Huge hole over 400,000 miles long (700,000 kilometers) is 55 times wider than the Earth
A wide hole in the sun’s atmosphere is facing Earth and spewing a stream of solar wind toward our planet. Estimated time of arrival: April 9th. In this extreme ultraviolet image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, we see not only the hole, but also a bushy filament of magnetic bordering the hole’s leading edge:
Such filaments are often unstable. If this one erupts while it is facing Earth, it could hurl a CME in our direction, adding to the effect of the incoming solar wind.
The canyon-shaped hole is remarkably wide, stretching more than 700,000 km from end to end. As a result, Earth could be under the influence of its gaseous emissions for days.
I don’t understand – how many football fields is that?
Football fields?? I’m curious how many Manhattan’s it is.
Try more than 50 Earths.
Yinz ain’t thinking on nearly the right scale. should be, how many Olympic size swimming pools it is. 🙂
And how many Hiroshimas is it spewing at us?
End to end around 1,400,000 – 50 meter long pools
Looks like around 100,000km wide so area around 2,800,000,000,000 Olympic Pools
I think I’m off by a factor of 10.
14,000,000 pools long and 28,000,000,000,000 pools in area
Just to bring my non-UK colleagues up to speed, the official unit of large area for use in the UK is “the size of Wales”.
To graphicconception
I thought such measurements were only valid at Vulture Central or is a BBC unit?
Cricket pitches?
graphicconception April 7, 2018 at 4:19 am
“Just to bring my non-UK colleagues up to speed, the official unit of large area for use in the UK is “the size of Wales”. ”
Reminds me of a story I heard. There was this American visiting Cardiff when he entered a pub and saw several hefty women sitting at a table. He approached and said “I love your accents. What part of England are you ladies from?” Their angry reply was “It’s Wales you idiot, Wales!” The American replied ” Oh, I am sorry, what part of England are you whales from?” He is expected to be released from the hospital in several weeks.
How many Al Gore’s would fit in that thing and when can we start?
Just 1 AlGore, he’s too overbloviated
Although it is just about the size of his Carbon Footprint
It would take me about four Manhattans to describe it to you.
TomInFL, having a girlfriend who was born in Wales I am surprised that the visitor in Cardiff survived.
Really, this “crack” in the corona is on its second time around. Is that why it’s news? Then again, what else is there to talk about when it come to solar activity right now?
I see the “crux of the biscuit” here as the equinoctial aurora displays it will still produce before the sun gets too high up north.
Sorry, meant to type solar equinoctial wind inspired aurora displays…
What’s effect of “a stream of solar wind” on our environment and infrastructure?
Richard, it means that guy in Ft. Lauderdale won’t need his George Foreman Thrilin Grilin to cook on his balcony anymore.
Oh, no. That would be bad.
What! We’ll all be turned to ash ? What a way to go !
It could mean God is issuing Earth a reset and reboot.
Richard, (if you aren’t being snarky) the effect will be geomagnetic storminess and aurora displays, especially during this time around the equinox. This is nothing but a curiosity as solar wind is always present to some degree. If the magnetic filament near the coronal hole were to collapse violently it could produce a Hyder flare and a CME of corresponding intensity, sometimes exceeding the levels of sunspot flare ejections.
That’s why it’s fun to keep an eye on the sun.
Oops, sorry
https://helioviewer.org/
Thanks, Pop, I’m not being snarky. I didn’t know how the ordinary solar wind might be related to a CME, with its threat of power grid and electronic disruption. Now I’ll look up the Hyder flare. I appreciate your explanations, and your vigilance of the sun. Well, your fun in the sun! Cheers.
How many Delaware equivalents is that?
North-South or East-West?
Antarctic ice bergs are measured in Delawares, thought it might be a new metric.
nickreality
But Antarctic sea ice anomalies are measured in Greenlands: ” In June 2014, the excess sea ice around Antarctica was larger than the entire land mass of Greenland. ”
“From March 2017 to March 2018, the sea ice around Antarctica increased more than 2/3 the entire area of Greenland.“
If we do have a CME heading our way, we won’t have much warning. link
A CME in 1859 caused disruption in telegraph systems. link There was no power grid at the time so the telegraph system was the only long stretch of wire.
A CME shouldn’t directly affect our electronic devices because of their small size. Anything plugged into the power grid could be subject to voltage spikes and be damaged thereby. The protection against that is a power bar with a built in surge arrester. Surge protection is probably a good idea anyway.
There is the possibility that a CME could take down the power grid. link The protection against that is your emergency camping supplies.
If I had a fifteen minute warning about a CME, I would remove the house from the grid by throwing the main breaker. I would also unplug as much stuff as I could in the time available.
Good chance it wouldn’t work. Think induced current and/or the EMP threat. If the CME is strong enough, it may not matter if you disconnect from the grid.
Phil, CMEs and EMPs are not synonymous. They take place over different timescales.
http://www.govtech.com/em/emergency-blogs/disaster-zone/thedifferencebetweenanempandacme.html
If the power grid responds effectively to the situation, your power will go off at about the same time you are removing yourself from the grid. Hopefully, improved grounding systems will dissipate induced current better than in the past.
On a local scale, lightning produces many times more energy than a CME or even EMP could produce.
The grid has been protected from lightning for a generation or more.
An EMP would be like 10’s of thousands of lightning bolts hitting the grid all at once. However these bolts would be scattered over the entire country. As a result at any given location, the total energy being imparted to the grid is small and well within what it is designed to handle.
With millions of people buying 10’s of millions of surge protectors, the grid is even better protected.
2 Springs ago my home was struck by lightning at about 1:10 AM. The instantaneous BOOM had my wife and I spinning in mid-air about 3′ off the bed. The strike fried my cable router and all electronics in that cabinet, fried my gun safe lights, and our plug in digital house phones. All surge protectors gave up their useful life for the cause. Recuperation cost to me was about $700. I ain’t afraid of no CME event. Already been there 🙂
No home grade surge protector has the capacity to absorb a direct lighting strike.
