Are we in a solar grand minimum? We’ve seen this before, but now predictions are for an extremely weak solar cycle ahead.
Today is the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. The sun has been without a single observable sunspot now for over a month – 33 days according to NOAA and SIDC data. Spaceweather.com says:
“This is a sign of Solar Minimum, a phase of the solar cycle that brings extra cosmic rays, long-lasting holes in the sun’s atmosphere, and a possible surplus of noctilucent clouds. “
There’s been sightings of the electric blue noctilucent clouds as far south as Joshua Tree, near Los Angeles, and many many other locations. But one of the most interesting things is due to the fact that the Sun’s magnetic field has weakened, more cosmic rays are now bombarding Earth and some airline flights are seeing doses of radiation up to 73 times that which we’d see at ground level.
For example, a flight from Chicago, IL to Teterboro, NJ which flies at 45,000 feet gets 73.3 times the radiation dosage than a traveler would experience at ground level. A typical commercial flight across the United States gives you about 40x exposure – about the same amount of radiation as a typical dental x-ray. The Chicago-Teterboro flight is almost double that. Frequent air travelers during the solar minimum like we have now would get an even more elevated dose of cosmic rays.
Spaceweather.com is monitoring passenger flights:
We are constantly flying radiation sensors onboard airplanes over the US and and around the world, so far collecting more than 22,000 gps-tagged radiation measurements. Using this unique dataset, we can predict the dosage on any flight over the USA with an error no worse than 15%.
E-RAD lets us do something new: Every day we monitor approximately 1400 flights criss-crossing the 10 busiest routes in the continental USA. Typically, this includes more than 80,000 passengers per day. E-RAD calculates the radiation exposure for every single flight.
The Hot Flights Table is a daily summary of these calculations. It shows the 5 charter flights with the highest dose rates; the 5 commercial flights with the highest dose rates; 5 commercial flights with near-average dose rates; and the 5 commercial flights with the lowest dose rates. Passengers typically experience dose rates that are 20 to 70 times higher than natural radiation at sea level.
Here is a table of recent “hot flights” arranged by radiation dosage level:
There’s now a dedicated website setup for monitoring this https://www.radsonaplane.com/
Meanwhile, the sun seems to be in a deep slumber, PerspectaWeather reports:
The sun continues to be very quiet and it has been without sunspots this year 62% of the time as we approach what is likely to be one of the deepest solar minimums in a long, long time. In fact, all indications are that the upcoming solar minimum may be even quieter than the last one which was the deepest in nearly a century.
In addition, there are now forecasts that the next solar cycle, #25, will be the weakest in more than 200 years. The current solar cycle, #24, has been the weakest with the fewest sunspots since solar cycle 14 peaked in February 1906. Solar cycle 24 continues a recent trend of weakening solar cycles which began with solar cycle 21 that peaked around 1980 and if the latest forecasts are correct, that trend will continue for at least another decade or so.
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Ban carbonated drinks, flat beer anyone?
Earth’s Magnetic poles are on the move, and it’s magnetic field is also weakening , considerably , so if this trend continues , the escalating threat to frequent fliers and astronauts is imminent . A recent article published in one of the leading Geophysics Journals highlights evidence that supports the hypothesis that some extinction events, such as the disappearance of the Neanderthals 40,000 years ago, and possibly the North American megafauna(12800 bp ) , maybe linked to transient reversal, and weakening of Earth’s Magnetic poles.
” … highlights evidence that supports the hypothesis that some extinction events, such as the disappearance of the Neanderthals 40,000 years ago, … maybe linked to transient reversal, and weakening of Earth’s Magnetic poles.”
>>
Somehow humans were exempted? Maybe we really were all trogs. And somehow chimps and mountain gorillas survived as well? I’d be looking for another explanation.
Here is an opportunity to corroborate or reject the protective effect of long term exposure to low-level radiation. Compare the cancer rate for pilots and flight attendants with the rest of the population.
good point!!!
