Solar Cycle Driven by More than Sunspots; Sun Also Bombards Earth with High-Speed Streams of Wind
From an NCAR press release September 17, 2009
BOULDER—Challenging conventional wisdom, new research finds that the number of sunspots provides an incomplete measure of changes in the Sun’s impact on Earth over the course of the 11-year solar cycle. The study, led by scientists at the High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Michigan, finds that Earth was bombarded last year with high levels of solar energy at a time when the Sun was in an unusually quiet phase and sunspots had virtually disappeared.
“The Sun continues to surprise us,” says NCAR scientist Sarah Gibson, the lead author. “The solar wind can hit Earth like a fire hose even when there are virtually no sunspots.”
The study, also written by scientists at NOAA and NASA, is being published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Space Physics. It was funded by NASA and by the National Science Foundation, NCAR’s sponsor.
Scientists for centuries have used sunspots, which are areas of concentrated magnetic fields that appear as dark patches on the solar surface, to determine the approximately 11-year solar cycle. At solar maximum, the number of sunspots peaks. During this time, intense solar flares occur daily and geomagnetic storms frequently buffet Earth, knocking out satellites and disrupting communications networks.
(Illustration by Janet Kozyra with images from NASA, courtesy Journal of Geophysical Research – Space Physics.) click for larger image”]
Gibson and her colleagues focused instead on another process by which the Sun discharges energy. The team analyzed high-speed streams within the solar wind that carry turbulent magnetic fields out into the solar system.
When those streams blow by Earth, they intensify the energy of the planet’s outer radiation belt. This can create serious hazards for weather, navigation, and communications satellites that travel at high altitudes within the outer radiation belts, while also threatening astronauts in the International Space Station. Auroral storms light up the night sky repeatedly at high latitudes as the streams move past, driving mega-ampere electrical currents about 75 miles above Earth’s surface. All that energy heats and expands the upper atmosphere. This expansion pushes denser air higher, slowing down satellites and causing them to drop to lower altitudes.
Scientists previously thought that the streams largely disappeared as the solar cycle approached minimum. But when the study team compared measurements within the current solar minimum interval, taken in 2008, with measurements of the last solar minimum in 1996, they found that Earth in 2008 was continuing to resonate with the effects of the streams. Although the current solar minimum has fewer sunspots than any minimum in 75 years, the Sun’s effect on Earth’s outer radiation belt, as measured by electron fluxes, was more than three times greater last year than in 1996.
Gibson said that observations this year show that the winds have finally slowed, almost two years after sunspots reached the levels of last cycle’s minimum.
The authors note that more research is needed to understand the impacts of these high-speed streams on the planet. The study raises questions about how the streams might have affected Earth in the past when the Sun went through extended periods of low sunspot activity, such as a period known as the Maunder minimum that lasted from about 1645 to 1715.
“The fact that Earth can continue to ring with solar energy has implications for satellites and sensitive technological systems,” Gibson says. “This will keep scientists busy bringing all the pieces together.”
Buffeting Earth with streams of energy
 Sarah Gibson [ENLARGE](©UCAR, photo by Carlye Calvin.) News media terms of use* |
For the new study, the scientists analyzed information gathered from an array of space- and ground-based instruments during two international scientific projects: the Whole Sun Month in the late summer of 1996 and the Whole Heliosphere Interval in the early spring of 2008. The solar cycle was at a minimal stage during both the study periods, with few sunspots in 1996 and even fewer in 2008.
The team found that strong, long, and recurring high-speed streams of charged particles buffeted Earth in 2008. In contrast, Earth encountered weaker and more sporadic streams in 1996. As a result, the planet was more affected by the Sun in 2008 than in 1996, as measured by such variables as the strength of electron fluxes in the outer radiation belt, the velocity of the solar wind in the vicinity of Earth, and the periodic behavior of auroras (the Northern and Southern Lights) as they responded to repeated high-speed streams.
The prevalence of high-speed streams during this solar minimum appears to be related to the current structure of the Sun. As sunspots became less common over the last few years, large coronal holes lingered in the surface of the Sun near its equator. The high-speed streams that blow out of those holes engulfed Earth during 55 percent of the study period in 2008, compared to 31 percent of the study period in 1996. A single stream of charged particles can last for as long as 7 to 10 days. At their peak, the accumulated impact of the streams during one year can inject as much energy into Earth’s environment as massive eruptions from the Sun’s surface can during a year at the peak of a solar cycle, says co-author Janet Kozyra of the University of Michigan.
