Seen at Watts Up With That:
On August 31st, at 23:59 UTC, just a little over 24 hours from now, we are very likely to make a bit of history. It looks like we will have gone an entire calendar month without a sunspot. According to data from NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center, the last time that happened was in June of 1913. May of 1913 was also spotless.
With the current space weather activity level of the Sun being near zero, and the SOHO holographic imaging of the far side of the sun showing no developing spots that would come around the edge in the next 24 hours, it seems a safe bet to conclude that August 2008 will be the first spotless month since June 1913.[…]
As commenter Jim Powell points out,
There was a stretch of 42 spotless days from 9/13/1996 to 10/24/1996. Today we have equaled this period. Check out Jan Janssens spotless days page http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html.
The Belgian chart cited shows that a 42-day span is the 10th-longest spotless span in the past 160ish years. If we go another week without a sunspot, we would be tied for fourth position.
So, why do sunspots matter? Well, there is a school of thought that periods of low sunspot activity are closely correlated with cooler-than-normal periods on earth. (See Wikipedia entries on the Dalton and Maunder minimums.)
This opens the door to the question: so, what happens when solar-generated global cooling meets human-influenced global warming?
It’s a shame that discussion on global warming, climate change, and conservation have all become so politically charged. Because, frankly, I don’t know whether I’m supposed to trust this sort of news (via Watts Up With That):
The first new sunspot in weeks has emerged today. The spot that has emerged is small and on the equator, so it appears that it is a cycle 23 spot rather than one from the cycle 24 that is gave one spot on January 8th, signaling a start of cycle 24, but has given no cycle 24 type spots since.
Based on what we know about the sun, a cycle 24 spot would be reverse polarity to cycle 23 spots and high latitude. The longer cycle 24 continues to delay producing its spots heightens the concern that we may be in for a longer inactive period on the sun, such as a Dalton type minimum.
In case you’re wondering what a “Dalton type minimum” is, Wikipedia provides this bit of trivia:
The Dalton Minimum was a period of low solar activity, lasting from about 1790 to 1830. Like the Maunder Minimum and Sporer Minimum it coincided with a period of lower than average global temperatures.
There is even a blog dedicated to the prediction of an imminent Dalton-type minimum, entitled “Dalton Minimum Returns.
A recent post there links to a presentation by David Archibald which goes into a bit more detail about such predictions.
Personally, I’m not familiar enough with long-term climatology and the science of global warming to feel comfortable in knowing whether to believe or disbelieve such discussion.
True, I have previously expressed a willingness to believe in global warming, although recent warm years I’d attribute to the effects of other cycles and normal random variation.
However, the idea of cyclical variation of solar activity on the earth’s climate does fit in on my cycles-upon-cycles view of the world.
It would actually be amusingly ironic if human-induced climate change lead to the potential upcoming Dalton-like minimum being not quite as bad as it would otherwise be.
Bah. Now I have a headache from thinking about all these correlations.
Despite that headache, I still think that there are good reasons to pursue conservation and more sustainable technology, beyond the global warming predictions/hype.
