I got a tip by email from JohnA who runs solarscience.auditblogs.com about this NASA press release. John’s skeptical about it. He makes some good points in this post here.
What I most agree with JohnA’s post is about sunspots. While we’ve seen some small rumblings that the solar dynamo might be on the upswing, such as watching Leif’s plot of the 10.7 CM solar radio flux, there just doesn’t appear to be much change in character of the sunspots during the last year. And the magnetic field strength just doesn’t seem to be ramping up much.
He writes:
“Let’s check out the window”
On Solarcycle24.com they’ve got yet another sun speck recorded yesterday, that by today had disappeared. Exactly the same behaviour we’ve been having for 12 months with no end in sight.
I agree with JohnA, it’s still a bit slow out there. Leif is at the conference in Boulder where NASA made this announcement below, so perhaps he’ll fill us in on the details.
Here is the NASA story:
Mystery of the Missing Sunspots, Solved?
June 17, 2009: The sun is in the pits of a century-class solar minimum, and sunspots have been puzzlingly scarce for more than two years. Now, for the first time, solar physicists might understand why.
At an American Astronomical Society press conference today in Boulder, Colorado, researchers announced that a jet stream deep inside the sun is migrating slower than usual through the star’s interior, giving rise to the current lack of sunspots.
Rachel Howe and Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona, used a technique called helioseismology to detect and track the jet stream down to depths of 7,000 km below the surface of the sun. The sun generates new jet streams near its poles every 11 years, they explained to a room full of reporters and fellow scientists. The streams migrate slowly from the poles to the equator and when a jet stream reaches the critical latitude of 22 degrees, new-cycle sunspots begin to appear.
Above: A helioseismic map of the solar interior. Tilted red-yellow bands trace solar jet streams. Black contours denote sunspot activity. When the jet streams reach a critical latitude around 22 degrees, sunspot activity intensifies. [larger image] [more graphics]
Howe and Hill found that the stream associated with the next solar cycle has moved sluggishly, taking three years to cover a 10 degree range in latitude compared to only two years for the previous solar cycle.
The jet stream is now, finally, reaching the critical latitude, heralding a return of solar activity in the months and years ahead.
“It is exciting to see”, says Hill, “that just as this sluggish stream reaches the usual active latitude of 22 degrees, a year late, we finally begin to see new groups of sunspots emerging.”
he current solar minimum has been so long and deep, it prompted some scientists to speculate that the sun might enter a long period with no sunspot activity at all, akin to the Maunder Minimum of the 17th century. This new result dispells those concerns. The sun’s internal magnetic dynamo is still operating, and the sunspot cycle is not “broken.”
Because it flows beneath the surface of the sun, the jet stream is not directly visible. Hill and Howe tracked its hidden motions via helioseismology. Shifting masses inside the sun send pressure waves rippling through the stellar interior. So-called “p modes” (p for pressure) bounce around the interior and cause the sun to ring like an enormous bell. By studying the vibrations of the sun’s surface, it is possible to figure out what is happening inside. Similar techniques are used by geologists to map the interior of our planet.
In this case, researchers combined data from GONG and SOHO. GONG, short for “Global Oscillation Network Group,” is an NSO-led network of telescopes that measures solar vibrations from various locations around Earth. SOHO, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, makes similar measurements from Earth orbit.
“This is an important discovery,” says Dean Pesnell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “It shows how flows inside the sun are tied to the creation of sunspots and how jet streams can affect the timing of the solar cycle.”
There is, however, much more to learn.
“We still don’t understand exactly how jet streams trigger sunspot production,” says Pesnell. “Nor do we fully understand how the jet streams themselves are generated.”
To solve these mysteries, and others, NASA plans to launch the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) later this year. SDO is equipped with sophisticated helioseismology sensors that will allow it to probe the solar interior better than ever before.
Right: An artist’s concept of the Solar Dynamics Observatory. [more]
“The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on SDO will improve our understanding of these jet streams and other internal flows by providing full disk images at ever-increasing depths in the sun,” says Pesnell.
Continued tracking and study of solar jet streams could help researchers do something unprecedented–accurately predict the unfolding of future solar cycles. Stay tuned for that!
