The Sun is Awake!!!

FluffyMcDeath

FluffyMcDeath

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Yippee :banana:
The sun is showing off a smattering of bona fide spots today.

Admittedly, they aren't very big spots - but I haven't seen the sun so speckled in ... in ... well a very long time.

Solar output remains low however and this cycle may not amount to much. We shall have to wait and see.
 
Glaucus said:
And how do you know this?
Click to expand...
Been following along now for a while. I guess I started following when the "no anthropic warming" folks kept harping on about how the earth had been cooling for years and I thought, well, of course it has because we've been coming off a solar max for years (i.e. solar output had been falling) so I googled for sunspot info and came across solarcycle24.com.

Solar cycle 24 is the one that should have been starting up last year but it's been a slow starter. The last cycle wasn't as spotty as the one before either. Wiki has a nice page on past cycles.

If solar cycle 24 is a bust and we go into a bunch of low cycles then we may have ice skating on the Thames again a la the Little Ice Age. Then again... current climate models have assumed a solar forcing function of roughly cycle 23 over and over again. That may be a poor assumption.
 
Wow. So the Southern US states may actually understand the joys of hockey after all. Red, wanna buy some skates? :-)

Well as far as lower solar output goes: that sucks!
 
Glaucus said:
Well as far as lower solar output goes: that sucks!
Click to expand...

Sucks? Yes, in a famine inducing, population reducing way, yes, a bit. We can truck in fertilizers where soils lack nutrients, we can pipe in water where the land lacks rain, but we have no reasonable substitute for shortened growing season and lowered sunlight.

However, it would be extremely unlikely for the sun to go maunder quiet in a single cycle. We have time to figure out whose land and food we are going to steal.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
Glaucus said:
And how do you know this?
Click to expand...
I googled for sunspot info and came across solarcycle24.com.

If solar cycle 24 is a bust and we go into a bunch of low cycles then we may have ice skating on the Thames again a la the Little Ice Age. Then again... current climate models have assumed a solar forcing function of roughly cycle 23 over and over again. That may be a poor assumption.
Click to expand...

I've been going there for solar information since its name was "solarcycle23.com"

This is not much sunspot activity, and it did much the same a year ago.

At least we won't have to hear more about the polar bears starving because of melting ice. Although I don't think ice is what polar bears look for when they're hungry.
 
metalman said:
This is not much sunspot activity, and it did much the same a year ago.
Click to expand...

Yup. A pretty sad display, isn't it? It doesn't take much for me to get excited after almost a hundred days of nothing.
 
Glaucus said:
Wow. So the Southern US states may actually understand the joys of hockey after all. Red, wanna buy some skates? :-)

Well as far as lower solar output goes: that sucks!
Click to expand...

Hurrah! I can finally (re)use all of my issue cold weather gear somewhere else than Alaska! :banana:

I like playing Ice Station Zebra! :pint:

Regards,
Ltstanfo
 
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