This is a wow-level video of a solar flare on May 1, 2013:
Spectacular Solar Flare!
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Tag Archives: solar
Tiny Solar Activity Changes Affect Earth’s Climate
A few years ago I asked a rather famous and media saturated astronomer what he thought about the Sun’s impact on global warming. I got a lecture that I had to be a flat-Earther to believe such garbage.
Now, it’s becoming fairly common:
…..solar energetic particles and cosmic rays could reduce ozone levels in the stratosphere. This in turn alters the behavior of the atmosphere below it, perhaps even pushing storms on the surface off course.
“In the lower stratosphere, the presence of ozone causes a local warming because of the breakup of ozone molecules by ultraviolet light,” climate scientist Jerry North at Texas A&M University told SPACE.com.
When the ozone is removed, “the stratosphere there becomes cooler, increasing the temperature contrast between the tropics and the polar region. The contrast in temperatures in the stratosphere and the upper troposphere leads to instabilities in the atmospheric flow west to east. The instabilities make for eddies or irregular motions.”
Tiny changes in solar energetic particles………
Something like this perhaps?
July 12, 2012 X-Flare
A very powerful CME was unleashed and directed at Earth yesterday. It was so cool I wanted to put a video of it here. When I got here, I noticed I already had a really cool CME video. It was from March. There was another really cool one last week too, but I was on vacation and didn’t feel like fooling with it. So, here’s yesterday’s. It comes with the same caveats as the other big ones we’ve had this year. Electronic communications stand to be interrupted around 1am tonight, etc..
Ya know, this has been an incredibly active solar season. I think that makes five X level CME’s this year. It’s also been a really HOT summer as well. Coincidence? The Bad Astronomer would tell you it is. I’m more inclined to think there’s a very direct connection. I’ve explored that here before so I won’t bore you all again with the charts and stuff.
March 7, 2012 X5.4 Solar Flare
Too Cool:
A few satellite operators probably won’t agree with me. But the power unleashed in that one flare is beyond anything anyone on this planet has ever dealt with.
H/T: Onorbit
Another Kentucky aurora?
Image
Spaceweather.com announced this just a few minutes ago:
Active sunspot 1401 erupted today, Jan. 19th, for more than an hour around 16:00 UT. The long-duration blast produced an M3-class solar flare and a CME that appears to be heading toward Earth. Forecasters say strong geomagnetic storms are possible when the cloud arrives during the late hours of Jan. 21st. High-latitude (and possibly middle-latitude) sky watchers should be alert for auroras this weekend.
This is what happened here the last time this happened:
August 4, 2010 Storm
That white blob on the sun is the source of what should prove to be, well, not as interesting as one would think. A massive CME is heading right at Earth. That means we’re gonna get some extra oomph in our auroral lights. Might even get some ( extra ) static on our cell phones. If weird things start happening sometime tonight, now you know why.
Cell phones all staticy?
This is most likely why:
If that had been pointing at us, your phones would not be working at all. And guess what, it’s spinning our way!
9-9-9, the last of the repetitive single-digit years
Yes, today’s 9-9-9. It’s the one time this will happen in our lifetime. As such, we need to party like it’s 1-9-9-9. Fail, I know. But, consider this, according to those who know, this is the last repetitive single-digit date of our lifetime. Seriously. It is. Think about it, the next time it would happen would be 1-1-1. That of course would be January 1, 3001. That’s about 992 years from now. That’s a long time folks. 992 years ago we didn’t have the internet. For that matter, we didn’t have electricity. 1009 was a pretty boring year for most people. Searching through history, I can only find a couple of events that make 1009 noteworthy at all:
- Feb 14th – First known mention of Lithuania, in the annals of the monastery of Quedlinburg.
- Oct 18th – The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a Christian church in Jerusalem, is completely destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the Church’s foundations down to bedrock.
