Still No Sunspots
The current Solar Cycle — an indicator of the sun’s magnetic activity, which in turn is believed to influence our planet’s climate — is confounding astronomers by resolutely refusing to conform to predictions. There should be increasing numbers of sunspots blemishing the sun’s surface by now, but there are none. What does this trend indicate for our future?
According to Michael Asher, writing in Daily Tech on 1 September 2008, The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.
I wrote about the lack of sunspot activity back in March 2008, in There Goes The Sun — when I quoted from another Michael Asher article highlighting the sudden drop in global average temperature and its possible link to the lack of solar activity since the beginning of Solar Cycle 24, which kicked off at the start of 2008. By now, the sun should be exhibiting an increasingly frequent display of sunspots as it heads to a peak of activity around 2012 — but it isn’t.
Instead, reports Michael, this year has been extraordinarily long and quiet, with the first seven months averaging a sunspot number of only 3. August followed with none at all. The astonishing rapid drop of the past year has defied predictions, and caught nearly all astronomers by surprise. He says that When the sun is active, it’s not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop to near-zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins. This time, they haven’t.
Graph from Wikimedia Commons, via Daily Tech
Sunspot data have been collected since 1749. The last time such a quiet entire month was recorded was in June 1913. Three events in the past 1,000 years have occurred where low sunspot activity had a measurable effect on the Earth’s climate. The Dalton, Maunder, and Spörer Minimums have all led to rapid cooling — the Maunder Minimum was what led to the Little Ice Age, when the European and North American continents suffered around 100 years of wan summers and freezing winters.
So is the general consensus changing? Are we moving from a global warming scenario to one of global cooling? Well, the jury’s still out — but it’s not surprising.
On the one hand, our planet has undoubtedly been warming up at an alarming rate recently. The Arctic ice pack has experienced a summer melt this year which almost matches 2007’s record melt. The legendary North-West Passage has been completely ice-free and navigable by commercial vessels for the second year running. This is causing increasing concern about the potential for conflict as countries rush to claim their alleged share of the oil and gas reserves that are coming within reach as the ice recedes. Senior US Coast Guard commander Rear Admiral Gene Brooks, in charge of the Coast Guard’s vast Alaska region, appealed for a diplomatic deal. “The potential is there with undetermined boundaries and great wealth for conflict, or competition. There’s always a risk of conflict,” he told BBC News. He added that this was especially the case “where you do not have established, delineated, agreed-upon borders”.
On the other hand, the same report makes the observation that the melt may also have an effect on the weather far beyond the Arctic region itself, as white reflective ice makes way for darker ocean that absorbs more solar radiation. At America’s northernmost climate research post, run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), station chief Dan Endres warns of the development of more severe weather systems. ‘As the icecap retreats, and we see changing weather patterns here, it could translate into stronger storms – we’ll see more severity in the storms we have, that’s part of climate change. And these storms, the weather patterns, often start in the Arctic and move south.’
Indeed, that’s the nub of Whitley Strieber and Art Bell’s argument in their Superstorm theory: Arctic conditions may spiral out of control to such an extent that new, hitherto unobserved weather patterns could emerge that may trigger violent snowstorms across the northern hemisphere, despite — or in fact because of — what’s generally called global warming. Even though average temperatures across the northern hemisphere might be quite high at the time, a vast carpet of snow suddenly deposited across huge areas of Europe, Russia, Canada and North America would reflect enormous amounts of solar energy back into space, slowing that same snow cover’s melt. This would allow further falls of snow to accumulate as more normal weather patterns — influenced by the much colder atmospheric and ground temperatures — resumed, and much of Earth would be in the grip of a period of intense cold that could last for many hundreds of years.
Because Strieber and Bell work on science’s edgy frontier where many researchers fear to tread, their Superstorm theory is dismissed by most, if not all, climatologists. The sun’s current lack of activity, though, has certainly caught scientists’ attention. If it continues, it may well adversely influence our climate enough to neutralise the current warming trend and initiate another “Little Ice Age”. Under these conditions, it’s doubtful whether the atmospheric energy imbalance necessary for Superstorm formation would prevail.