The streams strike Earth periodically, spraying out in full force like water from a fire hose as the Sun revolves. When the magnetic fields in the solar winds point in a direction opposite to the magnetic lines in Earth’s magnetosphere, they have their strongest effect. The strength and speed of the magnetic fields in the high-speed streams can also affect Earth’s response.
The authors speculate that the high number of low-latitude coronal holes during this solar minimum may be related to a weakness in the Sun’s overall magnetic field. The Sun in 2008 had smaller polar coronal holes than in 1996, but high-speed streams that escape from the Sun’s poles do not travel in the direction of Earth.
“The Sun-Earth interaction is complex, and we haven’t yet discovered all the consequences for the Earth’s environment of the unusual solar winds this cycle,” Kozyra says. “The intensity of magnetic activity at Earth in this extremely quiet solar minimum surprised us all. The new observations from last year are changing our understanding of how solar quiet intervals affect the Earth and how and why this might change from cycle to cycle.”
About the article
Title: “If the Sun is so quiet, why is the Earth ringing? A comparison of two solar minimum intervals”
Authors: Sarah Gibson, Janet Kozyra, Giuliana de Toma, Barbara Emory, Terry Onsager, and Barbara Thompson
Publication: Journal of Geophysical Research – Space Physics
Related sites on the World Wide Web
Whole Heliosphere Interval (2008)
h/t to Leif Svalgaard
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Leif adds some perspective to this press release:
IMHO this is just another PR stunt, ‘never seen before’, ‘overturns what we thought before’, etc.
It has been known for a long time [decades] that there are strong recurrent solar wind streams leading up to solar minimum [EVERY solar minimum]. Attached are plots of the solar wind speed prior to minimum for many minima in the past. The blue curve show the speed derived from geomagnetic measurement and the pink curve shows that directly measured by spacecraft, some of the differences between the curves is due to missing data from the spacecraft [at times they only measured a small percentage of the time]. The smooth curves are 13 rotation running means.Also attached is the Recurrence Index, a measure for the recurrence tendency of the flow. High values = a solar rotation is very much like the previous one [the cross correlation between the two]
Especially the minimum in 1944 is very much like the current one in the sense that there was high-speed solar wind close to the minimum, even closer, fact. It is amazing that each new generation of scientists will have to rediscover and relearn what was already known. But such is human nature, every generation has to do this.
Thanks, Leif. After the event, the Arctic winds quickly increased pushing cold air down to the south. The 6 to 8 C coolness lasted for many months. Looking at the Stratosphere temperature chart, the SSWs occur every few years, usually in late winter raising the Stratosphere temperature in a major way. The increased temperature oushs the molecules further apart and thus allows an increase of cosmic rays to reach earth.
I have read papers that indicate that there is excess kinetic energy in the atmosphere. It occured to me that some of this excess energy could possibility come from GCRs.
I wonder how penetrating the tail end of the energy of this plasma aimed at earth can be, into the lower atmosphere? What stops it from reaching the ground? Does it reach the ground? Could it generate cloud seeds a la GCR ?
Steve Huntwork (21:02:14) : “Why the souces of neutron counts, when we are talking about gamma rays?”
Unless I’m missing something, the discussion was about cosmic rays, not gamma rays. They are two very different things. Cosmic rays are a misnomer in that they are actually energetic particles (usually protons).
And did the intense GRB of Jan 21-22 actually work to magnify and turn the SSW event into one of the greatest since records were kept?
And did all that heating of the stratosphere…a red bubble that lasted for weeks and weeks on the CPC Vertical Cross Section chart of the Polar Vortex…did that heating finally translate down into the lower atmosphere and has that contributed to the recent warming spike observed? a la 1998??
As the cause of SSW events are heretofore unknown, such possible links, however remote, must not be ruled out entirely at this point.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
BOULDER—Challenging conventional wisdom, new research finds that the number of sunspots provides an incomplete measure of changes in the Sun’s impact on Earth over the course of the 11-year solar cycle.
Piers Corbyn has always said this.
On October 28 he is going to make public some of the key elements of his method.
Steve Huntwork (21:02:14) :
Why the souces of neutron counts, when we are talking about gamma rays?
You asked about cosmic rays. By historical accident, cosmic ‘rays’ are not rays at all, they are particles. So cosmic rays are not gamma rays.
JFD (21:21:56) :
After the event, the Arctic winds quickly increased pushing cold air down to the south.
I think that is just coincidence.
anna v (21:27:23) :
I wonder how penetrating the tail end of the energy of this plasma aimed at earth can be, into the lower atmosphere? What stops it from reaching the ground? Does it reach the ground? Could it generate cloud seeds a la GCR ?
