Guest essay by David Archibald
Solar cycle length is one of the more important parameters, though difficult to judge even though the cycle is more than half over. The longer Solar Cycle 24, the colder the climate will be during Solar Cycle 25 according to Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory. The one true indication of the end of a solar cycle and the beginning of the next is the flattening of the heliospheric current sheet. That is likely to be at least four years away.
Figure 1: Heliospheric current sheet tilt angle
Figure 2: Interplanetary Magnetic Field
The interplanetary magnetic field has recovered from the record lows of the Solar Cycle 23/24 transition with a peak of activity post the Solar Cycle 24 maximum to levels equating to the 1970s colling period.
Figure 3: F10.7 Flux 2014 – 2016
For the last 18 months solar activity has been in a disciplined downtrend with well-defined activity bounds. There was a jump up in the lower bound of activity in July 2015 but still maintaining the same slope. What is interesting at the moment is that the F10.7 flux has been in a narrow band between 75 and 79 since October 17th.
Figure 4: F10.7 Flux less the decline
To better understand what was going on during that period of 18 months of disciplined downtrend, Figure 4 above shows the F10.7 flux since the beginning of 2015 with the slope flattened. There is a change in character between the first part of the disciplined downtrend period and the second part, with much less volatility in the latter.
Figure 5: F10.7 Flux 1948 – 2016
Figure 5 shows the whole of the instrumental record for the F10.7 flux. While Solar Cycle 24 is the smallest solar cycle in the record, no apparent climate response has been seen to date apart from the cooling of the North Atlantic water column to 700 metres. The greatest temperature response to changes in solar cycle length is seen in northwest Europe so the North Atlantic water column heat content may prove to be a leading indicator.
Figure 6: Ap Index 1932 – 2016
Activity in the Ap index is backloaded to after Solar Cycle 24 maximum.
Figure 10: Solar Wind Flow Pressure 1971 – 2016
The peaks of the solar wind flow pressure during the current solar cycle are also backloaded to after solar cycle maximum.
Figure 7: Oulu Neutron Count 1964 – 2016
The cause of variation in the neutron count is the strength of the interplanetary magnetic field carried in the solar wind. A weaker magnetic field and solar wind allows more galactic cosmic rays to penetrate to the inner planets of the solar system. The galatic cosmic rays cause a shower of neutrons when they hit atoms in the atmosphere. In turn, those neutrons provide nucleation sites for cloud droplets, increasing cloud cover and the Earth’s albedo. Despite the higher values for the interplanetary magnetic field and the solar wind flow pressure post the solar cycle maximum, the neutron count has risen to the levels characterisitic of the 1970s cooling period.
Figure 8: Solar Dipole from the Wilcox Solar Observatory
It is apparent that a number of aspects of solar activity are not a random walk. That may include the solar dipole which appears to form one sharp peak during each solar cycle with the peak values for at least the last four cycles aligned.
Figure 9: Total Solar Irrradiance 1976 – 2016
Variation of total solar irradence over the solar cycle is said to be inconsequential in affecting climate with the change in neutron count being at least seven times more powerful. The total solar irradiance is down to levels of solar minima prior to the 23/24 minimum.
David Archibald is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery)
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No matter how you look at it we are fluxed.
Anthony this maybe nothing but I have been receiving a window saying your security certificate can’t be verified and results in lock-up. Additionally I get a “can’t load this page” but a refresh solves the issue, or troubleshooter will allow access. This might deter a new viewer and thought you should know. It could be MS harassment since I refuse to load WIN-10. Anyone else out there with the same issues?
CB
FWIW.
I get the same thing when using the Opera browser. I never get the certificate notice when using Firefox.
Forget M$ and use Ubunto/SeaMonkey, user-friendly OS and free.
I get that notice with Firefox if I happen to change the month by accident.
I work in the corporate space and Win-10 is awful to manage. M$ seems to think *IT* knows what users want in their corporates. Windows updates re-set user set defaults like default .PDF reader. Apply a Win-10 update, it resets to M$ default, Edge. Also the “Allow Windows to manage my printers” is a complete joke for many users.
I’ve been using Windows 10 without a problem until last week. Now, when one of the WordPress video ads starts playing, it takes me off the page I’m reading and automatically scrolls to the video. It even does that sometimes when I’m in the middle of writing a comment. The only time I can read the article or comments is when the video ad stops playing. No video ad played when I clicked on this article however.
“Louis November 6, 2016 at 9:43 pm”
I guess you have been infected with the “Anniversary Edition” of Win 10 1607 14393.
