December 21, 2008
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, Fellow AMS
IceCap.us

With the number of sunspotless days reaching 16 so far this month, we have now exceeded 1912 as the 2nd quietest sun year since 1900. Only 1913 ranked higher with 311 days. With 12 more days this month as of this writing, we could reach as high as 266 days. Note that 2007 also ranked in the top 10.

sunspotlessdays121908.jpg

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This is the month by month comparisons of sunspotless days this solar minimum (red) through November and the last minimum in the mid 1990s (blue).

sunspotless_rank.jpg

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The geomagnetic activity has also been extremely low. This is the Ap Index. This plot displays monthly average Ap values and 13-month running smoothed Ap values. The most recent data are always USAF estimates; official values are included as they become available.

apindexsec.jpg
Larger Image

and Longer Term here
longtermapindex.jpg

See this Anthony Watts post on the massive breach of the earth’s magnetic field discovered by NASA and the possible solar role in the lowering of the earth’s Ionosphere to an all-time low altitude. See full post pdf here. See more on the ways the sun may affect our climate here.

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Global Cooling Related Links

ICECAP, International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, is the portal to all things climate for elected officials and staffers, journalists, scientists, educators and the public. It provides access to a new and growing global society of respected scientists and journalists that are not deniers that our climate is dynamic (the only constant in nature is change) and that man plays a role in climate change through urbanization, land use changes and the introduction of greenhouse gases and aerosols, but who also believe that natural cycles such as those in the sun and oceans are also important contributors to the global changes in our climate and weather. We worry the sole focus on greenhouse gases and the unwise reliance on imperfect climate models while ignoring real data may leave civilization unprepared for a sudden climate shift that history tells us will occur again, very possibly soon.