“If we do have a CME heading our way, we won’t have much warning. link”
According to your link, we could have at least 15 hours warning, a lot more than we can expect for a strategic EMP explosion.
“There is the possibility that a CME could take down the power grid. link The protection against that is your emergency camping supplies.”
According to your link for that statement, you’d need to be set to camp out for a long, long, time, possibly forever, or until fallout from melting nuclear reactors arrives.
Says the LLoyd’s report:
“The total U.S. population at risk of extended power outage from a Carrington-level storm is between 20-40 million, with durations of 16 days to 1-2 years. The duration of outages will depend largely on the availability of spare replacement transformers. If new transformers need to be ordered, the lead-time is likely to be a minimum of five months.”
This is pretty upbeat, since it seems to suggest that the populations of New York, Montreal, Toronto, etc. can survive more than five months without electricity. I’m also curious how the effects being limited to only 20-40 million people was calculated.
I’m also surprised by the following statement:
“If spares are readily available, the total transportation and setup time for a large power transformer can range from a few weeks to months depending on distance and logistical issues38. If new transformers need to be ordered, the lead-time is estimated to be between 5-12 months for domestic suppliers, and 6-16 months for international suppliers39,40,41.”
Everything I’ve read on the subject to date suggests that :
1. there’s no such thing as “of the shelf” grid transformers, that each has to be built for the specific location
2. there are no spare grid transformers in storage in North America, whether generic or custom built
3. grid transformers are not manufactured in North America, they would have to be ordered from overseas and built there
Evidently, this was an exaggeration, according to one of the linked reports:
“In 2010, six power transformer manufacturing facilities existed in the United
States, and together, they met approximately 15 percent of the Nation’s demand for [large] power
transformers ” .
it goes on to say the situation has improved slightly. But the demand currently not being met by American manufacturers is only for routine replacements. Whatever the improved capacity, it can’t possibly handle a situation where hundreds of these transformers are required immediately.
And if there is a civil defense plan for Manhattan or the island of Montreal in the event of a power outage lasting more than a week, I’d like to see it. If such plans exist, I imagine they will consist primarily of confining the population on the island by any means.
But 20+ million people living five months without power for water, heat, and light? The mind boggles…
We could just reuse all the PCB transformers we have removed and have stored in various places around the country. That could tide us over long enough for the new ones to be built.
No, it wouldn’t take years to fix things….. I always think of those Iraqi oil well fires after Operation Desert Storm…. Every expert from under every rock was saying that it would take years to put them all out and that climate would be affected, people would die, baskets of kittens would evaporate… the whole catastrophic enchilada.
….. But what ACTUALLY happened?…. They had them all out in a couple of months, most of them within weeks. The kittens were saved.
If you want to argue by cherry picking news reports (I very much doubt that you could know that “every” expert predicted the oilfield fire results you describe), here’s my cherry pick – the Japanese experts bet that there would never be a tsunami higher than ten meters. The mayor of one small village bet his reputation and the finances of his town on building a wall and gates 15 meters high, and saved the town and its people from disaster. And more lately, the experts predicted that the nuclear ejecta from the three burst containment vehicles at Fukushima would not continue to be a significant health threat for more than a few years. But six years later, it turns out that in addition to the gases released, there were also much more radioactive particles with much longer half-lives that contaminated the entire fallout area, extending the expected period of contamination hugely.
Your house is only hooked to the grid magnetically through a horribly resonant transformer. It doesn’t pass “pulses” as it’s tuned to 50 or 60 Hz. Your winding is displaced on one side of a square iron core a long ways from the thousands-of-volts primary winding which protects your home from primary side lightning and long line solar storm pulses. The core is heavily grounded to prevent arcing from primary to secondary. They are about 2 ft apart on opposite sides of this grounded core. Thank Nikola Tesla for this genius design Edison’s DC system never provided. Many homes arced and burned when lightning hit the overhead DC wires hooked straighg to the houses.
I don’t see what the big deal is. There have been coronal holes before, some bigger than this. Coronal holes seem to occur on a fairly regular basis. As for the filament and potential CME, meh… It’s happened before and it’ll happen again.
It doesn’t have to be a “big deal”, its simply interesting. As well as “big deals” WUWT imparts knowledge.
Shouldn’t someone from the UN tell us what to do? How to survive this? Should we buy bottled water or not? And how the hell should anyone know how big Wales is?
We should volunteer to pay more carbon fraud, I mean tax.
(sarc)
s Only dialectic materialism and the soviet system can save us from the sun. We must abandon our capitalist system and immediately establish one world government under the UN or the EU, whoever wins the inevitable duke-it-out between them. That will save us. But wait. Who’s going to pay the reparations? Never mind. /s
Solar climate change?
That CO2 molecule sure is powerful. Must be all Man’s fault.
Oh, no! It’s worse than we thought it was when we thought it was worse than we thought it was when we were sure it was worse than we thought!
An increase in solar wind would likely also cause temps to rise – the wind increase will decrease the GCR’s reaching atmosphere and so we get less low level clouds meaning albedo drops and things warm up.
So I think main effect will be a sudden increase in triumphant “told you so” publications from the Church of AGW true believers. 😀
Well, at least the Svensmark hypothesis will be confirmed. ??? Maybe not.
“Does this CLOUD finding close the door on any possible Galactic Cosmic Ray cloud-climate connection? No one has shown mechanistically that the ion-aerosol clear-sky mechanism is strong enough to impact clouds, and now the CLOUD team has also found this to be the case. Nonetheless, we can thank the ion-aerosol clear-sky hypothesis for creating the CLOUD experiment that has unlocked a treasure trove of information on nucleation, growth, and aerosols in general.”
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/2017JD027475
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/2017JD026844
We can add Svensmark’s suggestion to Phlogiston and Luminiferous aether – ideas that weren’t true.
Isn’t there enough charged nuclei? I mean, would the effects of more be noticeable?
