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Grand Solar Minimum 2019 Featured

28 May 2019 By In Blog style

Sept 23, 2019

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NASA Predicts 200 year Grand Solar Minimum coming soon

Follow the latest GSM tracking and impacts with link above.

May 28, 2019
The laws of physics have not changed, yet we continue to develop our understanding and improve our numerical models to better represent these fundamental truths.  The spring of 2019 has presented records of cold, floods, snowfall and heat around the world.  May has broken all time snowfall records in Minnesota, California, Australia, and the Andes.  I continue to monitor the global weather and watch the jet stream patterns which are still quite strong in both hemispheres, unusual for May when the northern jet weakens and southern jet intensifies normally.  The 150 to 180 kt jet continues to steer strong storms across the Pacific through the US and into the North Atlantic producing unseasonably intense tornados and flooding in the central US, cool East, snows in California’s High Sierra.  As it crosses the North Atlantic,  it has continued a strong blocking pattern with the Icelandic Low and another Siberian - Arctic polar vortex in east central Asia.  These have produced very wet conditions across southern Europe, and central Asia.

Astronomers and planetary physicists are observing a long period of little or no solar flares this past 60 days.  They noted that the sun’s magnetosphere has weakened thus permitting more cosmic rays to enter our solar system.  These have been linked to this year’s stratospheric warming by NOAA’s and the USAF space weather forecastersNASA’s scientists have also measured the stratospheric warming.  See NASA’s Solar and heliospheric Observatory SOHO for more information.  This upper atmospheric warming is linked to the infamous “polar vortex” which drew polar and arctic air south across eastern Canada and the US breaking many records last winter and this spring.  A similar polar vortex developed and persisted over eastern Siberia from January to May.  

In the Southern Hemisphere during their fall March to May 2019, the jet stream was strong producing many cyclonic storms in the Southern Ocean which had 970 to 930 mb center pressures.  These large winter storms produced heavy snows on the Antarctic coastal mountains with maximum 10-day forecasts of 1 to 3 meters of snow according to the ECMWF 9 km resolution global model.  In the southern Andes, this model predicted many 10-day periods of 2 to 4 m of accumulation.  Further north in New Zealand and Australia, they have had early snows of 50 to 150 cm on the south island and in the Snowy Range of Queensland 30 to 70 cm forecasts.  Canberra has coldest May day in 19 years.  The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has some interesting Space Weather Services that discuss the solar minimum.
These unusual physical observations around the world some say confirm that we are moving into an ice age - not global warming.  Let’s continue to watch and be prepared for climate’s change.

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