Solar Polar Flip Underway

According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, this solar cycle's (24) magnetic field reversal is about to happen. The change of signs of the sun's magnetic poles also mark the peak of the solar maximum, the weakest in 100 years.

"It looks like we're no more than 3 to 4 months away from a complete field reversal," says solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University. "This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system."

The sun's magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years. It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun's inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes itself. The coming reversal will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24. Half of 'Solar Max' will be behind us, with half yet to come.

"The sun's north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up," says Scherrer. "Soon, however, both poles will be reversed, and the second half of Solar Max will be underway."

source

So, they've recorded 3 already and we are about to go through a 4th. What happened the other 3 times and why is this 4th one so interesting?

And this means???? Environmental impact???

reply to post by IvanAstikov


First one for cycle 24. If you're referring to the graph in the picture, it's comparing the amplitude of this years solar maximum to the two previous cycles.

Originally posted by IvanAstikov
So, they've recorded 3 already and we are about to go through a 4th. What happened the other 3 times and why is this 4th one so interesting?

A magnetic field swap happens every solar cycle.
Every time, every 11 years, going back billions of years.

This one isnt particularly interesting at all, except that its the current one happening now.


Note also: this has *nothing* to do with the doomsdayers pole flip that they keep predicting for the earth.

Wow, thanks for the news.

I was wondering when this was going to happen.

Today I was thinking - the brightness of the sun was off the charts.

I remember during the past solar minimum, I was thinking that the sun was too dim, and remembering past times when it was brighter. (I noticed this before I knew about the phenomena.) A dim sun really does effect your psychology and I remember feeling bummed out, reminiscing about when it was nicer and brighter. Well now it is too bright, but I like it better then when it was dim.

I'm surprised others find this news trivial. It is really a major event. The magnetic poles of the sun are going to reverse, effecting the massive heliosphere.

The Earth also reverses its magnetic poles periodically. When this happens, it won't go unnoticed. Compasses going crazy, people bombarded with intense radiation and aurorae occuring all over the Earth where they normally do not occur.

reply to post by thegoods724


Grand Solar Minima, like the Maunder Minimum are believed to be one of the main causes for prolonged cooling periods (Little Ice Age). The next few years will offer the opportunity to answer a lot of questions as to how exactly the sun affects earth's climate.

NASA

In the galactic scheme of things, the Sun is a remarkably constant star. While some stars exhibit dramatic pulsations, wildly yo-yoing in size and brightness, and sometimes even exploding, the luminosity of our own sun varies a measly 0.1% over the course of the 11-year solar cycle.

There is, however, a dawning realization among researchers that even these apparently tiny variations can have a significant effect on terrestrial climate. A new report issued by the National Research Council (NRC), "The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth's Climate," lays out some of the surprisingly complex ways that solar activity can make itself felt on our planet.

Originally posted by nOraKat
...I'm surprised others find this news trivial. It is really a major event. The magnetic poles of the sun are going to reverse, effecting the massive heliosphere....

But it really isn't a major event. Solar pole reversals don't really affect us in any noticeable way.

The sun goes through a pole reversal practically every solar cycle (every 11 years or so). The last polar reversal was 12 years ago (in 2001), and there were no noticeable effects from that reversal. Prior to 2001, the Sun' poles reversed themselves in 1990, and just about every 11 years prior to that.

It's not a big deal, considering it happens all the time.

Originally posted by nOraKat
...The Earth also reverses its magnetic poles periodically. When this happens, it won't go unnoticed. Compasses going crazy, people bombarded with intense radiation and aurorae occuring all over the Earth where they normally do not occur.

Yes. A pole reversal of Earth (which is DIFFERENT than a pole reversal of the Sun) would create some problems. For maybe 1000 years during the flip, the Earth's magnetic field will be weakened enough to allow some harmful cosmic rays through, which will lead to increases in cancer rates. Also, much of our technology that relies on the present condition of the poles -- especially our modern satellite communication -- will be affected.

However, we can't tell if one is coming soon. There is no regular cycle for Earth pole reversals. Past reversal have come 5000 years apart, but some have come 50 million years apart. Recently (the past 20 million years) Earth pole reversals seem to have come a little more regularly occurring every 200,000 to 300,000 years -- BUT the last one was 780,000 yeas ago, so there goes that "cycle".

Therefore, it seems there is no way to say "we are due" for one. One may be coming a soon as the next thousand years or so, or maybe as long off as a few million years from now.

There are some scientists who say there is some evidence that a pole reversal on Earth is coming soon, but "soon" to them is within the next 1500 years (and that is "soon" in the grand scheme of things).

Look at that pathetic 24 suncycle .
Maybe there is a maunder minimum (little ice age)
coming.

www.washingtonsblog.com...

reply to post by talklikeapirat

Grand Solar Minima, like the Maunder Minimum are believed to be one of the main causes for prolonged cooling periods (Little Ice Age).

Believed by some. Some aren't so sure.

Much has been made of the probable connection between the Maunder Minimum, a 70-year deficit of sunspots in the late 17th-early 18th century, and the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America were subjected to bitterly cold winters. The mechanism for that regional cooling could have been a drop in the sun’s EUV output; this is, however, speculative.

science.nasa.gov...

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People

Originally posted by nOraKat
...I'm surprised others find this news trivial. It is really a major event. The magnetic poles of the sun are going to reverse, effecting the massive heliosphere....

But it really isn't a major event. Solar pole reversals don't really affect us in any noticeable way.

