A detective story from Stanford University News. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html
When researchers found an unusual linkage between solar flares and the inner life of radioactive elements on Earth, it touched off a scientific detective investigation that could end up protecting the lives of space-walking astronauts and maybe rewriting some of the assumptions of physics.
BY DAN STOBER
http://www.pcaire.com/images/solar_flares.png
1. A solar storm yes, but hardly a Tsunami
The headlines were alarmist as usual: NASA scientists braced for ‘solar tsunami’ to hit earth, but reality was a little less alarming. A C3 flare caused a G2 geomagnetic storm (G1 being the weakest and G5 the strongest) with a Kp value of 6. (Kp of 5 at G1 and 9 at G5).
The Northern lights could be particularly spectacular but a moderate G2 storm can be expected to have some relatively minor but significant effects:
From http://www.spaceweather.com/ The solar storm of August 1st sent two CMEs toward Earth. The first one arrived yesterday, August 3rd, sparking mild but beautiful Northern Lights over Europe and North America (see below). The second CME is still en route. NOAA forecasters estimate a 35% chance of major geomagnetic storms when the cloud arrives on August 4th or 5th. High-latitude sky watchers should remain alert for auroras.
In Solar Cycle 24 sunspot activity continues to undershoot Solar Cycle 5.
2.The media and the environmental community were up in arms about “the worlds worst environmental disaster” and BP has been demonised by the US press but we now learn that 75% of the oil leakage in the Gulf of Mexico has already dispersed and that the Oil From Spill Poses Little Additional Risk.
The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.
Geoff Sharp’s recent article suggests that the Landscheidt minimum is already upon us.
The winters of the past two years have been noticeably colder. The northern hemisphere in particular has experienced record cold, record snow and a rebuilding of the Arctic sea ice extent. The southern hemisphere this winter has also seen record low temperatures in South America which is resulting in many hundreds of deaths (human and livestock). There are a number of players involved which can be attributed to this cooling trend and when they come together they are capable of dropping the world’s temperatures by a significant amount.
Perhaps the most important player is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) which is a hot and cold ocean temperature cycle in the Pacific of about 30 years. The world’s temperature trend very closely matches this cycle which has the potential to override solar activity of the day. The last major PDO cooling event was between 1946 and 1976 which experienced the highest solar cycle on record (SC19) followed by a low cycle (SC20). The deepest cold of this era was recorded when both the PDO and low solar activity teamed up, which is right where we are again today with perhaps a greater influence from the solar side with my predicted imminent grand minimum.
Aside from other ocean oscillations the ENSO pattern has a large short term effect on our climate/weather system. We are just coming out of a rather warm El Nino cycle and current observations are showing the possible impact of a very strong La Nina cooling pattern taking shape.
The La Nina phase is now official with the Australian BOM records showing all the major indicators heading into continued La Nina conditions. Of particular interest is the sub surface temperatures in the Pacific showing a large area 4 deg under normal.
Another oscillation called the Antarctic Oscillation (AAO) is showing its highest readings since records began in 1979, during the strong 1999 and 2008 La Ninas the AAO was also high.
The cooling phase of the PDO is just beginning and should reduce the strength and frequency of future El Ninos and add extra punch and frequency to upcoming La Ninas.
So the stage is set for one of the most interesting natural experiments, nearly all the cool players are in place with the exception of the Atlantic Oscillation still not in its cool phase. I predict the extra boost from my predicted solar grand minimum along with the current oceanic conditions the next northern winter will experience conditions similar to the Little Ice Age (1250-1850).
Adolfo Giurfa points to this map showing the cooling oceans.
The winter of 2010 / 2011 could remove many uncertainties and provide a fatal blow to global warming alarmism – though doom-day scenarios will never ever die.
Why do journalists always feel it necessary to report science in alarmist terms?
Solar storms and the geomagnetic consequences are serious and the subject of serious study but such study is devalued when sensationalised by intrepid reporters from the outback.
Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph informed us that “Nasa warns solar flares from ‘huge space storm’ will cause devastation”. The reporter Andrew Hough goes on breathlessly to explain that the “Daily Telegraph can disclose” that
National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years. Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013. In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken. “We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” said Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa’s Heliophysics division. Every 22 years the Sun’s magnetic energy cycle peaks while the number of sun spots – or flares – hits a maximum level every 11 years. Dr Fisher, a Nasa scientist for 20 years, said these two events would combine in 2013 to produce huge levels of radiation.
We should head for the hills !!!!
The 22 year Solar Cycle – the Babcock cycle was discovered by HW Babcock in 1961.
In 2007 NASA was predicting the Cycle 24 maximum for 2011 as a strong maximum or in 2012 as a weak maximum. By March 2009 the maximum was being forecast for May 2013 with the admission that “It turns out that none of our models were totally correct,” says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA’s lead representative on the panel. “The sun is behaving in an unexpected and very interesting way.”
The great 1859 storm– the “Carrington Event” – electrified transmission cables, set some papers on fire in a few telegraph offices, and produced exceptionally bright Northern Lights. Some electrical disruption also occurred during storms in 1921, 1937, 1941 and 1958. On August 4, 1972 a solar flare knocked out long-distance telephone communication across Illinois. That event, in fact, caused AT&T to redesign its power system for transatlantic cables. A similar flare on March 13, 1989, provoked geomagnetic storms that disrupted electric power transmission from the Hydro Québec generating station in Canada. In 2005, a solar storm disrupted satellite-to-ground communications and Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation signals for about 10 minutes.
There is a long way in nature from notable to disruption to devastation and to catastrophe; but in journalism the distance seems exceedingly short.
The sunspot numbers and the solar flux for May are not keeping up even with the reduced expectations for this cycle.
Are we in the Landscheidt minimum or is it still to come?
Even though many of the alarmists of Global Warming reject the notion of the Solar Cycle having much influence on climate, there is little doubt that the period of the Maunder Minmum coincided with the Little Ice Age. It has been unfortunate that the so-called mathematical models on which Global Warming conclusions are based have descended to the level of glorified arithmetic even though there is little understanding of what the arithmetic represents.
It is time for science to return into the debate and for incomplete mathematical models relying on “fudge factors” to validate the model against temperature proxies (which are themselves highly unlikely to be solely dependant upon temperature) to be treated with the utmost scepticism. In fact it is time for scepticism to return to science.
Predictions of a global cooling over the next 20 or 30 years seem to be gaining substance.
Spring has come to Sweden but observing the slowness with which ice melts on cloudy days, even with temperatures well above zero is just a reminder that surface air temperatures are much less effective in transferring heat to oceans than direct solar radiation.
There are fascinating indications that the current solar cycle (24) is very similar to solar cycle no.5 which started in January 1798. The inference is that the current minimum could resemble the Dalton minimum. The Landscheidt minimum it seems. http://www.landscheidt.info/
Does this tie in to the North Atlantic Oscillation which could have caused climate warming for the 30 years prior to 1998 and is now going to lead to 30 years of global cooling?
The k2p blog 