We could use a little kick-start to spring. March is over, but no one told Gaia. She is in no mood for letting go of winter just yet. Maybe Ra can warm up her disposition.
I normally have 5 or 6 rounds of golf in by the beginning of the Masters. I have only gotten out twice, and both times it was too cold to finish. I know the drill … climate vs weather … blah blah blah. You would think after 6+ decades of adding GHG’s to the atmosphere we would have at least noticeable warming, instead of chronically below average temps in an area that also has UHI warming.
Since none of use lives everywhere at once, the local temps are what are noticed. And the lack of actual warming for many of us does not help make the case that this is an “urgent problem” that can not wait for action. On the contrary it makes the case for another “jump to conclusion” politically motivated agenda, to make another sector of the economy, increase in cost faster than wage growth.
Russ – do you think you’ll feel a degree or two of warming in your lifetime?
Seasonal delays are predicted by AGW. Milder winters with extreme cold outbreaks are predicted by AGW. The fluid mechanics and the Rossby Wave theory (globally) about these conditions are becoming better understood. Of course we should still reserve judgment a little longer to see if regional climate changes since 2011 continue at the same pace.
Every possible outcome is predicted by AGW.
How “urgent” is it to take action against something that is so minor that it can not be noticed? That exists as a statistical variation from the “normal climate” of vague magnitude, uncertain cause, and unknown results?
How likely is success for the recommended corrective action to be taken, when it is the same recommended action for the opposite conjecture of 4 decades ago?
I am very willing to give it time. It in our best interests to know what is happening before to take action to correct what we think might be happening, and what we think might be causing it, and what we think might be the result of it.
That is the only course that makes logical sense. But this is not really about logic, is it?
Meteorologist in research – there’s a HUUUUGGGE difference between a seasonal delay in change of ambient temperature and a one degree change in AVERAGE mean temperature. You should know that.
I’m with Russ – the Arctic air coming south into MY area is bringing NON-seasonal cold that should have been dissipated by now, with temps in the mid to upper 50s day time and 40s at night. Instead, according to what has been happening – and I’m recording everything as it goes – it’s in the teens at night, and low to mid-30s daytime. Not one tree in my county has leaf buds OPEN. The buds are there, but no sign of relaxing the outer petals to allow the leaves and arboreal flowers (maples, sycamores, sumacs, etc.) to open leaves and collect O2 and sunshine.
This is LATE in the season for this kind of weather. It’s been getting progressively later every year since 2006, when the first solar minimum occurred in this century. If it isn’t obvious that a dormant sun has something to do with this WEATHER and seasonal shift, then what is it?
When migrating songbirds returned to this area in the spring of 2006, there was no food for them to eat. They were starving to death. It has been like that since then and is continuing NOW. I have grackles on my lawn looking for bugs that haven’t emerged and won’t until the milder air returns. And what if it does NOT return until May????
And PUH-LEEZE don’t throw that CAGWer stuff at me. There is a difference – massive difference between a shift in a seasonal weather cycle and a ridiculously undetectable global temperature difference of one degree.
Russ – I don’t think we can rescue ourselves. And anyway, our great great grandparents weren’t thinking about environment of our lives. It goes against our nature. It’s too far in the future.
The global circulation is being energized by 3 or 4 Hiroshima bombs per second, but the planet is very big. You won’t see a temperature rise in your local area, it’s lost in the noise, you’re right, but look at the long waves (planetary waves or Rossby Waves) which form and sustain regional climates. Look at the amplifications and elongations and the shifts.
Sara – great examples of seasonal delays due to energized storm tracks opposing the return of the Sun’s influence. The hard parts of the winter, which we remember most, require increased energy. Here at the lab we’ve been watching this interesting change since 2011 (it was interrupted by El Nino).
Meteor man:
You had it right, but you kept right on going into the Hiroshima’s per second tar pit. All those Hiroshima’s are going to add up to a record low for me tomorrow morning. They sure don’t make em, like they used to. It seems odd to me that I live on Glacial deposits and there is not a glacier within a 1000 miles of me. How many Hiroshima’s per second did it take to remove millions of cubic meters of ice?
And yet life survived, and in fact it thrived. A tiny change in a life giving molecule will remain undetectable, compared to the gross temperature swings we have every day, and every year. The climate changes. Thankfully it is remarkably stable due to the large volume of water on the Earth. If you think we are done for, I suggest you convince your fellow travelers to go up to the Arctic and see the devastation we are causing. You should be able to buy up Arctic Circle land for a bargain, and when the Hiroshima’s per second hits jackpot, you will be a real estate billionaire. Maybe run for President of the Earth.
To Sara April 7, 2018 at 4:39 pm re the unseasonable cold this Winter and Spring (if we ever get Spring):
It is snowing in Calgary and minus 9C (+16F) right now. Maybe this is just weather, or maybe it is the early signs of a climate change – global cooling even as atmospheric CO2 continues to increase.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/07/easter-islands-ecological-suicide-myths-and-realities/comment-page-1/#comment-2784381
[excerpts]
I (we) predicted the commencement of global cooling by 2020-2030 in an article published the Calgary Herald in 2002. That prediction is gaining credibility as solar activity has crashed.
…
The “catastrophic man-made global warming” myth ignores the devastating impacts of the Little Ice Age on humanity and the environment, and ignores the inevitable reality that our coming generations could soon face another ice age that will harshly test our technologies and threaten the survival of millions of people. The cold centuries to come WILL even make man-made global warming look positively attractive!
Russ R.: heck, I played in February last year and my state abuts Canada eh. This year i cant get nobody to go a round. Obviously its global cooling…..
Russ – you’ll have to look at the upper air charts over the period of the last 30 years and especially in the last 7 years to see the trend.
Allan – the planetary wave pattern has become more chaotic due to insufficient outflow, like a pot of boiling water going through stages of heating. This will give us record weather events, blizzards, droughts, flooding, stronger storms and less hurricanes, everything resulting from the more energetic Rossby Waves.
