Solar Sleuths Tackle Meaning Of “Quiet Sun”

The Sun was spotless on June 19, 2009 - as it has virtually every day for the past year. That has AGW (Anthropomorphic Global Warming) proponents backing and filling. This “quiet Sun” has continued far too long. Two years ago, a special task force predicted that the transition from the just-ended Solar Cycle 23 to the upcoming Cycle 24 would come around March 2008. It didn’t. (To be fair, there was sharp disagreement within the group at that time.)

Who cares — likely all of us. What if this inactivity continues like it did for 75 year during the so-called Mauder minmum (1645 to 1715) that some believe triggered the Little Ice Age.  Plus, when the sun prodigiously spits out plasma and protons from a lot of sunspots communications becomes tougher all over Earth, and a lot of other things happen that solar scientists like to argue about.

There was a curious period of about 75 years shortly after Galileo’s discovery of sunspots when few were observed and it was cold, very cold. Other phenomena such as the aurora borealis (northern lights) that are associated with solar activity were also missing from European records during that period. The interval is coincident with what has long thought to have been a time of unusually severe winters in both Europe and the North America. Certainly writings from those times report it was unusually cold but emperical records are scant.because nobody had yet invested the themometer or even a temperature scale

Galileo Galilei invented a rudimentary water thermometer in 1593 which, for the first time, allowed temperature variations to be measured. Bit is was not until 1714, Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the first mercury thermoscope, the modern thermometer anad calibrated the temperature scale named for him.. So, before that and during the Mauder minimum temperature comparisons were necessarily subjective. So you have to rely on things like tree rings, ice cores and sediment samples

Knowing when the upturn in solar activity begins and, more importantly, how strong it’ll get at maximum has grown in importance over the years. When the Sun gets agitated, it buffets our planet with huge “storms” of high-speed plasma (ionized gas), punctuated by threatening flares of relativistic protons. When it’s quiet, like now, it looks like it gets colder.  I guess we are about to find out.