The sun goes through a pole reversal practically every solar cycle (every 11 years or so). The last polar reversal was 12 years ago (in 2001), and there were no noticeable effects from that reversal. Prior to 2001, the Sun' poles reversed themselves in 1990, and just about every 11 years prior to that.

It's not a big deal, considering it happens all the time.

edit on 8/6/2013 by Soylent Green Is People because: (no reason given)

Certainly news to me..

I don't know about you, but 12 years is a really long time for me, and this is the first one I will be conscious of as it happens since I only heard about it 5 years ago or so.

An event doesn't have to threaten my life for me to consider it significant.

reply to post by nOraKat

An event doesn't have to threaten my life for me to consider it significant.

It'll be alright. You won't feel a thing.
I promise.

reply to post by alfa1


I would be very careful believing you know what you know. Based on what the article is telling us to believe?

We are living in an absolutely unprecedented moment of time.

Not saying anything "bad" is going to happen but I am saying that something unprecedented is going to happen. Somebody says this has happened before or happens every time and everybody just believes it because somebody says it is so. Especially NASA who knows more than most people about what the truth is. They get everybody believing what they say.. as though ti is more credible. Anybody who says anything differently is instantly discredited cause we are not NASA.

Open your minds. DO NOT believe everything the article is saying. They spin everything to manipulate perception. We all should know this by know. LOL LOL right? I mean that is what this whole website is about.

The truth is that what is about to happen is not something any one of us has seen. Possibly ever.

reply to post by nicolet

The truth is that what is about to happen is not something any one of us has seen. Possibly ever.

The truth is, if you're older than 12, you have seen it.

if you factor in earthquakes into the graph of sun cycles and volcanic activity particularly in the 17th and 18th century when people in europe were eating pets and resorting to cannabalism in europe after a volcano in iceland went off .

many believe that there is a connection between planetry alignments and earthquakes

Originally posted by IvanAstikov
So, they've recorded 3 already and we are about to go through a 4th. What happened the other 3 times and why is this 4th one so interesting?

Yes, and wonder if when she (on video) says "...as we approach the reversal, the sun's hemisphere's are oddly out of sync, with the northern already switching and the southern racing to catch up..." means 'oddly out of sync' this time, or as a general rule. Does that mean technically the sun has two south poles just now? Also what happens when it 'briefly goes to zero' ...does that wavy sheet thing subside briefly? And what will the heliosphere be like when that happens?

Can it be thought of as a pulse of sorts on a huge cosmic scale?

Oh the questions, LoL...

Originally posted by nicolet
reply to post by alfa1

 

I would be very careful believing you know what you know. Based on what the article is telling us to believe? ...

Personally, I knew that the Sun's magnetic field regularly reverses itself during the solar maximum (roughly every 11 years) long before I read this article. I think I learned about this in astronomy class in high school in the 1980s (or maybe I read about it in a book sometime since then).

You are right about one thing -- don't blindly believe what you read on the internet. Do some of your own research to see if what someone is stating on the internet is accurate or not...

...For example, if someone on the internet says that the Sun's magnetic pole reversal is an event unprecedented in our lifetime, and will wreak havoc with the Earth, the perhaps a little independent research will show you how untrue that idea is.

For that matter, you shouldn't blindly believe me, either, when I say it is a common occurrence that happens every 11 years, without wreaking havoc. You should confirm for yourself the stuff I'm saying here before you believe me.

reply to post by Phage



The part you've quoted is a perfect example why reductionist approaches will most likely fail to explain possible complex sun - earth climate relations. A fact, that has been pointed out repeatedly by researchers; increasing acknowledgment is a good sign of improvement.

Solar forcing

Therefore, studies based on a supposed unique global variation of temperature or pressure variations, to be characterized by one unique
T(time)-curve, valid for the whole Earth’s surface, are likely to fail. Reliable material, observational as well as theoretical, is now available for allowing one to search for the solar signal in the observed terrestrial temperature distribution in latitude, longitude and height.

From the NRC workshop featured in the NASA Science article ...

Solar Variability and Terrestrial Climate

In a concluding panel discussion, the researchers identified a number of possible next steps. Foremost among them was the deployment of a radiometric imager. Devices currently used to measure total solar irradiance (TSI) reduce the entire sun to a single number: the total luminosity summed over all latitudes, longitudes, and wavelengths. This integrated value becomes a solitary point in a time series tracking the sun’s output.

In fact, as Peter Foukal of Heliophysics, Inc., pointed out, the situation is more complex. The sun is not a featureless ball of uniform luminosity. Instead, the solar disk is dotted by the dark cores of sunspots and splashed with bright magnetic froth known as faculae. Radiometric imaging would, essentially, map the surface of the sun and reveal the contributions of each to the sun’s luminosity.

Of particular interest are the faculae. While dark sunspots tend to vanish during solar minima, the bright faculae do not. This may be why paleoclimate records of sun-sensitive isotopes C-14 and Be-10 show a faint 11-year cycle at work even during the Maunder Minimum.

A radiometric imager, deployed on some future space observatory, would allow researchers to develop the understanding they need to project the sun-climate link into a future of prolonged spotlessness.

And probably the most important part, at least for me ...

Understanding the sun-climate connection requires a breadth of expertise in fields such as plasma physics, solar activity, atmospheric chemistry and fluid dynamics, energetic particle physics, and even terrestrial history. No single researcher has the full range of knowledge required to solve the problem. To make progress, the NRC had to assemble dozens of experts from many fields at a single workshop. The report summarizes their combined efforts to frame the problem in a truly multi-disciplinary context.

Originally posted by nOraKat
An event doesn't have to threaten my life for me to consider it significant.

If scientists did not tell you about it you would never know....