“they are focusing in the wrong area of the map.”
Doubt it. The tachocline is the interface between the uniformly rotating football-shaped core(football standing on end) and the lagging outer envelope.
The baroclinic forces originate, therefore, at higher latitude than on earth, at about 60 degrees. The ‘jet stream’ lies at the interface between polar and tropical regimes here and if the analogy is consistent that interface moves south over the course of time with the new Schwabe cycle.
IMO, this is a different paradigm than meridional circulation where polar effects are a source.
Why are there “concerns” about another Maunder minimum-like period if the sun doesn’t effect climate? If you acknowledge the “concern”, doesn’t that mean you are acknowledging that the sun is the primary driver of heat on earth, and CO2 and other factors are minor?
What an admission!
Jim,
Sunspot #1020 was counted for a two day and one day interval, or three days in total with a number of 12, without a single Earth based image that I could find. If there is such as image of #1020 please post the link. Mt. Wilson saw absolutely nothing! In the SOHO MDI Continuum images #1020 may have existed for 5 hours on and off and that is being generous; it did not survive for 72 hours as the official record would indicate. Sunspot #1020 will be the classic example of a Cheshire because it faded in and out of visibility several time. If you have not yet played with the SOHO Movie Theater go to this link and use it:
http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/soho_movie_theater
As I indicated in the table posted above, #1021 reached maximum size at 2009/06/17 00:00UT. The SOHO Movie Theater shows its behavior quite nicely. Sunspot numbers can be adjusted after the fact because before there was electronic communications it would take a letter weeks or months to get around the world. With the exception of #1020, which was assigned a number instantly, because I suspect it had two spots at birth, it is typical to wait for ground based verification. The official start of #1021 may well be 2009/06/16 20:48UT or 22:24UT once a consensus is reached.
Mt. Wilson Observatory is located at (34°13′33″N 118°03′25″W). According to the Navel Observatory on June 17, 2009 sunrise at Mt. Wilson would have been at 12:40UT or 05:40PDT. The tracing was made at 13:45UT or 6:45PDT, which is 65 minutes after sunrise. I am sure that Mt. Wilson is staffed whenever the sun is above the horizon. If seeing conditions were not good Mt. Wilson may not have reported #1021. 34 minutes after Mt. Wilson made its tracing #1021 is reduced to pore in the SOHO image but still it is being counted as of this post.
My point is that without SOHO, which became operational in May 1996, #1020 would never have been reported and it is extremely unlikely that #1021 would have been observed either. When you hear reports that the sun is returning to normal then what is normal?
Should we ignore #1020 and #1021, absolutely not because they look exactly like what Livingston and Penn are predicting, just don’t compare them to the historic record as that comparison may be meaningless. As Dr. Svalgaard has suggested we may need to rethink how we define Sunspots or if Sunspots are even a good proxy for solar activity.
Mike
Jim Hughes (07:06:15) :
You haven’t gone out and tried to chase these things down, or you wouldn’t be so quick to take aim at the consternation over phantomistic panorama.
Let me be the one to paint the real picture for you:
Last year I could project most of what was counted.
Oh yes, the overdid it a bit, and a lot of us grumbled even then.
This year, I’m having a very hard time projecting 1/3 of what is counted.
And that’s not including what never survives the night to be projected for my day.
SWPC/NOAA and SIDC are not the only ones in the world capable of maintaining a spot count, and as far as I am concerned, they’ve allowed themselves to be painted into the phantom spot corner.
It stinks. That’s the big deal.
Why?
Because the Sun cannot be altered in the Sky, and those of us who have gotten our duffs outside to see for ourselves know exactly Watts Up With That.
Dan (07:29:04) :
Find yourself an amatuer astronomer. You know, those goofy guys out with thier telescopes and fancy filters, etc. We number in the low millions these days. Shouldn’t be too hard.
Mark Lundborg (09:39:20) :
Why are there “concerns” about another Maunder minimum-like period if the sun doesn’t effect climate? If you acknowledge the “concern”, doesn’t that mean you are acknowledging that the sun is the primary driver of heat on earth, and CO2 and other factors are minor?
