The missing sunspots: Is this the big chill?
Scientists are baffled by what they’re seeing on the Sun’s surface – nothing at all. And this lack of activity could have a major impact on global warming. David Whitehouse investigates
Monday, 27 April 2009
![The disappearance of sunspots happens every few years, but this time it's gone on far longer than anyone expected - and there is no sign of the Sun waking up](http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00167/06-sci_167838t.jpg)
AFP
The disappearance of sunspots happens every few years, but this time it's gone on far longer than anyone expected - and there is no sign of the Sun waking up
Could the Sun play a greater role in recent climate change than has been believed? Climatologists had dismissed the idea and some solar scientists have been reticent about it because of its connections with those who those who deny climate change. But now the speculation has grown louder because of what is happening to our Sun. No living scientist has seen it behave this way. There are no sunspots.
The disappearance of sunspots happens every few years, but this time it’s gone on far longer than anyone expected – and there is no sign of the Sun waking up. “This is the lowest we’ve ever seen. We thought we’d be out of it by now, but we’re not,” says Marc Hairston of the University of Texas. And it’s not just the sunspots that are causing concern. There is also the so-called solar wind – streams of particles the Sun pours out – that is at its weakest since records began. In addition, the Sun’s magnetic axis is tilted to an unusual degree. “This is the quietest Sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” says NASA solar scientist David Hathaway. But this is not just a scientific curiosity. It could affect everyone on Earth and force what for many is the unthinkable: a reappraisal of the science behind recent global warming.
Our Sun is the primary force of the Earth’s climate system, driving atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. It lies behind every aspect of the Earth’s climate and is, of course, a key component of the greenhouse effect. But there is another factor to be considered. When the Sun has gone quiet like this before, it coincided with the earth cooling slightly and there is speculation that a similar thing could happen now. If so, it could alter all our predictions of climate change, and show that our understanding of climate change might not be anywhere near as good as we thought.
Sunspots are dark, cooler patches on the Sun’s surface that come and go in a roughly 11-year cycle, first noticed in 1843. They have gone away before. They were absent in the 17th century – a period called the “Maunder Minimum” after the scientist who spotted it. Crucially, it has been observed that the periods when the Sun’s activity is high and low are related to warm and cool climatic periods. The weak Sun in the 17th century coincided with the so-called Little Ice Age. The Sun took a dip between 1790 and 1830 and the earth also cooled a little. It was weak during the cold Iron Age, and active during the warm Bronze Age. Recent research suggests that in the past 12,000 years there have been 27 grand minima and 19 grand maxima.
Throughout the 20th century the Sun was unusually active, peaking in the 1950s and the late 1980s. Dean Pensell of NASA, says that, “since the Space Age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high. Five of the ten most intense solar cycles on record have occurred in the last 50 years.” The Sun became increasingly active at the same time that the Earth warmed. But according to the scientific consensus, the Sun has had only a minor recent effect on climate change.
Many scientists believe that the Sun was the major player on the Earth’s climate until the past few decades, when the greenhouse effect from increasing levels of carbon dioxide overwhelmed it.
Computer models suggest that of the 0.5C increase in global average temperatures over the past 30 years, only 10-20 per cent of the temperature variations observed were down to the Sun, although some said it was 50 per cent.
But around the turn of the century things started to change. Within a few years of the Sun’s activity starting to decline, the rise in the Earth’s temperature began to slow and has now been constant since the turn of the century. This was at the same time that the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide carried on rising. So, is the Sun’s quietness responsible for the tail-off in global warming and if not, what is?
There are some clues as to what’s going on. Although at solar maxima there are more sunspots on the Sun’s surface, their dimming effect is more than offset by the appearance of bright patches on the Sun’s disc called faculae – Italian for “little torches”. Overall, during an 11-year solar cycle the Sun’s output changes by only 0.1 per cent, an amount considered by many to be too small a variation to change much on earth. But there is another way of looking it. While this 0.1 per cent variation is small as a percentage, in terms of absolute energy levels it is enormous, amounting to a highly significant 1.3 Watts of energy per square metre at the Earth. This means that during the solar cycle’s rising phase from solar minima to maxima, the Sun’s increasing brightness has the same climate-forcing effect as that from increasing atmospheric greenhouse gasses. There is recent research suggesting that solar variability can have a very strong regional climatic influence on Earth – in fact stronger than any man-made greenhouse effect across vast swathes of the Earth. And that could rewrite the rules.