Studies have been done. Their cancer rates are higher.
https://www.livescience.com/62913-cancer-risk-flight-attendants.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1739925/
@Dan
@icisil
I must say that I am quite shocked about this. I am sure nobody ever told the pilots and attendants that they were more at risk of dangerous radiation when they were employed? This could be a major claim coming up at some time in the future.
But indeed, it does make sense. However, my thinking is that it is not cosmic radiation, as the report is claiming.. It is the sun’s radiation. The lower the sun’s solar polar magnetic field strengths, the more of the most energetic are -or can be – released from the sun. Our atmosphere is protecting us by forming ozone, peroxides and N-oxides. However, the higher you are the less air you have to protect you….
If you are “shocked” by this then you are remarkably ignorant of basic physics. Which is proven by the nonsense about the sun.
Incidentally there is a lot more to be shocked by. For example people living in granite areas are exposed to considerably increased radiation levels. As are people who eat bananas (0.1 microsievert/banana).
This documents that low dose whole body gamma radiation has a protective effect: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708
The high cases of melanoma in the high flyers suggests conflation.
Way too difficult. You would have to document lifestyles, diet, exercise, genetics, drug use, and much more for thousands of people over a long period.
Been reading for over 10 years that low sun spots, create more gamma rays which allow more clouds, which I guess makes more rain, and that is what we are seeing..
The strongest Grand Solar Maximum event in 11,400 years occurred for 63 years from 1933~1996.
There hasn’t been a global warming trend since these abnormally strong solar cycles ended in 1996, despite 30% of all man-made CO2 emissions since 1750 being emitted just since 1996, if the 2015/16 Super El Niño spike is factored out.
The next La Niña cycle starting at the end of next year will very likely be a strong one, which will finally negate the 2015/16 Super El Niño spike. Moreover, the PDO, AMO, NAO and AOO are all approaching their respective 30-year cool cycles, and the the NAO cool cycle seems to have started.
Since 1850, global temps rise during 30-year ocean warm cycles, and fall during 30-year cool cycles. Period.
To top it off, a 50-year Grand Solar Minimum event seems to have already started which will add to the coming global cooling.
Given all these converging global cooling phenomena, by the end of Trump’s second term, the absurd CAGW scam will be laughed at.
And why you’ve seen it approached by state and local government. Which in most cases probably worse thought out, which in turn leads to more Centralized power,,, after all those local measures are tossed out as failing to produce sustainable tax dollars they bet on coming.
The Constitution allows state and local governments to pretty much do anything that’s not specifically granted to the federal government in Article 1 Section 8, providing these laws and policies don’t infringe upon citizen’s civil rights, and with the proviso federal funds will never be used to bail out states who foolishly overspend and under-tax
their residents on crazy Leftist policies…
My advice to anyone living in insane Leftist states is to move, and do so quickly…
Thanks Sam, I believe you have pretty much nailed it.
The lead article as reported shows two bad uses of measured data.
1. There are too many significant figures in the ratio of airborne to ground radiation. You can’t quote 73.3. Better to write “About 70 times”.
2. Dangers in using average radiation exposures for people on the ground compared with airborne. The literature has numerous examples of how different rooms in a home have different levels from effects like radon movement. What matters to the person, for health purposes, is the time exposed to high levels and not the time exposed to local or regional averaged levels. Also, time exposed to low levels is important medically, though not as sensational and thus often ignored or downplayed.
The lead article is spoiled by an attempt to sensationalise it and to make it look like sexy, trendy science. Should not do that, authors. Geoff
When flying in such skies, people worry about Chernobyl.
I worry about Chernobyl, and the luggage handling system at Heathrow.
There would be reason to worry about the luggage handling ‘system’ at Heathrow.
Although better than it used to be [except when ‘they’ initiate an “Improvement”], the old adage,
“Breakfast in London; Lunch in New York; Luggage in Ulan Bator”, was pretty accurate.