These CONCERNS are but the outer symptom of their conscious inner “jet stream” of guilt currents.
rbateman (09:41:53)
Because the Sun cannot be altered in the Sky, and those of us who have gotten our duffs outside to see for ourselves know exactly Watts Up With That.
Good idea: Tell those guys just to read WUWT to find the right explanation, so they won’t lose their jobs by making quite a tangle of lies hard to disentangle.
Well, well. So, Pamela was right. It is the jet stream. ; – )
Here’s my take on the Sun. The spots we had 3 weeks ago were the PEAK of Cycle 24 not the start. Cycle 24 is early, but it has a great negative offset related maybe to that big solar step function Anthony has made reference to around the first of 2003.
Also, there may be an interaction between the Sun and its near planets that we have never seen before because its magnetic field has never been this low before. It might explain the ice ages.
What I *like* about this press release is that it is NOT the typical “tablets handed down from on high” appeal to authority that sunspot experts (kaff!) have been handing down for the last two years.
Instead, it propounds a mechanism and theory that is testable in the near future. That, my friends, is one hell of an improvement.
And if it turns out right, these guys deserve some serious kudos for perhaps giving us a much more accurate way to predict future sunspot activity.
And if it turns out wrong, they still get props from me for putting their stuff out there in advance and letting the chips fall where they may.
How much loss of internal pressure represents one of these subsurface jet streams? I’m just a little worried about it… I couldn’t forget the Sun is a G2V.
I meant “loss of thermal pressure”.
Ok. Testing 1 2 3.
What we should be seeing:
http://fenyi.solarobs.unideb.hu/DPD/1997/19970507/19970507_055351_Gyula.jpg
http://fenyi.solarobs.unideb.hu/DPD/1997/19970507/19970507_055351_Gyula.jpg
http://fenyi.solarobs.unideb.hu/DPD/1997/19970522/19970522_064232_Gyula.jpg
This:
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov//data/REPROCESSING/Completed/2009/mdiigr/20090616/20090616_2224_mdiigr_1024.jpg
is not there yet.
Anaconda (08:51:20) :
@ur momisugly George Varros (06:34:31):
You are on the right track, the Sun is electrical in nature, being constituted of 99.9% plasma, charged particles. As I suspect you know, plasma is ‘quasi neutral’ , that is, while being overall neutral (an equal number of electrons and ions), it seperates into differentiated regions of charge, seperated by double layers.
Your construction reflects the scientific observations & measurements made of the Sun.
I have several points: You mention “current” several times, but don’t say, “electrical current”, is that intentional?
Yes, intentional. It is plasma current and possibly self limiting in that increased plasma current results in higher helicity of the flux tube which results in the plasma pressure having to go somewhere and it does by dragging field lines away from the main flux tube. The plasma pressure ‘inflates’ the magnetic loops and ultimately bubbles them up into an ‘omega’ shape.
You state: “This helicity allows plasma to drag magnetic field lines away from the flux tubes which causes a magnetic bubble in a sense.”
yes. the twisting up of the flux tube is an increase in helicity which acts or causes a resistance or causes the moving plasma current to sort of get backed up. It then needs somewhere to go.
Do you mean the electric current of the plasma changes and the magnetic fields follow the new paths of electric current?
No.
You state: “The base then shorts out, blasting plasma and field lines away from the sun.”
Yes. When the ‘short’ occurs between the two sides or base of the ‘omega’ shape of the looped up field lines, the entire area of field lines become disconnected and are in a magnetic configuration that is opposite of the configuration they were in before the disconnection. It is like two magnets that all of the sudden oppose each other.
Do you mean the double layer short circuits causing the double layer to explode, driving plasma away from the Sun which in turn froms a new set of magnetic fields which reflects new patterns of electron movement or flow?
No. Not sure we have a double layer as described by Alfven.
You mention a “sigmoid”, do you subscribe to the idea that a sigmoid is electrical in nature?