If the temperature of the planet goes down for a statistically meaningful amount of time then AGW will be falsified.
meteorologist in research wrote:
“If the temperature of the planet goes down for a statistically meaningful amount of time then AGW will be falsified.”
Agreed m-i-r, but this has already happened, when Earth cooled from ~1940 to ~1977, even as atmospheric CO2 accelerated, so the
CAGW hypo is already falsified.
The CAGW hypo is also falsified as follows:
The upper-bound estimate of Transient Climate Sensitivity of ~1C/(2xCO2) by Christy and McNider (2017) is highly credible for the satellite era from ~1979 to mid-2017. This upper bound was calculated assuming (conservatively, for the sake of simplicity and clarity) that ALL the observed warming in the satellite era was due to increasing atmospheric CO2. This maximum climate sensitivity is so low that there is NO credible global warming crisis.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/2017_christy_mcnider-1.pdf
I have searched and found NO credible evidence that catastrophic human-made global warming exists in reality. None!
Incidentally, using the same assumptions as Christy and McNider, the TCS for the period ~1940 to ~1977 is about MINUS 1C/(2xCO2).
Furthermore, I proved in 2008 that the velocity dCO2/dt changes contemporaneously with global temperature, and its integral atmospheric CO2 changes ~9 months later. This clear signal can only exist if TCS is very small. See also Humlum et al (2013) for a similar observation.
Practically speaking, if TCS exists at all in significance, it must be very low, probably a positive number less than 0.5C/(2xCO2), or even lower.
In summary, the catastrophic human-made global warming crisis has already been disproved.
meteorologist in research – The temperature gradient is getting shallower because the poles are warming more than the tropics. This retards the pressure gradients which are the driving force of weather events. So we will see less severe weather events in a warming climate than we will in a cooling one. Which is exactly what we have been seeing. When we see more severe weather events it will be because the opposite is happening – the temperature gradient is getting steeper. This will occur because the poles will cool faster than the tropics.
Russ R wrote:
“So we will see less severe weather events in a warming climate than we will in a cooling one. Which is exactly what we have been seeing. When we see more severe weather events it will be because the opposite is happening – the temperature gradient is getting steeper. This will occur because the poles will cool faster than the tropics.”
I agree with you. The global warming alarmists have it backwards – again! A lower temperature gradient between the equator and the poles over the past few decades has been accompanied by fewer and weaker hurricanes, etc. Global cooling, which I believe will re-commence circa 2020-2030, will be accompanied by wilder weather.
Society will look back at global warming alarmism as the most expensive scam in history. Tens of trillions of dollars have been misappropriated, energy costs crucial to human and the economic survival have skyrocketed, and the reliability of vital energy systems has been degraded.
Allan – to see what’s happening look at the upper air charts, not average temperatures.
Russ – The weakening gradient is what has been causing harsh winter storms in the NE US and Western Europe. In the US it’s a shift of the Alberta storm track. Since it’s a shift to the east I don’t know what will happen in the future. Maybe it will shift back as the energy for the dynamics increases. That’s what we’ve been hoping for here in the SouthWest. It can’t get worse here.
Allan – “A lower temperature gradient between the equator and the poles over the past few decades has been accompanied by fewer and weaker hurricanes, etc.”
Fewer but stronger hurricanes are predicted by AGW theory. Wind shear at the inflow heights is being suspected. So far it’s true, but there’s so little warming to make a confident correlation about this. 50 years from now we’ll find out what we were wrong about. The forecasted feedbacks were wrong so far.
m-i-r – you have to be much more specific and cite some pertinent references to support your comments.
Regards, Allan
We had MUCH more severe winters in the late 70’s when the fear was a return of Little Ice Age Conditions. The global temp estimates were lower than they are presently. And the current weather models show that stronger temperature gradients have a greater ability to move cold DENSE air further south than weak temperature gradients do. Greater pressure means larger displacement of an air mass.
Less hurricanes you are correct. More powerful is not within our ability to determine because you are comparing hurricanes we have good data on, at all phases of development, and hurricanes that we only have vague data on, and estimates of landfall strength. The satellite era is too short to know whether they are stronger now or not. A case can be made for either stronger or weaker, which means that claim is unsubstantiated. Certainly with the increased population in the direct path of hurricanes since the widespread use of air conditioning, you would expect to see much larger damage and death figures in recent decades than we have, if they are stronger.
And the Alberta clipper storm track is the norm for the past. It is the absence of it that is unusual. The way the northern hemisphere land masses are formed allows Siberia to become very cold once the winter deepens. Those frigid temps are very dense and are not easily moved. But the lack of sunlight, the reflection of any sunlight by snow cover, and the distance from any warm bodies of water, intensifies this cold pool of air until it spills out across the Arctic Ocean into North America. Sometimes it goes through Alaska, sometimes it remains north of Alaska. But it pushes south down into the plains and meets no resistance until well into the interior of the eastern half of the US. This is the same weather pattern that generated the Laurentide Ice Sheet, and is the norm for most of the geologic past.
Thanks, Russ,
——————We had MUCH more severe winters in the late 70’s when the fear was a return of Little Ice Age Conditions.
the fear? You mean Time magazine etc.?
——————The global temp estimates were lower than they are presently.
yes
——————-And the current weather models show that stronger temperature gradients have a greater ability to move cold DENSE air further south than weak temperature gradients do.
I thought that you agreed that weaker north-south gradients are releasing the polar vortexes?
——————-Greater pressure means larger displacement of an air mass.
Greater pressure at what height?
———————Less hurricanes you are correct. More powerful is not within our ability to determine because you are comparing hurricanes we have good data on, at all phases of development, and hurricanes that we only have vague data on, and estimates of landfall strength.
Yes, over such a short period of time with very little increase in temperature it’s not yet smart to talk about stronger hurricanes. If we start to see a trend though it will be a fear for the future.
——————And the Alberta clipper storm track is the norm for the past. It is the absence of it that is unusual.
The storm tracks have been shifted to the east, even in the eastern Atlantic.
