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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the have-to-wear-shades dept.

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


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @05:38PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @05:38PM (#810324)

    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)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:41PM (#810390) Journal

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:17PM (#810446)

      And, NOAA predicts that 2019 is going to break the global-full-year record once again in 2019.

      Do you know the difference between weather and climate? One year is not climate.