Well, it is that the more torsion or twisting that occurs on the flux tube, these two regions at the base are dragged from their original positions, to their position as a sigmoid. The sigmoid means CME is eminent. If you watch the evolution of one of the spots that starts sigmoid-ing, and twist up a mouse cord or piece of rope, you will see how the twisting tries to cause both parts of the base to migrate;
You mention, “[magnetic] field lines”, do you consider “field lines” as a conceptual aid that maps a “field” of undifferentiated continuum of magnetic strength?
Let me make a movie or set of slides of this as it is very easy to demonstrate and easy to understand. Should I ?
But you don’t have a chance to predict something until you have a grasp of its physical structure and processes.
But, knowing a few things about flux tubes and plasma pressure sort of makes sunspots a little more understandable and thus also understandable as to why there are so few right now. The magnetic field is down, the plasma output is low, things are flowing smoothly and there are low differentials. A few years back, I did some garage experiments with helium and flyback transformers and was able to inflate field lines away from a persistent electrical arc and sustain them occasionally by allowing just the right amount of gas to flow, to allow a portion of the electrical arc to bubble out. It was like a high speed version of a chunk of field line that is about to CME. I guess a flare that seems to trigger a CME is the actual ‘shorting of the circuit’ event.
With an active sun, there is an active magnetic field, loads of plasma output and all kinds of signs of twisted up loopy field lines, inflated with plasma pressure. I have no idea why all this goes from an active to inactive state.
My apologies for not using correct terminology! I’m not a scientist but merely an amateur astronomer with interests that go beyond my schooling.
In 1997, I submitted a paper to the AGU on ‘Blue Jets’ which appear to be the results of ejected spheromaks. The paper was rejected because at the time, only Sentman and Wescott of UAF in Alaska may have been the only ones to have observed blue jets and get footage of them.
What spawned the paper was that I happened to get lucky and see several blue jets and one was easily recognizable as a blue ‘smoke ring’. Sentman and Wescott footage of a mesoscale event over the Texarkana area also show this although not completely clearly due to the LLV cameras they used back in the day. The reviewer’s comments were based all on sprites, a different beast indeed so they were clueless. CMEs that end up being toroid shaped and the toroidal nature of the leading edge of blue jets are… x-zacktly the same.
GV
This release is laughable, the condescension tangible and the speculation visible and refutable. I disagree with geo, there’s nothing to like here at all, it’s just more BS.
rbateman (12:41:22):
Aren’t those sunspots from , 1997? What is the similitude between July 7th, 1997 solar activity and the current solar activity?
In the old days science was about the certainty of results.
Now all we have is the certainty of prediction. And if you didn’t like my old predictions I have others.
The new science: we can predict anything and given enough time we will.
[snip]
[snip you have been banned – see message in the Honolulu weather station thread]
Leif,
Rather than counting sunspots, would it make more sense to report and track the area of the sun covered by sun spots. If I am not mistaken, the reports include this information.
I haven’t plotted this yet, but I’m curious if that might present a better insight into solar activity.
Michael Ronayne (06:38:30)
Sunspot #1020 was counted for a two day and one day interval, or three days in total with a number of 12, without a single Earth based image that I could find. If there is such as image of #1020 please post the link. Mt. Wilson saw absolutely nothing! In the SOHO MDI Continuum images #1020 may have existed for 5 hours on and off and that is being generous; it did not survive for 72 hours as the official record would indicate. Sunspot #1020 will be the classic example of a Cheshire because it faded in and out of visibility several time. If you have not yet played with the SOHO Movie Theater go to this link and use it:
http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/soho_movie_theater
As I indicated in the table posted above, #1021 reached maximum size at 2009/06/17 00:00UT. The SOHO Movie Theater shows its behavior quite nicely. Sunspot numbers can be adjusted after the fact because before there was electronic communications it would take a letter weeks or months to get around the world. With the exception of #1020, which was assigned a number instantly, because I suspect it had two spots at birth, it is typical to wait for ground based verification. The official start of #1021 may well be 2009/06/16 20:48UT or 22:24UT once a consensus is reached.