——————The way the northern hemisphere land masses are formed allows Siberia to become very cold once the winter deepens. Those frigid temps are very dense and are not easily moved.
It mostly depends upon the planetary wave number.
——————But the lack of sunlight, the reflection of any sunlight by snow cover, and the distance from any warm bodies of water, intensifies this cold pool of air until it spills out across the Arctic Ocean into North America. Sometimes it goes through Alaska, sometimes it remains north of Alaska. But it pushes south down into the plains and meets no resistance until well into the interior of the eastern half of the US. This is the same weather pattern that generated the Laurentide Ice Sheet, and is the norm for most of the geologic past.
I agree, a lot of it has to do with the continental configuration, but the shape of the continents are not a variable (recently). Again, it mostly depends upon the planetary wave number which has decreased from 7 to 9 down to 5 to 7 due to higher energy levels in the global circulation.
“You mean Time magazine etc.?” It was not just Time. Look at the snowfall records that were set in the winters of 77-80, across both North America and Europe. We had major blizzard conditions that were sustained over repeated systems. We have had similar systems in recent decades, just not repeated with the frequency of those winter storms. Similar to what the east coast of the US saw this year. Storm after storm, and widespread snowfall, not small bands.
I do not agree that “weaker north-south gradients are releasing the polar vortexes”. I think that is just an excuse for the failure of climate models to forecast the severe winters we continue to have in the face of “global warming”. I don’t have data to support that contention, but common sense indicates that polar excursions are a normal condition, and explain many of the same weather reports we have for weather patterns before satellite data was available.
It seems very easy in science to have a very short data set, that is primary random-walk, and assign attribute for patterns that turn out to be random fluctuations, in a longer term trend or cycle. Large displacements of the polar jet in the wintertime is not a new phenomena. It is interesting to measure the displacements and think you have found something new, when all you really are doing is seeing a newer phase of a repeating cycle that is older than your data.
ALLAN MACRAE April 8, 2018 at 6:28 pm
m-i-r – you have to be much more specific and cite some pertinent references to support your comments.
I haven’t found a good website for explaining dynamic meteorology.
Russ – Well, you have your opinions. What will convince you that we’ve been able to reliably apply Rossby Wave Theory in the last 30 years? More winters with their record-breaking dynamics continually in the science news? – with the mechanisms explained even at the level of pop science articles?
We’ve recently in those decades had the data collection network and the computing power to check strengthenings and dampenings. Should we reverse our conclusions because uninformed people are opinionated?
You should make predictions for future patterns and compare how well your predictions aligned with the actual patterns.
Not wait until the patterns occur, and then pontificate on how well those weather patterns align with the predictions you didn’t make.
For instance, did you see the occurrence of several strong nor-Easters coming in the last half of this winter, before winter started?
And then you can tell us in September how much the Great Lakes will freeze over in 3 winter periods, end of Dec, end of Jan, and end of Feb. You can add in a snow report for the ski resorts of the Rockies, the upper Midwest and the Northeast, also in 3 parts. And while you are at it tell us what will be the monsoon rain in the SouthWest. Might as well tell us when the spring will warm enough to get crops in the ground for the Great Plains.
Post your predictions here, and we will help you verify their accuracy.
Russ – my customers would want forecasts like that. I wish chaotic systems were forcastable in the intermediate term (actually I don’t because my workload is big enough now with just point forecasts for launches and recoveries).
As it is we have different approaches for short and long term forecasts. And my role is to explain to the experimenters what the numerical weather prediction (NWP) models are telling us.
So another opinionated meteorologist, sure that he has the answers, but unwilling to test the veracity of the answers by extrapolating them into the future. I don’t blame you. It is much easier to apply your answers to the past, and fit the narrative to the known pattern. Like a test, where you only have to answer the questions that work with the only equation you know how to use.
30 years is only half a cycle. That makes you a blind man, describing half an elephant. Do you even know which half it is?
Even if 10 times more money was available to us we could only be a LITTLE bit more accurate. According to science we know why the accuracy will not get much better. Small perturbations and dampenings in the near future, beyond the current data, will always offset the synoptic scale systems over time.
I’m quite surprised now by the accuracy of the 16 day forecast, — most anywhere in the world surface to 40,000 feet.
It should be noted that the 1859 Carrington Event happened during a solar cycle as low as this one.
I think that’s Italy.
Oops, sorry guys… it’s North Korea at night from space.
Yeah, it looked like Italy to me, too.
No Leif Svalgaard yet on this thread. I assume it is just not controversial enough?
That right. Nothing unusual there. And the solar wind blows all the time. Just a little faster [but thinner] in high-speed streams from coronal holes.
Isn’t this being caused by global warming?
You are on the right (left) track fxk.
It’s all being caused by the demon molecule, CO2 – global warming, global cooling, wilder weather, milder weather, coronal ejections, ozone holes, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
The interesting thing is that “the molecule which should not be named” causes the coronal holes to get bigger but then sometimes it causes them to get smaller. Dark magic you know.
And there you go, just a few threads after being told by a crowd of Lefties to quit saying things that might hurt their feelings; just couldn’t help yourself, could you?
Alan R wrote:
“And there you go, just a few threads after being told by a crowd of Lefties to quit saying things that might hurt their feelings; just couldn’t help yourself, could you?”
My bad Alan – I guess I am just insensitive, but then, I have been calibrated differently from the uber-delicate “snowflakes” of the me-me-me generation.
For example, in the first two years of my Kazakstan project, I managed two armed invasions, one of my main office in Almaty and one at my field camp, both without bloodshed. That project was later sold to the Chinese for US$4.2 billion.
I have also been through too many armed checkpoints manned by border guards, police, army and others. I am personally offended when some a$$hole points a gun in my direction. That’s almost it.
If someone physically assaults me, I am generally unimpressed and feel no need to retaliate – unless they have real skills and/or use a weapon.
If someone verbally assaults me, my reaction is “I feel under-motivated – where is your gun?”
