From NASA News: Solar ‘Current of Fire’ Speeds Up
What in the world is the sun up to now?
In today’s issue of Science, NASA solar physicist David Hathaway reports that the top of the sun’s Great Conveyor Belt has been running at record-high speeds for the past five years.
“I believe this could explain the unusually deep solar minimum we’ve been experiencing,” says Hathaway. “The high speed of the conveyor belt challenges existing models of the solar cycle and it has forced us back to the drawing board for new ideas.”
The Great Conveyor Belt is a massive circulating current of fire (hot plasma) within the sun. It has two branches, north and south, each taking about 40 years to complete one circuit. Researchers believe the turning of the belt controls the sunspot cycle.
Above: An artist’s concept of the sun’s Great Conveyor Belt. [larger image]
Hathaway has been monitoring the conveyor belt using data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). The top of the belt skims the surface of the sun, sweeping up knots of solar magnetism and carrying them toward the poles. SOHO is able to track those knots—Hathaway calls them “magnetic elements”–and thus reveal the speed of the underlying flow.
“It’s a little like measuring the speed of a river on Earth by clocking the leaves and twigs floating downstream,” Hathaway explains.SOHO’s dataset extends all the way back to 1996 and spans a complete solar cycle. Last year, Lisa Rightmire, a student of Hathaway from the University of Memphis, spent the entire summer measuring magnetic elements. When she plotted their speeds vs. time, she noticed how fast the conveyor belt has been going.
A note about “fast”: The Great Conveyor Belt is one of the biggest things in the whole solar system and by human standards it moves with massive slowness. “Fast” in this context means 10 to 15 meters per second (20 to 30 miles per hour). A good bicyclist could easily keep up.
Below: The velocity of the Great Conveyor Belt (a.k.a. “meridianal flow”) since 1996. Note the higher speeds after ~2004. credit: Hathaway and Rightmire, 2010. [larger image]
The speed-up was surprising on two levels.
First, it coincided with the deepest solar minimum in nearly 100 years, contradicting models that say a fast-moving belt should boost sunspot production. The basic idea is that the belt sweeps up magnetic fields from the sun’s surface and drags them down to the sun’s inner dynamo. There the fields are amplified to form the underpinnings of new sunspots. A fast-moving belt should accelerate this process.
So where have all the sunspots been? The solar minimum of 2008-2009 was unusually deep and now the sun appears to be on the verge of a weak solar cycle.
Instead of boosting sunspots, Hathaway believes that a fast-moving Conveyor Belt can instead suppress them “by counteracting magnetic diffusion at the sun’s equator.” He describes the process in detail in Science (“Variations in the Sun’s Meridional Flow over a Solar Cycle,” 12 March 2010, v327, 1350-1352).
The second surprise has to do with the bottom of the Conveyor Belt.
SOHO can only clock the motions of the visible top layer. The bottom is hidden by ~200,000 kilometers of overlying plasma. Nevertheless, an estimate of its speed can be made by tracking sunspots.
“Sunspots are supposedly rooted to the bottom of the belt,” says Hathaway. “So the motion of sunspots tells us how fast the belt is moving down there.”
He’s done that—plotted sunspot speeds vs. time since 1996—and the results don’t make sense. “While the top of the conveyor belt has been moving at record-high speed, the bottom seems to be moving at record-low speed. Another contradiction.”
Above: An artist’s concept of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Launched in Feb. 2010, SDO will be able to look inside the sun to study the conveyor belt in greater detail, perhaps solving the mysteries Hathaway and Rightmire have uncovered. [larger image]
Could it be that sunspots are not rooted to the bottom of the Conveyor Belt, after all? “That’s one possibility” he notes. “Sunspots could be moving because of dynamo waves or some other phenomenon not directly linked to the belt.”
