More unexpected solar behaviour, solar magnetic dipole has not crossed zero

Plot from Wilcox Solar Observatory
(http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Dipall.gif)

This is fairly important news given the sun is strongly a magnetic entity, moreover this might be in line with some predictions about a kind of magnetic collapse.

• Livingston and Penn work which suggests the visibility of sunspots will drop

NOTE: NASA have used an offset Y axis, visually misleading, the slope is far less than shown.

http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/03sep_sunspots/

• Monopole solar activity as suggested was the case during a previous solar minimum based on work with unpublished solar drawings in Scaninavian university archives. (vague because I can’t remember the source)

The polar field is not known before recent times, deduced from spectroscopic work.

On looking back at various Talkshop articles the following surprise dated March 2011 turned up

Vuc had helped out by telling me about data which extends the dataset back in time a little. I think more luck than law but it suggests there is a significant meaning in detail cyclic content.

Previous posts on this subject are best found by Google, which indexes blogs so here is a specific search phrase

site:tallbloke.wordpress.com wso polar

Article cross posted on Tallbloke’s Talkshop

Tim