“pameladragon November 6, 2016 at 4:54 pm”
Can’t do that with Govn’t agencies in Australia.
…Carbon Bigfoot, check to make sure your date and time are correct…
..Louis, the problem is not Win 10 ( which sucks)..It is a WordPress problem that Anthony is trying to get fixed, IIRC….
I got a Can’t Post this Reply today for a page that still should be open.
I have been noninfrequently “bugged” with that “security certificate” notification for the past 3 weeks, and sometimes, no matter what you “click on” ya can’t get away from it unless ya select another website, …… and I am using MS System10 on a Dell platform ….. or WIN-10 whatever.
It is almost as irritating as that Adobe Flash Player “pop-up” ad was,
Flumoxed too !
g
I guess I am really confused and flumoxed too, because of this, to wit:
Excerpted from the above: Guest essay by David Archibald
Now that claim about cosmic rays “zapping” atoms in the upper atmosphere and “knocking” the “neutrons” out of them and those now “free” neutrons providing nucleation (adhesion) sites for atmospheric water vapor to collect into visible “drops” of H2O (clouds, fogs and mists) sure got me to wondering just what the “science” is/was that causes that to happen.
Likewise, as others claim, it requires minute “dust” and/or “salt” particles/particulate in the atmosphere to provide nucleation (adhesion) sites for atmospheric water vapor to collect into visible “drops” of water (clouds, fogs and mists) …… or great big drops of water (rain).
So, when I was reading up on “neutrons” to refresh my memory, I found these items:
And while I was reading up on the above, I got to wondering about, to wit:
On a cold, cold morning, …… why does the water molecule in my exhaled breath collect cohesively together forming a “visible” mist, fog or cloud of water vapor?
On that cold, cold morning, is the air that is in close proximity to my mouth being constantly “zapped” with cosmic rays to create oodles of “free” neutrons, ……. or is all that air that I’m exhaling my breath into loaded down with or crammed full of minute “dust” and/or “salt” particles/particulate that the moisture in my exhaled breath immediately does a “nucleation” trick on?
A curious mind would like to know the answers.
Interesting post. A major problem with trying to make any guesses about solar cycles and climate is the varying length of the records, as many of the data sets do not date back to the last cooling spell in the 1970’s and earlier.+
Same applies to most climate datasets.
“It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” –unknown Danish Parliamentarian.
I thought that quote was from Yogi Berra.
@Tom:
Yogi Berra has the quote “It looks like deja vu all over again” attributed to him.
Yogi said ” Predictions are hard, especially about the future” .
Yogi Berra – “I never said half the things i said.”
That’s a misquote of a famous Yogi Berra quote. Here’s another one of his that I love – “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
David Archibald writes, “While Solar Cycle 24 is the smallest solar cycle in the record, no apparent climate response has been seen to date apart from the cooling of the North Atlantic water column to 700 metres.”
Why would the relatively small solar cycle 24 impact the North Atlantic heat content to 700 meters, but no other basin? Doesn’t this suggest that something else was responsible for that decline, especially when the ocean heat content to depths of 2000 meters for the North Atlantic shows an increase?
Equally mystifying is AWW Arctic winter warming.
Another thing that happened during solar cycle 24 was that the earth heated to its warmest surface and lower troposphere temperatures on record. David Forgets to mention this, having spent years predicting that solar cycle 24 would herald the coldest temperatures in a generation: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/03/cet-cooling-in-line-with-solar-model-prediction/
And what does atmospheric temperature measure DWR54? Hint: It doesn’t measure heat content. You should learn the ‘gas laws’ and about atmospheric enthalpy. Then stop using imprecise colloquial terms such as warmest and coldest and use correct units for heat such as kilojoules per kilogram.
It really is amazing how the warmists are still trying to claim the recent el nino as a climate phenomena.
“And what does atmospheric temperature measure DWR54? Hint: It doesn’t measure heat content.”
Not of the whole climate system, no.
It doesn’t even measure the heat content of 7% of it.
93% lies in the oceans…..
The solar cycle 24 cooling will start with surface ocean cooling.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2016/anomnight.11.7.2016.gif
There are multiple mechanisms.
http://notrickszone.com/2016/11/04/cold-october-n-hemisphere-snow-cover-reaches-near-record-high-record-snow-in-siberia/
The pacific is likely still unloading heat. It’s a much bigger ocean and will require more time to unload it’s heat. I firmly believe the negative arctic oscillation will dominate until the pacific finishes cooling. Along with heat, lots of water vapor will continue to be drawn out and dumped, southwest Alaska will stay above average temperatures, and alarmists will keep claiming the earth is warming despite the opposite happening for whatever deceitful motivation that inspires them.
