Sun Flatlining Into Grand Minimum, Says Solar Physicist Weather isn’t climate, but circumstantial evidence indicates our sun may be entering a grand minimum of sunspot activity, not unlike the Maunder Minimum that some climatologists think caused record low winter temperatures in Northern Europe during the latter half of the 17th century. “My opinion is that we are heading into a Maunder Minimum,” said Mark Giampapa, a solar physicist at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona. “I’m seeing a continuation in the decline of the sunspots’ mean magnetic field strengths and a weakening of the polar magnetic fields and subsurface flows.” “If we’re entering a Maunder Minimum, it could persist until the 2080s,” said Giampapa, who points out that if such a minimum’s primary effect is cooling, it could wreak havoc by curtailing agricultural growing seasons which, for instance, could lead to lower wheat production in breadbasket economies. But Giampapa says it could also mean a global excursion from the mean, resulting in local climate extremes in terms of both anomalous temperatures and precipitation. Article Source: forbes/sites/brucedorminey/2014/01/20/sun-flatlining-into-grand-minimum-says-solar-physicist/ Space Weather & The Maunder Minimum: Solar Activity vs. Cosmic Ray Activity suspicious0bserverscollective.org/1/post/2014/03/space-weather-the-maunder-minimum-solar-activity-vs-cosmic-ray-activity.html
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 07:31:50 +0000
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