[Doly]

It will also destroy the credibility of climate change advocates whose claims of "man-made global warming" will become completely discredited

If climate change advocates lose credibility, it will be only because they have allowed people to believe that climate change means a steady rise in temperatures, which has never been the case.

The credibility of man-made global warming is pretty rock solid when you remember the foundation: you simply can't explain the current average temperature of the Earth without using the greenhouse effect from CO2 as an explanation. The calculation was done in the 19th century, well before anyone was thinking about global warming. The amount of CO2 has been rising, which is something that you can measure yourself if you want to (CO2 sensors are available for several industrial applications). Therefore, by simply plugging in numbers in a 19th-century formula, you would conclude that man-made global warming is a real thing.

The only issue is that, if you want to know the specifics for your location, you need to go into weather models and all that. But my point is, you don't need a weather model at all to know that man-made global warming is happening.

[theluckycountry]

Nice explanation Doly, but you left out the politics. If you are Republican you don't believe in it because the Republican party says it's all BS and their voters believe whatever they are told. Same for the other camp. There is a direct correlation, statistically far too strong for any other explanation.

[Doly]

Nice explanation Doly, but you left out the politics.

I left out the politics because climate change is about physics, and physics doesn't give a damn about politics. I do appreciate that religion... I mean, politics... likes to claim otherwise. Religion/politics likes to claim lots of things. Which is all right, as long as you don't start believing too hard in religion/politics.

As a fine example of what happens when you start believing your politicians too hard, look at Ukrainians right now. They obviously believed too hard in the wrong things: that either their country wasn't going to get invaded, or that if it did get invaded, it was going to get lots of help fast. And they're paying a hefty price for that mistake. And that's what happens when you make a mistake in judging other countries, and after all, it was an understandable mistake that may be corrected, if the people in other countries change their minds.

When you make a mistake about physics, physics can't change its mind. As I see it, if you have a suspicion that religion/politics is asking you to disbelieve physics, that's when you start assuming that all and every single institution in your society may fail soon. Like, not just Republicans, but the democratic system, the existence of the USA, the continuation of Western civilization. The whole lot. Why would you rely on any single one of them, let alone trust them? Disbelief in physics equals TEOTWAKI in my book, especially if the people that disbelieve physics publicly hold any significant amount of power.

I do appreciate that I have a minority view and lots of people think that you can have a party making these claims for decades and it isn't a reason to freak out and go prepper. Their choice. Time will tell who is right.

[Newfie]

You DO have a minority view, its not wrong but minority.

To wrao back to blaming R’s…… the D’s are just as ignorant and reactionary. They no more understand climate change than the R’s.

Say this because I my background is solidly D, supposedly CC supporters. However after endless hours of talking and discussing I find very few have a either a PHYSICS or a SYSTEMIC understanding of CC.

If I change my approach just a little and talk about something closely related, say ocean plastics, then the political/religious differences evaporate. Then you can no longer tell a D from an R.

D’s (the larger political movement) have spouted so much nonsense that the R’s don’t trust them. Nor should they.

BOTH sides have a political agenda they seek to push regardless of facts.

Dealing with Physics and Systems behavior is HAAARD!

And here we are.

I am sorry. SUN SPOTS???

[Doly]

D’s (the larger political movement) have spouted so much nonsense that the R’s don’t trust them. Nor should they.

I think the R's don't trust D's due to a long tradition, more than anything else.

Though, if by "nonsense" you mean that D's have been talking in very child-like language, with simple words and simple emotional appeals, I can see your point. I have a bit of a meme allergy to that sort of language myself, but I try to tolerate it because lots of people speak in simple words and don't know how to express themselves in any more sophisticated ways.

Who should the R's trust? That's a good question. Certainly not their leaders, they're lying to them. And their own judgement is dubious. Their best bet is probably to trust in very old traditions that have a long history of being useful, of the sort that existed before the current politics.

[Newfie]

I suggest that we talk to our neighbors and trust them.

I see little point in dealing with either of the political parties. Their entire reason for existing is to insure their further existence. That is a self serving system that does the country no good.

Maybe we will have a solar flare and that will disrupt things to such an extent we can get some fresh blood in office. I have no better plan. People seem intent upon arguing about which corrupt ruling class is less objectionable rather than to imagine a solution.

[Plantagenet]

Large coronal mass ejection from the sun should reach the earth tonight, centered on North America. Auroras may be visible unusually far south.

coronal-mass-ejection-detected-nasa-will-hit-earth-tonight

I take a late evening walk and check for the Aurora almost every night. The aurora is a H U G E feature......Up here in Alaska they appear directly overhead and reach tens of thousands of feet up into space. From the lower 48 they'll be visible along the northern horizon if this CME is as big as NASA thinks it is.


Hopefully tonight's aurora will be a good one.

Cheers!

[yellowcanoe]

I take a late evening walk and check for the Aurora almost every night. The aurora is a H U G E feature......Up here in Alaska they appear directly overhead and reach tens of thousands of feet up into space. From the lower 48 they'll be visible along the northern horizon if this CME is as big as NASA thinks it is.

Cheers!