Mt. Wilson Observatory is located at (34°13′33″N 118°03′25″W). According to the Navel Observatory on June 17, 2009 sunrise at Mt. Wilson would have been at 12:40UT or 05:40PDT. The tracing was made at 13:45UT or 6:45PDT, which is 65 minutes after sunrise. I am sure that Mt. Wilson is staffed whenever the sun is above the horizon. If seeing conditions were not good Mt. Wilson may not have reported #1021. 34 minutes after Mt. Wilson made its tracing #1021 is reduced to pore in the SOHO image but still it is being counted as of this post.
My point is that without SOHO, which became operational in May 1996, #1020 would never have been reported and it is extremely unlikely that #1021 would have been observed either. When you hear reports that the sun is returning to normal then what is normal?
Should we ignore #1020 and #1021, absolutely not because they look exactly like what Livingston and Penn are predicting, just don’t compare them to the historic record as that comparison may be meaningless. As Dr. Svalgaard has suggested we may need to rethink how we define Sunspots or if Sunspots are even a good proxy for solar activity.
Mike
Mike,
I have no qualms with your comments about Region 1020, and your SOHO comments are noted, but this really isn’t about any particular region anyway. Since my comments were related to the continual complaining about these small regions being numbered. Almost day in and day out. And similar regions have been counted prior to this time frame like I mentioned before.
So the real difference isn’t “their” presence. But the lack of any larger groups is. Which we all know about. As far as a new way of measuring or counting. I guess you could do this but I’m still not sure why one needs to change things other than to sleep better.
I mean you have the areal coverage to go by and everyone knows that it is way behind average wise. And then we have the solar wind and geomagnetic activity acting somewhat out of character also. So we all know that the sun is not behaving the same as it has during the previous several cycles.
(Anyone more physics-oriented): Is it correct to assume that this slow “migration” of the solar jet stream toward the equator (the red-and-orange bands in the graph) is related to the magnetism of the material in the stream… whereas the east-to-west movement is due to solar rotational speed?
For ‘misguided’ minority who happen to believe that magnetic field in plasma could only exist as a result of an electric current flow this image
http://www.geocities.com/vukcevicu/ElctCurrent-Plasma.jpg
is nothing new, for the many may just be an ‘irrelevant’ coincidence.
This is what actually happens in Joint European Torus science research centre
http://www.jet.efda.org/pages/focus/heating/images/7c.jpg
the largest man-made magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment currently in operation. Its main purpose is to open the way to future nuclear fusion experimental reactors (sun’s helium is a product of hydrogen fusion).
Why not learn about what may be going within sun’s interior from the experiments conducted in science labs, rather then forever indulge in a guessing game?
Are they reintroducing the butterfly chart?
Nasif Nahle (13:05:10) :
rbateman (12:41:22):
Aren’t those sunspots from , 1997? What is the similitude between July 7th, 1997 solar activity and the current solar activity?
That’s May, 1977, 12 months after minimum.
So, we’ve got what, 6 months to go depending on where the current minimum should be?
Testing 1 2 3
rbateman (09:41:53) :
Jim Hughes (07:06:15) :
You haven’t gone out and tried to chase these things down, or you wouldn’t be so quick to take aim at the consternation over phantomistic panorama.
And you know this how ? And it doesn’t matter anyway
—
Let me be the one to paint the real picture for you:
Last year I could project most of what was counted.
Oh yes, the overdid it a bit, and a lot of us grumbled even then.
This year, I’m having a very hard time projecting 1/3 of what is counted.
And that’s not including what never survives the night to be projected for my day.
I am sorry your having a rough time getting it right but like I told Mike. We all know that this cycle is behaving differently.
—-
SWPC/NOAA and SIDC are not the only ones in the world capable of maintaining a spot count, and as far as I am concerned, they’ve allowed themselves to be painted into the phantom spot corner.
No they’re not the only one but I always go by the International number when it comes to official sunspot count anyway when I look back over things even though I talk about the SWPC alot.
—-
It stinks. That’s the big deal.
Why?
Because the Sun cannot be altered in the Sky, and those of us who have gotten our duffs outside to see for ourselves know exactly Watts Up With That.
Clever ending I’ll give you that.