This feigned-hurt reaction of the snowflakes, who claim to be deeply wounded by the slightest of slights, is a form of micro-aggression. It is a dishonest attempt to label the other person as a bully, and is a tactic used by people of low integrity to shift the topic of debate to their advantage.
Best, Allan 🙂
Allan Macrae, the CAGWer/Warmian/snowflakes have to do virtue signaling because they have nothing else. They have nothing to say, other than trying to insult you and throwing tantrums. They are boring, and may find themselves cold and hungry if this weather cycle continues.
Crop production in the US is a bit ahead of schedule, but the volume will depend entirely on weather, something they refuse to recognize. Have you ever wondered what they will do if there is no flour to make bread for their vegan diets? Will we have to give them cake to eat?
I think it may be Brexit!
I agree with you Sara.
This virtue-signaling and micro-aggression tactic is getting really old and stale.
I first recall it being used against me in 2002 in a public meeting. I was on the Board of a large homeless shelter and we had an imminent crisis – we had 600 funded spaces and needed 200 more before winter set in. Homeless people do freeze to death in Canada – it happens.
The province doubted our numbers (which turned out to be correct) and we held a meeting of all homeless agencies to appeal to them to each provide more beds. One of the attendees commented that he felt “hurt” or “diminished” or something by our appeal – as if anyone should give a damn about his delicate feelings in a life-and-death situation.
I had written two article for the Calgary Herald describing this crisis, to no effect. I went to Premier Ralph Klein’s pancake breakfast to appeal to his trusted advisor Art Smith, and was in mid-conversation when some idiot hit Ralph in the face with a pie – and that was the end of that conversation.
I then held a meeting with our Executive Director, Pat Nixon the Executive Director of the Mustard Seed, and editor of the Calgary Sun Licia Corbella. The conversation droned on and was going nowhere. Then I asked Pat if it was true that one of his homeless guys had tackled Ralph’s assailant and held him until the Police arrived. Pat confirmed the rumour, and Licia asked if she could interview and photograph him.
The next day, the headline in the Calgary Sun read “Ralph Klein Doesn’t Know Who His Real Friends Are!” Licia wrote about ten more articles urging the government to act, and I finally got a phone call from the Provincial Minister, who asked me “Allan, how can I make this thing go away?” I explained that we needed 200 more funded spaces, and we needed them now – it was forecast to get much colder that night. He verbally agreed, and we had the spaces open by 5pm.
That organization now shelters over 1200 souls per night and provides 1.5 million free meals per year.
Just a few words about Art Smith – one of the best men I ever met.
Arthur Ryan Smith flew 34 combat missions in Lancaster Bombers in WW2 and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1943.
In RAF Bomber Command, a standard rotation was 30 operations. The average numbers of operations survived by an Avro Lancaster – the RAF’s principal heavy bomber from 1942 onward – was 21.
Of around 125,000 aircrew who served in RAF Bombers in WWII, 55,573 were killed on operations.
More on Art Smith here:
https://www.lieutenantgovernor.ab.ca/aoe/business/arthur-smith/index.html
@pop piasa: That improved grounding system exists. Can’t advertise here, but if interested – reply – and we’ll figure out a way to get in contact.
It is sad how many unserious replies there are to this posting!
Agree
What’s wrong with having a little fun?
Well, tomwys1, since that ‘hole’ in the sun’s atmosphere is many, many times the size of the Earth, and there is not much we can do about it, what’s wrong with having some fun?
Lighten up, Francis!
Does this phenomenon classify as a large sun spot?
If so it must have an effect on the cooling cycle of the sun which we are maybe entering.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Does this phenomenon classify as a large sun spot?
No, it is actually a bit brighter [in visible light] than a spot as its small magnetic field elements are bright.
It’s all a joke until the Sun burps, then it’s back to the horse and cart.
If that happens, it may be back to a particulate matter basics. Just sayin….. you could just be pollution in the end. Yikes!
Will I will have to take my “buns” out of the safe? It has a battery operated combination lock.
An out-sized interesting phenomena!
If interested.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/swpc-dissemination-service-modernization-0
Leif, I assume you too will be providing some feedback? C’mon man! 😉
I did [contrary to you 🙂 ]. Repeat: nice coronal hole, but not exceptional. Such large [or larger] holes occur often just before solar minimum in every cycle.
I meant to the dissemination service modernization platform project Leif! They obviously need some consulting. I have dealt with their email attributes for years. Hopefully they make it gooder through alternative modern means 😉
Best to say what you meant in the first post…:-)
OMG, you have been talking with my wife! She says the same type thing far too often!
I would hope you would provide some feedback to the SWPC, through the link I provided, to help them make things the best it can be for those of us who use it. Conveying info with relative clarity would be a good thing for the novice observer, and I am not sure they know how to do that yet.
Good to see you about, regardless Leif!
They think they are smart scientists and that their readers are too, so that the latter can figure it out even if it is obscure 🙂
Tou·ché
Why doesn’t it show up as a sunspot or part of a sunspot??
http://spaceweather.com/images2018/06apr18/hmi1898.gif?PHPSESSID=a2um7216287jseccrf5m474d92
It is corpse of dead sunspots. When sunspot die their magnetic field is left over and spreads over a large area which often results is coronal holes.
Mr lsvalgaard, would you care to comment on this Solar related article?
https://www.thegwpf.com/astronomers-just-found-theyve-been-completely-wrong-about-these-giant-sun-tornadoes/
Sunspots typically occur in pairs with opposite magnetic polarity. The magnetic field goes from one sunspot to its buddy some distance away, i.e. in a horizontal direction, like this
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/images/image009.jpg
http://astronomy.nju.edu.cn/~lixd/GA/AT4/AT416/IMAGES/AACHCZB0.JPG
Often the field is twisted instead of just going straight. The magnetic field carries a load on plasma which at times when the field is disturbed can explode. The explosion hurls plasma away from the sun [we call that a Coronal Mass Ejection, CME] but also down towards the surface where it collides with the matter there and heats it [we call that a flare].