The aurora is of course a far less frequent event for those of us living further south. One occurrence I remember happened while I was on a canoe trip in Algonquin Park. I got up in the middle of the night for a pee and noticed an unusual glow in the sky. We were camped on the north side of a lake so I realized there must a pretty good aurora display for me to be aware of it. I paddled out to get a view to the north and sure enough there was a great aurora display.

[Plantagenet]

There's been some incredible Auroras the last few days....apparently one sunspot is repeatedly launching CMEs at the earth just now.

We're starting into a new sunspot cycle and its looking like total sunspot numbers might be low but nonetheless this cycle might be an active one for coronal mass ejections and auroras.


Say Hello again to sunspots......They're starting to come back now!

Cheers!

[theluckycountry]

Nice explanation Doly, but you left out the politics.

I left out the politics because climate change is about physics, and physics doesn't give a damn about politics.

Quite true, but as far as action goes, politics is in the drivers seat so any discussion of mitigation etc is pointless unless that aspect is factored in. I still have lots of podcast from the 00's where the 'solutions' were thrashed out but it was all a waste of time since the world wasn't interested in solutions, just bigger SUV's and bigger houses. It's not just the leaders, the people themselves refuse to give up their lifestyles.

As a fine example of what happens when you start believing your politicians too hard, look at Ukrainians right now. They obviously believed too hard in the wrong things: that either their country wasn't going to get invaded, or that if it did get invaded, it was going to get lots of help fast.

Idiots! What else can you say. Did they learn nothing from Hitlers' European tour? How the west let him consume half of the eastern nations without lifting a finger? The west cares little for central Europe, sure they'd like it under their control, but they know their limitations. The supply lines are simply too long and Russia too close to risk any sort of intervention.

When you make a mistake about physics, physics can't change its mind. As I see it... Disbelief in physics equals TEOTWAKI in my book, especially if the people that disbelieve physics publicly hold any significant amount of power.

I do appreciate that I have a minority view and lots of people think that you can have a party making these claims for decades and it isn't a reason to freak out and go prepper. Their choice. Time will tell who is right.

I agree, we 'will' have TEOTWAWKI, nothing surer actually. The science on CO2 was tested and proven 100 years ago and ice cores attest to the fact that the planet turns into an oven when they get to the levels we have now reached. Thank God we'll be dead probably before the worst of it sets in, there is still a lot of ice to soak up the heat, just as the oceans have been sucking up the heat and the co2 thus far. Insane weather is the short-term major risk in my opinion. Super Hurricanes, biblical floods, out of control wildfire seasons. But we are already seeing this aren't we, and the captain of the Titanic is still asleep in his bed.

Location Location Location is the key. Far from the coast, from forests, from rivers.

[Plantagenet]

What else can you say. Did they learn nothing from Hitlers' European tour? How the west let him consume half of the eastern nations without lifting a finger?

Lets get our history right on this point----it wasn't just Hitler consuming eastern European countries.

Consider how WWII started......In 1939 Stalin and the Russians agreed to a non-aggression pact with Hitler and the Nazis. In a secret agreement made as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact....also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact----the Russians and germans secretly agreed to jointly invade Poland. The Germans invaded Poland from the west and then the Russians invaded Poland from the east. The German Army and the Red Army met in central Poland, and then Stalin and Hitler divided Poland between them. The joint invasion of Poland by the allied armies of the USSR and the Third Reich is what started WWII.


Hitler and Stalin joined forces to jointly invade Poland in 1939

Cheers!

[Newfie]

Location Location Location is the key. Far from the coast, from forests, from rivers.

We have invested in Maritime Canada as our location.

It is now cool and depopulating. Supposed to get warmer and wetter.

But quite close to the coast, surrounded by water which helps mitigate temperature extremes. And lots of trees to suck up pollutants and provide firewood.

[Tanada]

More text and a bunch of embedded pictures at link below the quote.

Solar cycle: What is it and why does it matter?

The solar cycle describes an approximately 11-year cycle of solar activity driven by the sun's magnetic field and indicated by the frequency and intensity of sunspots visible on the surface.

Solar cycles are repetitive yet difficult to predict. A cycle can be as short as eight years or as long as 14 years and varies dramatically in intensity. The current cycle — solar cycle 25 — began in December 2019, according to a solar cycle 25 article from NASA. Solar activity is expected to ramp up until the predicted solar maximum in 2025.

Heightened solar activity poses a risk to satellites, spacecraft and even spacewalking astronauts due to increased radiation exposure. On Earth, the large geomagnetic storms that solar activity triggers can interfere with high-frequency radio communications and Global Positioning Systems (GPS), according to NASA.

The solar cycle is driven by the sun's magnetic field, according to NASA Space Place. Every 11 years or so, the sun's magnetic field flips so north becomes south and south becomes north. Changes in the sun's magnetic field affect the amount of activity on the solar surface.

In a NASA statement, solar physicist Phil Scherrer of Stanford University describes what happens during the solar cycle. "The sun's polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero and then emerge again with the opposite polarity. This is a regular part of the solar cycle."