They didn’t mention the United States because it wouldn’t exist for another 700 years. But, going back to the last repetitive single-digits, it was Muslims fighting Christians. Who woulda thunk that? My main hope for the next repetitive single-digit date is that those pesky holy wars are forgotten. If this post doesn’t illustrate how futile they have been for 1,000 years, nothing will.
Other than that, nothing of note happened in 1009. Nobody famous was born, nobody famous died. It just came and went. About the only humor I can find in 1009 came at the expense of king of Sweden, Olof the Tax-king. That’s it. Guess there’s not much comedy documented from 1009 since they didn’t have tv. For that matter, they didn’t even have mass print. That’s right, no National Enquirer, New York Post, New York Times, you name it. Aliens simply didn’t abduct people much in 1009. If they did, no one really cared. Additionally, there were no books. Therefore, there was no reason to be abducted by aliens in the first place.
In the meantime, I’m not going to worry too much about things. I read this while checking out 1009:
The sun apparently greatly affected the climate in 1009. Imagine that.
Get the point? Humanity changed so much from 9-9-1009 to 9-9-2009 that anticipating 9-9-3009 seems absurd. So, I won’t. The Earth apparently hasn’t changed much at all. Therefore, I’ll just wait till this weekend and party like it’s the only 1-9-9-9 I’ll ever know.
And, then, start anxiously awaiting the first repetitive double-digit date in 992 years.
Waiting on the next Carrington Event?
The last couple of years have been pretty boring as far as sun gazing goes. I don’t do that, but I do enjoy following the numbers. Zero’s just aren’t all that exciting. In the meantime, our summers have been equally exciting, we’ve danced all over record lows here for a month, again, same as last year. No record highs were ever in peril. Today in my email I got an article from spaceweather.com about an event in 1859. An amateur sun watcher was watching the sun when it pretty much erupted directly at him. His recollection of the event is enjoyable to read. The event itself would be named after him, the Carrington Super Flare. What he saw was a brilliant flash that lasted only a few minutes. When it was gone, it didn’t come back. However, the next morning, the skies were lit with borealis all the way to South America:
Carrington Event
It knocked out telegraphs all over the planet. Lines and papers caught fire. It knocked out all communication for a couple of days. Back then, that was an inconvenience. Today, it would be catastrophic. Cell phones, GPS, television, even toilets would be affected. It would create an electronic mess that would take a year to fix, or more. The solar flare of 1989 created all kinds of problems.
Damage from the 1989 solar flare
That thing is nothing compared to Carrington. 1859 was a peak year from what had been a rather quiet period:
Sunspot cycles
The previous two cycles had been rather active. The cycle they were in, not so much. The cycle we’re in now, not so much either. In fact, practically non-existent. Atlantic tropical storms had also been somewhat unexciting:
1859 began a five year stretch that stayed rather busy ( given record keeping prior to 1901 ). Kinda like now. Our tropical storms have been rather unexciting the last couple of years. Additionally, there was a spike in temperatures the following twelve months. So, although the obvious occurs such as electrical disturbances, I just gotta wonder what the geophysical effects were. 1989 saw a massive solar flare that wreaked havoc all over the planet. It was tiny compared to Carrington. The solar flares generally run in eleven year cycles. The second complete cycle since 1989 would be 2011. I’ll be keeping an eye on the sun that year for sure.
First storm of 2009
The sun is at a solar minimum. Has been for a while. Last year we were expecting a few storms. Didn’t get any. Not that we got less than normal, we got zero. No one attributed that to anything in regards to the global warming issue. It’s still 100% man’s fault. However, today I read this in Livescience:
The sun kicked up a whopping storm Tuesday and more yesterday, as seen by the orbiting STEREO-B spacecraft. The activity is hidden from our terrestrial view, so scientists are eager for a better look. They think two sunspot regions are involved…..
One worry — not much of a worry, the experts say — is the potential for a Little Ice Age.
I had to look, of course. This is what it looks like:
OK, I gotta wonder the inverse here. If this solar activity might create a little ice age, then wouldn’t the lack thereof create a little hot age?