re: #331 avanti

Not sun spots, nor climate change just a Alberta Clipper bringing in cold weather to part of the country. Sun spots don’t just pick of the US to effect.

Thats right. The whole planet feels it.

Space scientists are scratching their heads, trying to explain why the sun remains eerily quiet despite being at a time when sunspots should be becoming more frequent.

The sun passed the low point of its 11-year cycle of sunspot activity last year.

The first sunspot of the new cycle was spotted in January, but solar observers say our star has been almost free of such activity since then.

(View large close-up image of the Sun from Friday, June 13, showing the solar surface continues to be mainly free of sunspots.)

“It continues to be dead,” said Saku Tsuneta with Japan’s National Astronomical Observatory while attending a solar conference in Montana.

Scientists there said they don’t believe the lack of sunspots means that an event known as the Maunder Minimum is beginning.

That phenomenon produced a lack of sunspots for 50 years in the 17th century, resulting in what is referred to as the “Little Ice Age.”

Periods of inactivity are normal for the sun, but the current spot-free period has gone on much longer than usual.

This cycle is just simply “off to a slow start,” said NASA solar physicist David Hathaway.

But another solar scientist, Oleg Sorokhtin, of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, believes the solar drought is an indication that Earth will ender a period of cooling.

He makes that prediction based on past trends and early records. Sorokhtin points out that whatever influences human activity is having on the climate is a “drop in the bucket” compared to the rapid cooling that could occur due to an inactive solar period.