What is certain is that the sun will become more normally active again at some point in the future, and this, in turn, will inject more energy into the complex systems responsible for rising global temperatures and — assuming we haven’t sufficiently curtailed our emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by then (judging by our current efforts, it’s very doubtful) — the whole warming mechanism will resume, eventually leading to a point where the necessary conditions for Superstorm formation are present once more.
Either way, it seems to this observer that the odds of our future involving some kind of Big Freeze are shortening dramatically.
Read my Climate Change posts in chronological order by using the Climate Change Log.
Friday Linkage | Headspace says:
September 12th, 2008
5:51 pm
[...] Still No Sunspots by ‘Somerset’ [...]
Frank says:
September 13th, 2008
12:48 am
I reckon it’s going to get colder — it’s on the cards. I don’t believe global warming is anything to do with pollution. I think it’s mainly linked to solar activity. I read somewhere that all the planets in our system had had an increase in temperature that matched ours and all they have in common with us is the sun. When I was a kid they were scaring people with ice age talk, then it’s global warming, and now ice age again. The planet’s temperature changes, it always has — nothing we can do about it.
Climate Chaos says:
September 13th, 2008
3:04 am
Good to see you touch on these facts. Many outlets are not covering the lack of sunspots, nor are they covering the implications of climate alternatives that might be created if the lack of sunspots continue.
I would add the NASA/NOAA models initially predicted the sunspot minimum in 2006. They have been issuing corrections, but as of June 2008 they stopped since they are outside their models. Some alternative models have predicted 10-50 years of cooling due to calming of the sun.
Maybe we should consider the implications of an extended cooling period on food and energy.
Somerset Bob says:
September 13th, 2008
7:24 am
Frank — many thanks for your comments. Now you mention it, I also remember hearing about temperature changes on other planets, and in searching for something on it I found this item on Live Science: Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds (12 March 2007). It also contains some discussion refuting the idea that fluctuating solar output has any measurable effect on Earth’s global temperarues. Just goes to show how scientific thinking is still very fluid on this matter.
Climate Chaos — thanks for dropping in. You have a very interesting web site which looks to be full of relevant information, so I’ll be digging into it in the coming days. Yes, the implications of the effect decades of global cooling will have on our food and energy supplies are staggering — definitely something I’ll try to discuss in future posts.
WestHighlander says:
September 14th, 2008
4:37 pm
Hopefully, this may be the beginning of the end of the great fraud of human causation of Global Climate Change — aka Anthropomorphic Global Warming
If the lack of sunspots and the potentially significant cooling doesn’t cure the victims of Human Engendered Climate Catastrophism then there is no hope for them
What is most amazing is that people are willing to believe hand waving (can’t even characterize it as theory) in the form of predictions of General Circulation Models for 100 years in the future — when all they need to do is look at the plot of solar activity and correlate it with both anecdotal and instrumental temperature data.
While there is debate about a specific mechanism for why solar activity occurs what governs its intensity and why the earth’s climate varies over the years, decades, centuries, millennia, etc. — No thinking person can fail to grasp the simple fact that the sun’s emissions of light (and other electromagnetic waves) and of course particles (such as the solar wind and Coronal Mass Ejections) is the single most dominant factor influencing the earth’s climate.
So suffice it to say that if the present minimum persists for any significant period of time – - then not only will we have to start worrying about long johns fashion shows — we will have to start worrying about global food supplies.
Westy
Somerset Bob says:
September 14th, 2008
10:29 pm
WestHighlander — I appreciate you taking the time to share your view.
I agree with you whole-heartedly about there being a link between fluctuations in solar activity and climate changes here on Earth, but I’m not so sure we can say just yet that our modern-day human activity has no effect whatsoever on climate. I think it’s possible the two may both be responsible for changes, each in their own way, but independently of each other.
Butthawk says:
October 4th, 2008
6:53 pm
I think that maybe I know I might be sure about it but perhaps it’s not clear.