The solar wind particles do not reach the ground. Solar cosmic rays do, in so-called ground-level events of which about 20 have been observed over the past 60 years, so they are very rare, and have no influence on the climate.
anna v (21:27:23) :
You have to wonder about there being a bit of cross-contamination between GCR count and Solar stuff hitting Earth. That would make Earth caught between a rock and a hard place.
Leif Svalgaard (20:54:25) :
“About one millionth of that we get from the ordinary heat and light.”
Perhaps solar wind has a direct influence on clouds, aside from its effect on GCRs, which increases solar wind’s overall impact on Earth’s climate?
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Tin_rev.pdf
Leif, please bear with my ignorance.
Plasma hits the stratosphere, plasma is streams of ions and electrons in bunches so the whole is neutral. When it hits matter, this symmetry is broken, and the atmosphere, higher and lower is matter. If the individual ions have enough energy they will ionize the matter they hit.
so maybe I should ask:
What is the energy distribution of the individual ions/electrons in the plasma ?
How deeply does the plasma penetrate before it breaks up?
From these two pieces of information one should be able to see if there are enough ions reaching the cloud creation level to generate a seeding effect
Bob Long (20:04:32),
Lateline seems to have a policy of bagging any criticism of AGM. Reporter Tony Jones launched into a pro AGM attack on the director of ‘The great global warming swindle’ a few years back, it was embarrassing to watch and designed to make the director look foolish,instead it did the opposite.
Lateline were so proud of their efforts, they released the interview to DVD and it is now available at your local library!
In trying to figure out what the sun’s influence on earth’s climate is you can’t simply look at what the sun is doing and then conclude something. The activity, in all its forms, coming from the sun is only one variable in that equation.
I’m inclined to think that solar driven variations at the top of the atmosphere would interfere with the outward rate of flow of radiative energy at the air/space boundary.
Thus one could find that a burst of energy at that boundary from solar variation would reduce the loss of radiative energy to space and allow a build up of energy at one or more levels within the air.
That would have an effect on the air pressure distributions within the air and influence the air flows thus affecting climate.
However I don’t accept that such effects within the air would be transmissible into the oceans because of the barrier presented by the evaporative process at the ocean surface.
So, as I’ve previously indicated one gets conflicting processes within the air whereby the air has to resolve simultaneously that the sea surface/surface air temperatures maintain equilibrium and at the same time the solar energy arriving has to approximately match radiative energy leaving the planet.
That is a whole class of energy interplay that is entirely unrecognised by current climatology and not reflected at all in the climate models, yet if true, it would account for a lot of puzzling phenomena observed in the air and especially at the air/space boundary.
One of the impacts of solar wind on clouds may be Nocilucent Clouds:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/08/26/noctilucent-clouds-and-the-earths-interface-with-space/
AIM has been in service for a while.
http://aim.hamptonu.edu/
Are there any correlations between the AIM data:
http://aim.hamptonu.edu/sds/index.html
and Solar Wind?
As a famous doctor once wrote:
“The sun is up. The sun is yellow. The yellow sun is over the house.
It is hot out here in the sun. It is not hot here under the house.”
Leif Svalgaard (20:08:05) :
rbateman (19:47:09) :
What happens when the coronal holes at low latitude shut off during a long and deep minimum?
They are replaced by coronal holes at higher latitudes. This is already happening.
Leif, please could you tell us to what extent the energy streams from these higher latitude coronal holes ‘miss’ the planets lying in the orbital plane. i.e. Are they coming out perpendicular to the solar surface in fairly narrow streams or is there sufficient ‘spread’ that they still ‘cover’ the matter in the orbital plane?
Thanks
OT:
I just want to thank you Americans so much.
It appears, that democrats see no way of getting cap and trade through senate.
This message has come to Denmark, and politicians are chocked. They are already talking about making a new COPENHAGEN summit ½ year later so that the US will have time to get their legislation in place.
It seems the little Danes has no clue, that the problems for the democrats is not likely over in ½ year. Over here the missing legislation of US is seen as a knock out on the process. Which may be correct.
The Danes are brainwashed im afraid, but you Americans think for yourselves, and thankyou so much for this. Im sure that the fact that only 51% of the democtratic voters see global warming as something human made is the real reason why even some democrats cannot vote for your cap and trade.