Auto
There would be reason to worry about Chernobyl, depending on what parts you visit … or what part visits you. The Red Forest is highly radioactive (some measured hotspots @ur momisugly 1 mSv/hr), and the wood is not decaying properly there possibly due high radiation effect on insects, fungi and microorganisms.
Forests Around Chernobyl Aren’t Decaying Properly
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around-chernobyl-arent-decaying-properly-180950075/
This presents a problem because accumulated debris increases the risk of forest fires that make the radioisotopes airborne again.
Heavily Contaminated ‘Red Forest’ Near Chernobyl on Fire
https://sputniknews.com/europe/201806051065132274-chernobyl-red-forest-fire/
All too confusing. Almost deliberately so. By all sides.
How does the actual temperature of the sun vary with time and what is the correlation of the temperature to the sunspot cycle.
How does the actual average distance of the earth from the sun vary with time over a thousand year period?
Both are important to working out the actual sun exposure while being different from what actually gets through due to albedo changes.
On the responsiveness of surface temperature to the sunspot cycle
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/06/19/sunspots-and-temperature/
Leif says
‘the next maximum will be a bit stronger than SC24’
At least there I agree now with Leif!! We had the double pole switch on the sun in 2014 and IMHO that was the beginning of the new GB cycle. At that time the solar polar field strengths were at their lowest.
It cannot go lower still so it must go up, most likely by the same pace going up as in the past it was going down.
All planets arrived in time. I predicted a few years ago that SC 25 will be similar in size than SC 23….It seems I was right. SC26 will be similar to SC22, etc., etc.
Of course we are still reading the SC’s wrong. You must read them in pairs. (Nicholson – Hale cycle)
This is normal.
When they are these phases they last a long time, and this century will be so.
The next cycle will decrease further, like the next one.
That’s Steven Mosher wet dreams :
ONE month he always can refer to.
And too one month he can blame “deniers” always falsely referring to:
“Steven Mosher June 21, 2019 at 7:59 pm
now all we need is a year where its only june”
@Dan
@icisil
I must say that I am quite shocked about this. I am sure nobody ever told the pilots and attendants that they were more at risk of dangerous radiation when they were employed? This could be a major claim coming up at some time in the future.
But indeed, it does make sense. However, my thinking is that it is not cosmic radiation, as the report is claiming.. It is the sun’s radiation. The lower the sun’s solar polar magnetic field strengths, the more of the most energetic are -or can be – released from the sun. Our atmosphere is protecting us by forming ozone, peroxides and N-oxides. However, the higher you are the less air you have to protect you….
No, the sun’s radiation does not produce the same barrage of secondary high-energy ions and particles that come after cosmic radiation hits the atmosphere and its dust-gas-particle barriers.
@RACook
one of the rare occasions where we seem to disagree; there was a small error that slipped through my last comment. It should read:
It is the sun’s radiation. The lower the sun’s solar polar magnetic field strengths, the more of the most energetic PARTICLES are -or can be – released from the sun. Our atmosphere is protecting us from this dangerous radiation by forming ozone, peroxides and N-oxides. However, the higher you are the less air you have to protect you….
Hence, do not go to Mars before you have created an atmosphere similar to that of earth’s
The important result is that we are entering the Landscheidt mini Iceage. See Paullitely.com for verifiable details.
@RACook
one of the rare occasions where we seem to disagree; there was a small error that slipped through my last comment. It should read:
It is the sun’s radiation. The lower the sun’s solar polar magnetic field strengths, the more of the most energetic PARTICLES are -or can be – released from the sun. Our atmosphere is protecting us from this dangerous radiation by forming ozone, peroxides and N-oxides. However, the higher you are the less air you have to protect you….
Hence, do not go to Mars before you have created an atmosphere similar to that of earth’s
Lava tubes bring shielding with the territory.
