Articles Tagged "Solar News"

So, what we may be seeing is evidence that the Sun is driving global warming-and the release of a greenhouse gas. Unless Dick Cheney has secretely commissioned to have SUV`s moved en-masse to Mars and fitted with special equipment to allow them to run in the thin Martian air, this warming-and the subsequent release of methane (much like the release last year of methane on Earth in BOTH hemispheres contrary to most anthropogenic models) is being driven by the Sun.

If Martian global warming and the release of methane is driven by solar activity rather than human industrial emissions, doesn`t this argue for similar effects on the Earth, which is much closer to the sun than Mars, after all? Do we take make the enormous investments to reduce our industrial emissions if the cause of the Earth`s warming is outside of our control? But then, we wouldn`t need a worldwide socialist system, now would we!

Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com alerts our readers to the fact that Russia is preparing to launch the country's first science satellite in years.

The satellite is the Koronas-Foton, which was designed to conduct uninterrupted monitoring and analysis of solar activity and will analyze heating of the Sun's corona, mechanics of solar bursts, and the nature of Sun cycles. According to officials involved in the project, the satellite would help to plan manned space missions, including future expeditions to Mars, by providing accurate and up-to-date forecasts of solar activity. The Sun’s influence on weather and climate on Earth would also be investigated...

What it means..

Once again, we are led to say: Not much global warming here! And this being the case in a place that is clearly demonstrated to be responsive to changes in solar and volcanic activity, we are led to wonder why there has been no response to the past century's historic increase in the air's CO2 content.

Well, to be totally truthful, we actually don't wonder, as we believe that a number of negative feedback phenomena of both a biological and physical nature tend to largely counter the modest greenhouse effect of the rising atmospheric CO2 concentration, rendering its impetus for warming too small to even detect.

Last week's bulletin mentioned an announcement coming on Tuesday this week from NASA. It concerned data from the Ulysses spacecraft, indicating solar wind pressure is declining. The speed of solar wind hasn't changed much, but the density and temperature are lower.

by Dani Cooper

The sun's magnetic fields may have an impact on weather conditions such as El Niño, and could be an effective tool in long-term rainfall predictions, an Australian geographer says.

In the latest issue of Geographical Research, Professor Robert Baker of the University of New England says there is a relationship between the sun's magnetic cycles and fluctuations in the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI).

October 27-29, 2004, Meredith, New Hampshire

Widespread empirical evidence from the extensive Earth climate datasets suggests the presence of an 11-year solar signal of order 0.1K in surface, atmospheric, and ocean temperatures. But general circulation models (GCMs) underestimate this response by as much as a factor of five. The GCMs account primarily for direct forcing by changing incoming total radiation and assume that the response time for climate feedback processes to this external forcing is of order 100 years. Processes and pathways not included in the GCMs may help facilitate the larger than predicted climate response to decadal solar variability. Solar variations in the UV spectrum modulate stratospheric ozone concentrations, which may couple to climate via radiative and dynamical pathways.

These pathways may involve the Northern and Southern annular modes, allowing a solar signal to be amplified and reach Earth's surface. Internal atmosphere-ocean oscillations such as the NAO and ENSO may also play a role. Clouds may expedite the feedback process, as they appear to also exhibit variability with the solar cycle. Stochastic climate variability may amplify the relatively small solar variations. Other, non-linear, climate processes are speculated.

From EngineeringNews.Co.Za

Evidence of sunspot involvement in climate change compelling
by Dr Kelvin Kemm

Over the last few years, the evidence that sunspots on our sun are directly related to climate change on earth has been steadily increasing. I explained the exact proposed mechanism in some detail previously. Great work in this field is being carried out by Dr Henrik Svensmark and coworkers in Denmark and elsewhere.

We wonder if the Met Office read Science News?

From Science News - USA

Lowdown on the sun

“This extreme minimum has important implications for the solar dynamo for solar activity and perhaps even for terrestrial climate,” comments solar physicist Spiro Antiochos of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The dynamo is the roiling motions of gas inside the sun that generate the sun’s magnetic field.

Because the magnetic field at solar minimum acts as the seed field for the next minimum, “it may well be that the next cycle will be low, which could have a cooling effect on terrestrial weather," Antiochos says. "There appears to be evidence for a correlation between lack of activity and terrestrial cooling.” Such cooling was observed during an extended period of unusually low solar activity about 300 years ago known as the Maunder Minimum

From The Herald-Dispatch

Show features West Virginia’s caves

“There is conclusive evidence that, in fact, solar output affects droughts in North America based on the study of stalagmites,” Springer said in a news release. “Their growth is directly related to the amount of water obtained from the surface and we can study the history of droughts – some that have lasted 100 years.”

by Carolyn Barry

The sun's fluctuations can help predict extreme climatic events on Earth decades ahead of time, new research suggests.

Solar cycles are 11-year phases during which the sun's activity ebbs and flows, accompanied by an increase in sunspots on the sun's surface. (Watch a video of how solar storms cause "sun quakes.")