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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Pamela, I think I get what you’re saying now. OK, wow, that would be extremely interesting. I suppose only time will tell what’s going on there.
Basil: excellent post. I agree. If it takes a prolonged cooling with all that implies (possibly millions, if not billions lost to starvation) to return this debate to science, then so be it. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING will convince a True Believe(tm) we’re not to blame. As one of them keeps telling me, “even if we’re wrong, it’s the right thing to do.”
If they are wrong it is the wrong thing to do. (Horribly wrong; costly in human life). Even if they are right, it is the wrong thing to do because the proposed measures are ineffective for fighting GW but highly effective for crippling the wealth necessary to deal with AGW, if real.
They have Pascal not only half backwards, but completely backwards.
I’m wondering where all you people hoping for cooling hail from. While I anticipate cooling, I am NOT looking forward to it. Wisconsin is already cold enough, and there are only so many games at Lambeau I can take in below-zero temperatures!
Thanks for the list Evan. Anyone have a chart of actual sunspot data for these periods? I am especially interested in cycle change overlap data. I would also want charts of sunspot data for the periods in-between these minimums, say 10 cycles on either side for each period. I wish I had data for the other aspects of sun measurements, which I consider to be more predictive of weather change than just spot numbers. Oh well. What I am interested in is the time span between last one out and first one in as well as overall count of sunspots during cycle change, comparing normal cycles to minimal cycles.
Oort (1010-1050)
Wolf (1280-1340)
Spörer (1415-1534)
Maunder (1645-1715)
Dalton (1790-1840)
What a great way to spend my spring break. By the way, it is friggin cold in northeast Oregon with more snow on the way.
RE: DNorris (04:13:56) :
During the 2010s, a Great War started, which far exceeded the levels of destruction and death during the two Great Wars during the previous century. Adding to the already rising aerosol levels coming from Asia, additional aerosols were sent airborne by thousands of nuclear explosions. While not causing a short and intense “nuclear winter” as projected by certain 20th century alarmists, the additional aerosols serves as an additive factor to the effects of a solar minimum, combined with previously poorly understood negative feedback due to land use changes which had occurred during the previous 10000 years. Furthermore, the interglacial was nearing its end. The combined impacts caused the interglacial to arrive prematurely. The Era Of Great Change had begun.
Anyone looking forward to cooling as a technique to put the kibosh on AGW theorists, really ought to read “Fallen Angels”.
In that book, as part of the background, the North Dakota highway department is in a desperate battle to keep the advancing glacier from closing the cross-state freeway, and Chicago is being slowly dismantled by its own residents for firewood… and the US government is still fervently fighting against AGW, by such advanced techniques as denying allotments of paper to unapproved technologists and government critics.
Where is the Martin Luther of climate science when you need him?
Think “95 postcards”.
Not sure how trading one myth for another would help. What we need are the Galileo’s, Copernicus’, Kepler’s of climate science.
PG: “Anyone have a chart of actual sunspot data for these periods?”
One can find historic data digging around at
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/
Recent data is more complete, however, comparing the 9/1996 cycle 22 minimum with today’s values is most interesting.
FYI:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0327/p01s02-woap.html
REPLY: Yes lets burn food to replace oil, great idea those biofuels. 🙁
Plus, the rice shortage, and to an extent, the wheat shortage, have been made worse by the horrible winter experienced in Asia. As you know, literally that whole continent has been affected, from the Levant, to the Yellow Sea.
I’ll wait in this place where the sun never shines;
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves.
Red is grey and yellow white
But we decide which is right
and which is an illusion.
Reply: Knights in White Satin
Solar cycle twenty four is already late enough, that we can be pretty damn sure that during the coming cycle, we are going to freeze.
This, however, is not going to unduly bother the church of anthropogenic Gaia warming.
It will probably not even enable science to recover. We see the same rot in every area of science, most notoriously string theory.
Anthropogenic Gaia warming is not causing the decline of science, rather the decline of science is has caused anthropogenic Gaia warming – see the famous essay “space aliens cause global warming” The rot set in science first, and only later did scientific theories become religions rather than science.
We are seeing a similar transmogrification throughout academia, indeed science is the second last and second least affected, the least affected being mathematics. History, for example, has been liberated from inconvenient facts thanks to the discovery that what dead white males thought was happening is of no account.
Evan Jones: Cream; White Room?
“Nights”, actually 😉
There’s a little black spot on the sun today
Its the same old thing as yesterday
Tex: Good call.
Sitting in an English garden
waiting for the sun…
Have to admit 988 especially is a shock after months without M-class flares. This abscence was itself absent during the cycle 23 minimum. There we had flaring even during Sept. 1996 during a month stretch without spots.
Jan Janssens indicates cycle ignition falls into two sets re: the delay before minimum following first day without spots. The curve fit implies 24 minimum coming mid-2009, it is already too late to take the preceding fork.
Prophets of a static sun CYA, the roof is coming down.
Don’t these sun spots have the (same) reverse-polarity of the previous ‘Cycle 24’ spot?
REPLY: They are rotated compared to the cycle 24 spot if you look closely.
See, global warming is even affecting the Sun.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Ok, time to get Evan away from the computer.
The sunspot cycle start has become the latest “hurricane naming” monkey football of science, all in the name of politics 🙂
Cycle 24 will start when it starts, the sun will let us know when it’s ready. And at that time, we all will know.
Anthony
It looks like a cycle 24 is coming. On the farside right now.
REPLY Yes I saw the hologram, but be cautious, these are resolved through methods that can make an erroneous position. Let’s see what it looks like when it comes around.
We really need a SOHO on the other side of the sun too.