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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A shadow on the sun
Staring at the loss
Looking for a cause
And never really sure
The latest on sunspot 23
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/28mar_oldcycle.htm?list181784
I don’t know about “Eddy Minimum”, but Landscheidt Minimum sounds good. “Eddy” seems disrespectful.
In terms of snow, here in New Hampshire (measured in Concord) we have just moved into the #2 spot in terms of seasonal snowfall records, with over 115″. We need only about 6.5″ more to beat the all-time record of 122″, set back in 1873-74. That is doable, as snow in April here is not at all unusual.
What happened to the page
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/our-changing-sun-and-colony-collapse-disorder-in-bees/
?
I was going to return to it for a thorough reading but it seems to have disappeared. If it is still available, tell us where.
Thanks,
– Gene
I miss the reason you consider ‘Eddy Minimum’ disrespectful, Bruce. Jack Eddy is the one who named Maunder Minimum, at least partly because of the alliteration. He could have called it the Oerter Minimum after the one who really discovered it, but called it Maunder Minimum instead after one who ballyhooed it.
Read up on Jack Eddy. He is the one who brought the concept of minima back into the consciousness of climate scientists. Well, some of them. The ones who believe there can be great natural variability of climate.
It really amazes me the scientific ignorance of some of the defenders of AGW. They catch a mole tail, and raise a mountain. Sure, CO2 must have some physical effect, but the fierce adherence by some advocates to the IPCC’s mistaken conception of that effect, and the perverted modeling done thereby, simply amazes me. Look at the resistance to reconsider some assumptions even in the face of seven years of leveling, and now dropping, of temperature.
It is indeed heartening to hear some public wondering by Pachauri about the recent cooling. The buck does stop, after all, at his desk. Surely not all of the warmistas harbor a deep desire to become gigantic fools. Gore, and Hanson, I’m not so sure about; the desire by them to be giants may overshadow any caution about what sort of giants.
Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum
Pachauri smells a bad sum.
=================
Re: The “Gore minimum”. Even if meant in derision that a$$hat does not deserve to have his name preserved that way.
I propose the Gorebull Minimum, as in Gorebull warming.
Has anyone noticed that 250 of the last 1000 years have been major solar minimums?
The age of shadows has begun
Giant machines blot out the sun
Frozen lands becoming known
The age of shadows has begun
Just to mention again, the first potential cycle 24 spot occurred July 31st, 2006. The second was in March of this year. The first one lasted hours. The second one seems to have also disappeared. If one were to say that cycle 24 started back then, it is now 1 yr, 8 mo old. Normal overlap is between 6 months and 2 years as the old cycle ramps down and the new one ramps up. It looks like this overlap will be greater than two years. If the entire sun quiets down into a long sleep, it seems to make sense that the old one will drag on but in a very quiet pattern and the new one will seem to never get into its maximum. Has this been the pattern before?
REPLY: The second was January 4th, 2008
my bad. above post done this AM while freezing in NE Oregon. thanks for the correction.
Haven’t you read about these guys?
I live in New York. #B^1
[…] The recent spots all bore magnetic and positional signature of the previous sunspot cycle. The new cycle has still failed to makea normal start. Posted at 11:07 AM | […]
To lighten the mood a bit:
The sun appears to be shooting blanks
All talk, no “backbone”
Just…can’t…rise…to the occasion
Isn’t ejecting anything at all
snip if you need to…wait…that’s not what I mean. Clip if you need to.
Kim, I didn’t know who Jack Eddy was, and mistakenly assumed Eddy was a nickname for Theodor Landscheidt. I have since read a bit about him, including an Interview with Jack Eddy by Spencer Weart, in ’99. An excerpt from it is below. Very interesting that he initially set out to debunk Maunder who got a lot of his ideas from Sporer, and decided on the name Maunder because it sounded better, with all the m’s.
So when I read Maunder’s and Sporer’s claims from the 1890’s that several hundred years before that the sun had behaved strangely for seventy years, it seemed almost preposterous. And in the long-standing traditions of the High Atltitude Observatory, where I had been trained, it needed to be shot at, even after all these years, and dismissed once and for all. So I set out to demonstrate that what Maunder had claimed was really nonsense. I felt I could do that by applying other tests that Maunder didn’t have: like our better understanding of aurorae and so on. And so I tried them. And every one I tried seemed to confirm what Maunder and Sporer had said.
After reading about him, I now think “Eddy Minimum” would indeed be appropriate.
Pamela,
The old man sun is 7 billion years old. When I get that old, I won’t be ejecting anything either.
To put the whole Climate Change issue into perspective vis-a-vis the Peak Oil Crisis, everyone needs to ask themselves, their associates, all sitting elected officials and those seeking office, especially the office of President of the United States, “What is more threatening in both the long and short terms, a beneficial 1 degree F rise in average world temperatures over the past 100 years, or a 1 percent decline in world oil production over the last 100 weeks – with steepening declines forecast? Furthermore, can our economy better deal with declining fuel inventories in an environment of persistent warming, or in an environment of declining average temperatures over the next several decades, the most likely scenario given the highly reliable solar inertial motion (SIM) model forecasts of climate change?” Solar cycle # 24 will tell the tale. The problem is not AGW. The problem is the end of cyclical warming coincident with the onset of Peak Oil. And, who would make $300M available to Al Gore to convince us that we are responsible for Global Warming and must pay dearly to reverse it? Pay a tax and change the weather? I don’t think so.
Bruce Cobb, yes, that is a wonderful interview with Jack Eddy. He liked words.
================================
New forecast out for SC24. Not before July 2008 or could be mid 2009:
http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Engwelcome.html
REPLY: Thanks Bob, I’ll post this.
Interesting on Eddy (post-minimum years):
http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/starkno7.html
After that… (What?)
An interesting article on John Eddy in his “post-minimum” days:
http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/starkno7.html
I’d be curious to know what came next in his career, and don’t recall Wear’s interview covering it.
[…] why were these five sunspots fingered as old solar trekkers rather than members of the next generation? It all comes back to what a solar cycle is–and sunspots, flares, prominences, and plage are […]
no one seems to no how bad the sun spots have got to.you all will do when the iceage comes with speed.and your thinking were the next meal will come from.be serious all of you. this is a big threat.and you think its a game
and dont beleive what nasa allways says.they are controled by the illuminati.and they want controll.and make us feel thick by brain washing us with the tv -radio-and pappers witch are all controlled.its been happening for years.look it up for your self.the illuminati