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21 spotless days and solar magnetic field still in a funk
Watts
Up With That
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2008
We are now at 21 days with no sunspots, it will
be interesting to see if we reach a spotless 30 day period and
then perhaps a spotless month of December.
From the data provided by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction
Center (SWPC) you can see just how little magnetic field activity
there has been. I’ve included it below with the latest available
update from December 6th, 2008:
click for a larger image
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
What I find most interesting about the Geomagnetic Average Planetary
Index graph above is what happened around October 2005. Notice
the sharp drop in the magnetic index and the continuance at low
levels. Read on for more.
This looks much like a “step function” that I see
on GISS surface temperature graphs when a station has been relocated
to a cooler measurement environment. In the case of the sun, it
appears this indicates that something abruptly “switched
off” in the inner workings of the solar dynamo. Note that
in the prior months, the magnetic index was ramping up a bit with
more activity, then it simply dropped and stayed mostly flat.
Currently the Ap magnetic index continues at a low level, and
while the “smoothed” data from SWPC is not made available
for 2008, I’ve added it with a dashed blue line, and the
trend appears to be going down.
As many regular readers know, I’ve always pointed out the
sharp drop in 2005 with the following extended period of low activity
as an odd occurance. Our resident solar astronomer Leif Svalgaard
disagrees with this. But I’d also like to point out that
this was the time when global sea level as measured by the JASON
satellite and reported by the University of Colorado began to
lose its upward trend.
Source: University of Colorado, Boulder
Coincidence? Perhaps. But I think investigation is needed to
determine if there is any mechanism that would explain or exclude
this correlation.
(h/t Joe D’aleo
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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