As usual there is nothing new about this ‘finding’. The ‘tornado’ picture was simply an attempt of dumbing down what happens.
Leif – is it believed that sunspots are a common feature in stars throughout the galaxy? Also is the TSI variation (and timescale over which is happens) we see for the sun too small at galactic distances for our sun to be called a variable star?
Sunspots [starspots] are common. Most stars [except very hot large stars] have spots, some much bigger than the sun’s. The TSI variation can be picked up if your instrument is sensitive enough, so depends on the observer. It is correct to call the sun a [very weak] variable star.
I thought that stars were still just points, even the most powerful telescopes.
Is there an indirect method of detecting sun spots?
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a15948566/pi-grius-most-detailed-image-another-star/
Leif,
Excellent article link!
Thanks,
JimG1
I think what will happen is amazingly… nothing. That is relative to Earth’s weather in as much as we can observe.
Whatever. Willis has assured us that the sun has absolutely no effect on the Earth. [If it] went out tomorrow, we could ignore it.
“if it.” Jeez…
”Willis has assured us that the sun has absolutely no effect on the Earth”
In Willis’ defense, he has never had the courage to claim that the sun has no effect on climate. He has only ever claimed that he has repeatedly checked in all the places you wouldn’t expect solar influence on climate and confidently reports he hasn’t found it there.
Next weeks installment: No change in Lama wool production in south America due to solar cycles.
The truth just needs to be liberated from the evil designs of the Willis.
Got iit.
As long as there is no threat to cheese, fine wines, and broccoli production, I’m good with it. Fortunately, if the grid shuts down, I can still cook with my gas stove. I have three boxes of kitchen matches standing by.
Once again someone is confusing “the Sun has no effect on Earth” with “the small changes in the Sun’s output have only a small effect on Earth’s climate”. No one has ever said the first and many have said the second.
Only good thing about a Carrington event is that we should get great auroras.
Not my fault. It was like that when I got here.
It is the fault of rising CO2. Or the Russians did it.
I demand that the oil companies pay to have it filled, and that the Koch Brothers do it personally – using non-flammable material. As a protest I am not using any fossil fuels until I need them.
An old guy at the beach this afternoon was charging $5 to look at the sun through his $50,000 solar telescope.
I paid $5, saw a large flare on the limb–but no hole. I was duped!
You didn’t see the sign “Hole temporarily closed for inspection”?? Then it must have just been gone for tea.
Noticed the Red Saux hat, perhaps that is a clue.
Guy got that from a pawn shop for $120 bucks.
Someone somewhere will predict the end is near.
It makes me wonder if the Sun’s magnetic field goes through cycles of strength and relative weakness or even reversing polarity like Earth’s field – or even if there is a synchronicity between the two? Does anyone know I f these “holes” might be linked to a weaker solar field?
I laughed at the comment about a CME making the George Foreman grill redundant – I always like to think of CERN as the world’s most expensive micro-wave oven.
Is there anything CO2 can’t do?
CMEs occur every week, sometimes 3x a day. No big deal. The risk here is only a little higher than the risk of creating a black hole at the Large Hadron Collider, which BTW a physicist sued CERN asking the judge to save the world
Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.”
Dr. Arkani-Hamed said concerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe, “Neither has any merit.” He pointed out that because of the dice-throwing nature of quantum physics, there was some probability of almost anything happening. There is some minuscule probability, he said, “the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/science/29collider.html
It probably will create black holes, but they will evaporate in a matter of seconds.
MarkW – I’ve read that black holes that are formed could be so tiny that they’re insulated by a quantum length (no Hawking Radiation possible) and this would mean that the next time the compartment is energized they will definitely have a BH problem. Interesting stuff..
Some physicists say the guys at Cern are using the wrong value for a quantum mass. They’re off by many magnitudes! Theorists debate back and forth.
Settled science, no doubt.
Physicists take it for granted that there’s no evidence for Hawking radiation. I doubt it. In my quantum theory of black hole, Hawking radiation is theoretically possible but for a different physical mechanism than Hawking’s proposal. I employ quantum tunneling as the mechanism, which is experimentally confirmed. However, entanglement of particles makes the process complicated. It seems if Hawking radiation is possible, then a white hole is impossible. They are mutually exclusive. BTW in my theory a white hole is what we commonly call the Big Bang
How sure is ‘science’ that our current model of the sun is correct ?
Will it really take 4 thousand million years before the sun runs out of hydrogen, expands, and eventually gobbles up the earth ?
Will it really take 4 thousand million years before the sun runs out of hydrogen, expands, and eventually gobbles up the earth ?
Yep.
Bigfoot carcass believed Bigfoot victim
Buffalo carcass… nevermind
“Boffins astonished to discover a MASSIVE HOLE in the SUN!”
I’m having a major British tabloid moment here. What news from Yellowstone?
I’m sorry ? what massive hole as over the last 3 weeks there have been bigger ..
there have been a couple that have spanned the northern and southern hemispheres of the sun ?
so what gives ?
NASA issued a statement on it, so we covered it. Complain to them.
@gracious host 🙂
And thank you for that! Allow me to opine on the obvious causation of this event.
As several people have intuited, CO2 is the culprit, but do they know why? Do they understand the settled science of cause and effect?
Let me explain. CO2 is going to rise a little in about a year or two. This will directly cause a slight temperature increase in the oceans in the next few days and months. This will cause the CME any second now. Now here comes the part you folks have been missing, pay attention because it’s sciency. The oceans will cause the CLIMATE MODELS to pass through a discontinuity in the flux transformer coupled to the electromagnetic field of the sun, which is manifested by this hideous gash on the face of the sun.
CO2 – hole in the sun, Q.E.D.
