Guest post by Paul Dorian *Potential role of low solar activity this winter as solar minimum deepens and the wide-ranging impacts of increasing cosmic rays* The sun is blank again today and for the 200th day in 2019 as the solar minimum deepens; image courtesy NASA Overview The sun continues to be very quiet and…
University of Washington For 400 years people have tracked sunspots, the dark patches that appear for weeks at a time on the sun’s surface. They have observed but been unable to explain why the number of spots peaks every 11 years. A University of Washington study published this month in the journal Physics of Plasmas…
Guest post by Paul Dorian Overview The sun continues to be very quiet and it has been without sunspots this year 70% 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…
Guest Post by David Archibald The two major items of interest are the likely month of minimum in the Solar Cycle 24 – 25 transition and the likely amplitude of Solar Cycle 25. The latter can be derived from the solar polar magnetic field strength. Figure 1 following indicates that 25 is likely to be…
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…
From NASA Goddard: Summary: The Sun’s rotation rate in its first billion years is unknown. Yet, this spin rate affected solar eruptions, influencing the evolution of life. A team of NASA scientists think they’ve figured it out by using the Moon as critical evidence. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare…
From Science Mag A violent, active sun, as seen in ultraviolet light in October 2014—near solar maximum in its 11-year solar cycle. As the sun approaches solar minimum, scientists are trying to predict the timing and strength of the next solar maximum. NASA/SDO/LMSAL By Sarah ScolesMay. 30, 2019 , 2:00 PM BOULDER, COLORADO—For all of…
NOAA forecasters say there is a 55% to 60% chance of geomagnetic storms on May 15th and 16th when a series of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) could hit Earth’s magnetic field. Storm levels are expected to range between category G1 and G2. This means auroras could be sighted in northern-tier US states such as Montana,…
GUEST: HENRIK SVENSMARK By H. Sterling Burnett By bombarding the Earth with cosmic rays and being a driving force behind cloud formations, the sun plays a much larger role on climate than “consensus scientists” care to admit. The Danish National Space Institute’s Dr. Henrik Svensmark has assembled a powerful array of data and evidence in his…
This is not a novel result, for example: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/30/tools-to-spot-the-spots/ Nevertheless, this is a solid analysis and exercise in citizen science.~ctm By: Leron Wells During my early teenage years as an avid fan of the Space Program I was patiently waiting for NASA to get the Shuttle flying so hopefully they could boost Skylab from its…