From NASA Science News h/t to John-X
Spotless Sun: 2008 is the Blankest Year of the Space Age
Sept. 30, 2008: Astronomers who count sunspots have announced that 2008 is now the “blankest year” of the Space Age.
As of Sept. 27, 2008, the sun had been blank, i.e., had no visible sunspots, on 200 days of the year. To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go back to 1954, three years before the launch of Sputnik, when the sun was blank 241 times.
“Sunspot counts are at a 50-year low,” says solar physicist David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. “We’re experiencing a deep minimum of the solar cycle.”
Above: A histogram showing the blankest years of the last half-century. The vertical axis is a count of spotless days in each year. The bar for 2008, which was updated on Sept. 27th, is still growing. [Larger images: 50 years, 100 years]
A spotless day looks like this:
The image, taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on Sept. 27, 2008, shows a solar disk completely unmarked by sunspots. For comparison, a SOHO image taken seven years earlier on Sept. 27, 2001, is peppered with colossal sunspots, all crackling with solar flares: image. The difference is the phase of the 11-year solar cycle. 2001 was a year of solar maximum, with lots of sunspots, solar flares and geomagnetic storms. 2008 is at the cycle’s opposite extreme, solar minimum, a quiet time on the sun.
And it is a very quiet time. If solar activity continues as low as it has been, 2008 could rack up a whopping 290 spotless days by the end of December, making it a century-level year in terms of spotlessness.
Hathaway cautions that this development may sound more exciting than it actually is: “While the solar minimum of 2008 is shaping up to be the deepest of the Space Age, it is still unremarkable compared to the long and deep solar minima of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” Those earlier minima routinely racked up 200 to 300 spotless days per year.
Some solar physicists are welcoming the lull.
“This gives us a chance to study the sun without the complications of sunspots,” says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center. “Right now we have the best instrumentation in history looking at the sun. There is a whole fleet of spacecraft devoted to solar physics–SOHO, Hinode, ACE, STEREO and others. We’re bound to learn new things during this long solar minimum.”
As an example he offers helioseismology: “By monitoring the sun’s vibrating surface, helioseismologists can probe the stellar interior in much the same way geologists use earthquakes to probe inside Earth. With sunspots out of the way, we gain a better view of the sun’s subsurface winds and inner magnetic dynamo.””There is also the matter of solar irradiance,” adds Pesnell. “Researchers are now seeing the dimmest sun in their records. The change is small, just a fraction of a percent, but significant. Questions about effects on climate are natural if the sun continues to dim.”
Pesnell is NASA’s project scientist for the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a new spacecraft equipped to study both solar irradiance and helioseismic waves. Construction of SDO is complete, he says, and it has passed pre-launch vibration and thermal testing. “We are ready to launch! Solar minimum is a great time to go.”
Coinciding with the string of blank suns is a 50-year record low in solar wind pressure, a recent discovery of the Ulysses spacecraft. (See the Science@NASA story Solar Wind Loses Pressure.) The pressure drop began years before the current minimum, so it is unclear how the two phenomena are connected, if at all. This is another mystery for SDO and the others.
Who knew the blank sun could be so interesting?
Steve M. (12:20:38) :
Thanks Lief, of course your paper does not come up when I googled predictions…not really surprsing.
You should have tried:
prediction svalgaard
or
smallest cycle in 100 years
🙂
“Not logic, just physics.”
Leif, it was so obvious I was not using your esoteric definition that you did not ‘enforce’ it for several exchanges. Your demand that I use your definition now, to allow you to save face, is preposterous.
” How Round is the Sun? ”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/02oct_oblatesun.htm
“… During years of high solar activity the sun develops a thin “cantaloupe skin” that significantly increases its apparent oblateness… “
terry46 (10:12:48), The minima for solar cycle 23 was expected to be in March 2006. There have been several cycle 23 spots and a few cycle 24 polarity spots since then. As of today, we have surpassed the 446 spotless days milestone in this minima. I don’t know if that count includes the first 10 spotless days though.
Small sunspots? Sunspots are assigned a number. The small spots we recently saw were given a 1.1 sunspot number. The even smaller August spot was rated at 0.5.
Back in the day, Galileo seems to have charted some quite small sunspots; however, without being able to time travel our current equipment back to his time, we will never really know how well the two methods of observation correlate.
John M Reynolds
Gary,
Thanks for your reply.
Leif,
Thank you.
Gary Gulrud (13:14:38) :
Your demand that I use your definition now, to allow you to save face, is preposterous.
I really don’t care what you use. My goal here is to inform the general readership and to warn against and correct, if possible, misconceptions and misrepresentations, and to promote the use of a civil and respectful tone.
John-X (13:43:16) :
“… During years of high solar activity the sun develops a thin “cantaloupe skin” that significantly increases its apparent oblateness… “
And it is those ‘pimples’ that are responsible for most of the increase in TSI because we get to see ‘sideways’ into the hotter interior layers. Like in this image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Aa_large.jpg
There was an article in Physics Today a month or two ago by Scaffetta and West, discussing a link between solar activity and climate trends. The letters to the editor have been published today, and they are quite an interesting read, along with the reply from the authors.