Politely – noted.
There is a – ‘So what?’
I hate the idea that the ‘Climate’ [what an all-enveloping word that ‘climate’ is?] may cool.
Cool is bad.
Cold kills.
I – a seaman, not an astrophysicist or a watermelon – really don’t know what [if anything] to make from this, so far as the future is concerned.
‘A little warmer, please!’ is my plaintive cry.
Auto, well wrapped up here in London at about 4C [say 40F].
Heating off for the night now.
That fits with what earthnull is showing. Note the surface winds which are bringing the cold into the area. Further to the west there is that strong warm surface flow which flows north, and is the reason for the above average temps and lower sea ice conditions being shown for the Arctic…https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=23.49,45.65,819/loc=-0.656,51.731
You say “So what ?”
So what if the world is going to end as we know it !
That’s what !
You must sell all your possessions immediately, and head for the hills.
Everything else will be flooded from melting glaciers.
I happen to have some spare cash, and will do you the huge favor of buying all your possessions
at 5% of their true worth.
You will not need them in “the hills”.
I will stay in the val;ley and fill sand bags to ward off the floods!
… I’d like to be serious on the subject of climate change, but some days I lift myself up out of the climate change “debate”, and this is what I see (and I’m sorry to all the scientists here who make meaningful contributions to understanding how things work):
— Humans have made almost no progress in predicting climate change since the 1800s … yet some smarmy left wing people have found a way to scare people with their fantasies of a coming climate change catastrophe, in an effort to control them, and extract money from corporations for their energy use.
No one at this blog knows the future climate.
Everyone at this blog knows the climate is always changing.
Everyone at this blog knows the lie about carbon dioxide controlling the climate has been repeated so many times, with children brainwashed in school for several decades, that is permanently stuck in many brains like a fictional Ronald Reagan “welfare queen anecdote”.
Poverty is important.
People without electricity are important.
The poorest people in the world desperately need fossil fuels and electricity.
And the smarmy left wing climate zealots, who hate fossil fuels, could not care less.
Climate blog for non-scientists
Free
No ads
No money for me
A public service for people who think economic growth is a good thing
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
Just another run of the Miller day in Al Goirge’s paradise/
I’ll pay 6%
10% for ocean front in the tropics.
Yes auto, this go ! go! go! more cold yay ! attitude is about as logical as all the warmists cheering the hottest year EVAH or applauding the melting of Arctic ice like they’re betting on a horse, rather than being really concerned that it is really bad that it is melting.
‘more than half over’
Ok, I recall that Cycle 24 got off to a late start, in fact I think articles on it were among the first posted on WUWT? But I thought it would be ending around 2018- or is there a very long tail on this one, also?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682610002658
Well, the peak was in 2014 not 2013. The original prediction was 11.1 years.
It officially began January 4, 2008. So it should have ended on February 2019.
Looks like it will run late. Which means the next peak won’t be 2023.
Be careful PA, the start of cycle 24 is listed as “2008.12”.
If they had used the month name “December” instead
they would have caused a lot less confusion. Solar cycle
23 was more than 12 years long.
Be careful PA, the start of cycle 24 is listed as “2008.12”
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/10jan_solarcycle24/
“On January 4, 2008, a reversed-polarity sunspot appeared—and this signals the start of Solar Cycle 24,” says David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle_24
Solar Cycle 24 is the 24th solar cycle since 1755, when extensive recording of solar sunspot activity began.[1][2] It is the current solar cycle, and began on January 4, 2008, but there was minimal activity until early 2010.
1. I am careful.
2. The cycle started on January 4, 2008 with the first reversed polarity sunspot.
Dr. Hathaway now regrets jumping the gun when he
published that article. He also went on to publish a paper
on cycle 23 where he acknowledges the correct ending
date for cycle 23. The internet is a great thing, but unfortunately
for us bad information lives forever.
More moving the goal posts. The standard used to be polarity reversal, and now it seems to be “minimum activity”.
Other than Svalgaard pretty much everybody was wrong about cycle 24 intensity. .
We’ll see.
The early sunspot counters didn’t know what a
polarity reversal was. Now, I’m an obsessive compulsive
who got up early in the morning every day in 2008 to see
what the sunspot count was. My advice to you is, stop protesting
the election and pay more attention to your studies.
