THE SUNS WAKING: IT COULD GET BAD
Written by: Bob Metcalfe
Interconnectedness is something that is often overlooked, but plays a crucial role in our everyday lives with regards to space, the universe, and earth.
In some posts over the past few months, we've mentioned about how the sun has been at a solar minimum for quite some time. Well, it's waking back up. NASA officials just recently announced that they think the next few years will get quite active with regards to solar activity. In fact, just last month, they witnessed one of the most intense bursts of solar energy in years.
Our sensitivity to this activity on earth is our technology. Communications, GPS, cell phones, and power grids are some of the major developments here that are extremely sensitive to solar energy bursts. Air travel could be put to a stand still, GPS rendered useless, and emergency radio communications go mute. It's a scary realization that could occur sooner than most think.
They say that early warning can help minimize the problems, but there's only so much we can do. We've seen in the past few years several times where GPS or cell signals were sketchy at best because of a huge burst of solar energy.
The next few years will certainly prove interesting. Not only will this have a huge social impact, they say that the economic impact could dwarf even major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.
All it takes is one large sunspot to cause chaos. But with that said, I think we're ignoring the fact that the sun has been in a deep slumber not seen in a century, and that solar irradiance, just to mention one, has been at record low. Those who think the sun is "waking up" in any big way need only to go back to the image archives of 2002 to see what a truly awake sun is supposed to look like. A few sun "specks" from time to time is hardly anything impressive. We just got through two period of a blank sun, both periods lasted nearly two straight weeks. That was just last month! The upcoming "maximum" will not be anything impressive, as we're heading into a maunder type minimum. Look out for the intense global cold to come. The first signs of this minimum were felt just this last winter with the extremely negative AO - a perfect calling card of the solar minimum.
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