What researchers really need is a good look deep inside the sun. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, launched in February 2010, will provide that when its instruments come online later this year. SDO is able to map the sun’s interior using a technique called helioseismology. SOHO can do the same thing, but not well enough to trace the Great Conveyor Belt all the way around. SDO’s advanced sensors might reveal the complete circuit.
And then…? “It could be the missing piece we need to forecast the whole solar cycle,” says Hathaway.
Stay tuned for that.
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The wonderful thing about all this is: What ever happens, it is not the fault of mankind and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
I strongly suspect that this concept is closely related to the climate on Earth. Try as hard as we can, we are not in control of the climate and we are not going to have much of an effect on whether or not the Earth cools down or heats up.
Thank you Anthony for the work you do.
Very interesting research. Meanwhile, isn’t it interesting that despite one of the deepest solar minimums in a century that we’ve just passed through, that we are still seeing such high global temps? To what do the AGW skeptics attribute this. Currently March 2010 tropospheric temps are spiking way above 20 year records:
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Warmth at all levels of the troposphere, especially check out 14,000 ft. and click on the record high button and see how far above March tropo temps are.
Now, I know, AGW skeptics will say this is all either El Nino, or even (as on misquided and underinformed poster said) because it shows the earth is actually cooling. Sorry, both are insufficient.
Warming of the troposphere is exactly the main effect predicted by AGW models, with numerous side effects, such as melting of sea ice, warming of ocean, melting of glaciers, rising of oceans, etc. But specifically, the warming of the troposphere is the key to them all because that is wear the GH gases are rising, and where they trap the heat. Now yes, I fully realize that GH gases don’t actually “trap” the heat, but rather, act through the process of absorption and re-radiation of heat, but the net effect is to “trap” heat, by radiating some of the heat back to the surface and to other molecules of GH gases in the troposphere. Of course some of the heat is radiated back into space, and thank god it is, or we’d be cooked in a few days.
Also, despite the recent extreme solar minimum, we haven’t seen a positive arctic sea ice anomaly since 2004, probably won’t this winter, and have actually seen several negative antarctic sea ice anomalies in the past few years. How do AGW skeptics explain this? We’ve got record warmth in the troposphere and the arctic sea ice still did not recover to it’s seasonal norm this winter– all despite the deep solar minimum. Could these solar cycle play less of a role in the climate than the increased antropogenic GH gases, as AGW theorists are saying?
vukcevic (08:24:20) :
My answer (with no pay) is exactly the same:
“I don’t know why this works. The underlying physics is a mystery. But it does work.”
The world is full of people who claim things they don’t understand works even when they don’t.
And Hathaway’s quote is as wrong as can be. He doesn’t know how his geomagnetic ‘peak’ correlation works, and clearly it didn’t either, to wit the failure of his old prediction.
kim (08:17:16) :
I learned from Leif several years ago that the sunspots during the Dalton Minimum were sparse, large and predominately southern hemispheric.
Maunder, not Dalton.
It wouldn’t surprising to find out that the magnetic belts could as deep as or near the core of the sun. Gravitation alone could not explain how a star can hold on to its outer core when becoming a red giant and then collapsing quickly and explosively when it goes supernova.
Mark.R (22:43:50) :
“the sun and Earth are gradually moving apart. It’s not much – just 15 cm per year”
This is the best news ever. No need to go to colonise Mars. As Sun looses its mass (and its gravity decreases, its outer layers are going to expand, but the Earth will move further away, so we’ll get good TSI. This will be an exponential process (Newton F=g *m1*m2/r^2). This means even in its ‘red Giant’ state the Sun ain’t going to turn the beautiful Gaia into French fries. (God did not do all that work for nothing!)
Anthony this news is worth of a closer scientific scrutiny.
@ur momisugly Anna V,
Thank you for your comments.
You have said:
“Wrong. Smart geo engineering could be reversible.”
I can see that in the case of “sun shades” it is true that they can dismantle the system if they want to.