What relief to look at graphs un-influenced by “climate change” – though I am sure that, with sufficient research funding, there will be some alarmist “scientist” ready and willing to postulate some causative connection theory!
If you fund it, they will come
Well, I guess we’ll know, one way or another, if there is a correlation between reduced solar activity and a colder climate on Earth in the next couple of decades. The question will then be, is it just a correlation, or coincidence, or is the reduced solar activity a causation. Lots of speculation, not enough data.
There are actually some very good and highly predictive models already published in “Environment and Energy” by a WUWT reader, Dan Pangborn (feel free to step in here anytime Dan).
His model essentially calls for integration of solar activity; the effect isn’t instantaneous. It makes quite a bit more sense than the CO2 model and appears to actually work. The take home message though is that the effects of cycle 24 and later 25 won’t be experienced immediately.
Sorry, I think I misquoted the Journal, it’s likely to be “Energy and Environment”. I’m not really sure, I read the paper on-line.
And I see I spelled Dan’s last name wrong. His post below shows it as Pangburn.
Bar – No worries on spelling.
A lot has happened since that Energy & Environment Vol 25 #8 paper but the approach is the same and the predicted temperature anomaly for 2020 is nearly identical. The current ‘accepted’ sunspot numbers are designated V2, the explanation of why CO2 has no significant effect on climate had not yet been discovered, the rise in water vapor had not been recognized as becoming a substantial contributor countering cooling, and 5-yr smoothing had not been applied to measured data. All these refinements are incorporated in my blog at http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com which matches measured temperatures 98% 1895-2015.
Friis-Christensen and Lassen theroy … which Friis-Christensen now agrees has broken down.
If we are having the allegedly warmest decade in recent history at a time of record low solar activity, trying to talk up solar as a significant driver is to admit something else is filling the gap, causing warming DESPITE the low activity.
I wonder what that could be?
The “something else” or as I wondered last June “unidentified factor” is the rising water vapor (which apparently puzzled Willis). Including it with the two other significant factors (CO2 is not one of them) results in a 98% match to measured average global temperatures 1895-2015. http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com
the gap is filled with adjustments
Greg
Residual / latent heat from the oceans keeps popping up. A warming cycle isnt necessarily over when the heat lamp dims. There is a lot of stored heat to be released yet.
PS – look what you have done to the sea ice extent after forcasting the spiral of death has finished. You have stirred the sea ice gods. Keep smiling Greg.
Greg. Perhaps there isn’t a gap if you were to measure atmospheric heat content with the correct units kilojoules per kilogram.
With the exception of the 1998 El Nino and 2015/2016 El Nino peaks, the climate has been unusually steady between those peaks (the peaks are unrelated to CO2).
Please recall that ALL real time measurements average temperature measurements since 1880, were made DURING a warming trend that started in roughly 1850.
Imagine the average temperature had gone up 0.1 degrees from 1880 to 1881, and NEVER changed since 1881: If that happened, it could be stated that: “The last decade from 2005 to 2015, was the hottest decade on record” — factually correct, but very misleading … especially considering there are no real-time measurements at all for 99.9999% of Earth’s climate history.
The scaling of the time axis in both figure one and figure two above is a bit weird. It seems to indicate that both 3 years and 2 years are equally long timewise ( fig. 1) and 4 years = 5 years (fig 2). Is there some hidden message hiding there?
“……cooling of the North Atlantic water column to 700 metres”
Warming and cooling of the North Atlantic is directly associated with solar cycles.
11 year ‘cycle’ solar is only one half of the proper ~22 year solar (magnetic) cycle.
The earth’s magnetic field also has a 16 year magnetic ripple (origin unknown but it could be linked to Indian monsoon 16 year cycle)
These two magnetic cycle produce beat of 9 and 60+ year natural ‘Geo-Solar Oscillation’ driving weather and climate patterns in the north Atlantic better known as the AMO.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSCp.gif
For those who like to know more see this LINK
Thanks Vuk. I presume the green plot is temperature – yes?
And can you bring it more up to date, it currently ends in 1012. Thanks.
R
Yes, it is temperature, data ends in 2011, publication date was September 2012 where the graph comes from.
Will update eventually, but as the link shows theoretical cycle’s movement up to 2020, it is in ‘so far so good’ form.
