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NASA Scientist Reverses Sunspot Prediction, Bolstering Global Cooling Theory
Friday, 17 June 2011 09:25 Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post
Today, Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center, believes his earlier prediction was wrong. Rather than hitting a peak of 160 sunspots, and possibly 185, as he predicted in 2006, he now believes that the Suns activity will decline dramatically. The current prediction, to less than half that of 2006, would make this the smallest sunspot cycle in over 100 years, he now states.
All this comes amid a flurry of other reports, including from scientists at the U.S. National Solar Observatory (NSO) and U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, indicating that global cooling, and perhaps even a new Little Ice Age, is on its way.
We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now, but we see no sign of it, states Frank Hill of the U.S. National Solar Observatory, who recently co-authored another paper in the field. This indicates that the start of Cycle 25 may be delayed to 2021 or 2022, or may not happen at all.
The upshot is chilling: If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum well see for a few decades, Hill states. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earths climate.
The notion of another Little Ice Age, as happened in the last half of the 1600s, is no longer dismissed. Asks the National Solar Observatory: An immediate question is whether this slowdown presages a second Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period with virtually no sunspots [which occurred] during 1645-1715.
Friday, 17 June 2011 09:25 Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post
Today, Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center, believes his earlier prediction was wrong. Rather than hitting a peak of 160 sunspots, and possibly 185, as he predicted in 2006, he now believes that the Suns activity will decline dramatically. The current prediction, to less than half that of 2006, would make this the smallest sunspot cycle in over 100 years, he now states.
All this comes amid a flurry of other reports, including from scientists at the U.S. National Solar Observatory (NSO) and U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, indicating that global cooling, and perhaps even a new Little Ice Age, is on its way.
We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now, but we see no sign of it, states Frank Hill of the U.S. National Solar Observatory, who recently co-authored another paper in the field. This indicates that the start of Cycle 25 may be delayed to 2021 or 2022, or may not happen at all.
The upshot is chilling: If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum well see for a few decades, Hill states. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earths climate.
The notion of another Little Ice Age, as happened in the last half of the 1600s, is no longer dismissed. Asks the National Solar Observatory: An immediate question is whether this slowdown presages a second Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period with virtually no sunspots [which occurred] during 1645-1715.