Have I got it right?
All speculation fullas, all speculation.
Tony says:
November 5th, 2008
9:55 pm
I’ve heard tons about the Anthropomorphic causes of Gloal Warming but this is the first time I’ve stumbled across the whole sunspots/no sunspots scenario. That gives me a whole bunch of stuff to look into. Great article and thanks for the info.
Kevin John says:
November 8th, 2008
2:22 pm
I remember reading SuperStorm a while back and talking about it with people that looked at you with blank expressions and glazed eyes after you told them what might happen if the currents failed. I find it interesting that people don’t dismiss it out of hand anymore, only subscribe to the canned “we-drive-too-much” fossil overuse theory and NOW the eyes glaze over when you suggest another force is acting upon the solar system that is causing this phenomenon.
Of course here in the US, post-election, there is crazed joy that somehow, somewhere, an angel from the future Obama trinity will come down from the heavens in D.C. before Mr. Bush formally leaves office to save everyone from financial armaggeddon.
Tent cities sprouting up in Grant Park might not give the new Camelot the look they really want to portray, which leaves the serious discussion of why the world is in such a mess somewhere on the back burner.
Great post — keep up the good work Somerset!
Somerset Bob says:
November 10th, 2008
11:25 am
Butthawk — thanks for your comment. Yes, admittedly it’s speculation on my part, but that’s the best I can do.
Tony and Kevin John — I appreciate both your comments. I’ve been a bit lax following up on the sunspot situation, but I gather from a recent SpaceWeather newsletter that some spots have been turning up recently. Today’s site news says:
“Solar minimum is behind us,” declares NASA sunspot forecaster David Hathaway. He bases the assertion on a flurry of new-cycle sunspots in October 2008. For the first time, active regions from new Solar Cycle 24 are outnumbering active regions from old Solar Cycle 23. Solar activity is still low, but the sun is showing signs of life. Full story at NASA.
Gary says:
December 1st, 2008
2:56 pm
Well, Bob, there was a brief flare-up in November, but there has now been another 2 full weeks with zero sunspots. Today is the first of December. No sunspots. Just thought I’d chime in. I’ve been watching this for a couple years, though I’m no expert. I’ve certainly noticed milder summers, especially this summer! We hardly ran the AC and I live 100 miles dues West of cotton farms. Last winter we got more snow than we had in years. So far this Fall has been fairly normal though. It’s certainly not warm! It’s snowed for 36 hours, though it mostly melted. We’ll see what shakes up now that December is here.
I appreciate your courage to talk about this subject. Also, thanks to those who commented thus far. I’m none for “doom and gloom,” but I like to look at as many sides of the story as I can. Looking at only one side is the definition of narrow mindedness (e.g. global warming fanatics).
Somerset Bob says:
December 2nd, 2008
9:09 pm
Hi Gary, thanks for your comment. I must admit I’ve taken my eye off the ball recently, as I’ve been concentrating on a bit of family tree research which has become something of an obsession! So your comment has helped to keep me me up to date with what’s going on.
It certainly sounds like Solar Cycle 24 is exhibiting what can reasonably be described as anything but a normal start. We’ve recently had a little early snow here in the UK, though hardly in traffic-stopping amounts (and it doesn’t take much to snarl up our roads!), but perhaps it’s a sign of a chilly winter ahead.
Thanks again for taking the time to write. I appreciate it
adsldave says:
March 14th, 2009
11:42 pm
Well i’ve just read through this article & comments after reading about such things as sun spots, medieval warming period, etc as i’m trying to get a two sided picture of the whole global warming debate. I just thought i would comment that here in the UK we have had the worst winter for 2 decades, Could this be in part due to the lack of sunspots ?
Well i’m off to do some more reading.
Somerset Bob says:
March 31st, 2009
11:01 am
Hi adsldave — (with apologies for the late response — I was on holiday!) thanks for your comment.
I think it might be — compounded by a general pause in the overall warming trend caused by La Nina in the Pacific, so I understand.