A MONTH WITHOUT SUNSPOTS: There are 28 days in February. This year, all 28 of them were spotless. The sun had no sunspots for the entire month of Feb. 2019.
The last time a full calendar month passed without a sunspot was August 2008. At the time, the sun was in the deepest Solar Minimum of the Space Age. Now a new Solar Minimum is in progress and it is shaping up to be similarly deep. So far this year, the sun has been blank 73% of the time--the same as 2008.
Solar Minimum is a normal part of the solar cycle. Every ~11 years, sunspot counts drop toward zero. Dark cores that produce solar flares and CMEs vanish from the solar disk, leaving the sun blank for long stretches of time. These minima have been coming and going with regularity since the sunspot cycle was discovered in 1859.
However, not all Solar Minima are alike. The last one in 2008-2009 surprised observers with its depth and side-effects. Sunspot counts dropped to a 100-year low; the sun dimmed by 0.1%; Earth's upper atmosphere collapsed, allowing space junk to accumulate; the pressure of the solar wind flagged while cosmic rays (normally repelled by solar wind) surged to Space Age highs. All these things are happening again.
http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=01&month=03&year=2019
(Score: 5, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 05 2019, @12:13PM (19 children)
It's global warming of course.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @12:35PM
Humans like to think they are the most important species, but the beavers are going to release 3x more global warming https://www.sciencenews.org/article/beavers-are-engineering-new-alaskan-tundra. [sciencenews.org]
The fiery skygod can have even more effect, all it takes is a slight increase in cloud cover to overcome the beaver caused warming. I wouldn't be surprised if the dolphins were messing around with undersea volcanoes though.
(Score: 2, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 05 2019, @01:00PM (15 children)
Possibly you're being sarcastic. But, think about it. They're saying our sun went dark in February. Just like in 2008, and 2009. Does anyone remember the type of weather we were having in February? INCREDIBLY COLD. And when the sun gets bright again, we have the hot weather again. But the Global Warming Hoaxers will say, "oh, it's horribly hot, we must ELIMINATE Clean Coal, Oil & Gas, delicious Hamburgers (Ocasio-Cortez), Cars & Planes, and our brave Soldiers!" WRONG, it's nothing we're doing, it's the sun going bright & dim, bright & dim. By the way, this is why we can't have Solar Energy. Because it only works when the sun is VERY BRIGHT!!
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @01:07PM
Global warming is caused by Democrats:
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/tempByPres.png [columbia.edu]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @05:05PM (7 children)
"Does anyone remember the type of weather we were having in February? INCREDIBLY COLD."
We were having cold weather in Febuary because it's WINTER and global warming has the effect of destabilizing the actic vortex (a very cold weather pattern over the arctic) and nudging it over north america - which it did in febuary which is why it was so cold. We literally had arctic weather reaching as far south as the northern united states.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 05 2019, @05:34PM
The northern part, it's not Arctic. But sometimes we call it Arctic. As in, Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, also known as A.N.W.R. After decades of waiting, we opened A.N.W.R. in Alaska for energy development. Very proud of that one!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @05:38PM (2 children)
You are going to have a hell of a time convincing all the people brainwashed to fear global warming that the coming years of colder winters and heavier snows were part of the original prediction.
It is hilarious to watch so far, because you can tell the people in the media know what will happen, but the "scientists" think people have been listening to their reasoned arguments this whole time.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:41PM (1 child)
You are going to have a hell of a time convincing all the people brainwashed to fear global warming that the coming years of colder winters and heavier snows were part of the original prediction.
It was ONE STORM!
Thus far it has been an unusually warm winter in the US.
And, NOAA predicts that 2019 is going to break the global-full-year record once again in 2019.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:17PM
Do you know the difference between weather and climate? One year is not climate.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:28PM (1 child)
Meanwhile, Australia is literally on fire and setting heat record after heat record.
2018-19 was Australia’s hottest summer on record, with a warm autumn likely too [theconversation.com]
If you deniers want to bring anecdotes to this science fight I can find a crap-ton more of them than you can.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @08:42PM
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/22/changes-to-darwins-climate-history-are-not-logical/ [wattsupwiththat.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday March 06 2019, @03:41AM
Then where the hell was it in January, when it was so warm in Montana that the grass started greening up? Our punishment for this pleasant state of affairs being that now we're having January again, down to -24F night before last. I think my calendar is broken.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:25PM (4 children)
So Far 2019 Has Set 33 Hottest And 0 Coldest Temperature Records [forbes.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:37PM
That guy is no better than the inquisition, please do not link to him:
https://darkmattercrisis.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/the-dark-matter-crisis-continues-on-the-difficulties-of-communicating-controversial-science/ [wordpress.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @09:50PM (2 children)
Why bother? The idiots think they are stable geniuses who are free thinking enough to see the truth. There is no combatting that level of narcissism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:24PM (1 child)
You're responding to someone who "knows" "weather isn't climate" yet posts stuff like that everywhere anyway. Apparently it is to counteract "the other team" doing it somehow. When summer comes watch all the posts about how hot it is, but we all know weather isn't climate wink wink.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2019, @05:41PM
When you aggregate the local weather it becoooomes the climate *gasp*
A wide spread trend record heat is a good indicator of the climate. The cold snaps are also a good indicator if they aren't accompanied by a drop in the average temps. Climate change causes chaotic weather patterns, and don't forget that melting ice which will cause temporary cold conditions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2019, @12:44AM
this is why we can't have Solar Energy. Because it only works when the sun is VERY BRIGHT!!
