Puzzled Scientists Say Strange Things Are Happening On the Sun

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Robert Lee Hotz reports in the WSJ that current solar activity is stranger than it has been in a century or more. The sun is producing barely half the number of sunspots as expected, and its magnetic poles are oddly out of sync. Based on historical records, astronomers say the sun this fall ought to be nearing the explosive climax of its approximate 11-year cycle of activity—the so-called solar maximum. But this peak is 'a total punk,' says Jonathan Cirtain. 'I would say it is the weakest in 200 years,' adds David Hathaway, head of the solar physics group at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Researchers are puzzled. They can't tell if the lull is temporary or the onset of a decades-long decline, which might ease global warming a bit by altering the sun's brightness or the wavelengths of its light. To complicate the riddle, the sun also is undergoing one of its oddest magnetic reversals on record, with the sun's magnetic poles out of sync for the past year so the sun technically has two South Poles. Several solar scientists speculate that the sun may be returning to a more relaxed state after an era of unusually high activity that started in the 1940s (PDF). 'More than half of solar physicists would say we are returning to a norm,' says Mark Miesch. 'We might be in for a longer state of suppressed activity.' If so, the decline in magnetic activity could ease global warming, the scientists say. But such a subtle change in the sun—lowering its luminosity by about 0.1%—wouldn't be enough to outweigh the build-up of greenhouse gases and soot that most researchers consider the main cause of rising world temperatures over the past century or so. 'Given our current understanding of how the sun varies and how climate responds, were the sun to enter a new Maunder Minimum, it would not mean a new Little Ice Age,' says Judith Lean. 'It would simply slow down the current warming by a modest amount.'"

The winter is coming

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:Global warming..

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably mean the talks in 1970s. This hypothesis had little support in the scientific community, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s and press reports that did not accurately reflect the full scope of the scientific climate literature, i.e., a larger and faster-growing body of literature projecting future warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. The current scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth has not durably cooled, but undergone global warming throughout the 20th century.

Re:Global warming..

[ColdWetDog]

To say that the science beyond 'global cooling' / "new ice age" in the 1970's was anywhere near as robust or accepted by scientists in the field (as opposed to bored journalists and second tier science fiction authors) is simply untrue. A number of papers were written, people thought about it, but it never gained the acceptance that the current climate change scenarios have.

Re:glass half empty

[Kamien]

Exactly.
The difference between high and low solar activity is small (0.1% difference).
With solar radiation at the average level of ~1366 W/sqm the variation is a tiny 1.3 Watts...

The temperatures during the so-called Little Ice Age were lower than average by less than 1 degree Celsius.
Calling the period an "Ice Age" is incorrect.

Re:Global warming..

[riverat1]

It was actually a toss-up at the time (in science, not public opinion) ...

Perhaps but the fact that from 1965 to 1979 the number of papers on warming outnumbered the number of papers on cooling by 6 to 1 shows they were already leaning toward warming. Link. [confex.com]