Click for magnified view of the sun showing the most recent spot.
Sunspot 987, 988, and now newly emerging 989 are shown above.
With all being near the equator, they are still a cycle 23 spots. A cycle 24 spot would be at a much higher latitude.
The most recent magnetogram shows them to have the magnetic polarity of cycle 23 spots, in addition to being near the equator.
Cycle 24 remains late. There was one sunspot of high latitude and reversed magnetic polarity on January 4th, 2008, but none have been seen since:
Click for a larger image
UPDATE 2: The solar holographic image shows a potentially large spot on the far side of the sun, we’ll have to wait until it comes around to see what it is. The method is not always perfect.
Darker area is the far side of the sun.
Seismic waves propagating through the sun are used to image potential spots on the far side. Here is a description of how it is done.
UPDATE 3:
It looks as if the spot seen yesterday on the far side of the sun via the holographic technique has disappeared. As I said “The method is not always perfect.”
The two spots above are earthward, 987, and 988.
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Looks like a 3rd spot, also at the equator, might be emerging.
Bill in Vigo, truly I think cooling will come soon enough to stop the carbon craziness, but if we are in for decades of cooling, life will still get very tough for the poor and powerless(intended) of the world. A cooler niche will not sustain as much life here on earth and a human die-off of just a few percent is still hundreds of millions of people. It won’t just be freezing, or starvation, but disease and war from the associated social dislocations.
It is terribly ironic to hope for cooling to break the fever of carbon encumbrance. We are damned if it cools, and damned if it doesn’t. Why couldn’t we figure out the true role of CO2 in climate without a shocking cooling to awaken us to the facts? Some scientists we’ve turned out to be.
====================================
Not being a sun spot expert, can someone comment on the reletive size of these spots? Are they small, normal, or large?
The cooler temperatures of 2007 have already had a huge impact on the prices on basic food commodities.
While there were only a few unexpected frost situations like for winter wheat in the US south and the ethanol fiasco has impacted corn prices, most of the world experienced lower than normal crop harvests due to the cooler weather. Stocks and inventories of basic food commodities are now are their lowest levels ever.
World wheat prices and soybeans recently reached $20 per bushel which is twice the previous record. These prices are nothing compared to what would happen if China, the US mid-west, Eastern Europe and Canada can only produce 25% of a normal crop like would have happened in the Little Ice Age.
Still a little too early to cry Wolf Minimum, but I hear some howling in the distance.
I hear some howling in the distance. That would be the anguished cries and fighting and squabbling of the AGW religionists
over how best to keep spinning the data, and keeping the whole fraud going long enough to pass their anti-carbon laws, taxes, and keeping all their various and sundry scams and schemes going.
Human food crops are going to suffer from significant cooling a lot more than they would suffer from warming or biofuels development. Global cooling could cause the deaths of hundreds of millions via starvation. What have we done to cause this cooling?
Quick! Sacrifice some virgins to the sun god!
I wonder how ocean coral will react to the coming Maunder-type minimum?
Modern corals evolved 250 million years ago, when oceans were far more acidic than they are currently. In other words, corals evolved in a very acidic ocean, and have survived large numbers of extreme climate fluctuations–warmings to glaciations to warmings etc.
Coral seems to be reacting badly to sunscreens, but a bit of experimentation should allow development of human skin suncreens that are coral-friendly.
Quick! Sacrifice some virgins to the sun god!
(Hey! I said that yesterday on consimworld!)
Just make sure you use Virgin 1.0.
JEFF
Compare for yourself…
http://images.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~sparke/ast103/sunspots.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~sparke/ast103/lecture11.html&h=800&w=800&sz=79&hl=de&start=10&um=1&tbnid=S5yvtTwUrWF0XM:&tbnh=143&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsunspots%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dde%26sa%3DN
The ones we have now I’d are small. But I’m not an expert either.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that there have been only two sunspots (one in January and one earlier this March) that would be considered part of 24. They were in the upper hemisphere of the pictures we have been studying and demonstrated reverse polarity thus would be new cycle spots. The current group near the equator would be from the tail end of cycle 23. The new cycle is still holding back, like an engine that just won’t turn over.
This March? Huh? When? (Looking wildly around.)
I thought we just had the one last January, with an arguable spitball back in ought-6?
Rev?
From Evan Jojnes:
“Still a little too early to cry Wolf Minimum, but I hear some howling in the distance.”
According to global knowledge (Google), the Wolf Minimum already happened between 1280 and 1340 (1,160 references). There are 869 references to “Gore Minimum.” Someone ought plot that count over time….
The timing is perfect in creating a human caused global warming hysteria, convince politicians and business people to push for bio-fuel and carbon tax when we are entering a solar minimum if your goal is to create mass famine and widespread poverty.
The Wolf minimum marked the start of the Little Ice Age and the end of the Medieval Warm Period.
Look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315-1317
I wouldn’t be surprised if the floods and rains in England and in many places in Western Europe of last year will be repeated in the coming years.
One problem is that the AGW people will claim these unusual weather patterns are climate change caused by CO2. And people will believe them.
oops my bad. I was referring to the one in 06. Spin this one around in our heads. If that was the beginning of cycle 24 (yes, I am talking way back in 06) and the next sun spot was in January of this year, the thought of a throwback to the mini-ice age minimum may be the elephant in the room having tea with the gorilla. Anyone want to speculate that we have been in cycle 24 for two years and have had only two sun spots that meet the criteria for “new” sunspots? It’s almost unthinkable isn’t it. But what if it were true?
