Articles Tagged "Solar News"

As the sun's energy rises and falls, so goes the Earth's atmosphere, a new study suggests.

These fluctuations in the sun's energy explain a recent partial collapse of the Earth's upper atmosphere, which had previously puzzled scientists.

A sharp drop in the sun's ultraviolet radiation levels triggered the collapse, according to the new study, detailed in the Aug. 25 edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The researchers also found that the sun's magnetic cycle, which produces differing numbers of sunspots over an approximately 11-year cycle, may vary more than previously thought.

"Our work demonstrates that the solar cycle not only varies on the typical 11-year time scale, but also can vary from one solar minimum to another," said study team member Stanley Solomon of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. "All solar minima are not equal."

The findings may have implications for orbiting satellites, as well as for the International Space Station.

Last month we listened to Donald Coxe's weekly presentation to institutional investors. Coxe is the Chairman and Chief Strategist of Harris Investment Management. He has been a bull on the commodity markets for some time now and has correctly pointed out numerous investment opportunities in the energy, metals, and grain markets.

We were surprised when he mentioned the historical nature of the solar cycle and its' potential impact on global weather patterns and the agricultural sector. Most of the time Coxe he restricts himself to ‘worldly' indicators of supply and demand. Apparently an article on the subject recently appeared in Investor's Business Daily.

Since the performance of so much of our portfolio is driven by the weather – especially companies in the energy and agricultural sectors – and since Coxe notes the current sunspot cycle may point to lower global temperatures, we decided to examine the issue. Other long term forecasters we follow have not raised the issue to date.

Image Via Google Books

The 56 year cycle mentioned yesterday (“Periods When to Make Money” (© 1883) was picked up by FT Alphaville; we hear it caused some “consternation” in certain circles where the marinating of ice cubes takes place.

I find these approaches quite fascinating, if for no other reason than I consider myself a student of market history. (Whether it is an actionable thesis is an entirely different question). For those of you who are also interested in such things, let’s explore this periodicity, better known as the Benner Cycle.

Getting more accurate forecasts about space weather may not help you decide whether to water your garden, but it could soon clue you in better to when events in the solar system may be putting a damper on your electronic activities.

Johns Hopkins University, Boeing, and Iridium Communications announced on Wednesday that they have launched a new space-based service that they say will help scientists monitor magnetic storms around Earth.

Dubbed the Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment (AMPERE), the system utilizes commercial satellites orbiting Earth to take magnetic-field measurements in real time. The result is output that gets scientists one step closer to accurate, year-round tracking of space weather and the effects it can have on the planet, including disruptions to telecommunications service and the electrical power grid.

"Solar storms can disrupt satellite service and damage telecommunications networks, cause power grid blackouts and even endanger high-altitude aircraft," Brian J. Anderson, principal investigator at Johns Hopkins, said in a statement. "The next wave of solar storms will occur over the next three to five years and recent solar activity is just the beginning of a long, stormy space weather season."

A team of researchers led by Mausumi Dikpati from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Roger Ulrich from the University of California, Los Angeles have suggested a cause for the unusually long lull in solar activity in the last decade.

Our Sun is constantly changing, differing in the number of sunspots and solar flares over an 11 year cycle. The changes in the level of the activity of the Sun can have wide ranging effects here on Earth, such as communication satellite blackouts and power grid failures.

The conveyor belt plasma flow in the Sun. Image: NASA.

The last solar cycle (cycle 23) ending in 2008 was very different to its predecessors, with a minimum in solar activity which was both less active and longer in duration than previous cycles. Ulrich and his colleagues suggest, in a paper featuring in the journal Geophysical Research Letters on 30 July, that the extended minimum in solar activity may be caused by a change in the flow of the Sun’s plasma. The surface of the Sun is constantly changing as layers of hot plasma move along the surface towards the poles and then back down towards the equator, in what scientists call the “conveyor belt”. Ulrich found that the currents carrying this plasma were flowing much closer to the poles than has been observed in previous solar cycles. The increase in the size of the current, and the slower return of the matter to the equator could cause the observed longer period of minimum activity.

To explain this Dikpati and her colleagues modelled how the conveyor belt may affect the length of the solar cycle. Modelling magnetic fields in the Sun’s interior, the authors have found that the extended plasma flow towards the poles could cause the lengthening of the solar cycle. Dikpati says “the key for explaining the long duration of [the previous cycle] with our dynamo model is the observation of an unusually long conveyor belt”. The team were able to use their model to predict that the last solar cycle would be longer than expected back in 2004.

With changes in the Sun's activity affecting navigation and communication technology on Earth, it is important that we are able to make predictions about the solar cycles. According to Ulrich “This study highlights the importance of monitoring and improving measurement of the Sun’s circulation,” adding “in order to improve predictions of the solar cycle, we need a strong effort to understand large-scale patterns of solar plasma motion.”