It is more difficcult to extract SOX and particulates frrom the atmosphere. About all you can do is wait for them to settle out on their own. Of course, if you’ve been following Prof Curtzen’s original suggestion of using rockets and artillery to project sulphur into the atmosphere then you can just stop doing it. If, howevere, some of the wilder schemes have been adopted such as creating artificial volcanoes, is it that easy to stop the volcano? Has anyone ever had any success stopping a volcano?
But however “reversible” the schemes are, what you can do is stop heat reaching the erth but once you remove the screens all you do is expose the earth to the current level of solar energy. You cannot make up for the energy not recived while the screenss were in place.
This means that essentially eco-engineering schemes are about cutting us off from excess received energy but if we need to warm up quickly there is nothing they can do. So if we have lost 50% of the suns energy for a year, our energy budget is forever missing 50% of that years energy.
So the engineering may be reversible, in some cases, but the effects are not, we would have to live with the consequences. As I say, if they do all this solar energy blocking at a time when we are actually cooling, then we could be in real trouble because this would make everything worse with no escape mechanism. This is one of the reasosn why the “preccautionary principal” cannot be allowed to be invoked, there is no recovery mode.
Cap and trade and the other AGW mechanisms will do harm to people and society. Yes. They will not harm the environment. While some of us will suffer terribly from the effects, as you suggest, ultimately it is a survivable situation for people. We may emerge with a lot fewer people, (potentially a lot fewre politicians and climate scientists with a political agenda) and with a much altered global economy and a society we may not recognise, but humanity can survive that and, one hopes, as the true impact begins to become apparent we can scale back on the causes.
Ideally we would recognise the folly of the AGW case and the economic disater being constructed in its name and stop it all now but I suspect that it is easier said than done. I also, sadly, suspect that it may take a great many millions of deaths before anyone reacts to shut down this scam. Millions of people dying is a common event due to corrupt political regimes, false science and the like. The rational that says we ought to spend our money combatting aids, poverty and disseases, as suggested by Lomberg, because we get more benefits from our money, doesn’t seem to sway politicans overly much. We can look at the millions that died as a result of the banning of DDT and ask “who takes the blame?” Rachel Carson? Politicians? us? but the more important question is why did it take so long to do anything about it?
I don’t know thhe answers. All I surmise is that the same will happen with the manufactured problems of AGW. It will take many millions of deaths before we can get something sensible done. It may end in bloodshed. It may be that we will have to start holding people to account for the misinformation that causes so much suffering. It didn’t happen with Lysenko. It isn’t likely to happen with Al Gore, Phil Jones, Michael Mann or any of the grey men behind the AGW scam. One wonders how some of them sleep at night. As you suggest, there are real actual deaths attributable to the actions that have resulted from the AGW scam.
There is real environmental damage (in the sense that rainforreest is being destroyed to produce palm oil or sugar cane, in the sens ethat some species will become extinct as a result such as the orang utang or the sumatran rhinoserous, or that the landscape will become smothered in unsightly wind turbines). So far the IPCC has been quick to point out the increased deaths in summer but hide the corressponding deaths in winterr from cold. That makes these people complicit in a false scheme that will cause actual deaths.
That is the real crime. Not the money or that we won’t have such an easy time of it.
You are right, eugenics at its worst. One wonders if this isn’t an unstated objective of some of those who are exploiting the AGW scam.
Humanity has been studying the sun for thousands of years but there’s still a lot about it that our most learned solar scientists have yet to learn.
It’s nice when solar scientists acknowledge this. Thanks Leif.
@ur momisugly Anna V
Sorry, Anna, i missed your point about the use of the solar screens as a means to collect and focus solar energy onto the earth.
Good point.
I suspect we are now getting into some really expensive engineering though. If the idea is feasible and practicable to begin with I’m sure the added cost will be welcomed by those doing the engineering. I’m not sure how they’d go about it in the first place. I imagine any significant size screen woul be quickly subjected to the effects of the solar wind. It will eb a job just to get it up and deployed and keep it there without then trying to be able to move it from one part of the earths orbit (between the earth and the sun) to another (behind the earth to collect and reflect energy back to the earth).
