Still no sunspots...

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Spaceweather.com

Daily Sun: 05 July 09

New-cycle sunspot 1024 is growing rapidly and crackling with B-class solar flares. Credit: SOHO/MDI

SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

[Turtle]

so it goes.

SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

Originally Posted by Spaceweather.com

Sunday August 23, 2009
QUIET SUN: Today marks the 44th consecutive day without spots on the sun--one of the longest quiet spells of the current solar minimum. In early July, sunspot 1024 seemed to herald the long-awaited onset of Solar Cycle 24, but shortly after that apparition, sunspot production turned off again. Deep solar minimum continues...
...
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. Their technique is based on Zeeman splitting of infrared spectral lines emitted by iron atoms in the vicinity of sunspots. Extrapolating their data into the future suggests that sunspots could completely disappear within decades. That would be a bummer for Spaceweather.com. ...

[UncleAl]

The Solar Constant is in decline. The solar wind is in decline. Solar extreme UV is in sharp decline causing the upper atmosphere to cool and contract. A tsunami of propagandistic swill spinning global warming, carbon dioxide, renewable energy, carbon sequestration, carbon credits... is at the precipitous edge of having the Official Truth knocked out of it.

California is flensing is residents with fees from The Great Drought. Experts wail that there is no correlation between solar activity and rainfall. Indeed, there is none to be seen except when it periodically happens at roughly 12-year intervals concident with solar minima: 1957-8 (160% rainfall), 1972-3 (140%), 1982-3 (185%), 1997-8 (190%). An entire political construct of artificial scarcity and very real penalized consumption will be snorkeling for its life. 2010 through 2012 California is staring down hillside-liquefying real world 50 inches of rain/year. Imagine the Official surprise - and the emergency measures to be unsurprisedly imposed.

"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." Richard Feynman.

--
Uncle Al
UNDER SATAN'S LEFT FOOT
Vote a 10 for the experiments!

[Donk]

Originally Posted by UncleAl

A tsunami of propagandistic swill spinning global warming, carbon dioxide, renewable energy, carbon sequestration, carbon credits... is at the precipitous edge of having the Official Truth knocked out of it.

California is flensing is residents with fees from The Great Drought. Experts wail that there is no correlation between solar activity and rainfall. Indeed, there is none to be seen except when it periodically happens at roughly 12-year intervals concident with solar minima: 1957-8 (160% rainfall), 1972-3 (140%), 1982-3 (185%), 1997-8 (190%). An entire political construct of artificial scarcity and very real penalized consumption will be snorkeling for its life. 2010 through 2012 California is staring down hillside-liquefying real world 50 inches of rain/year. Imagine the Official surprise - and the emergency measures to be unsurprisedly imposed.

An impressive correlation. I decided to check those years against the figures for my nearest weather station (Oxford, UK), and got these:

1957 (108%), 1972 (87%), 1982 (99%), 1997 (90%).

Not quite so convincing. I tried tabulating rainfall against solar minima for all the figures I had (back to 1853):

1855	97%
1867	105%
1878	103%
1890	71%
1901	86%
1913	98%
1923	102%
1933	75%
1944	85%
1954	112%
1964	64%
1976	78%
1986	107%
1996	70%

Now all we have to do is figure out why sunspots affect the weather in California but not in the UK

[UncleAl]

Good literature work! The Pacific El Niño, triggered by sunspot minima, reversing flow of wind and water, funnels a whole ocean of moisture into the US West Coast. England is warmed and watered by the Gulf Stream - the other side of an ocean basin gyre. London is at 51°30′N latitude. It should be frozen solid in winter. If anything there is anticorrelation with sunspot minima - you should be going cold and dry 2010-2012.

Patience. Observation is better than Luddite Enviro-whinerism and selling carbon indulgences against the sin of global warming.

--
Uncle Al
UNDER SATAN'S LEFT FOOT
Vote a 10 for the experiments!

[Donk]

Originally Posted by UncleAl

The Pacific El Niño, triggered by sunspot minima...

Sorry, I don't see it.
wiki: El Niño/Southern Oscillation

Originally Posted by wiki

Major ENSO events were recorded in the years 1790-93, 1828, 1876-78, 1891, 1925-26, 1972-73, 1982-83, and 1997-98.

