Solar flare danger – massive sunspot the size of Jupiter takes aim at Earth

The large weak magnetic field intensity sunspot group 12192 is disappearing. The very, very, short lifetime of the sunspots is due to the low magnetic field intensity of the sunspots. There are two variables 1) the amount of magnetic flux that forms a sunspot and 2) the magnetic field intensity of the magnetic flux. There was also a large sunspot in the Northern hemisphere as the solar magnetic cycle shut down in the solar magnetic northern hemisphere. The solar southern hemisphere is roughly a year behind the solar northern hemisphere and is repeating what was observed in the solar northern hemisphere. The solar northern hemisphere is now spotless.
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_4500.jpg
I see there are no comments yet that the solar northern large scale polar field has dropped to and is staying at zero. The large scale polar field normally shoots through zero when the magnetic field reverses during the peak of the solar cycle. The solar magnetic field intensity has never in the space age stayed at zero. It makes sense as that that the large northern scale polar field is zero as the solar northern hemisphere is essentially spotless.
The solar southern magnetic field intensity is anomalously low though not zero. Based on the current extraordinarily low large scale solar magnetic field, the sun is very, very quickly heading to a Maunder like solar magnetic cycle minimum. The Maunder like solar minimums in the past have lasted from 100 to 150 years.
http://www.solen.info/solar/polarfields/polar.html

Solar polar fields
The development of the solar polar field strength throughout a solar sunspot cycle can be used to predict the magnitude of the next cycle and the peak of the current cycle. Polar field reversals typically occur within a year of sunspot maximum.

The solar large scale magnetic field is created by and modified by the sunspots that are produced in a solar magnetic cycle. The magnetic flux tubes that rise up to the surface of the sun to form sunspots on the surface of the sun are believed to be create in the narrow region, the solar’ tachocline’ which separates the solar convection zone and the solar radiative zone. As the magnetic flux tubes are buoyant, the tachocline has a barrier that holds the magnetic flux in the tachocline region until it reaches sufficient magnetic field intensity to break the barrier, at which time the magnetic flux leaves the tachocline. The magnetic flux tube requires a calculated minimum field strength of 20,000 to 30,000 gauss to avoid being torn apart by the turbulent force of the solar convection zone.
The magnetic flux tube expands as it rises up through the convection zone, as it expands the magnetic field intensity of the magnetic flux tube declines. The magnetic field strength of a sunspot on the surface of the sun ranges from 1500 gauss to 5000 gauss. There are no sunspots on the surface of the sun that have a magnetic field intensity that is less than 1500 gauss.
For some unexplained reason the magnetic field strength of sunspots has been declining linearly. As the magnetic field strength of the sunspot declined large long life sunspots were replaced by tiny short lived sunspots. The next stage in the process was the magnetic flux tube was torn apart as it rose in the solar convection zone such that there was no longer sufficient field strength to form a sunspot. There was only a region of higher field intensity in a large region of the sun.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/440/1/012001/pdf/1742-6596_440_1_012001.pdf

The peculiar solar cycle 24 — where do we stand?
The minimum that preceded solar cycle 24 was unusual in its depth and duration. It was the quietest minimum recorded in the era of detailed data. Cycle 24 started off extremely slow and has continued to be weak. We review the conditions of the minimum that preceded cycle 24. We discuss ignored or missed signs that cycle 24 would not be normal, and finally comment on the behaviour of the cycle thus far.
The minimum that preceded solar cycle 24 was unusual in its depth — the 10.7 cm flux was the lowest recorded, while there were sunspot free days than have been recorded among recent cycles. The minimum was also of a much longer duration than any other minimum in recent history.
The minimum preceding the cycle showed other unusual characteristics. For instance, the polar fields were lower than those of previous cycles. In Fig. 1 we show the polar fields as observed by the Wilcox Solar Observatory. It is very clear that the fields were much lower than those at the minimum before cycle 22 and also smaller than the fields during the minimum before cycle 23. Unfortunately, the data do not cover a period much before cycle 21 maximum so we cannot compare the polar fields during the last minimum with those of even earlier minima.

Other, more recent data sets, such as the Kitt Peak and MDI magnetograms, and they too also show that the polar fields were weak during the cycle 24 minimum compared with the cycle 23 minimum (de Toma 2011; Gopalswamy et al. 2012). The structure of the solar corona was also quite different from what is expected during a normal minimum. As can be seen from the LASCO images shown in Fig. 2 the solar corona has the canonical solar-minimum structure during the cycle 23 minimum, but the coronal did not have a simple configuration of streamers in an equatorial belt as it was during the previous minimum in 1996.
4. Cycle 24 thus far…
The dynamics of the solar interior is quite different (William, solar cycle 24 from other solar cycles observed) from what has been seen before. Of course one has to keep in mind that we only have 16 years of data on solar interior dynamics, and this allows us to compare this cycle only with cycle 23. As can be seen in Antia & Basu (this volume), the latitude independent part of the solar rotation rate s slower during this cycle than it was in cycle 23. The zonal flows are different too, in particular, the poleward flow is very weak. Plots of the zonal flow seen at different latitudes plotted at a function of radius and time show other differences between the flows during cycles 23 and 24, as can be seen in Fig. 3 of Antia & Basu (this volume). In fact the poleward flow is so weak, it was at first believed to be absent and led to the speculation that cycle 25 may not occur at all and that we may be delayed or that we may be headed towards a Maunder-type minimum (Hill et al. 2011). What Antia &Basu (this volume ) also find is that while the zonal flows at all latitudes in cycle 23 can be fitted with three harmonics of an 11.7 year period, one cannot simultaneously fit the mid-latitudes of cycle 24.

… they also found a negative correlation between the numbers of small and large sunspots and that during the period of 1998-2011, the number of large sunspots gradually decreased, while the number of small sunspots steadily increased. Of course, since it is believed that sunspots need a minimum strength to emerge, the question will be whether the trend of decreasing numbers of large sunspots will continue over the current cycle, and hence make a spotless cycle possible. The long-term trends in the strength and size of sunspots will perhaps be a better indicator than solar flows as to whether the Sun is moving towards a magnetically quiet phase.

There is a bit of a ‘private war’ going on further up the thread.
Some people take themselves too seriously, blog-science should be fun,
Solar polar fields according to data from Stanford are moving in right direction, albeit very slowly,
so where is the fun in that, you might ask:
You see, the formula in the above link has its roots in the Greek mythology:
Helios (Sun) is son of Zeus (J-upiter) who in turn is son of Chronos (S-aturn)
Most of us are greatly influenced by our fathers, and through them in smaller extent by our grandfathers.
Translate the above into numbers and you get:
Solar Activity = 2xJ +1x J-S