I imagine the original concept is for some kind of foil deployed between us and the sun. That will be most vulnerable to the solar wind and will soon be displaced. I guess the option would be not to try and reposition it but simply to allow it to disintegrate and deploy a new screen as and when and where needed.
I suspect the lower cost option would be artificial volcanoes. I’m sure the quick fix mentality would love that. Engineering and deploying sun shades will be a lomng term effort. A few well placed nuclear deevices to initiate a couple of volcanoes will be attractive to some.
Vuk etc (09:11:20) :
Anthony this news is worth of a closer scientific scrutiny.
Nonsense, in a billion years the distance will change 1/1000 of its current value. And by that time, the Earth is devoid of higher life anyway, because there will not be enough CO2 left to sustain plant growth.
>>R. Gates (08:55:13) :
>> we’ve just passed through, that we are still seeing such
>>high global temps?
>>To what do the AGW skeptics attribute this. Currently
>>March 2010 tropospheric temps are spiking way above
>>20 year records:
You do jest, surely. One of the coldest N. Hemisphere winters in 30 years, and you are still harping on about warming??
.
>>I imagine any significant size screen woul be quickly
>>subjected to the effects of the solar wind. It will eb a
>>job just to get it up and deployed and keep it there
Please see – Ralph (07:51:40) :
And orbital solar screen will rapidly become a grand solar sailing-ship, and be off to Jupiter in a trice.
http://www.amazon.com/Project-Solar-Sail-Arthur-Clarke/dp/0451450027
.
i wonder how some people keep their job at NASA
To expand a bit on Ninderthana’s and Ralph’s explanation, besides the density issue, if the lower belt is 200,000km below the Sun’s surface, per the article, simple geometry makes clear that the lower belt has a considerably shorter distance to travel before reaching the upwelling zone, no? So, it darn well has to be slower.
And a nitpicking observation: I think it is unhelpful to refer to the Sun’s axial tilt when what is being described is the tilt of the Earth’s orbital plane. L
Ray (09:07:51) :
It wouldnt surprising to find out that the magnetic belts could as deep as or near the core of the sun. Gravitation alone could not explain how a star can hold on to its outer core when becoming a red giant and then collapsing quickly and explosively when it goes supernova.
Ray it’s called rotation. How does our atmosphere stay in place. The same.
Ralph,
Surely I don’t jest. The N. Hemisphere winter was only the coldest in 30 years in SOME areas…Greenland and part of N. Canada for example, saw record warmth. The record cold in other areas is directly attributed to the negative AO index, which pushed colder air further south, while warming parts of the arctic. For example, if it had been extremely cold over the whole north, we probably would have seen the arctic sea ice recover to its normal level this winter, but it has not. Why? Because parts of the arctic were warmer than normal! AGW is a global phenomenon, and as such, no one cares if you’ve got extra frost on your pumpkin this winter in Pumpkin Patch, AK. Globally, the last few months have been among the warmest on instrument record, and this is what AGW models speak to…not local and short-lived abberations. We are looking at what the long term trends are. The Met Office has predicted that 2010 will likely be the warmest on instrument record, and I fully concure. Considering we’ve just passed through this 100 year deep solar minimum, how could we be facing a record warm year? Answer: Because the sun plays less of a role in the climate than the buildup of anthropogenic GH gases…this is the heart of the AGW hypothesis, and so far, despite the long and deep solar minimum, the hypothesis holds up…
R. Gates (08:55:13) :
“Meanwhile, isn’t it interesting that despite one of the deepest solar minimums in a century that we’ve just passed through, that we are still seeing such high global temps? To what do the AGW skeptics attribute this. Currently March 2010 tropospheric temps are spiking way above 20 year records:”
There seems to be reasonable evidence of a significant ocean component based on the cycles of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation;
http://icecap.us/docs/change/ocean_cycle_forecasts.pdf
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/PDO_AMO.htm
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~mantua/REPORTS/PDO/PDO_egec.htm
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~mantua/REPORTS/PDO/PDO_cs.htm
And there also may be a significant volcanic component based historical observation:
http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/climate_effects.html
http://www.longrangeweather.com/global_temperatures.htm
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1991vci..nasa…..R
If you look all of the potential variables involved in Earth’s climate system;
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7y.html
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/pd/climate/factsheets/whatfactors.pdf
you’ll see that it is folly to assign primary driver status to any variable when we have a rudimentary understanding of such an astoundingly complex system.
