Paul,
The reason the sunspot numbers have been "dropping" over the last 50 years is because roughly 60 years ago we had the the highest recorded annual peak since 1700 !
So, yes I guess its all downhill since then !
The relevance of it returning to "normal" is what ? - That its "Normal" or that its "Dropping" ?
But if you compared the last 50 years with what occurred 100 years ago you could then say that we now have roughly double the sunspots from that time !
Obviously man induced Global Warming - Im joking of course
This is obviously cherry picking the data and drawing any conclusions like these is meaningless misinformation.
If you look at the long term annual sunspot data you can see the cycles and see that the last 50 years is pretty ordinary and represents little variation to what has happened before (in fact quite similar to a similar period around 200 years ago) - what we can see is there is quite a lot of variation over time that probably indicates there is more going on inside the sun and given there is only a record of not quite 30 cycles since 1700 - we simply dont have a lot of data to truly analyse the internal cyclic nature of all that is going on inside the Sun.
jpg attached of chart showing annual sunspots since 1700
Graph X axis at ) actually represents 1700.
Data from reliable source -
http://sidc.oma.be/silso/datafiles
Picture tells a 1000 words here - everyone can draw their own conclusions.
Rally
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Haese
The idea that the sun may be going into another Maunder minimum and yet be another longer term cycle which contains the smaller cycles is nothing new. The sunspot numbers of the last 50 years have been steadily getting lower and lower. This is backed up by the gauss (magnetic strength) of sunspots is dropping each cycle since. It has been suggested that once the gauss drops below 1500 the Sun will not be able to form sunspots. And; hence we get a Maunder minimum. Further evidence shows that the meridional flow has changed and slowed enough to prevent the next cycle or the one after from occurring. Its all yet to be seen what the effects will be and very hard to predict with our current understanding of how the Sun actually works.
Another competing theory though is that the Sun's next cycle is going to be similar to the cycle at the start of the 20th century. It will be weak but then the following cycle will get stronger and the one after that stronger and so on and so on until the cycle returns back. Again time will tell.
However, I am sure I read recently on Space Weather that the association with the lack of any sunspot cycle during the Maunder minimum and colder than normal temperatures experienced in Europe during that time is probably purely coincidence and probably attributed to other factors like a massive volcanic eruption (I cannot remember where the article said).
It remains to be seen what effects on climate any such minimum will have. Most likely not any thing like that being suggested in the article. I remain firmly fascinated by how the entire system works on this planet and like many still trying to have a rudimentary understanding of all the elements involved. |