Further note: you may notice that there is a difference in the shape of the ‘theoretical cycle’ in the link and geo-solar cycle in the graph above. The reason for this is that the ‘theoretical cycle’ has a clean 21.4 year period Cos function, while in the graph above the Cos function is replaced by the solar magnetic cycle derived from the actual sunspot data by simply assigning negative polarity to the even cycles.
> In turn, those neutrons provide nucleation sites for cloud droplets,
Can anyone provide a citation for this? It seems strange that cloud nucleation sites would like to form around a tiny uncharged particle. Also, free neutrons are short lived (~10 min. half life) breaking down into protons and electrons (and yes, a electron antineutrino too).
The primary goal of CLOUD is to understand the influence of galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) on aerosols and clouds, and their implications for climate.
http://cloud.web.cern.ch/cloud
Also read up on Svensmark’s hypothesis
it is a more complex process
http://inspirehep.net/record/541142/files/cosmic_cloud_paths.png
So where do these free neutrons come from ? If the sun is their source, it seems they would burn up most of their half life reaching the earth, and if they do so at near light speed, then of course they will transit the atmosphere in a millisecond.
Ergo they must be hitting something destructively rather than decaying in the atmosphere. So I would think they create charged particle showers which in turn become the cores of water droplets.
Or something along those lines. What makes the muons an pions ??
G
No – the neutrons in the cosmic radiation don’t come from the sun. (Their short half life of just about 10 minutes does exclude this source. And: Neutrons don’t travel with the speed of light, but much slower.) They are “secondary” cosmic rays. This means, they are produced in the upper atmosphere by a process called “Nuclear Spallation”. For details see here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spallation#Nuclear_spallation
I don’t think that these secondary neutrons are an important source for the production of aerosols for cloud seeding. Their main effect is the production of cosmogenic nuclides like Carbon-14:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14#Natural_production_in_the_atmosphere
If I remember it correctly, Svensmark thinks that the most energetic galactic ions, which reach even the low troposphere are important for cloud seeding (and not the secondary neutrons), because only these should be able to enhance the most reflective lower cloud cover.
“The galactic cosmic rays cause a shower of neutrons when they HIT atoms in the atmosphere. “
the neutrons themself are not of cosmic origin. The galactic cosmic rays (GCR’s) are just that… Galactic origin “charged” particles, mostly relativistic speed protons and alpha particles (Helium nuclei). Those relativistic charged particles acquired their velocities by not-well understood acceleration processes, but likely similar to terrestrial particle accelerators. Those Relativistic protons and helium nuclei strike terrestrial molecules of mostly oxygen, ozone, and nitrogen in the ionosphere and top of the stratosphere. That first impact releases a huge, cascading shower of other charged particles and uncharged neutrons as very shortlived radioactive nuclides are formed. The counted neutrons come from those shattered decaying nuclei. Neutron count thus becomes a measure of the GCRs that are making into 1 AU. Solar activity thus anticorrelates with terrestrial neutron counters that look skyward.
Temperatures here in Lincoln UK are not much different to last November both internally and externally measured ,they have dropped a little in the last few days but I have yet to see it go below freezing which it did near the middle of last November. It is the drop in Solar radiation which is mainly responsible for declining temperatures now but if the weather pattern persists I think it will be much colder from December.
vukcevic: if you flow/process diagram had attribute values[units of something] attached to each arrow, it would be more informative.
If you were to accidentally use a photo of Naomi Klein rather than Naomi Oreskes, I don’t think any harm would come of it.Their outlook is similar.
David
You made exactly the same claims about Solar Cycle 23 and Solar Cycle 24. You have written “papers” in which predictions of a 2 deg decline in temperatures by the end of Solar Cycle 24. In fact, I seem to remember that your initial predictions were centred on the end of Solar Cycle 23 and on the Solar Cycle 24 maximum.
There isn’t any cooling, David Not even a little bit. There wasn’t any cooling in the 1970s either despite the impression you try to convey in Fig 2, 6, & 7. The mid 20th century cooling began in the 1940s and ENDED in the 1970s. In any case, how is that Solar Cycle 20 triggered an immediate (or even faster) cooling effect while Solar Cycle 23 (same length) has had no effect.
Hello, trouble is that when it starts to cool, all perfectly natural, the Green zealots will claim the credit, and demand even more money to research the matter. plus even more restrictions on the use of fossell fuel. Bring out the guiletine and finish off all of these nutty people.
Michael Elliott.
should be
You have written “papers” in which predictions of a 2 deg decline in temperatures by the end of Solar Cycle 24 were made
Ya know, GCR remained at elevated levels throughout solar cycle 24. Even at solar cycle 24 maximum, they remained as high as they had during previous solar cycle minimums!