No one knows what will happen or how it will effect our understanding of climate change on Earth. If the Earth cools under a quiet Sun, then it may be an indication that the increase in the Sun’s activity since the Little Ice Age has been the dominant factor in global temperature rises. That would also mean that we have overestimated the sensitivity of the Earth’s atmosphere to an increase of carbon dioxide from the pre-industrial three parts per 10,000 by volume to today’s four parts per 10,000. Or the sun could compete with global warming, holding it back for a while. For now, all scientists can do, along with the rest of us, is to watch and wait.
Dr David Whitehouse is author of ‘The Sun: A Biography’ (John Wiley)
The Sun explained...
Core The energy of the Sun comes from nuclear fusion reactions that occur deep inside the core
Radiative zone The area that surrounds the core. Energy travels through it by radiation
Convective zone This zone extends from the radiative zone to the Sun’s surface. It consists of “boiling” convection cells
Photosphere The top layer of the Sun. It is this that we see when we look at the Sun in natural light
Filament A strand of solar plasma held up by the Sun’s magnetic field that can be seen against its surface
Chromosphere A layer of the Sun’s atmosphere above the photosphere, around 2000km deep
![LiveJournal](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/independent/poweredby-comments.jpg)
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP logged and may be used to prevent further submission. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by the Independent Minds Terms of Service.
- Print Article
- Email Article
-
Click here for copyright permissions
Copyright 2009 Independent News and Media Limited
Comments
Why would you draw this as a inference, given that the last decade has seen most of recorded history's warmest years?
Things should have been below the long term average if solar activity was playing a big role.
The last year or so has been a little cooler than of late thanks to La Nina but still well above the long term average.
You seem to be encouraging readers to take a sceptical view of global warming without explaining why.
It is obvious from all the global temperature datasets that the worlds annual temperature hasn't increased since 2001 - so although we live in a warmer decade than of late and the warmest years are within it - there has been no increase in global temperatures recently. It certainly isn't the same as the 1980 - 98 period when we saw relatively rapid warming. Something has changed in the past ten years.
This is a brilliant article - lots of good science and the latest research that points to awkward questions for those who take a too simplistic view of 'global warming'
well done Independent. At last good 'science' writing about climate change..
If that is the case, why does NASA declare 2005 to be the warmest year ever?
From the VASA website:
The year 2005 was the warmest year in over a century, according to NASA scientists studying temperature data from around the world.
Image to right: 2005 was the warmest year since the late 1800s, according to NASA scientists. 1998, 2002 and 2003 and 2004 followed as the next four warmest years. Credit: NASA
Climatologists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City noted that the highest global annual average surface temperature in more than a century was recorded in their analysis for the 2005 calendar year.
Some other research groups that study climate change rank 2005 as the second warmest year, based on comparisons through November. The primary difference among the analyses, according to the NASA scientists, is the inclusion of the Arctic in the NASA analysis. Although there are few weather stations in the Arctic, the available data indicate that 2005 was unusually warm in the Arctic.
Just how embarrassing it would be to find that the guilt that is being laid on us has all been a mistake.
Economists have been shown not to understand their data. I don't feel it is beyond belief to find that scientists and politicians might have made similar misjudgements.
you might be right - but this is science not guilt - there is no alternative to finding out exactly what is going on. If we do not then we will end up deeper in the you know what that you think we already are. Saying that the science doesn't matter because we have to act now, in case its too late when we really know, is a recipe for catastrophe.
There is no alternative to finding out EXACTLY what is happening.
Excellent article.
Perhaps I should expand on my point a little. I agree entirely that we should find out exactly what is happening with the aid of comprehensive and accurate science. To deny that would be strangely naive. My point was, not that we should act without evidence, but that increasing global temperatures are only part of a larger environmental picture.
The assertion made on the post previous to mine, was that our guilt for causing environmental problems could somehow be lifted if it turns out the Sun is responsible for global warming, and not the huge levels of man-made pollution now popularly believed to be the cause. Presumably then, guilt free, we could go on polluting at will, safe in the knowledge that it was the Sun after all.
