Odd Sunspot behavior

It's fairly well understood that solar cycles have some impact upon global temperatures, although how much is a matter of some contention. The little Ice Age indicates it is possible there can be considerable impact as this period coincided with the Maunder Minimum, a period of extremely low sunspot activity. Currently, we see sunspot activity similar to that seen during the Maunder Minimum, but while the Maunder Minimum lasted from 1645 to 1710, so far we have only seen corresponding low activity from 2007 to the present.

Interestingly enough, sunspots form when the sun is more active. The more sunspots there are, the more active the sun is. Typically the sun cycles from many sunspots to just a few and back to many every 11 years or so.

Since my tax dollars pay for some fairly sophisticated gear that observes the sun, I like to track the numbers of sunspots every few days. If you are interested, you can view historical information along with current info and predictions from NOAA here, updated weekly around Wednesday. For a real time view, you can visit spaceweather.com and see an image of the sun with the sunspots listed. There have been zero most of the days I've checked for the past several months.

While examining the NOAA data, I noticed something interesting. There is a note at the bottom of page 6 from PRF 1717 from July 29th 2008 that contains this line. RI represents a standard method for measuring the number of sunspots.

"The lowest smoothed sunspot index number for Cycle 22, RI = 8.0, occurred in May 1996. The highest smoothed sunspot number for Cycle 23, RI= 120.8, occurred April 2000."

We are currently at the end of Cycle 23, waiting for Cycle 24 to begin and it is taking its time.
This note tells us a couple things. The first is that the lowest sunspot value detected at the transition from cycle 22 to 23 was 8.0, averaged over a month in May of 1996. Adding our 11 year cycle to this we should have cycle 24 beginning around May of 2007. However, since May of 2007, we have had 9 months with average monthly sunspot values below 8. Not only that, but the last 3 months have been 2.9, 2.9, and 3.1 respectively. So we're currently at less than half the minimum from the previous cycle with little change in sight.

As I'm sure you have noticed, this year has been unusually cooler than in years past. I've heard reports of a hard winter in China, we had much more snow than normal in South Idaho, a friend of mine returned from fishing in Alaska reporting colder than normal temperatures and haying season is about 2 weeks behind previous years. It seems possible it is due to the fact that the sun is counteracting a period of increased activity over the past several cycles (1950's -2000) with reduced activity now. How long it will last is anyone's guess, but if we continue with these very low sunspot numbers we'll be heading for much cooler temperatures which will make us wish Global Warming was really happening and that it was caused by humans. If we could just keep the Greenies from destroying the world's economy in the meantime, we could prepare for the coming time of cooling by storing wheat and other kinds of food on a global scale, but I don't see that happening.

We're going to look back on this and wonder how we could have been so stupid as to listen to the liberal media. With their encouragement we are running cars on food and trying to solve a nonexistent problem some think is caused by CO2. I can only pray that our nation will turn back to God and learn how to distinguish truth from fiction.

God's creation is absolutely amazing and no matter how advanced we become, we will always be able to learn more about how it works. We should not make assumptions based upon a faulty understanding of creation. As a nation, let's trade our belief in the religion of Global Warming and worship of the environment for belief in Jesus. We would be much better off in both the short and long run.