Maybe Linsky was right after all and we have reached an overlapping region between interstellar clouds. Does the interstellar magnetic field vary locally between 2-6 nT?
Published: 07-13-2009
Cloud Tripping Through the Milky Way
….At the moment, we are between clouds. The solar system has “just” left the LIC, which got its name because astronomers once believed we were still inside it. We’re now on a collision course with the G cloud, which stands between us and the galactic center. Linsky says we’ll enter the G cloud in less than 5,000 years — perhaps even tomorrow. Once that happens, there’s a chance the G cloud will affect the Sun’s solar wind and Earth’s climate…..
My bold..
I watched a great video about that a year or so ago, but I can’t seem to find it again…any ideas ?
Just a thought..
What if the ‘interaction regions’ between interstellar clouds are akin to a galactic size ‘radiation belt’? eeek
What if there is a process equivalent to that which produces the Ring Current around Earth, producing a ‘ring current’ at the interaction region of the heliosphere, giving rise to the energetic neutral atoms as mapped by IBEX?
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/15oct_ibex
Would we expect interstellar magnetic fields to be stronger in the interaction regions between clouds? What about radiation type pressures?
wiki
Radiation pressure is the pressure exerted upon any surface exposed to electromagnetic radiation. Radiation pressure implies an interaction between electromagnetic radiation and bodies of various types, including clouds of particles or gases.
What might an interstellar interaction region, electromagnetic wave effect have on the heliosphere? These would be to an interstellar scale and duration.
And what if the electromagnetic wave, driven by an interstellar interaction region, strokes the heliosphere . Is it absorbed or deflected or both, which is common. Hemispheric asymmetry comes to mind here..
ShrNfr November 6, 2016 at 12:46 pm
No matter how you look at it we are fluxed.
———————————————————
I agree, and it could be an electron abundance. lol
What in the world is cancelling out the positive solar fluxed.
We’ve Looked at Clouds from Both Sides Now
––after Joni Mitchell
Published: 12-08-2015
“””In 2008, Fellow Jeff Linsky and his colleague Seth Redfield of Wesleyan University used spectral information gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope to figure out that the solar system is surrounded by 15 nearby clouds of warm gas, all within 50 light years of the Sun. In 2014, Cécile Gry of Aix-Marseille Université (France) and Edward Jenkins of Princeton University Observatory analyzed the same data, but came up with a much simpler picture of the local interstellar medium, or LISM. These researchers suggested that rather than comprising 15 different clouds, the LISM is made of a single continuous cloud that surrounds the Sun.
….For their part, Linsky and Redfield offered three reasons in support of their theory. First, they pointed out that the speed and direction of the flow of gas is different for each one of their 15 clouds. So, they asked Gry and Jenkins to propose a mechanism to explain how a single continuous cloud could exhibit so many changes in speed and direction. Second, many of the 15 clouds appear to be quite long and thin because they are shaped (as predicted) by strong magnetic fields near the Sun. Finally, the 15-cloud model explains why quasars twinkle at radio-wave frequencies. Twinkling results from the interaction of Earth’s changing position as it orbits around the Sun with the irregular shape of the local interstellar clouds found in the direction of twinkling quasars. Since only quasars in the lines of sight through cloud boundaries twinkle, individual LISM clouds must periodically lie in between the twinkling quasars and Earth.
However, a more quantitative test of the two models came in 2014. The Hubble Space Telescope obtained new, high-resolution spectra of stars shining through the LISM. When the researchers looked at the new data, Linsky and Redfield’s 15-cloud model was significantly better at predicting specific stellar spectral observations than the single-cloud model of Gry and Jenkins….””””””
https://jila.colorado.edu/news-highlights/looked-at-both-sides-now
Fifteen clouds of warm gas surrounding the solar system, as modeled by Seth Redfield and Jeff Linsky. New data from the Hubble Space Telescope better supports this model than a competing model that posits just a single large cloud of gas. Credit: S. Redfield, Wesleyan University, and J. Linsky and Steve Burrows, JILA
Interesting and possibly rather disturbing. The model seems to indicate denser clouds nearer the sun. You might wonder if perhaps the sun itself is the source of those clouds. That in turn suggests types of solar weather we are still unfamiliar with.
Likely a typo. “1970s colling period.” That’s a long time to be taking on coal. I thought most ships were into diesel fuel marine nowadays.