My counter point was that, to do so, would be taking a very narrow perspective of the impact of human activity on the environment, and that the processes now being put in place to minimise global warming are equally as relevant to all the other environmental impacts we as humans are making. Global warming is one part of a wider environmental picture, of which the guilt of humanity must be concerned with. So the Sun ends up causing the melting of the polar ice caps and changing weather systems. The Sun doesn't pour toxic chemicals into river systems, deplete fish stocks, cut down rain forests, spray DDT, et cetera, all of which are things we should feel guilty about. From a 'scientific' perspective, relieving ourselves of guilt, would be like coming to a conclusion on our environmental impact without considering any other variables. I'm sure that would not be acceptable to you as a rational 'scientifically-minded' person.
In the end, it is science that people choose to ignore when they damage the environment. It may indeed prove to be embarrassing to some if they are wrong about the causes of global warming, but guilt relieving it will not be.
Oh dear, now we will be hearing endless trumpeting from the gas-guzzling crowd & like spoilers who deny that humanity's activities play any part in the downgrading of the planetary environment. It might well transpire that estimates of human impact upon environment will have to be modified, maybe even changed completely, but such revision hardly absolves us of responsibility for the planet & its environment. In any event we will have to radically re-think our relationship to the planet; the waste & destruction, thoughtless pollution & governmental indifference to agricultural & industrial miscreance are all matters that will have to be addressed with more determination & urgency than has seemed apparent heretofore. Sunspots - or the lack of them - are not a new reason for idle complacency.
You are advocating the very things you are complaining about. People ran off and released huge amounts of CO2, a massive change in behavior, without understanding the consequences. So your solution is to run off and make more big changes in behavior without understanding the consequences?
How about we learn our lesson and learn what the effects are going to be *before* we do things that might cause harm from now on?
Periods of low sunspot activity have not been positive for financial markets or economic progress. Lindsay also predicted the breakup of the Soviet Union 200 years before it happened and said that the next major military conflict (war) would be between China and Russia. Interesting.
I agree that we need to change our lifestyles and stop dirtying up the planet but a lot of factions out there are looking at this as a means to tax us, or make money for themselves when it can still be down to partial natural causes.
This planet has been there before, even Ozone depletion has occurred before due to monstrous pollution when the earth had greater seismic and volcanic activity, an active pluming volcano can cause a lot more pollution than most people think and the earth healed itself given time.
I think the sun blows a safety valve which we have witnessed in the last decades as it got hotter, it gets to a peak then cools off somewhat.
IT IS REFUTABLE... you are just accepting what you are told without investigation. Climate Change due to greenhouse gasses is a mere theory that has NOT been proven. The fascists have declared the debate is OVER for Global Warming, so people like you can sit back and admire the Emperors New Clothes and ignore the massive pile of evidence that contradicts all the 'facts'.
To all sheep out there... How will increases in taxes cool the Earth down?
Most inconvenient when facts get in the way of PC isn't it ?
Maybe some common sense will start to now be evident instead of the lemming like chorus we've been hearing from Gore etc.
Revelations 16:8 "And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire."
16:9 "And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory."
Which makes as much sense as the climate change disciples of The Goracle dismissing Solar influence, the earths albedo, the provable minimal impact of CO2 v H2O as a greenhouse gasses and other actual science. Of course now the politicians of the major economies sniff a new tax miracle, a tax with the amazing property that an increase is good, a tax that will have the taxpayers celebrating each increase as 'good for the planet' one can be assured of a river of gold for the global warming 'science' community and their clergy.
This is not to say we should continue to use our precious irreplacable and extraordinarily thin layer of atmosphere as a sewer for the waste of energy production; it is simply to say the simplistic preachings of the global warming evangelists and their mindless incantations should be held in the contempt due any false prophet.
Russian scientists predict a mini ice age starting in 2010 to 2012 lasting past 2050. Are they wrong? They base their hypothesis on theory that can be verified. I have yet to see a theory of climate change that I can judge and test. Even the so-called "computer models" are not available for inspection. Why? Because someone might see the errors and bugs in them.
Science ignores the wild-eyed cult members who scream their religious dogma at us. Just as Galileo did when he was urged to recant his scientific theories during the Inquisition.