Professor Valentina Zharkova gave a presentation of her Climate and the Solar Magnetic Field hypothesis at the Global Warming Policy Foundation in October, 2018.
Principal component analysis (PCA) of the solar background magnetic field observed from the Earth, revealed four pairs of dynamo waves, the pair with the highest eigen values are called principal components (PCs).
PCs are shown to be produced by magnetic dipoles in inner and outer layers of the Sun, while the second pair of waves is assumed produced by quadruple magnetic sources and so on. The PC waves produced by a magnetic dipole and their summary curve were described analytically and shown to be closely related to the average sunspot number index used for description of solar activity. Based on this correlation, the summary curve was used for the prediction of long-term solar activity on a millennial timescale. This prediction revealed the presence of a grand cycle of 350-400 years, with a remarkable resemblance to the sunspot and terrestrial activity features reported in the past millennia: Maunder (grand) Minimum (1645-1715), Wolf (grand) minimum (1200), Oort (grand) minimum (1010-1050), Homer (grand) minimum (800-900 BC); the medieval (900-1200) warm period, Roman (400-10BC) and other warm periods.
This approach also predicts the modern grand minimum upcoming in 2020-2055.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_yqIj38UmY&t=3257s
http://www.solen.info/solar/polarfields/polarfields.png
Yep. Wish someone could prove her wrong, I can’t.
Ilya Usoskin did prove her wrong:
Usoskin, I.G., 2018. Comment on the paper by Popova et al.“On a role of quadruple component of magnetic field in defining solar activity in grand cycles”. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, 176, pp.69-71.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.05203
Ren
The cooling sum of all solar minima (Oort, Maunder, Dalton, Wolf) will, according to research done by Stefan Rahmstorf, certainly not be below -0.5 °C / decade.
Rahmstorf was discredited many times on many blogs, but was never scientifically contradicted.
When an experienced person like Leif Svalgaard confirms what Zharkova pretends, then it will be time to accept her claims. And not before, ren.
“… certainly not be below -0.5 °C / decade.”
Sorry: per century…
I have been regularly measuring radiation in aircraft for the last 6 months since I got a mobile geiger muller counter. (Ukraine makes excellent ones!)
Flying at anything near 60N (my regular flights) raises secondary spallation radiation from cosmic rays to suprisingly high levels.
I routinely measure rates between 4-5mR/hr on such flights, which means a highish dose for the aircrews over years.
To put some perspective on this, the radiation levels at FL30-35 are now so high, they are many times above the levels in much of the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
There are also areas of Europe which have particularly high BACKGROUND radiation levels due to the large presence of uranium and thorium in the ground or in Granite rocks.
Estonia is one of the most radioactive countries in Europe, as are parts of Cornwall & Brittany.
One of the most suprising things I discovered recently was leaving Warsaw airport.
The concrete of the runway had clearly and obviously been made using large amounts of coal based fly ash. A lot of coal fly ash particularly form Eastern Europe and China can have significant amounts of uranium in it.
Also in France for many years Areva sold the uranium mining tailings as simple ballast for building roads, with the result lots of minor roads in certain areas of France are really quite radioactive.
At WAW it was fairly astonishing to see the gamma-beta level on the ground many times normal background then see it DROP, the moment we took off.
As usual with most of this stuff “ignorance is bliss!”
I heard the ISS astronauts got a bad surprise not long ago when it was found that GCR’s were causing neutron showers from aluminum hull impacts. As far as I know they were issued bubble detectors.
Just wondering if this is going on in commercial aircraft and also not measured? Thermal neutrons are bad for bones.
Are you measuring neutron spallation ?
I was recently at a DLR expo where their new aerosol and pollution monitor aircraft was shown off. I asked whether among the hundreds of detectors aboard were any for radiation. Answer was No. Privately admitted they were requested by refused by their committee.