Leif Svalgaard (10:01:07) :
Can you elaborate on the loss of C02 (or carbon in particular)?
Loss to space and/or geologic sequestration can accomplish that.
anna v (07:27:55) :
You are assuming that cap and trade and all that nonsense are harmless. They are not. Returning to the energy consumption of the 1900s for the west will return us to the poverty and hardship of those times. The worst will happen in the third world where people will die of starvation as they already have with the ethanol fiasco that raised the price of corn and reduced people in Haiti to eating mud pies.
The mass media insulate the western world from the terrible conditions in the third world and make it a video game, “so what if 1 billion people starve to death”.
Eugenics at its worst.
————-
Anna,
Well said. So the choices are:
1. Embrace AGW and kill off one billion people now
2. Ignore AGW and suffer/benefit from the consequences in the future
And self identified “intellectuals” embrace AGW? I guess they figure they won’t be part of the billion people who die.
Mike Ramsey
I see good science, good data (facts) and poor theory. Looks to me like the conveyor belt is busted and needs to be pitched into the trash bin.
It is more than a proposition that the galactic environment that the sun encounters changes its mechanisms of energy action. As its core becomes protonically heavier because the influx of cosmic rays increases, the rate of flow of the top layers should be expected to speed up as its magnetic potential becomes more eclipsed by the ionically differentiated magnetic strength of the Interstellar cloud (as part of the star renewal process) which is causing the bottom layers of the conveyor belt (convective currents) to slow.
These changes interact with earth’s magnetosphere by allowing to densify because of the declining impact of the solar wind. Subsequently, earth’s outgoing radiation budget increases and with elemental lags attached the heat budget of all atmospheric layers change in the only possible abruptly forced turns.
Leif Svalgaard (10:01:07) :
“And by that time, the Earth is devoid of higher life anyway, because there will not be enough CO2 left to sustain plant growth.”
I doubt it. There are trillions and trillions tons of CaCO3 in the Montenegrian rocks alone. H, He, O an C are the most common elements of the Universe. There is no end to the human ingenuity, when pushed to the wall, they may find way to extract carbon, carry it in a small container mixed with some H2O and few minerals, feeding green bio-active personalised clothing, synthesizing carbon hydrates, directly plugged into the blood stream. And hey presto no need for plants.
Ref – Leif Svalgaard (09:04:02) :
kim (08:17:16) :
“I learned from Leif several years ago that the sunspots during the Dalton Minimum were sparse, large and predominately southern hemispheric.”
Maunder, not Dalton.
_____________________
Were the sunspots during the Dalton so different?
Could the magnetic fields be acting like a giant transformer? With the fields in the top portion inducing a countering Lenz field in the lower portion?
I believe the Wiffle Ball effect in the Polywell Fusion Reactor experiments are based on such induction. At least in theory.
Leif Svalgaard (10:01:07) :
Vuk etc (09:11:20) :
Anthony this news is worth of a closer scientific scrutiny.
Nonsense, in a billion years the distance will change 1/1000 of its current value. And by that time, the Earth is devoid of higher life anyway, because there will not be enough CO2 left to sustain plant growth.
———
Autotrophs (which include Plants) everywhere are now thanking us for postponing their (and thus our own) extinction.
Mike Ramsey