OK, so I’ve recently bemoaned my fortune in actually seeing an SC24 spot “live”. But there’s a much more serious question which Anthony Watts has brought up:
Galileo, Wolf, and other solar observers of the past would likely never have seen it. So with these Tiny Tims coming and going so quickly, that begs the question; was the Maunder Minimum, Dalton Minimum and other minimums not simply a period of Tiny Tim sunspots that nobody could detect with the observing equipment of the time?
THAT is a very good question.
Above is the record of the Solar Cycle right back to the Maunder Minimum. As you can see Galileo reported sunspots just before the Maunder Minimum, which was fortunate because with the instrumentation available at the time, he would not have seen the “Tiny Tims” similar to the current SC24 ones.
I hope this isn’t what we’re seeing. If the Earth’s climate is dominated by variations in Solar luminosity and magnetic field strength as is believed by some, then that would mean cooling.
And that would be a global disaster as deserts expand, storms increase, glaciers expand and wipe out towns and villages in places like Switzerland and Nepal, a shorter growing season with more variability in precipitation, an increase in the number of droughts and failed harvests leading to mass starvation in certain regions.
I hope its just a hiccup in global warming, because there’s very little to be scared of in a warming climate.
Before the current scare began, climatologists talked of warm periods as “Optimums” or “Optima”, a time of plenty and societal growth and prosperity. With the advent of political supplication to climate models and the pronouncements of some climate modellers, we have been taught to fear warming and try to reverse it as wholly undesirable even at the expense of every modern device that keeps us from being victims of climate change, howsoever caused.
I really hope for global warming. At the moment, I’m pessimistic about whether it will continue.
Either SC24 is the weakest ever solar cycle in a long time or I’m cursed. I look on Anthony Watts‘ excellent weblog and see that someone has sighted an SC24 spot in the Southern Hemisphere
And here’s the magnetogram showing that it is indeed an SC24 phenomenon:
If you care to look at the last SC24 spot to appear in the Northern Hemisphere, then this does appear to be an SC24 spot, (the magnetic polarities being reversed between the hemispheres).
So I snap into action, going to SolarCycle24.com and…
…is that it? Or is it a dead pixel in the camera? Let’s check the magnetogram:
…and its gone!
Another SC24 “Tiny Tim” and I missed it.
Clearly spotting sunspots is more difficult than I thought. There cannot be more than a few hours between Anthony’s post and mine, and yet the SC24 spot and magnetic signature had both disappeared.
And on a sad note, it appears not to have been given a number by NASA. Maybe the person responsible went for coffee at just the wrong time.
In early January 2008, NASA reported the start of Solar Cycle 24 with the sighting of a tiny reversed polarity spot. It lasted three days and then disappeared.
This was reported by Anthony Watts thus:
Solar physicists have been waiting for the appearance of a reversed-polarity sunspot to signal the start of the next solar cycle. The signal for the start of a new cycle is sighting a particular kind of sunspot. That wait is over.
And the NASA blog said:
“On January 4, 2008, a reversed-polarity sunspot appeared—and this signals the start of Solar Cycle 24,” says David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.
Above: Images of the first sunspot of Solar Cycle 24 taken by the NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).
Solar activity waxes and wanes in 11-year cycles. Lately, we’ve been experiencing the low ebb, “very few flares, sunspots, or activity of any kind,” says Hathaway. “Solar minimum is upon us.”
But the first announcement of Solar Cycle 24 wasn’t made by NASA in January 2008 - it was actually made by Ulrich Reith on 31 July 2006, with this post:
Last night it seems to have happend, the first sunspot of solar cycle 24 appeard on the southern hemisphere of the sun.
Very close to NOAA 10902 a tiny spot which should be named 10903 appeared at S12W55.
In the SOHO MDI magnetogramms it clearly shows a reversed polarity if compared to the polarity of cycle 23. (cycle 23: black first towards the western limb and white following black / cycle 24: white in front of black)
And I show the picture with an arrow so you know which spot we’re talking about.
Again, the spot persisted for a few days and disappeared.
So what to believe? The transition between one solar cycle and the next is very difficult to call as during the transition both magnetically polarized spots can be seen. The newer cycle spots are usually high latitude (>20o) North and South of the solar equator. Solar cycle 23 spots still continue to produce and any SC24 spots so far are barely a pixel in size and very rare.
Solar cycle 24 remains difficult to call definitively at this time, in my view.