Ah! This explains why you haven't worked a day in your life! :-D
Peace! MuBrutha! You still the man!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @04:22PM
You mean Global Smoothing.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday March 06 2019, @03:44AM
You mean it's cooked the sun too??!
Of interest:
Professor Valentina Zharkova: The Solar Magnetic Field and the Terrestrial Climate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_yqIj38UmY [youtube.com]
Grand Solar Minimum, here we come...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @12:30PM (2 children)
The Sun can see what we've been doing to Earth and wants to take revenge. Eventually it will bite the bullet and consume us in its last act of solar terrorism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @01:14PM
The Sun is such a jerk.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Tuesday March 05 2019, @03:01PM
Sounds like it's time to take the fight to the sun, or maybe build a space wall and make the sun pay for it.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @01:35PM (2 children)
The last time this happened was just before the Great Recession.
Among economists, "sunspots" are a sort of running joke, sometimes used as a "fudge factor" in economic models to account for unexplained extrinsic variables. This dates back to this guy, who found a correlation between solar activity and the business cycle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stanley_Jevons#Practical_economics [wikipedia.org]
I wonder if he was onto something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @01:46PM
Future prove past:
https://www.nature.com/articles/019196b0 [nature.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by istartedi on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:27PM
To the extent that sunspots are linked to climate, an economic link would not be out to lunch at all. Sun spots less, climate disrupted, agricultural yields decline, farmers and their consumers have hard times, foreclosures rise, they sell stocks to pay their bills, Boom! Wall Street's in trouble too.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @03:15PM
surely there's a correlation between earthquakes and sunspots and a correlation between radioactive particle half-life and sunspots?
too fuzzy in math right now, but what's the distance between two sphere magnets (unity strength, say 1 Tesla and unity size, say 1 meter) so that attraction drops below the plank length? obviously you cannot move in between and since the field strength is depend (by definition) on time, space and uhm .. errr ... well those two and maybe elementary charge (1e) there must be a distance where you can call truly separate (magnetically they don't know anything about each other). it's like the "schwarzschild radius" but using plank length instead?
i doubt that the suns magneticfield and and earth magneticfield are separate.
also i am guessing that if one magnet is massively huge but has a relatively weak magnetic field (tesla/mass) but the gravitational field of it is
enough to capture the second magnet which is mass-wise tiny but relatively strong in the magenticfield business (tesla/mass) that the mini-magnet can have a "3-punch" combo knockout effect on the orbital center ... or suemthing :)
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @03:38PM (4 children)
If you are going to delete every story about how records for cold are being set, you also need to delete them in the (Northern Hemisphere) summer when the same stories come out about how warm it is:
https://i.ibb.co/QcRnP80/soylentnews2019-03-04.png [i.ibb.co]
When summer comes around we will remember this.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 05 2019, @04:56PM
They don't say delete. And they don't say erase. They say "flag it as to not display." Or they say "reject." Fancy ways of saying, it's not something they want us to know. But don't worry, anybody can be an Editor. Anybody who kisses enough ass & never ever rocks the boat. Groupthink is goodthink!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:34PM (2 children)
HAHAHAH!
Really, you think this is newsworthy:
"February for much of Montana in top 5 ever for cold/snow."
You have the entire world to cherry-pick from and the best you can come up with is not even a record and doesn't even apply to an entire state.
SAD
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:43PM (1 child)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/03/01/winter-storm-coast-coast-snow-then-record-cold-march-roars/3020109002/ [usatoday.com]
https://weather.com/safety/winter/news/2019-02-25-february-has-broken-monthly-records-from-coast-to-coast [weather.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:19PM
*throws snowball*
see? AGW is a hoax!!
I'd respond more seriously but it would probably just be a waste of time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @04:34PM
They only count sunspots that would be visible using historical methods:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/01/amid-the-dimmest-sun-since-1978-a-month-without-sunspots/#comment-2644035 [wattsupwiththat.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by linkdude64 on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:49PM
They are draining the sun of their energy.
(Score: 2, Funny) by EJ on Wednesday March 06 2019, @01:17AM
When are people going to finally wake up and realize how badly our pollution is affecting the entire solar system?!
(Score: 1) by Crypthulhu on Wednesday March 06 2019, @04:26AM
Just in case anyone is curious, this has been affecting radio wave propagation very negatively recently. I've heard rumor that it's part of the reason amateur radio isn't as popular as it once was. It's much harder to get long distances with no sun spots lighting up the atmosphere.
*NORK*