Deary me, what are we to think now. I see articles of faith being heaved overboard, carbon dispensations suddenly worthless, the hymn book of doom sounding tuneless and the anger of the tribes rising as the high priests descend from the mountain having spoken to the computer (Deep Thought?) and deliver ten commandments of which only two are possibly right.
If it looks like denialism, and quacks like denialism, it usually is denialism, no matter how mildly it appears to be expressed (http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/C
Sunspots are darker than the uniform surface of the sun, so aren't they therefore cooler areas? It would seem logical that more sunspots would result in an overall slightly cooler sun. If not, can someone who really knows explain why?
One correction: "Faculae" isn't an Italian word, it's Latin.
Although at solar maxima there are more sunspots on the Sun s surface, their dimming effect is more than offset by the appearance of bright patches on the Sun s disc called faculae - Italian for little torches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way
sun's distance to galactic centre 26,000 +/- 1,400 light-years
- would take light ~ 26,000 years to travel from sun -> galactic centre
[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession
In astronomy, precession refers to a gravity-induced slow but continuous change in an astronomical body's rotational axis or orbital path. In particular, it refers to the gradual shift in the orientation of the Earth's axis of rotation, which, like a wobbling top, traces out a conical shape in a cycle of approximately 26,000 years.
- takes ~ 26,000 years for a precessionary cycle to complete.
[3]
... ... and evidence of religious relics and altars date back no earlier than 25,000 years.
speciation of man (with mind) ~ 26,000 years ago.
~*~
... ... ... more to follow.
:-)
(having a bad unicode moment)
It is odd how so many people blithely accept predictions on climate change that are ten, twenty, or one hundred years ahead. Yet readily and sensibly question the economic and social predictions of the same politicians no more than five years ahead.
The greatest danger we face, is probably from humanity's well known ability to make a hash of things. After a thousand years of warfare culminating in two world wars within half a century, why oh why do we suddenly believe we are collectively an enlightened species with the planet's best interests at heart?
There is nothing in human history that should convince anyone that we are capable of such unity of purpose.
Those people who do believe in such a thing, are indulging in self-deception and wishful thinking, just as it is fanciful that the world should be run by a council of wise elders, church leaders and politicians. This last bit isn't my idea, it is actually a Tony Blair proposal, thankfully long forgotten.
1. More greenhouse gasses trap more heat. This is known since Arrhenius' paper in 1896, and confirmed by all physical and climatological evidence after.
2. Less sunspots may mean a cooler earth.
So, a cooler sun might counteract the increasing greenhouse effect for a while. However, as soon as the sunspots reappear, global warming would return with a vengeance. Taking these observations as a reason to stop combating greenhouse gas emissions is a very risky bet on the idea that the sunspots will stay away forever (or at least as long as politicians are in office).
Most people reading this report will conclude that global warming is now less of a threat because the Sun's activity is more significant than many climatoligists had thought, but the Sun's activity is roughly cyclic and the underlying trend due to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will dominate in the longer term. If the Sun's cooling persists much longer we will be lulled into a false sense of security that could ultimately be our downfall.
If you just want to wallow in your own prejudice, why do you bother reading at all?
Among items on sunspots etc. you will see graphs e.g. of polar ice coverage, from sattelite data. Guess what - ice coverage is now at a *maximum*, not the minimum you hear about from those with an agenda.
Also, the Sun's change in % terms might be small, but then so is CO2's contribution - 95% of the global warming effect is from water vapour - over which we have no control - and of the remaining 5% the majority comes from natural sources, again something we have no control over.
The Maunder minimum, or little ice age, lasted well over a century.
What we are excellent at is being reactive, so when something happens we not only see stories of how individuals overcame adversity but also tales of how people helped each other during testing times. Unfortunately there isnt a single arguement in the world that is going to shift that way of thinking, and that is not saying that nobody cares about what happens to the earth but rather that is how we function as a species. Everything in the developed world is dependent on being able to travel long distances quickly (lots of shops and supermarkets are built miles away from town centres). People are encouraged to go see the world for themselves, and that means catching planes. Who is going to be able to prevent this from continuing by decreeing that people in general should stay in their locality? Major alterations in behaviour only happen as a reaction.
Fred Bear