Deep Solar Minimum

Deep Solar Minimum

science.nasa.gov

April 1, 2009: The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.

2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73%). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days: plot. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008.

Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year's 90 days (87%).

It adds up to one inescapable conclusion: "We're experiencing a very deep solar minimum," says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center.

"This is the quietest sun we've seen in almost a century," agrees sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This means, if the Sun continues at the record low activity that it has been going, that the oceans will soon enough deplete the extra heat they had stored from the Solar increased actiity we enjoyed for many years, and Earth could very well usher into a new LIA, or worse, unless the Sun's activity picks up.

There are going to be more extremes, both heat and cold wheather events, until there is not enough heat stored in the oceans to keep the northern hemisphere warm, and then, if the Sun's activity continues at the crawling pace it is going, winter will set in for much longer periods, and summers will be colder, and colder each year until the Sun's activity picks up, or if it continues at the crawling pace it is now, a new LIA will set in, and possibly an Ice Age if the activity continues to be low longer.

There is also the possibility that this is the calm before the storm. Let's just hope that neither scenario occurs, but people need to be aware of this, and start preparing, since we don't know when the Sun's activity will pick up again.

Here is an image of how Earth's heat content in the oceans have been decreasing because of the slowing down of the Sun's activity.


The graph, and an explanation of the graph can be found in the following link.

wattsupwiththat.com...

At least one good thing might come of this, as the oceans cool it means that CO2 solubility in seawater/oceans will increase, so perhaps the Global Warming camp will stop now demanding for the carbon credit scam.

Or is it too late already and the rich will continue to get rich, at the expense of the taxpayers, even as the Earth continues to get colder?


science.nasa.gov
(visit the link for the full news article)


[edit on 2-4-2009 by ElectricUniverse]

Anthropogenic Global Warming activists aren't interested in facts, they just play the "You're an Earth-wrecker" card and most people fall around at their feet.

they already are trading with this carbon emissions. the countries like US even already predict the win from that trade and it is inside the budget of 2011. I think that regardless to the facts the carbon mafia won't let it stop.

we will be taxed and any kind of reaserch is not going to be enough evidence to change it.

I hope that the whole system will collapse. and there will be no way to collect the taxes any more. we need to start with new monsters again and let them controling us to the moment where we can not live any more. with old ones we reached that time now.

reply to post by ElectricUniverse



Sorry for being ignorant, but it's early.

What is LIA?

Am enjoying the thread and looking forward to what is going on with our quiet sun..

reply to post by Kryties


yeah, because two years with low sunspot activity means that CO2 doesn't act as a greenhouse gas.

dismissing all the research based on some fluctuations in the solar sunspot cycle is incredible. there is less evidence that sunspots effect atmospheric temperature than CO2 but you're happy enough to go along with the idea, why is that?

Originally posted by Kryties
Anthropogenic Global Warming activists aren't interested in facts, they just play the "You're an Earth-wrecker" card and most people fall around at their feet.

You are right, they were not listening to the facts a few years back, and most likely there will still be quite a few that will continue to deny this even if they die frozen.

But who knows, lets wait and see if any of them responds to this thread, and let's see what they say...

reply to post by tribewilder


I'll venture a guess owing to context: little ice age.

reply to post by pieman


Yeah, because Earth has not experienced major climate upheavals on many occasions over the millennia it has existed - none of which were anthropogenically caused. /sarcasm

Come on, honestly, unless you are completely blind to the fact that Earth existed for many millions of years before you were born, you cannot ignore the fact that Earth goes through major climate changes on a relatively regular basis.

Nice try though.

[edit on 2/4/2009 by Kryties]

Originally posted by ElectricUniverse
There is also the possibility that this is the calm before the storm. Let's just hope that neither scenario occurs, but people need to be aware of this, and start preparing, since we don't know when the Sun's activity will pick up again.

This is what I'm worried about, with what I've heard about the poles shifting, magnetics weakening during it. If some serious flares happen while we are in a pole shift, the damage could be catastrophic.

Originally posted by pieman
reply to post by Kryties

 

yeah, because two years with low sunspot activity means that CO2 doesn't act as a greenhouse gas.

dismissing all the research based on some fluctuations in the solar sunspot cycle is incredible. there is less evidence that sunspots effect atmospheric temperature than CO2 but you're happy enough to go along with the idea, why is that?

Oh boy... The Sun constitutes 98.99% of all matter on the Solar System, which means that changes in the Sun affect the Earth, and it's climate more than the much needed atmospheric CO2. In fact the evidence has shown the contrary to your claim is the truth.