Recent El Niños have occurred in 1986-1987, 1991-1992, 1993, 1994, 1997-1998, 2002-2003, 2004-2005 and 2006-2007.

Solar minima 1784, 1798, 1823, 1833, 1843, 1855, 1867, 1878, 1890, 1902, 1913, 1923, 1933, 1944, 1954, 1964, 1976, 1986, 1996, 2008.

I've emboldened the (very few) dates which appear on both lists. I've even given you 1890, as it's close to 1891. Can you point me to somewhere that proves the correlation you're asserting?

[Turtle]

possible effects of no sunspots aside, the observable phenomena we currently have makes for unique opportunities. boldenation mine in the following quote.


NASA - Are Sunspots Disappearing?

Originally Posted by NASA

..."According to our measurements, sunspots seem to form only if the magnetic field is stronger than about 1500 gauss," says Livingston. "If the current trend continues, we'll hit that threshold in the near future, and solar magnetic fields would become too weak to form sunspots."

"This work has caused a sensation in the field of solar physics," comments NASA sunspot expert David Hathaway, who is not directly involved in the research. "It's controversial stuff."

The controversy is not about the data. "We know Livingston and Penn are excellent observers," says Hathaway. "The trend that they have discovered appears to be real." The part colleagues have trouble believing is the extrapolation. Hathaway notes that most of their data were taken after the maximum of Solar Cycle 23 (2000-2002) when sunspot activity naturally began to decline. "The drop in magnetic fields could be a normal aspect of the solar cycle and not a sign that sunspots are permanently vanishing."
...
If sunspots do go away, it wouldn't be the first time. In the 17th century, the sun plunged into a 70-year period of spotlessness known as the Maunder Minimum that still baffles scientists. The sunspot drought began in 1645 and lasted until 1715; during that time, some of the best astronomers in history (e.g., Cassini) monitored the sun and failed to count more than a few dozen sunspots per year, compared to the usual thousands.

"Whether [the current downturn] is an omen of long-term sunspot decline, analogous to the Maunder Minimum, remains to be seen," Livingston and Penn caution in a recent issue of EOS. "Other indications of solar activity suggest that sunspots must return in earnest within the next year."

Whatever happens, notes Hathaway, "the sun is behaving in an interesting way and I believe we're about to learn something new."

[Turtle]

possible effects of no sunspots to the fore, the observable phenomena we currently have makes for interesting speculation. the full article at the link has some graphs of the pertinent data sets.

SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

Originally Posted by Spaceweather.com

September 5, 2009

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.
...
Volcanic aerosols are a source of cooling; ENSO and greenhouse gases cause heating; the solar cycle can go either way. When added together, these factors can account for 76% of the variance in Earth's surface temperature over the past ~30 years, according to the analysis of Lean and Rind.

Several aspects of their model attract attention: "The warmest year on record, 1998, coincides with the 'super-El Nino' of 1997-98," points out Lean. "The ESNO is capable of producing significant spikes in the temperature record." Solar minimum has the opposite effect: "A 0.1% decrease in the sun's irradiance has counteracted some of the warming action of greenhouse gases from 2002 - 2008," she notes. "This is the reason for the well-known 'flat' temperature trend of recent years." ...

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

I see hint of Polar Illumination....am I to expect brilliance should the rain finally let up here....also hear rumors of solar eclipse coming up (2 supposedly)....also aint there a meteor shower sposed to be round this time of year (prolly missed it but I ask anyway)....no sign of the sun here though so lookin fer spots is about as fruitful as a cement cherry tree

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by DFINITLYDISTRUBD

I see hint of Polar Illumination....am I to expect brilliance should the rain finally let up here....also hear rumors of solar eclipse coming up (2 supposedly)....also aint there a meteor shower sposed to be round this time of year (prolly missed it but I ask anyway)....no sign of the sun here though so lookin fer spots is about as fruitful as a cement cherry tree

i don't know whether to laugh, cry, or just cut to the chase and check into the rubber room. whatever.

we had a couple sunspots last week, cycle 24 type, but they didn't last long. back to blank. the deep solar minimum continues

Originally Posted by spaceweather.com

Daily Sun: 08 Oct. 09
SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

The sun is blank--no sunspots. Photo credit: SOHO/MDI


Sunspot number: 0
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 07 Oct 2009

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 6 days
2009 total: 218 days (78%)
Since 2004: 729 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days