WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SUNSPOT CYCLE 24?

Arizona Daily Star, 19 May 2008
http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/239625

By Dan Sorenson

Many solar scientists expected the new sunspot cycle to be a whopper, a
prolonged solar tantrum that could fry satellites and raise hell with earthly
communications, the power grid and modern electronics.

But there's scant proof Sunspot Cycle 24 is even here, let alone the debut of
big trouble.

So far there have been just a couple minor zits on the face of the sun to
suggest the old cycle is over and the new one is coming.

The roughly 11-year cycle of sunspot activity should have bottomed out last
year, the end of Cycle 23 and the beginning of Cycle 24. That would have put the
peak in new sunspot activity around 2012.

But a dud sunspot cycle would not necessarily make it a boring period,
especially for two solar scientists with the Tucson-based National Solar
Observatory.

Two years ago, William Livingston and Matt Penn wrote a paper for the journal
Science predicting that this could not only be a dud sunspot cycle, but the
start of another extended down period in solar activity. It was based on their
analysis of weakening sunspot intensity and said sunspots might vanish by 2015.

And here's the punch line: That last long-term down period, 1645-1715, coincided
with the Little Ice Age, a period of bitter cold winters.

That kind of talk could ruffle some feathers in this time of climate change and
global warming, starring man-made carbon dioxide as the devil.
The paper, rejected in peer review, was never published by Science. Livingston
said he's OK with the rejection.

"I accept what the reviewers said," Livingston said. "'If you are going to make
such statement, you had better have strong evidence."

Livingston said their projections were based on observations of a trend in
decreasingly powerful sunspots but reviewers felt it was merely a statistical
argument.

He is aware that some opponents of the prevailing position that climate change
and global warming are the result of manmade activity — greenhouse gas,
specifically carbon dioxide, buildup — are very much interested in the idea
that changes might be related to solar activity.

"But it has not been proven yet," cautioned Livingston, an astronomer emeritus
who still works out of an office at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory
headquarters building on the University of Arizona campus.

"We may have to wait. We may be wrong. (But) the sun is going to entertain us
one way or another," he said.

It's not just a scientific curiosity. There's a lot at stake in predicting
whether sunspot cycles are going to be tame or wild, said Matt Penn of the
National Solar Observatory.

The powerful blasts of radiation that come from solar activity can fry
electronic equipment on Earth; particularly vulnerable are satellites.

FULL STORY at http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/239625