The August monthly sunspot graph
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Waking up is hard to do. Today NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center once again published its monthly graph, showing the progress of the sun’s sunspot cycle in comparison with the consensis prediction made by the solar science community in May 2009.
As I noted when I posted the July graph, the data continues to show that the Sun’s ramp up to solar maximum is far slower and weaker than predicted, despite the stories this week about how Sunday’s coronal mass ejection demonstrates that the sun is “waking up.”
Predictions for the coming sun spot cycle vary from very mild to extreme. The latest New Scientist has recognized that the sun does have an influence on our climate, albeit, not as extreme as our emissions. It will be very interesting if we have an El Nino sometime between 2012-2014. The sun, the El Nino plus the ever increasing Carbon dioxide in the air will all contribute to Arctic melting. That may just possibly be the year when we will see a pretty well ice free arctic with the accompanying acceleration of the melting of Greenland. Interesting days.