The woman who wrote this article has exhibited the absolute WORST kind of journalism....not doing her homework.
She is taking someone's quote and ASSUMED that the 11 year Sunspot Cycle works on some sort of solar alarm clock and exact every cycle. Yeah, she noted the 50 year "Maunder Minimum" (Mini-Ice Age) in the 1600's. Tree ring research indicated this sort of thing happens 10,000 to 15,000 years or so.
But all radio amateurs know (because it's in the study materials and sometimes on the exams) that sunspot cycles can be as short as 9 years and can even go 13 to 14 years, but 11 is the "average". A sunspot "minima" usually heralds the end of a cycle, and we've had a long stretch of no sunspots (visible to Earth) for 7 days.
Here is a copy & paste from the Amateur Radio Relay League's Propagation email from June 6th:
SB PROP @ ARL $ARLP024
ARLP024 Propagation de K7RA
ZCZC AP24
QST de W1AW
Propagation Forecast Bulletin 24 ARLP024
From Tad Cook, K7RA
Seattle, WA June 6, 2008
To all radio amateurs
SB PROP ARL ARLP024
ARLP024 Propagation de K7RA
We had seven days of no sunspots this week, but a sunspot was
emerging on Thursday, June 5. Helioseismic holography revealed a
high latitude sunspot on the opposite side of the Sun. Until
recently, we had no idea what was happening on the far side of the
Sun, the side directed away from earth. Go to
http://www.spaceweather.com/glossary/farside.html and to
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/Helioseismology.shtml for more
information on helioseismology.
As promised last week, here is an update to the three-month moving
averages of sunspot numbers.
Sep 05 39.3
Oct 05 28
Nov 05 36
Dec 05 40.6
Jan 06 32.4
Feb 06 18.1
Mar 06 27.7
Apr 06 38.5
May 06 39.7
Jun 06 28.9
Jul 06 23.3
Aug 06 23.5
Sep 06 21.2
Oct 06 24.1
Nov 06 23.1
Dec 06 27.3
Jan 07 22.7
Feb 07 18.5
Mar 07 11.2
Apr 07 12.2
May 07 15.8
Jun 07 18.7
Jul 07 15.4
Aug 07 10.2
Sep 07 5.4
Oct 07 3
Nov 07 6.9
Dec 07 8.1
Jan 08 8.5
Feb 08 8.4
Mar 08 8.4
Apr 08 8.9
I was able to calculate the value for April because we have all the
data for March, April and May. The total of all daily sunspot
numbers for those three months was 818. Divide that value by 92
days gives us approximately 8.891 as the average.
Note the average sunspot number has increased only slightly since
last Fall.
Jeff Lackey, K8CQ of St. Simons Island, Georgia noted that in the
table of zero-sunspot days presented last week, there was at least
one error. They counted as 36 days the period from May 27 to July
31, 1996. You can look at the whole website, not just the page we
linked to last week at,
http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html. Jeff
checked data in the table against an archive of sunspot data on the
ftp site, ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SUNSPOT_NUMBERS/.
He found that the 66 days they reported as 36 days were actually
over two periods, but neither was over 20 days. Jeff wrote,
"Indeed, the run that ended on 31 July began on 8 July, thus it was
a 14 day run. The beginning date of 27 May was for a run that ended
on 7 June. Between 7 June and 8 July, the sunspot numbers were all
non-zero."
The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center sees a constant and quiet
geomagnetic planetary A index of 5 through June 14. Geophysical
Institute Prague predicts quiet conditions for June 6, quiet to
unsettled June 7-8, and quiet again June 9-12.
As you can see, there were 36 days in 1996 (the END of the previous cycle) that had no sunspots....roughly a little longer than 11 years ago.
Some of you may want to hold off on preparing for an Ice Age coming next year and plan a cruise instead.
ROX
