Monday, 21 October 2024.
We start this week with a new scientific topic for our radar: space weather.
Or you think that global climate only relates to what happens on Earth? Most of us saw recent solar activity has led to increased impacts on satellites, infrastructure and beautiful auroras, appearing on regions of the Globe where they are usually not seen.
This means that something is also happening in space. NASA scientists are looking at it, mechanism called solar maximum.
(If you like vanguard science, read this article. Otherwise you can go straight to the final paragraph).
Last week NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that the Sun has reached its solar maximum period, which could continue for the next year. Roughly every 11 years, at the height of the solar cycle, the Sun’s magnetic poles flip, and the Sun transitions from being calm to an active and stormy state.
Solar Cycles started to be scientifically accompanied back in 1750 and we are now going through the 25th of it.
Solar cycles also relate to the occurrence of sunspots and have been tracked by astronomers since Galileo first observed them in the 1600s. Each solar cycle is different — some cycles peak for larger and shorter amounts of time, and others have smaller peaks that last longer.
During May 2024, a barrage of large solar flares and coronal mass ejections launched clouds of charged particles and magnetic fields toward Earth, creating the strongest geomagnetic storm at Earth in two decades — and possibly among the strongest displays of auroras on record in the past 500 years.
Is the 25th cycle already over?
Scientists do not know yet. It requires many months to determine the exact peak of this solar maximum because it is only identifiable when scientists have tracked a consistent decline in solar activity.
"Solar Cycle 25 sunspot activity has slightly exceeded expectations,” said Lisa Upton, co-chair of the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel and lead scientist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.
NOAA already indicated that “All weather on Earth, from the surface of the planet out into space, begins with the Sun. Space weather and terrestrial weather (the weather we feel at the surface) are influenced by the small changes the Sun undergoes during its solar cycle … careful measurements suggest that solar activity does in fact warm the Earth by about a tenth of a degree (0.1° C) during solar maximum relative to solar minimum.”
Same NOAA article adds that “the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds solar activity to be a minor contributor to climate change compared to anthropogenic factors such as the emission of greenhouse gasses”.
Will it really be? Should daily terrestrial meteorological science expand is frontiers to outer space?
In spite of such scientific doubts that might still exist related to their climate impacts, it is time for action.
Click at the image below to read “NASA, NOAA: Sun Reaches Maximum Phase in 11-Year Solar Cycle” article from 15 October 2024.
Last but not least, aligned with that “action appeal” mentioned above, do not overlook last week’s posts with more “mundane” topics, such as special insights on the legal nature of carbon credits, low carbon hydrogen, 2024 as the year of global emissions peak and legislative and methodological topics specifically related to Brazil.
