THE NEXT ICE AGE - NOW!

Sunspots: We really don’t know
what's going to happen, says solar physicist
______________________________

30 Aug 08 – Excerpts from an interview with NASA astrophysicist David Hathaway by Linda Moulton Howe: "Still No Sunspot Action on the Sun."

Hathaway: "...There has not been a spot on the sun for at least a month and this is about the third rotation of the sun this cycle where we have not seen any sunspots at all.”  

Maunder Minimum anomaly had few sunspots between 1645 and 1715, a period that overlapped with the Little Ice Age. Solar cycles since then (blue) have been rising in intensity. The four greatest solar maximums in sunspot and flare numbers have occurred in the last fifty years. Graph courtesy Hathaway/NASA.

Hathaway: "It is suggesting that the next cycle 24 might be a small cycle - much to my consternation! - since I’ve been predicting a big cycle.

Hathaway: "But the fact that it’s taking this long to get started and that it’s starting out so slowly are hallmark signs of a small solar cycle..."

Howe: Any Link Between Sunspot Activity and Earth's Temperature?

Hathaway: As far as years without sunspots, we had the Maunder Minimum when we went nearly 70 years without sunspots from 1645 to 1715, the Little Ice Age.

Hathaway: But again, the direct heating from the brightness of the sun is only about one-tenth of one percent, so it’s a small change.

Howe: Right now, you really don’t know what is going to happen?

Hathaway: Yes, I think that is a correct assessment. … There still are aspects of the sun that we thought we understood, but further evidence and modeling are showing us we still have a lot to learn here.

           No link between sunspot activity and Earth’s temperature? C’mon.
           As you already know if you’ve read Not by Fire but by Ice, I think
           magnetic forces – both on the earth and on the sun – affect tectonic
           activity on earth.

          The lack of sunspots may not directly affect earthly temperatures all
           that much, but if underwater volcanic activity continues to increase,
           thereby pumping evermore moisture into the skies, and if above-water
           volcanic activity continues to increase, thereby pumping evermore ash
           into the skies, then we have a problem. Warmer waters and cooler
           skies: A deadly combination. That’s how ice ages begin. Not because
           it’s all that much colder, but because we get more precipitation in the
           winter.  

Solar physicist David Hathaway, Ph.D., Solar Physics Team Leader, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, received his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado - Boulder in 1979.

See entire interview by Linda Moulton Howe
http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1465&category=Science
Thanks to John Sumption for this link