See the whole bunch here- http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_61/iss_10/10_1.shtml?type=PTALERT
paminator (15:31:05) :
There was an article in Physics Today a month or two ago by Scaffetta and West, discussing a link between solar activity and climate trends.
Thanks for the link. I tend to agree with Peter Foukal, and have discussed with Scafetta at AGU last Fall the use of flares rather than TSI directly. Our observations of flares in the past is even more uncertain than our reconstructions of TSI. As far as i remember the answer was that they had that result handy already…
Interesting to see the perception by several that the IPCC does not recognize the solar influence as significant, and that the ACRIM series is questionable.
actuator (12:35:32) :
“Oh, and I was in the 21st Century before it got here babe.”
Groovy, Smashing Baby! When this ship comes a’ rockin’, don’t come a’ knockin’, baby!
I have a question that’s been bothering me for a long time. The solar wind is composed of protons (hydrogen atoms stripped of their electrons). What heppens to all those electrons? Is there some sub-atomic process tha destroys or neutralizes these electrical charges without affecting the positive charg on the proton?
My fingers did it again- that was “positive charge”.
PS
I studied electrical engineering during the 1940’s at Michigan Mining & Tech, so I know a little about how ordinary electrical theory works. Got drafted before I got my degree, but I got a degree in computer science and worked with computers since the mid 1960’s. Never trusted computer models. Too much that can be “fine tuned”, so they’re no better than a SWAG.
Ted Annonson (19:19:39) :
The solar wind is composed of protons (hydrogen atoms stripped of their electrons).
For every proton there is also an electron. The solar wind is neutral. In fact, the [easy to move] electrons give the solar wind its very high heat conductivity without which there wouldn’t be a solar wind to begin with.
[…] addition, I want to point out a post at Watts Up With That? that shows the number of days the sun has been blank so far this year compared to the previous year count… In summary, this is the most number of blank days since 1954 already, and if current trends […]
Thanks Leif! I was wandering because the site I watch every day only shows the velocity and protons per cm^3. http://www.spaceweather.com/
If we are to do comparisons (and we should) with previous cycles as to spotless day, then we need to compare this episode with previous ones in the same manner: I.e – from previous maximum to minimum, and note that we are nowhere near confidence that minimum has been reached.
http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html#Evolution
Monthly number of spotless days
first 2 graphs. If we are at peak, then the total # of spotless days is going to be double what we have now, the spotless days counting starts later than SC10-15 , and runs stronger than the curve of SC10-15.
It looks to be a whole new animal.
Thanks Leif! I was wondering because the site I watch every day only shows the wind velocity and the number of proyyons per cm^3.
http://www.spaceweather.com/
Thanks Leif!
It seems most of my last comment got lost somewhere. I watch http://www.spaceweather.com/
every day and the give the solar wind velocity and the number of protons per cm^3, so it got me wondering about the electrons that must equal the number of protons.
So – Thanks again Leif.
Jim Powell (07:03:22) :
Most people are not aware that this made a great deal of recent press in a recent discovery pinpointing the impact site…
http://www.google.com/search?q=comet+canada+ohio+diamonds
Meanwhile James Hansen has continued in implicating CO2 in the rapid melt of the Laurentide stade: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2008/Carlson_etal.html
@leebertarian and Jim Powell:
An excellent release on the latest findings is here:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=25852
Interesting to note that Tankersley was skeptical of the impact claims, set out to disprove them and only ended up convincing himself of their validity.
I am forced to look at AGW like this: The wrong conclusion for all the right reasons. Throw out the CO2 forced warming and we are still left with the massive pollution on a global scale and eco-altering changes. At the end of the day, we are still biological creatures dependent on the Earth to sustain us, and we only got 1 Earth.
We surely won’t last long enough at this rate to get to understand what makes the Sun tick.
Science needs the public on thier side, for after all, if we can’t look to the govt. for answers, science is all we have left.
“I am forced to look at AGW like this: The wrong conclusion for all the right reasons. Throw out the CO2 forced warming and we are still left with the massive pollution on a global scale and eco-altering changes. At the end of the day, we are still biological creatures dependent on the Earth to sustain us, and we only got 1 Earth.
We surely won’t last long enough at this rate to get to understand what makes the Sun tick.
Science needs the public on thier side, for after all, if we can’t look to the govt. for answers, science is all we have left.”
I think a mistake in characterization is that people who are skeptical about Global Warming are somehow anti-environmental. And I completely disagree with your characterization of “for all the right reasons.”
Science should not be subject to bias due to social considerations. Social considerations should be driven by sound science. Most of us acknowledge certain environmental problems and issues that need to be addressed. Action to respond to Global Warming is unhealthy, if not scientifically accurate, because it means you are directing resources inefficiently. If Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant, and presents little risk to us, then those resources are better off being directed towards clean drinking water in impoverished places. Or cleaning up real toxic messes. Or development of alternative energies for national security reasons, as well as environmentally sound reasons. Carbon offsets are a joke, and Carbon Taxes will hurt legitimate, otherwise environmentally sound, businesses.
As a father of seven, I am also sensitive to greater agendas driven by many Global Warming alarmist groups that boil the message down to “people are bad.” I am viewed as the enemy to many.
So, I think it is great that people care about environmental issues. That, however, is no excuse for accepting bad science as some kind of means to an end.
Dee Morris & Jim Powell..
Thanks for the info!