Anyone watching the solar activity right now?

[Suff]

I watch this on solarham fairly regularly. Cycle 25 is heading on for twice as active as cycle 24. I strongly suspect this has a firm, if not significant, effect on all the temperature records being broken right now.

Don't get me wrong, Cycle 25 is not breaking any records, but with two full decades since the last strong solar cycle, that's a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere so the impact is magnified.

Not that I think we'll get an X flare in the 30's like 2003 but it is interesting anyway.

[Workingman]

Yes, the BBC's Science pages have been covering it for months with quite a few articles. Many of them have carried warnings of what could, might, can happen to satellites, telecommunications, GPS and power grids. Lots of references to the Carrington event of 1859. Then there have been plenty of others with pretty pictures of the auroras which can be seen at lower latitudes due to the strength of the current cycle and that they could last till late 2025. They were for the masses.

On the flip side there have been about three longer articles of a more scientific and historical nature. They talked about the effects solar cycles have on other planets of the solar system noting that there are cycles within cycles (Miyake events) carbon-14 spikes - links were given. When it comes to global temperatures it was noted that the Hubble telescope descended about 80m due to the expansion of Earth's atmosphere causing drag. Yes, the atmosphere got warmer due to the solar winds (and a few other space related things) just as it has done for billions of years. This was made worse by current levels of CO2.

[Suff]

Thanks for that, I don't need the articles as such because I already know most of that.

I follow the solar cycles fairly closely so I don't look for articles. One of the things I found out recently is that everyone in science says that solar activity has no/unquantified effect on the cryosphere.

But here is the rather stark fact. The reason they say that is because there are no studies on the impact of solar activity on the cryosphere and therefore, because there are no articles to point to; nothing is happening.

That was a bit of an interesting point for me. Because some quite dramatic things could be happening but so long as no accredited scientist is studying it then it doesn't exist.

But the current solar activity is quite interesting in its own right.

[Workingman]

Articles and papers are out there but they do not appear to be of interest to many of us. Their numbers go up during peak solar cycles - scientist are interested.

But when it comes to so-called "climate journalists" and the cryosphere they only cover such things as a huge iceberg calving off the Antarctic ice sheet - the size of London - or the discovery of a near-complete Mammoth from the sludge created by the melting of the Siberian permafrost. It's all very "Ladybird" version of the subject.

Job done, now let's move on to net-zero and CO2...

[Suff]

I agree on the journalists.

On the studies, no studies exist on the impact of the 10/11 year solar cycle on the cryosphere. I know because one of the articles I was reading about the Cryosphere nods to the fact that there may be an impact but then clearly goes on to state that nobody is studying it so it has to be ignored.

It was a fairly recent article.