BREAKING – major AAS solar announcement: Sun's Fading Spots Signal Big Drop in Solar Activity

“If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades,” Hill said. “That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth’s climate.”

Update: see the official press release here – “All three of these lines of research to point to the familiar sunspot cycle shutting down for a while.”

It looks like Livingston and Penn are getting some long deserved recognition. See their graph below:

Graph above from the WUWT solar reference page. Note: when the B gauss reading of sunspots hits 1500, they will no longer have enough contrast to be visible. That may occur at or near the years 2015-2017. WUWT carried a story in 2008 warning of this.

The American Astronomical Society meeting in Los Cruces, NM has just made a major announcement on the state of the sun. Sunspots may be on the way out and an extended solar minimum may be on the horizon.

From Space.com reporting from the conference:

Some unusual solar readings, including fading sunspots and weakening magnetic activity near the poles, could be indications that our sun is preparing to be less active in the coming years.

The results of three separate studies seem to show that even as the current sunspot cycle swells toward the solar maximum, the sun could be heading into a more-dormant period, with activity during the next 11-year sunspot cycle greatly reduced or even eliminated.

The results of the new studies were announced today (June 14) at the annual meeting of the solar physics division of the American Astronomical Society, which is being held this week at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

…

Currently, the sun is in the midst of the period designated as Cycle 24 and is ramping up toward the cycle’s period of maximum activity. However, the recent findings indicate that the activity in the next 11-year solar cycle, Cycle 25, could be greatly reduced. In fact, some scientists are questioning whether this drop in activity could lead to a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 when the sun showed virtually no sunspots.

…

“We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now, but we see no sign of it,” Hill said. “This indicates that the start of Cycle 25 may be delayed to 2021 or 2022, or may not happen at all.”

…

If the models prove accurate and the trends continue, the implications could be far-reaching.

“If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades,” Hill said. “That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth’s climate.”

More on this as it unfolds. This article will be updated as new information becomes available.

See also these previous WUWT posts leading up to this:

Solar activity still driving in the slow lane

Sun’s magnetics remain in a funk: sunspots may be on their way out

The sun is still in a slump – still not conforming to NOAA “consensus” forecasts

Livingston and Penn in EOS: Are Sunspots Different During This Solar Minimum?

Livingston and Penn paper: “Sunspots may vanish by 2015″.

Sunspots Today: A Cheshire Cat – New Essay from Livingston and Penn

=======================================================================

As I have been saying for some time:

The long term Ap (the solar geomagnetic index) has been on a downtrend, ever since there was a step change in October 2005.

Thanks to Leif Svalgaard, we have a more extensive and “official” Ap dataset (NOAA’s SWPC shown above has some small issues) that I’ve plotted below. The step change in October 2005 is still visible and the value of 3.9 that occurred in April of 2009 is the lowest for the entire dataset. The Ap Index was the lowest in 75 years then.

Click for a larger image

And I’ve also plotted the 1991 to 2009 from BGS/Svalgaard to compare against the NOAA SWPC data:

============================================================

Dr. Leif Svalgaard writes:

Here are the abstracts of the three studies referred to in the announcement:

P16.10

Large-scale Zonal Flows During the Solar Minimum — Where Is Cycle 25?13

Frank Hill, R. Howe, R. Komm, J. Christensen-Dalsgaard, T. P. Larson, J. Schou, M. J. Thompson

The so-called torsional oscillation is a pattern of migrating zonal flow bands that move from midlatitudes towards the equator and poles as the magnetic cycle progresses. Helioseismology allows us to probe these flows below the solar surface. The prolonged solar minimum following Cycle 23 was accompanied by a delay of 1.5 to 2 years in the migration of bands of faster rotation towards the equator. During the rising phase of Cycle 24, while the lower-level bands match those seen in the rising phase of Cycle 23, the rotation rate at middle and higher latitudes remains slower than it was at the corresponding phase in earlier cycles, perhaps reflecting the weakness of the polar fields. In addition, there is no evidence of the poleward flow associated with Cycle 25. We will present the latest results based on nearly sixteen years of global helioseismic observations from GONG and MDI, with recent results from HMI, and discuss the implications for the development of Cycle 25.

P17.21

A Decade of Diminishing Sunspot Vigor

W. C. Livingston, M. Penn, L. Svalgaard

s Convention Center

Sunspots are small dark areas on the solar disk where internal magnetism, 1500 to 3500 Gauss, has been

buoyed to the surface. (Spot life times are the order of one day to a couple of weeks or more. They are thought to be dark because convection inhibits the outward transport of energy there). Their “vigor” can be described by spot area, spot brightness intensity, and magnetic field. From 2001 to 2011 we have measured field strength and brightness at the darkest position in umbrae of 1750 spots using the Zeeman splitting of the Fe 1564.8 nm line. Only one observation per spot per day is carried out during our monthly telescope time of 3-4 days average. Over this interval the temporal mean magnetic field has declined about 500 Gauss and mean spot intensity has risen about 20%. We do not understand the physical mechanism behind these changes or the effect, if any, it will have on the Earth environment.

P18.04

Whither goes Cycle 24? A View from the Fe XIV Corona

Richard C. Altrock

Solar Cycle 24 had a historically prolonged and weak start. Observations of the Fe XIV corona from the Sacramento Peak site of the National Solar Observatory showed an abnormal pattern of emission compared to observations of Cycles 21, 22, and 23 from the same instrument. The previous three cycles had a strong, rapid “Rush to the Poles” in Fe XIV. Cycle 24 displays a delayed, weak, intermittent, and slow “Rush” that is mainly apparent in the northern hemisphere. If this Rush persists at its current rate, evidence from previous cycles indicates that solar maximum will occur in approximately early 2013. At lower latitudes, solar maximum previously occurred when the greatest number of Fe XIV emission regions* first reached approximately 20° latitude. Currently, the value of this parameter at 20° is approximately 0.15. Previous behavior of this parameter indicates that solar maximum should occur in approximately two years, or 2013. Thus, both techniques yield an expected time of solar maximum in early 2013.

*annual average number of Fe XIV emission features per day greater than 0.19