The disappearance of sunspots Is it a sign of the arrival of an ice age?

Hani Al - Dhalia

There are many solar phenomena that can be seen on the sun disk, especially at sunset, or when the sky is filled with intermittent white clouds blocking the sun to show a bright white disk, and the most important of these phenomena are sunspots.

They are dark spots seen on the sun, shines with them and absent with them, and even remain visible for days without disappearing and may continue to appear weeks also. These sunspots are the major sign of what is known as solar activity. What are the signs of their appearance and disappearance?

Sunspot cycle
The sun is a large magnet that forms between its north and south poles. A strong magnetic field is represented by field lines connecting these two poles. However, as the Sun orbits itself (it rotates at varying speeds, the fastest at the equator once every 27 days and the slowest at the poles every 34 days), it accelerates the rotation of magnetic field lines near the equator (at the beginning of the solar activity cycle) to rotate with the Sun faster than Rotation at the poles.

As the rotation continues, these lines wrap around the sun dozens of times more than their tails at the poles.This complicates the magnetic field lines and intersect them, causing them to break and then break.This shows directly on the surface of the sun dark spots called sunspots. At the beginning of each solar cycle.

The emergence of these spots with the passage of time until the peak of the cycle after about five years, and then this number decreases little by little, until the sun is quiet and disappear sunspots are no longer appear for days and weeks and perhaps for months and years.

Such a calm has occurred in relatively recent history when the sun's surface remained clean from spots for more than sixty years from 1645 to 1715, and this era was known as the Little Ice Age (or calm Munder), and land temperatures fell, and consequently increased amounts of snow in Europe Rivers have frozen, and agriculture has failed for many years, leading to mass famines that have killed tens of thousands of people.

Twenty - fifth solar cycle
Astronomers have been alerted to this phenomenon and have linked it directly to the number of visible sunspots. Since 1755 systematic monitoring and follow-up of sunspots began, leading to the discovery of the 11-year cycle of solar activity.

The number of solar cycles so far has reached 24 cycles, and the current cycle, which began in 2008, ends late this year, with the possibility of extending until next year, and all indications are that the 25th solar cycle is about to begin, and will mark the beginning of the emergence of the first solar spot Now or over the next few months, after an absence of months, it is expected to peak around 2025 and 2026 and extend until 2030 or shortly thereafter.

New Ice Age
Weather scientists and climate scientists at more than one international scientific institution, led by the National Weather and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) and the US Space Agency (NASA) and the solar telescope Soho of the European Space Agency (ESA), to study the form is expected to take the new solar cycle.

Their preliminary findings conclude that this cycle will be the least active in comparison to the sun cycles during the last two centuries, meaning that the average number of sunspots that will appear each year will be between 95 and 130 spots, compared with previous cycles between 140 and 220 spots.

This is a significant decrease, which, if it happens, will lead to bad weather for European countries, but it may in turn be positive for the Arab countries and their surroundings, as it is expected to increase the rate of precipitation, and crawl towards areas that had not reached before, such as the outskirts of deserts. It may have started before its usual season, or it was too late to stop.

But it will certainly not turn into a new ice age unless this state of solar calm continues for two or three consecutive cycles.

Earth's space
While this calm will have its effects on Earth, it will have other effects in space. The calmer the sun, the less destructive impact it will have on satellites in their orbits around the Earth, and the less expensive the repairs usually cause by sun's surface activities.

Coronal solar masses, which carry billions of waves of energy and cause electromagnetic storms, damage or destroy electronic circuits of satellites, or cut off radio and sometimes electricity, as in 1986 in Quebec, Canada, and increase the spectacular aurora borealis. And exhilarating in countries at higher latitudes north and south on the globe.

But it will not heat the atmosphere and will not directly raise the temperature of the weather. Rather, it usually bounces back into space by the Earth's magnetosphere, because the energy difference between solar activity and solar calm in each solar cycle is no more than 0.2%, which is very little difference. Blocking an extended new ice age, you won't worry.