When the sun's magnetic poles flip, the effects ripple through the solar system since the heliosphere — the region of space that is influenced by the solar wind — extends billions of miles or kilometers beyond Pluto according to the statement. Planets without a protective magnetosphere such as Venus feel the full impact. In 2006 the sun ejected a small coronal mass ejection (CME) — a release of plasma and magnetic field — which hit Venus and stripped the planet's atmosphere of vast amounts of oxygen.

Earth's magnetic poles also flip, but the interval between the reversals is much longer, averaging about every 300,000 years according to NASA Climate. The last pole reversal happened about 780,000 years ago.

Sunspots are darker, cooler areas on the surface of the sun that arise due to disturbances in the sun's magnetic field. The total number of sunspots varies during the 11-year solar cycle, with the peak of sunspot activity coinciding with solar maximum and a sunspot hiatus coinciding with solar minimum, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The solar cycle is also sometimes referred to as the sunspot cycle.

During a solar cycle, the number of sunspots goes from low to high and then back down to low.

The position of sunspots also changes throughout the cycle. During solar maximum, sunspots are found along mid-latitudes (approximately 30 degrees north and 30 degrees south). Then, sunspots gradually move toward the equator, where they are located during solar minimum. Sometimes no sunspots are visible at all during solar minimum.

When the solar cycle is at peak activity — solar maximum — space weather can pose a risk to communications on Earth, satellites and even spacewalking astronauts.

One spectacular side-effect of increased solar activity during the solar cycle is increased opportunities to see auroras: the aurora borealis (northern lights) and its southern counterpart, the aurora australis. When the energetic particles from the sun slam into and interact with Earth's upper atmosphere, dazzling light shows illuminate the sky. The color of the aurora depends on what chemicals in Earth's atmosphere the particles hit. Red hues are produced from collisions with nitrogen molecules and green is produced by oxygen molecules.

Despite the vast amount of energy released from the sun during particularly active periods in its solar cycle, according to NASA, the sun's irradiance — the amount of electromagnetic radiation received from the sun in power per unit area — varies by up to 0.15% across the 11-year solar cycle. This change in irradiance is not large enough to cause any long-term changes to Earth's climate.

Space.com

[Doly]

Quite true, but as far as action goes, politics is in the drivers seat so any discussion of mitigation etc is pointless unless that aspect is factored in.

And since politics is dysfunctional in a lot of countries these days, it's safe to assume that no action will happen till people are forced by circumstances.

It's not just the leaders, the people themselves refuse to give up their lifestyles.

I know. Hey, even most "green" people refuse to give up flying.

The west cares little for central Europe, sure they'd like it under their control, but they know their limitations. The supply lines are simply too long and Russia too close to risk any sort of intervention.

You wish. The way things are looking right now, the West is getting more and more involved. I think there are good chances of direct intervention sometime later this year.

Thank God we'll be dead probably before the worst of it sets in

We'll be dead, but our younger relatives may be alive.

Location Location Location is the key. Far from the coast, from forests, from rivers.

It isn't just those basics. What sort of country do you go to? You need some confidence that the place can grow enough food, that there is enough basic industry, that the authorities aren't going to make a much bigger mess of things when things start going wrong.

[Subjectivist]

www.phys.org
Researchers reveal hemispheric asymmetry of long-term sunspot activity
Li Yuan

Ph.D. candidate Zhang Xiaojuan and Prof. Deng Linhua from Yunnan Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences investigated the temporal variation of the hemispheric distribution of long-term sunspot activity during the time interval from 1939 to 2019.

This work was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Solar sunspots are the most easily visible structures in the photosphere. They are connected to most activity phenomena, such as filaments, flares and coronal mass ejections. Sunspot relative numbers are the measure of the global magnetic activity.

According to the latest dynamo theories, solar activity is not identical in the two hemispheres, i.e., there is always a hemispheric asymmetry. The hemispheric asymmetry is not an artifact of inaccurate or noisy observations, but a real feature of the solar cycle.

Studies of the temporal evolution of the solar cycles in the two separate hemispheres can provide important information for the dynamo process underlying this evolution.

In this study, the researchers investigated the temporal and spatial behaviors of the hemispheric asymmetry of sunspot relative numbers covering eight solar cycles (from March 1939 to November 2019). The solar data used in this study is a new sunspot database, which is obtained from the Mitaka observatory of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ/Mitaka).

According to the cross-correlation analysis, the researchers found that the NAOJ/Mitaka sunspot relative numbers were highly correlated with the international sunspot numbers obtained from the World Data Center Sunspot Index and Long-term Solar Observations, which confirmed that the Mitaka sunspot time series could be used for hemispheric variation study.

Furthermore, for the temporal analysis, there are enhanced powers in the period ranges of quasi-biennial oscillations, around nine years, between 30 and 50 years. The analysis results reveal a possible mechanism responsible for the generation and variation of the hemispheric coupling in the sun.

More information: X J Zhang et al, Hemispheric asymmetry of long-term sunspot activity: Sunspot relative numbers for 1939-2019, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2022). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stac1231

Citation: Researchers reveal hemispheric asymmetry of long-term sunspot activity (2022, May 24) retrieved 27 May 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-05-reveal-he ... nspot.html

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