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Location: somewhere close to Tampa, but closer to the beach
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Yep, just saw this news clip..after a historic low level of activity the past couple years, that big golden orb up there, the one we wear glasses to shield us from has started to show it's spots once again..hopefully, for all of us weather geeks, this means some excitement in the months to come..And some really exciting times down the road..welcome back spot..
I've been watching that for the last few days too. I like that website, also world earthquake monitoring.
This is the smallest class of sunspot activity but it is the first for a long time.
Yep, just saw this news clip..after a historic low level of activity the past couple years, that big golden orb up there, the one we wear glasses to shield us from has started to show it's spots once again..hopefully, for all of us weather geeks, this means some excitement in the months to come..And some really exciting times down the road..welcome back spot..
Hmm, that one got by me. So the sun seems to be starting another cycle? I hunted for some sources to verify that we are seeing an uptick and found this:
That and comments on other websites such as the On-line edition of Scientific American comfirm the sun is begining to kick up its heels a bit.
We have been in a period of unusually low solar activity for several years and this past year as well as the first six months of this one have seen sunspot numbers lower than at any time in history.
Experts tell us that an inactive sun (low level of spots and flares) also means a cooler one. Their reasoning is that though the spots themselves are cooler than the rest of the solar surface, their margins are much hotter than average so a higher level of spot activity generally means more solar output. More solar output translates to warmer surface temperatures here on Earth.
During the 90's and the first few years of this century, sunspot activity was fairly high and the higher level of solar radiation generated then could be a partial explaination for the much discussed global warm-up experienced at that time.
Since about 2004 or so that activity went away. Recent sunspot activity has been lower than at any time since we've been interested in them. During the mid seventeenth century to the early eighteenth there was an extended period of unprecedented solar sluggishness that was later called the "Maunder Minimum". This period of solar inactivity coincided with some of the harshest weather ever observed during this interglacial. The period from about 1640 to 1720 or so was the rock bottom coldest of the 3 to 4 hundred year stretch of climatic instability we now call the "little Ice Age".
Many climatologists correlate low sunspot activity with low global temperatures and even a cursory glance at charts graphing both will validate that relationship. Right now the sun is as quiet as it was during the Maunder Minimum, if not more so.
NASA tells us that 2008 was the coolest year worldwide since 2000 and the first 6 months of 2009 were no warmer but they also say that 1998 was the only year prior to 2000 that was warmer than last year.
Maybe "Global Warming" is just so much hot air (sorry) but given how low our sunspot counts are at this time, all other things being equal, we should now be as chilly as we were in the mid-late 1600's and we are far warmer. It will be interesting to see what happens to the short cooling trend we are now experiencing if/when our sun returns to 1990's activity levels...
[quote=FVWinters;9639696]During the 90's and the first few years of this century, sunspot activity was fairly high and the higher level of solar radiation generated then could be a partial explaination for the much discussed global warm-up experienced at that time.
Since about 2004 or so that activity went away.
NASA tells us that 2008 was the coolest year worldwide since 2000 and the first 6 months of 2009 were no warmer but they also say that 1998 was the only year prior to 2000 that was warmer than last year.
QUOTE]
It must mean something, because 2004 and 1998 were major events for us here in South Texas. Summer 2004 was hot, but that winter we got 3 1/2 in.of snow! It hadn't snowed here for about 100 years. Winter of 1997 was the previous year we got snow flurries and that summer of '98 was hotter than 2004. So with this very unseasonably, even for us, hot weather this year, winter should be cold and wet and possibly some frozen precip.
Guys and gals...thanks for the sun spot education...even though I can't contribute to this thread, I didn't want to be a lurker
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