@pigs that are flying
most interesting comment.
as I said, I believe that the continued lower solar polar magnetic field strengths allow for relatively more of the most energetic particles being released compared to when the sun has higher polar magnetic field strengths. I don’t really think the cosmic rays other than those coming from the sun are important at all.
Hence, my belief that the exposure level of flight personnel during the night will be lower.
Could you perhaps do a test to either prove or disprove this theory?
IOW measure highest exposure during a night time flight and compare this with exposure during same day time flight?
I am sure we will all very much appreciate your results – I am sure Charles will publish them here.
The further to the north the higher the galactic radiation. During class X solar flares there is a rapid increase in gamma radiation at the stratosphere boundary.
@pigs that are flying
most interesting comment.
as I said, I believe that the continued lower solar polar magnetic field strengths allow for relatively more of the most energetic particles being released compared to when the sun has higher polar magnetic field strengths. I don’t really think the cosmic rays other than those coming from the sun are important at all.
Hence, my belief that the exposure level of flight personnel during the night will be lower.
Could you perhaps do a test to either prove or disprove this theory?
IOW measure highest exposure during a night time flight and compare this with exposure during same day time flight?
I am sure we will all very much appreciate your results – I am sure Charles will publish them here.
“Imagine if the purported ‘Greenhouse gas’ property could be measured. We could have sensors at ground level…”
And the TV weather forecasts would include the CO2 count for the day:
“CO2 in the tri-cities will be over 425 parts per million over the weekend. Temperatures will increase by 0.137 degrees Fareinheit. Instead of the previously predicted high of 87, get ready for a blistering 87.137 degrees both Saturday and Sunday.”
Ever hear that? Or anything like it? Any report of CO2 levels on the weather report?
No.
Goldenrod pollen counts in PPM, yes. Humidity, yes. Minutes of sunshine, yes.
Barometric pressure, yes.
Many, many, many measurements that effect our weather are reported every day. Never is CO2 reported.
Over and over and over the CO2 cult chants: Basic physics! Arrhenius!
What’s going on?
sorry for the double postings
lately, there seems to be an extraordinary big delay in posting the comment and the actual publication.
That leaves me sometimes under the impression that something went wrong with the posting of the first comment?
[like I also asked many years ago: where do e-mails go that never arrive at the person you wanted to reach?}
“continued lower solar polar magnetic field strengths allow for relatively more of the most energetic particles being released”
NO!
It simply doesn’t work like that at all.
The solar wind (mostly high velocity protons) scatters the cosmic ray flux, causing it to decrease.
(It’s all about particle velocity, energy and density).
There are large energy differences of Mev to GeV here.
It’s true, the slight lowering in earth’s magnetic field has changed the CM/spallation to secondary particles, but it’s not the only thing that matters.
In an a/c the staff and passengers are largely unprotected, because thin aluminium is a largely useless beta/gamma shield at those kind of energies.
I was suprised to see, the largest particle fluxes were not seen out of the windows, but down the main aisles of the A/C.
If you need further proof of CR decreases, watch the forbush decrease as a CME hits the earth’s outer ionisised layers.
The CME has such high particle flux that it sweeps the cosmic ray flux out of the way and the decrease is very noticeable in high altitudes (particularly at the kind of altitude Concorde used to fly at), – around FL50 where the frictional losses are a lot lower at several MACH numbers.
If you like to know, Concorde was the ONLY commercial airliner that had continous monitoring onboard for neutron and gamma flux. Another reason it should still be flying and racking up profits for BA.
Please distinguish between proton flux from the sun propelled over the solar wind and CR flux from deep space (such as supernovae & X ray sources from Black holes etc)
They are totally different things.
yes, but I disagree with you?
you have to bring me the data to show me the difference between day time and night time exposure?
I think what we get from super nova and black holes etc is nothing compared to what we get from the sun, on its own.
Why do we not yet have nuclear fission on earth to make energy (H to He)? Is it not precisely because we cannot build a magnetic field strong enough to contain the energy?
yes, but I disagree with you?
you have to bring me the data to show me the difference between day time and night time exposure?
