It's tough to tell what the future may hold, when you have so little understanding of the past. When we were studying the solar wind a short while back, hardly anyone knew what it was made of ... Lots of assumptions, suspicion, mostly correct, but little fact. Modern satellites have pulled back the blinders, partially. Just recently THEMIS discovered the probable mechanism that fires off an aurora. Who knows what they will find next. The beauty of exploring.
It's quite possible the macro cycle time of our star is much longer than we think. Why has our solar system, and principally the Earth, switched to alternating ice ages and inter-glacier periods over the last 5 million or so years. What change(s) has caused that? When will it end, the glacial cycle, or what will come next. Could Earth settle out hot, or settle out at cold, who knows.
It's all guess work, because our hard data of the past is so crude.
I think the drop in The Average Planetary Magnetic Index (Ap) in late 2005 was a key event, signifying a 'change of state' with our star. Fortunately, we had the instruments in place to witness the event, but has it ever happened before? Correlates with what other event(s). But then again, it's just my guess, I can prove nothing, and will have to sit and wait like the rest.
My guess, sunspot activity will continue low, and will very likely duplicate the 1912-13 low activity time-frame. But then what comes next?
Sunday, January 4, 2009
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Keeping in mind that windmills are hazardous to birds, be wary of the unintended consequences of believing and contributing to the all-knowing environmental lobby groups.
Water vapour is the most important green house gas followed by methane. The third important greenhouse gas is CO2, and it does not correlate well with global warming or cooling either; in fact, CO2 in the atmosphere trails warming which is clear natural evidence for its well-studied inverse solubility in water: CO2 dissolves in cold water and bubbles out of warm water. The equilibrium in seawater is very high, making seawater a great 'sink'; CO2 is 34 times more soluble in water than air is soluble in water.
Correlation is not causation to be sure. The causation has been studied, however, and while the radiation from the sun varies only in the fourth decimal place, the magnetism is awesome.
Using a box of air in a Copenhagen lab, physicists traced the growth of clusters of molecules of the kind that build cloud condensation nuclei. These are specks of sulphuric acid on which cloud droplets form. High-energy particles driven through the laboratory ceiling by exploded stars far away in the Galaxy - the cosmic rays - liberate electrons in the air, which help the molecular clusters to form much faster than climate scientists have modeled in the atmosphere. That may explain the link between cosmic rays, cloudiness and climate change.
As I understand it, the hypothesis of the Danish National Space Center goes as follows:
Quiet sun → reduced magnetic and thermal flux = reduced solar wind → geomagnetic shield drops → galactic cosmic ray flux → more low-level clouds and more snow → more albedo effect (more heat reflected) → colder climate
Active sun → enhanced magnetic and thermal flux = solar wind → geomagnetic shield response → less low-level clouds → less albedo (less heat reflected) → warmer climate
That is how the bulk of climate change might work, coupled with (modulated by) sunspot peak frequency there are cycles of global warming and cooling like waves in the ocean. When the waves are closely spaced, the planets warm; when the waves are spaced farther apart, the planets cool.
The ultimate cause of the solar magnetic cycle may be cyclicity in the Sun-Jupiter centre of gravity. We await more on that. In addition, although the post 60s warming period is over, it has allowed the principal green house gas, water vapour, to kick in with humidity, clouds, rain and snow depending on where you live to provide the negative feedback that scientists use to explain the existence of complex life on Earth for 550 million years. The planet heats and cools naturally and our gasses are the thermostat.
Check the web site of the Danish National Space Center.
Very well said. But I think sunspots
will continue active if we will not take good care of our environment, especially in our own self.
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