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: 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.