO2 dissolves out of the warmer water and goes up into the atmosphere. Where on the graph did temps go up after these CO2 increases? The ‘lag’ between temp increases and rising CO2 levels, on average, is 800 years! Again, it is a *reverse* relationship. First temps increase, THEN CO2 levels increase.
Glaciers aren’t melting because of global warming. Glaciers erode. Erosion is inevitable.
>>Glaciers aren’t melting because of global warming. Glaciers erode. Erosion is inevitable.<<
It the net that important - is more water freezing or is more ice melting.
90 percent based on what...how some guy feels about global warming. They have absolutely no evidence of this and they admit it on page 9 of the 2007 IPCC summary. They admit this 90 percent is based on opinion.
I’ll see what I can find. or rather re-find.
There’s no evidence that CO2 is driving temperature at all. The magical feedback loop is a mathematical construction made up in someone’s pointy head.
thanks, bfl
>>90 percent based on what...how some guy feels about global warming. They have absolutely no evidence of this and they admit it on page 9 of the 2007 IPCC summary. They admit this 90 percent is based on opinion.<<
I’m just saying that this has been presented as saying the IPCC report has been presented as saying it proves global warming is caused by CO2. Now we hear it only said there was 90% chance CO2 is the biggest factor - that leaves a lot of room for another big factor. And that hasn’t really been covered.
Here’s the paper that backs up your true statement.
Siegenthaler et al., 2005, Science, vol. 310, 1313-1317
>>There’s no evidence that CO2 is driving temperature at all. The magical feedback loop is a mathematical construction made up in someone’s pointy head.<<
There is certainly reason to think it would since it lets in the light from sun but blocks the heat leaving the earth.
The hotter the rhetoric becomes the cooler the iron poised above; all this talk about tipping points aside, the time to strike has passed and desperation rears its ugly head.
I correct myself...it's on page 8.
"Magnitude of anthropogenic contributions not assessed. Attribution for these phenomena based on expert judgement rather than formal attribution studies"
It has already been addressed and allowed that to remain consistent with the underlying theory that we are now find ourselves at the point of irreversibility and are being encouraged (or enervated — a perspective) to redouble our efforts so as to accelerate an insurmountable problem with the only possible outcome, agreeing with the unstated conclusions, is to tacitly saddle those who come after us to pay for our previous errors and those we are about make.
Very little reason there to jump off the bandwagon only long enough for them to paint it up in proper manner to suit a hearse.
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