I think what we get from super nova and black holes etc is nothing compared to what we get from the sun, on its own.
Why do we not yet have nuclear fission on earth to make energy (H to He)? Is it not precisely because we cannot build a magnetic field strong enough to contain the energy?
Sorry this is complete nonsense.
Don’t you know the difference in energy spectrum between protons and gamma rays?
The energy from CR are many millions of times higher than anything that comes from the solar wind,- so high they have no problem penetrating into the ground.
The proton stream from the solar wind stops high up in the boundary between the earth’s atmosphere and space, which is why it manifests itself as AURORA, -after which all it can cause is some magnetic perturbations in the ground currents which we can detect more easily.
The fact is, the energies of CR are so high there is some scattering/spallation of secondary particles caused by collision of these with atmospheric molecules while the others carry on in their own sweet way.
We have difficulty detecting these, as we do measuring energetic neutrons because they are not charged by definition, and fundamentally random.
The solar wind can only diminish CR flux when it reaches a certain velocity by having such a large solar particle stream that it scatters the incoming CR flux by sheer volume and density, so the CR signal is temporarily overwhelmed.
As for daytime and night-time A/c radiation levels I didn’t see any difference.
That’s hardly suprising because they are sourced from particles from outer space, nothing to do with the sun.
Cochons dans l’espace
Thanks for this intelligent and intelligible comment.
J.-P. D.
At ground level we are measuring all kinds of radiation as background.
Some places have high background (eg. the chiltern hills 30miles west of London), whereas some, eg, London, Paris, Moscow built on a mixture of mud and sediments usually have low background.
I have no idea what is left over from places like the Kyshtym nuclear disaster,and when Mayak make a massive release of Ruthenium 106, they still go into denial like in 1986. (Nov 2017).
With the current mix of backgrounds, (well worth the visit to Criirad in France), there is an almighty confusion of stuff considered normal (but actually very high, eg. in my hotel in La Roche s Y, which had a huge wall built of nicely active granite)…some farmers in central France that built their cattle sheds on “remblais” using “steriles” from Uranium mines (yes it’s past belief but true, making the farm unsaleable!), a factory in Estonia making radioactive bricks & roof tiles for 40yrs from local active ordovician clay,measuring between 10x>50x normal bg. high Radon levels in apartments built in France believe it or not on a filled in uranium mine quarry (Crazy eh!)..the remains of Chernobyl’s caesium 40 (a nasty gamma emmitter) now in first half life, to be found right up as far up as the St Bernard pass…or in patches all over Corsica, Alsace, Cumbria, Finland, Estonia., Russia, Belorussia and Sweden…the Baltic sea which is by far the most radioactive in the world….(thanks to an extremely low rate of seawater renewal).
Some of it ends in the food chain through Fish, deer and wild boar meat..who eat the mushrooms that bring it to the surface…and of course everyone now has a bit of Plut in them thanks to the insane bomb testing rituals that the USSR and USA served up to us from the late 40s to the mid 60s, with a little bit of the Brits, the Frogs, Chinese, Indians, Israelis and Pakis thrown in for good measure.
If you have a geiger-muller counter, it’s fascinating to see just what places are ‘hot” “warm” or low, then we also detect the CR flux which varies with CMEs and Coronal hole high speed solar wind.
The Warsaw airport radioactive runway was just a bonus!
The time has come the Walrus said,
to speak of many things –
Of cabbages and Kings,
why the sea is boiling hot, and
Whether pigs have wings.
Joking aside, notably no mention of the Sellafield/Winscale nuclear disaster in 1957?
Geiger-Mueller don’t do neutrons. You mentioned Concorde did monitor neutrons above.
Is it worth checking this for commercial aircraft altitudes?
Two new sunspots today (June 24th). The spotless stretch since the end of May has been interrupted.
http://www.sidc.be/silso/eisnplot