Earth, and all living creatures and plants are CARBON based, which means we also need atmospheric CO2 to exist, and as anyone who has a greenhouse can tell you, when you increase the atmospheric CO2 content in a greenhouse, there is an explosion of growth, and produce yields the higher the amount of CO2. Greenhouse owners increase the CO2 content in their greenhouses from around 300-1,500, but the higher it is, the more work they have to do, so normally these people have to limit the amount of atmospheric CO2 in their grenhouses so that the plants don't overgrow.

There is not one piece of evidence that links atmospheric CO2 to the ongoing Climate Change which started in the 1600s, well before atmospheric CO2 began to increase. Atmospheric CO2 began to increase in the 19th century.

In fact we know as a matter of fact that during times of low Solar activity, like the one we are experiencing, the Earth went into cold periods such as the LIA, and CO2 had nothing to do with it, and atmospheric CO2 did not change much neither during the LIA, nor during the Medieval Warm Period, nor the Roman Warm Period, so in fact what the evidence shows is that changes in atmospheric CO2 occur under certain circumstances after some Climate Changes.

[edit on 2-4-2009 by ElectricUniverse]

Originally posted by tribewilder
reply to post by ElectricUniverse

 

Sorry for being ignorant, but it's early.

What is LIA?

Am enjoying the thread and looking forward to what is going on with our quiet sun..

No need to apologize, and as long as people have a desire to learn, you are not ignorant, just thirsty for knowledge ;P

LIA means Little Ice Age, a time period during which the climate shifted to cold in not only the northern hemisphere, but much of the world, and the coldest part of this period occurred at the same time that there was a minimum sunspost activity on the Sun for several years.

[edit on 2-4-2009 by ElectricUniverse]

Oh, and i forgot, the decrease in Solar activity has been ongoing for at least 3 years now, although the oceans have shown a decrease in heat storage before the last three years, which points to the fact that the slowdown of the Sun's activity started much earlier, because the oceans store extra energy from the Sun...

Atmospheric CO2 apparenlty wasn't powerful enough to stop the dissipation of extra heat stored in the oceans.

So much for the "all powerful atmospheric CO2". (sarcastic hat off)

wattsupwiththat.com...

The sun is making the scientists on earth look bloody stupid. We could have 100 times more cars, and still would be ok. It is only about control.

The sun being asleep has shown us, who really controls this planets weather, although weather manipulation goes on.

Originally posted by pieman
dismissing all the research based on some fluctuations in the solar sunspot cycle is incredible. there is less evidence that sunspots effect atmospheric temperature than CO2 but you're happy enough to go along with the idea, why is that?

So basically what you are saying is that the Sun affects the earths temperature less than "Greenhouse Gasses".

No offense but that is absolutely ridiculous.

reply to post by Dermo


Actually I can see that. All the radiation coming from the sun. It heats us up and makes everything all nice and toasty. and since there is less radiation That means there is less toastiness and more frigidness.

Am I correct on assuming this.

reply to post by tribewilder


LIA stands for Little Ice Age - the name by which the period from approximately 1350 to 1850 is known (dates vary according to location).

It was a period when the Atlantic regions in particularly were cooler. During this period there were a number of times when sunspot activity fell extremely low, the best known being the Maunder Minimum between about 1645 and 1715. This coincided with the coldest period of the LIA.

As a result, some people have falsely claimed that a similar period of low sunspot activity would result in similar low temperatures today. It would not. The Maunder Minimum came during a period of already low temps. A better analogy would be a similar low sunspot period during the preceding Roman/Medieval Warm Period (but unfortunately we don;t have records going back that far!)

Of course, it'll be a couple of decades before we can say we're in another Maunder type minimum

I actually remember reading an article by a leading scientist, though this was years ago, so no links possible, where he considered carbon emissions a blessing as technically, we were due for another ice age, and our technology and "global warming" was the one thing that we could do to offset or reduce the damage. Well that an erecting solar panels in space, because really, we have the technology to miminize small ice ages and possibly prevent larger ones. There are groups that live here that have far greater technology.

I have noticed that winters are colder every year, could this be due to a worsening solar minimum?

Hey,

OK this is not my strongest subject so bear with me

I was under the impression that the sun was heating up and this was a claim that people made when trying to debunk Global Warming / Climate Change. So if the sun was heating up it mean that humans were not the major cause for the CO2 issue.

Sunspots are areas of the sun with reduced surface temperature, right? So does this mean that the sun is not in fact heating up but getting colder?