When I last looked at the Ap geomagnetic index back in January, it looked pretty grim.
Now with the release yesterday of the new Ap data from NOAA, we see the largest jump in 2 years.
We’ve had a rash of sunspots lately, and it appears sol is awakening from its magnetic slumber. The question is: “dead cat bounce” or start of an upwards trend?
Hey, a little hockey stick action there. Take the low point and the freshest high point and you can draw a very steep slope.
Pure layman here…
How does this compare to previous quiet periods of the sun? Dalton etc? Same length? Less?
The 10.7 flux has been in the 70s for a long time. Its up at 80 today with the 3 spots, but the cosmic ray flux seems to be remaining more or less the same. Slight downturn, but nothing major. It took a big dip when that CME went past the earth on 4/5 but has climbed back to where it was prior, more or less. This is one quiet sun.
I wouldn’t call the latest sunspots significant, more like sputtering. and I doubt whether they could have been observed during the Dalton
Could you tell us, all the “correlations” that you find with other “meteorological” phenomena?. As Ap refers to “planetary” what your “hunches” are for these interesting times we are living in?.
As I understand it, the low has lasted longer than normal. It’s supposed to be an eleven year cycle and we’re well beyond that.
This is the type of post that generates questions.
We know that the sun is becoming more active (about time), but how does that relate to other cycles considering that we have just come through a long minimum?
Thank you
Sean Peake says:
May 5, 2010 at 11:53 am
I wouldn’t call the latest sunspots significant, more like sputtering. and I doubt whether they could have been observed during the Dalton
That is what we could call POST-NORMAL-ASTRONOMY-SUNSPOTS-COUNT, because it really follows PNS principles.
It’s going to be interesting to try and figure out is the spots or the magnets driving earth’s climate. Now that we have some instruments that can measure … fun times ahead.
“The question is: “dead cat bounce” or start of an upwards trend?”
I call “dead cat bounce” but that’s only a guess, of course. I’ve hung out here long enough to know that “we don’t know.” Minima like this don’t come along every 23 years or so ;o)
It’s just fantastic that we live in a time where we have the technology to make high quality observations of the sun and the technology to make those observations highly accessible. So we wait and watch and just maybe the younger people amongst us will have quite a story to tell their grandchildren.
I like to call the latest rash of spots ‘blinkers’, because that’s mostly what is going on. And, SWPC just has to count them all.
There is a wide discrepancy between the actual number of spotted regions and what SWPC is reporting. The only thing I can see that make sense is Catania’s Active Region Summary on solarcycle24.com. Someone is counting every region that has been active or inactive each day that is still on the visible side of the Sun.
Here is a comparison (active region latitude-wise by eyeball method) with 1998:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin9.htm
First 2 images:
1.) The sun in SOHO EIT color with MDI Continuum Luminance overlay 05/04/2010
2.) The same SOHO images from 05/04/1998.
There is a very noticable difference between the Sun in 1998(SC23) and 2010(SC24).
It’s not just the sunpots that are weak.
If Leif will weigh in, maybe he can tell us how much weaker the Magnetics on the Sun are comparing SC23 and SC24 to date.
From the graph above, I’d say that SC24 has finally revved up to the low point of SC23.
What I wonder now is just how much ramp does SC24 have left in it.
Wake up, Sol sister… Rise, awaken from your slumber…
Here comes the Sun, and I say, it’s all right…
Music aside, here’s hoping for a belated but active Solar cycle. Active. Like hugely active. Let’s give the new cameras something spectacular to record. Please.
And I’d agree about a “rash” of sunspots… as long as you define a rash as a few tiny spots of very little significance.
has this been attributed to global warming 🙂
The current sun spots are just specks so despite the spike in the Ap index, not much going on.
Good chart on solar terrestrial activity, courtesy of Solen, available here:-
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/solar.gif
Until we understand what’s going on with the sun, predicting future activity levels is is difficult – perhaps the SDO will give us some clues when the real-time data goes live?
Not to worry. There is a large lag time between when the Sun heats up again and the Earth accumulates the Sun’s additional output. Winter 2011 will still be another one of our worst in history just like last year.
Any idea why the minimums for both charts are different. First one was down to 1, revised and latest chart goes down to 2.
Jason Bair,
The second chart extends one more day on the x-axis.
So where will that take us with blue line?
Hey Anthony,
The latest temperature set for April 2010 came out- it’s down to .5 degrees Celcius above normal. Just wanted to let you know.
-Snowlover123
I gather that we are currently going through a change in the planetary magnetic field. Fluctuations since several decades with an eventual reversal in the next century.
What is the relationship (danger) that an (in)active sun would have during such a planetary situation?
Better for it to be quiet (more cosmic rays and clouds) or active (more aurora and perhaps irradiation due to less magnetic protection)?
Tarpon:
Nobody, except for Piers Corbyn, would dare to make such a “correlation”, the Pope , Arch-bishops and bishops of the Climate Change Creed forbids it. It doesn’t matter if on the earth fall 30 million lightnings a day, someone in the high spheres of this church separated magnetism from electricity, solar wind is just a poetical “summer breeze”, the Sun a ball of fire and the earth a big round stone. It all seems a Hanna Barbera flitstones’ cartoon. Cosmic rays, bah!, little pebbles falling from above….and so on.
OT
Good Glenn Beck videos from last Friday on Cap and Trade at the bottom of this article. I do recommend watching it.
BARACK OBAMA, AL GORE, GOLDMAN SACHS, AND THE GREATEST SWINDLE IN HUMAN HISTORY
““It is the Responsibility of the Patriot to protect his country from its government” ~Thomas Paine
$10,000,000,000,000
Ten trillion dollars. That’s the conservative estimate of the amount of money Barack Obama, Albert Gore Jr., and a whole cast of criminals stand to make (gross) off of the greatest scam in human history: “global warming.”
If you have ever sat back, scratching your head and wondering why the Marxists are pushing for a “cap and trade” bill that would not only make energy costs “necessarily skyrocket,” to quote Barack Obama, but do absolutely nothing to effect fictional “climate change, ” one way or the other, you are about to find out.”
http://www.thecypresstimes.com/article/Columnists/A_Time_For_Choosing/BARACK_OBAMA_AL_GORE_GOLDMAN_SACHS_AND_THE_GREATEST_SWINDLE_IN_HUMAN_HISTORY/29819
the official sunspot counts coming out of noaa, sidc, etc are a joke.
a casual glance at the widget shows a blank sun with sunspot ‘numbers’. you don’t have to be a skeptic to wonder what’s up with that.
so i have been taking a look – most have been ephemeral specks, and one (1068?) turned out to look pretty much blank no matter how you looked at it. this ‘science’ has been clearly politicized, for whatever reasons.
and i guarantee they were not counting invisible, ephemeral specks 24hr a day during the dalton or maunder grand minima. how are we supposed to compare what is happening now in any consistent way?
After a (unexplained) sudden drop in 2005, there is a sudden rise in 2010…
Could it be a digit problem? A mathematical glitch? A sensor problem?
We are becoming a permanently wireless society, with people addicted to high-speed error-free digital wireless communications (they love their videos on their iPhones).
Do we really want an active sun, even if that keeps global cooling away? Put on a sweater or give up on videos on demand on their cellphone, which would today’s young people choose? 😉