Americans, thank you!!!
if you look at that graph you see stronger winds pre 1970 and know comming back up. So stronger winds follow sunspots. I am a bid confused right know
Frank Lansner (00:26:27)
Just want to say thanks for the appreciation you offer. Liberty is not lost here…yet. I am a bit surprised why the Aussies seem to be such lambs. Maybe they didn’t leave in search of freedom but went in search of riches. But our country (USA) is falling fast and the future see’s only submission or revolution.
tallbloke (00:05:17) : Said…
.. what extent the energy streams from these higher latitude coronal holes ‘miss’ the planets lying in the orbital plane. i.e. Are they coming out perpendicular to the solar surface in fairly narrow streams or is there sufficient ’spread’ that they still ‘cover’ the matter in the orbital plane?
You know, if one were to study a fart, one could come up with the same argument that tallbloke made. Used to be that science would come up with things that advanced society. You know; electricity, telephones, batteries, aeroplanes, engines, etc. etc. Now it seems that all that science can come up with are inventions that want to diminish society. Why do you think that is?
We used to use God as a driver of mankind purpose. Now we use the earth as our driver. It seems we are taking a big step backwards.
anna v (22:13:02) :
Plasma hits the stratosphere
The Earth has a strong magnetic field and the plasma [a good electrical conductor] cannot cross a magnetic field, so it does not hit the atmosphere. The plasma stream is stopped about 10 Earth radii away from the Earth and flows around the Earth, confining the Earth’s magnetic field to a bubble [with a long tail pointing away from the Sun] around the Earth. A complicated system of electric currents are induced [as always when to move a conductor relative to a magnetic field] and a complicated system of plasma movements results that eventually lead to aurora and magnetic disturbances. See http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/Intro.html for details.
tallbloke (00:05:17) :
Are they coming out perpendicular to the solar surface in fairly narrow streams or is there sufficient ’spread’ that they still ‘cover’ the matter in the orbital plane?
Near the Sun the streams expand laterally to fill all of space, so there are no ’empty’ spots. When there are few and weak low-latitude coronal holes, plasma from the polar regions is bent ‘down’ towards the equator. For details see:
http://www.leif.org/research/A%20View%20of%20Solar%20Magnetic%20Fields,%20the%20Solar%20Corona,%20and%20the%20Solar%20Wind%20in%20Three%20Dimensions.pdf
Frank Lansner (00:26:27) :
you Americans think for yourselves, and thank you so much for this. Im sure that the fact that only 51% of the democtratic voters see global warming as something human made is the real reason why even some democrats cannot vote for your cap and trade.
Yet America [or more precisely USA] is also the place were an almost equal percentage believes that the Earth is only 6000 years old.
“Scientists previously thought that the streams largely disappeared as the solar cycle approached minimum. But when the study team compared measurements within the current solar minimum interval, taken in 2008, with measurements of the last solar minimum in 1996,”
I am not overly convinced by this “press release”
Are the 2 periods measured both considered the minimum, did they cherry pick the very bottom of 1996 and alternatively did they pick a period of still reasonable activity in 2008? Is any part of 2008 considered the minimum?
Would need to look directly at their data before jumping to conclusions.
wait … upper atmosphere expansion in 2008?
from this NCAR press release above:
“All that energy heats and expands the upper atmosphere. This expansion pushes denser air higher, slowing down satellites and causing them to drop to lower altitudes. ………….. they found that Earth in 2008 was continuing to resonate with the effects of the streams.”
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However, measurements in 2008 said that the Ionosphere was at a new low as we read in this WUWT link:
Earth’s Ionosphere drops to a new low
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/16/earths-ionosphere-drops-to-a-new-low/
“Observations made by NASA instruments onboard an Air Force satellite have shown that the boundary between the Earth’s upper atmosphere and space has moved to extraordinarily low altitudes. These observations were made by the Coupled Ion Neutral Dynamics Investigation (CINDI) instrument suite, which was launched aboard the U.S. Air Force’s Communication/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite on April 16, 2008.
“The height of the ionosphere/space transition is controlled in part by the amount of extreme ultraviolet energy emitted by the Sun and a somewhat contracted ionosphere could have been expected because C/NOFS was launched during a minimum in the 11-year cycle of solar activity. However, the size of the actual contraction caught investigators by surprise. (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)”
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http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/06/20/space.bubbles/index.html
Moody specifically mentions Realclimate.org as a “real science” blog.
Unscientific America is a must read if one is interested in understanding the science disconnect here in America. Moody suggests that scientists are not getting the message across to the general public because most of the discussions are between scientists in their scholraly journals. In fact, Car Sagan is one of the “heroes” in Moddy’s book yet he was ostracized by many scientists for being too “commercial”.
This book is the reason I am posting here on WUWT and why I made my climate change site.