September 3, 2009

Sunspot cycle 24 - will it ever show?

An interesting argument that sunspots may be going away entirely. From Watts Up With That:
NASA: Are Sunspots Disappearing?
From NASA News: Are Sunspots Disappearing?

September 3, 2009: The sun is in the pits of the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. Weeks and sometimes whole months go by without even a single tiny sunspot. The quiet has dragged out for more than two years, prompting some observers to wonder, are sunspots disappearing?

“Personally, I’m betting that sunspots are coming back,” says researcher Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona. But, he allows, “there is some evidence that they won’t.”

Penn’s colleague Bill Livingston of the NSO has been measuring the magnetic fields of sunspots for the past 17 years, and he has found a remarkable trend. Sunspot magnetism is on the decline.
I had blogged about it on August 21st. The thing to look at is this -- the magnetic strength of the sunspots:
sunspot_mag_fields.jpg
Last winter was brutal, this coming winter should be interesting... Posted by DaveH at September 3, 2009 9:14 PM | TrackBack
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