Admittedly only 97% of (mainstream) climate scientists are 100% certain about this last part since the exact mechanism of the ocean-flux transformer coupling has not yet been worked out by the Strawmann team. But if our all-but-certain, (settled) consensus is accurate, and all the models prove that it is, tragically, the sun will be PERMANENTLY scarred with this ugly blemish which would probably spread rapidly to other stars, eventually causing the galaxy to collapse and then the universe, leading to the inevitable cuts in vital government programs. Republicans, well, probably all fascist radicals are hoping for this to kill THE CHIILDREN. Is that what you want to see happen?
It is your selfish use of energy, exemplified by the dangerous artificial cis-normative GMO photons you are using to read these words, that is ultimately going to be responsible for this apocalypse unless you send money. Repent and join the woke green church of CAGW!
Rich Davis, I’ll send you money if you can explain how my production of CO2 when I’m cooking can reach a star that is 93 million ++ miles from my house.
I made a lovely casserole last night of scalloped potatoes and ham au gratin and I refuse to give up any of that, including the crusty bread and the celery stalks that went with it, and the cheesecake afterwards for dessert.
Thank you. I appreciate your view on this.
I photographed a sun dog late in the day a couple of weeks ago. I wondered what would happen. They always show up ahead of bad weather, just sunlight reflecting off ice in the upper atmosphere, but still — well, we’re still having snow in the forecast and I want spring.
This one seems to be pointed in our direction.
They’ve been using hydrofluorocarbon air conditioners on the sun again.
No, no, it’s because of all those darn wind turbines which they have put up there.
I think you mean it’s all the solar farms sucking the life out of the sun, leaving it resembling a Swiss cheese.
The wind farms just disturb the solar winds, eventually sending hot solar winds to the poles where they melt all the polar bears and penguins.
I read somewhere (I believe it was WUWT), that the sun is just a hollow ball. Does this fit that description?
Why would anyone think that?
Remind me which of the patchwork of theories that make up solar theory, that explains this?
The thermonuclear model certainly doesn’t, why would it, that is junk science
Why do you believe that the thermonuclear model can’t explain the existence of magnetic fields on the sun?
Correction, patchwork of completely unrelated theories
Any recommendations on books or websites dealing specifically with the problem of electromagnetic solar interference on earth, before or during our use of electrical grids and appliances?
With that title, I was expecting to see a massive excavator digging away at the sun.
I was expecting something exciting at spaceweathernews.com This is just an ordinary kind of coronal hole. As of the time of this post, speed has not broken 500 kps and density remains pretty much the same. Geomagnetic field is still in the green. Fake news from NASA or a Saturday morning joke at WUWT?
It will take another day or two for the stream to sweep by the Earth, so stay tuned.
This particular coronal hole [or rather its magnetic structure] has been around for several years, recurring every 27 days as the sun rotates it into view. It has negative [into the sun] magnetic polarity, so some 4 days later it will show up at Earth in the interplanetary magnetic field. We monitor [have for more than 150 years] the Earth’s magnetic field for the effect of such streams. Here is a so-called Bartels Diagram of the magnetic polarity of the coronal hole stream in question:
http://www.leif.org/research/Coronal-Hole-Stream-Recent.png
The diagram shows [with symbols] the polarity for consecutive 27-day rotations. Our coronal hole in the post is marked in red. As you can see, we are still a couple of days away from the boundary. When the boundary [called a sector boundary] sweeps over us, geomagnetic activity picks up and aurorae intensify.
To clarify, each symbol marks the polarity for one day.
Thanks, I hadn’t heard that it has to do with sunspots which have mostly dissipated away.
So when the sun is very active how much accumulating feedback effect have we observed?
So when the sun is very active how much accumulating feedback effect have we observed?
I don’t understand the question?
Now that I think about it it’s not like thunderstorm cells and their daughter cells on Earth. When the formation area conditions are conducive you can watch the dissipation/generation pattern on weather radar.
2511 was a curious one indeed. Quite an X-ray event in that one.
2511 was a curious one indeed. Quite an X-ray event in that one
Indeed it was:
http://www.leif.org/research/Bartels-Rotation-2511.png
Thanks Dr. S., for making this coronal hole more interesting.
I’ve lost track of how many rotations this (now dead) AR has been around, Doc. Can you refresh me?
It is part of a larger structure that I just showed in my comment of April 7, 2018 at 9:35 am.
Answer: several years.
This is what the magnetic field looks like for the hole
http://sdowww.lmsal.com/sdomedia/SunInTime/2018/04/07/f_HMImag_171pfss.jpg
Thanks! Haven’t I seen other ARs come and go around the edges of this hole?
I thought the unofficial official unit of area measurement was the “Rhode Island”.
Only East of the Mississippi . …. here in the West it is the Hellman.
lsvalgaard & A. W.,
Thanks. Always enjoyable.
Somewhere I have an old textbook with an older quote at the beginning that is something of this sort:
Many great researchers have studied the Sun for many years and have reached opposite (or varying) conclusions.
Seems some progress has been made.
Now, between rains, I have to plant a few Strawberries.,
John
I’m thinkin’ lots of the above folk are passing solar wind!
Who is to blame? The coal miners or the frackers?
Just wait till the Warmists get a hold of this! More evidence of global warming!
SpaceWeatherLive bemoans “drama” and “fake news” surrounding this recurring CH:
https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/news/view/337/20180406-coronal-hole-faces-earth
@ lsvalgaard ,
Is there ANYTHING new under the sun ??
Is there ANYTHING new under the sun ??
The sun is 4,600,000,000 years old, so the chance that there is anything new just when we are looking at it right now is vanishing small, so short answer is NO.
Ironically, when the Sun’s (or any ones) age reaches its maximum value, some new does happen. It dies.
😐
“The canyon-shaped hole is remarkably wide, stretching more than 700,000 km from end to end. “…….. So how many Thelma & Louise’s would it take to fill it up?
It means we’re doomed, of course.
This is quite concerning. If the model of ozone-depletion/warming is correct (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/22/volcanoes-and-ozone-their-interactive-effect-on-climate-change/), the additional UV-B influx could lead to significant global warming.
The solar reference page still shows normal (quiet) in solar physics’ misnaming system.