[dinopello]

<<The Solar Storm>>

Like we need another freakin' thing to worry about !

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '&')quot;This is solar behavior we haven't seen in living memory," says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

[sparky]

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I've been following the sun cycles closely for a while now ,
David Hathaway is not "a physicist" , he is the very official great priest of solar prediction
unfortunately he also made six false predictions of the strength of this cycle , Cycle 24

back in 2006 ,he was predicting a monster whose Wolf number would go up to 170
satellites falling off the sky and solar storms freaking out the grid ,
then as it became obvious that C24 was very late and very weak he shot a flurry of new predictions , all of them wrong

So far C24 looks like being the usual turn of the century weak cycle with some of the best predictions so far going as far as calling it the start of a new Maunder minimum, also called the little ice age .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

We'll see , it looks like we'll be lucky to get a wolf number maximum of 80 around 2013 ,
that's weak , but should Cycle 25 be smaller still , widespread crop failure become a real possibility

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsro ... 0112065794

on the positive side , global warming would then come in handy

P.S. the latest Hathaway prediction , the sun picture behind is great , pity about the graph
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/image ... dict_l.gif

.

[Oakley]

There are quite a few cycles in sunspot activity in addition to the well known 11 year and 22 year cycles.

Additionally, there is variability in the length and amplitude of all these many cycles.

It is true that the current 11 year cycle will have somewhat low numbers but it will be longer than average, probably not hitting peak until 2014.9 instead of 2013 mentioned above.

Cycle 5 and 6 were abnormally low (1803.1 and 1816.04); the current number 24 will not be unusual compared to them. I expect several unusually low numbers later this century with #29 being particularly low with a projected peak in 2071.07.

Nothing to worry about; the world is hardly ending as a result in variability in sunspot activity; just the normal ebb and flow.

[dinopello]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oakley', 'N')othing to worry about; the world is hardly ending as a result in variability in sunspot activity; just the normal ebb and flow.

[sparky]

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Natural variations in weather or physical conditions can get pretty extreme ,
it happen all the time , that's life !

a freak occurrence in the " once in thousand year " or several in sync , can result in interesting
outcome , and that's the garden variety of disaster .
in the " one in a million year " which is baseline stuff for a specie ,
there is stuff which make global warming seems like a camp fire !
so don't worry , disaster is a given we are just too short sighted about it

[sparky]

.
Some data on the quiet sun

an article from the very AGW paper the new scientist
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... ?full=true

and portion of an interview of Dr Hathaway
"David H. Hathaway, Solar Physics Team Leader, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama: “It’s started, but it has not overtaken 23 yet (laughs)! We’ve seen new spots from cycle 24 with new magnetic activity that is definitely Cycle 24. It has started, but it has not produced enough sunspots to take off and take us out of minimum yet. So, we’re still in minimum by almost any count.

There has not been a spot on the sun for at least a month and this is about the third rotation of the sun this cycle where we have not seen any sunspots at all. It is suggesting that the next cycle 24 might be a small cycle - much to my consternation! - since I’ve been predicting a big cycle. But the fact that it’s taking this long to get started and that it’s starting out so slowly are hallmark signs of a small solar cycle.

When you think you’ve got the sun figured out, it does things like this and it’s like, ‘Boy, there’s more to this thing than we know! (laughs)

\DO YOU STILL HAVE – I THINK IT WAS DINNER AND A $100 BET WITH PETER GILMAN AT THE HIGH ALTITUDE OBSERVATORY (NCAR, Boulder, Colorado)?

I’ve conveniently forgotten the nature of the bet! I saw Peter just last week. In fact, we had a meeting in Boulder at NCAR a week ago about the workings of the solar dynamo. Yeah, when they had their press conference two years ago in March 2006, Gilman and Dikpati said solar cycle 24 was going to start late. And I said, ‘Nah! It’s going to start early.’ I definitely lost that one. There’s no doubt about it. But I don’t remember what I owe him and he didn’t bring it up. Maybe he’s being too much of a gentleman. (laughs) "