“Anyone want to speculate that we have been in cycle 24 for two years ”
No, we haven’t. Sorry. The definition of when the transition officially occurs is when Cycle 24 spots out number cycle 23 spots. We’re not even remotely close….
According to global knowledge (Google), the Wolf Minimum already
Yeah, I know, that was why I made the ref.
From my handy-dandy “Solar Postcard”:
Oort (1010-1050)
Wolf (1280-1340)
Spörer (1415-1534)
Maunder (1645-1715)
Dalton (1790-1840)
Hmmm. Speaking of pattern recognition.
1010
1280
1415
1645
1790
. . .
2008?
Yoiks!
Evan Jones
From the pattern it would appear that we are overdue? Should the last year in the list really be 1998?
Get out the blankets!!!
The Great Famine of 2008–2010 (occasionally dated 2008-2015) was the first of a series of large-scale crises that struck the world early in the 21st century, causing millions of deaths over an extended number of years and marking a clear end to an earlier period of growth and prosperity during the 16th through 20th centuries. Starting with bad weather in the spring of 2008, universal crop failures lasted through 2010 until the summer of 2011; The world did not fully recover until 2015. It was a period marked by extreme levels of criminal activity, disease and mass death, infanticide, and cannibalism. It had consequences for Church, State, Western society and future calamities to follow in the 21st century.
From WikiFuture 😉
Evan Jones (12:28:38) :
“I thought we just had the one last January, with an arguable spitball back in ought-6?”
The current crop looks like some decent spots to me. I won’t have time, but in five days someone ought to post a theory about “retrograde” solar cycles where the sun’s conveyor belt not just slows down, but goes into reverse and starts sucking in the solar wind released during the previous years.
It’s kind of a pity that we didn’t have all the solar watching resources during the transition between cycles 22 and 23, I have little experience to compare the current minimum’s daily events with the last. OTOH, here are a couple links that show the last minimum was not like the current one:
http://www.dxlc.com/solar/cyclcomp.html
http://www.dxlc.com/solar/solcycle.html
To those who incline toward hoping for some cooling to cool the fever of AGW fanatics, they’ll just blame the cooling for masking the effect of global warming. They already do that with the mid-twentieth century cooling.
The thing to hope for is enough cooling to generate a Kuhnian paradigm shift in climate science that leads to proper recognition of the role of solar periodicities in climate cycles.
That would prevent IPCC types from being able to so easily dismiss the role of solar forcing. Having come to this party (the AGW controversy) and from another discipline (economics), I don’t know whether the forcing attributed to GHG’s is accurate or not, but having immersed myself recently in what the temperature record can tell us about solar influences, I’m quite certain that solar forcing gets short shrift in the IPCC analysis of forcings. This embolden’s the AGW alarmists, and gives them rationalization for ignoring solar influences.
One thing I’ve noted as I’ve begun to read various articles and abstracts in climate science is the number of them which report findings that are indicative of solar influences, but soft pedal the results somehow so as not to appear to be going against the AGW hypothesis. That is classic Kuhnian “normal science.” And it sucks. If it takes a period of cooling to generate a paradigm shift in climate science that will let climate scientists report their findings without kow-towing to those who have staked their careers and reputations on the AGW hypothesis, and who seek to protect the same by the power and influence they wield in the scientific establishment, then I’m for whatever amount of cooling that it take to do this. It won’t stop the “greenies” or those for whom the AGW hypothesis is not simply “normal science” but is part of an unscientific world view. But it will free science to be science again for a while.
Call me an antiantidisestablishmentarian. I’m all for disestablishing the Church of AGW. I’m also a credentialed minister, BTW, who understands the difference between faith and science, so I can say something like this with no slight intended to believers. In Kuhnian “normal science,” the reigning paradigm ultimately becomes an article of faith. Does “the science is settled” sound a bell here? Where is the Martin Luther of climate science when you need him?
Look at the tail (ending) of Cycle #4: http://www.dxlc.com/solar/cycl4.html
Looks like how #23 is finishing?: http://www.dxlc.com/solar/cyclcomp.html
Just when you think it’s done…..
“Anyone want to speculate that we have been in cycle 24 for two years and have had only two sun spots that meet the criteria for “new” sunspots? It’s almost unthinkable isn’t it. But what if it were true?”
The thought is actually relevant. We don’t have enough knowledge about the sun to predict a new Maunder minimum. A new MM would mean that the solarcycle almost disappear for decades. So it would in theory be possible that sc24 actually has started but it will not produce more than some random spots like in MM ~1650-1700.
Basil, they will probably beat the drums even louder, proclaiming that once the sun powers up again, AGW will be even more devastating, and that this is a reprieve that will allow us to repent our CO2 sins.
I know that currently, cycle changes are defined by the number of newbies out-pacing the number of oldies. But what if this time there is a long term pattern of change that forces us to use a new definition for this kind of change? What if these extremely low “minimum periods” we keep talking about also demonstrated a different pattern of change from old to new? What was the pattern of overlap like for these periods? Or IS there a pattern that we can discern with any degree of scientific theorizing that passes the smell test from the two or possibly three historic minimums? The end of 23 is still upon us but with very little activity, hanging on like a stubborn milk tooth refusing to fall out, and cycle 24 is either a few months old or TWO YEARS old if we dare to use a different definition for this odd case.