"The Year of the Jackpot" is a old SF short story about cycles, economic, natural, etc. discovered to build to a peak.

The "other Year 2000" thread below mentions the solar maxima, cycle 27 I believe. What it doesn't mention is that the 11 year sunspot cycle is believed (in some scientific circles) to be a subcycle of a 22 year drought cycle.

Sun spots, solar wind maxima, are suspected to affect the weather by making subtle changes to the jet stream, the height of the ionosphere, and such. El Nino, and La Nina may be affected directly.

After the 1929 stock market crash, the depression was intensified by several years of horrible drought out west. This coincided with the 22 year North American Drought Cycle. [this is the name of the phenomenum.]

If the dust bowl was 1933 (I'll check) then 1933+22 = 1955, 1955+22=1977, 1977+22=1999.

[Note: the 11 year sunspot cycle is not precisely 11 years, neither is the 22 year drought cycle. These are not widely accepted theories but fall into the category of interesting, someone should do more research.]

There have been reports of drought conditions detected south of the U.S. This may indicate a worsening of conditions for our agricultural production.

This is extremely speculative and I offer it to give people insight into this mechanism and a starting point for more research. Weather forecasting beyond a few hours is a black art. If anyone finds more info, please drop me an email and maybe we can run the piece in a future WRP... about the real weather this time.

Good luck to all, hope to see everyone safe, sound, and prosperous on the other side.

-- cory - ah6gi/3 (kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net), June 01, 1999

Answers

Subject:	A little Extra 'Help' For Y2K
Date:	1999/06/01
Author:	fedinfo <fedinfo@halifax.com>
	Posting History

Monday May 31 3:35 PM ET   Sun's Weather May Add to Y2K Woes By PAUL RECER AP Science Writer   CHICAGO (AP) - As if potential Year 2000 computer problems are not enough, stormy weather predicted for the sun early next year also could torment Earth's modern technology.   That could mean celebrating the new millennium in the dark, with a dead cellular phone. Ships and planes relying on satellites for navigation might have trouble. Even spacewalking astronauts are at risk.   Researchers, using new techniques, are forecasting the sun is going to enter the most violent and disruptive part of its 11-year cycle. The worst is expected to begin in January, when computers around the world struggle to cope with possible problems caused by the Y2K bug.   Severe solar storms erupting with massive bursts of magnetic energy and radiation are expected to continue at their peak until April.   Solar flares and coronal mass ejections - solar explosions that can equal a million 100 megaton bombs - send waves of energy toward the Earth.   They can cause power blackouts, block some radio communications and trigger phantom commands capable of sending satellites spinning out of their proper orbits.   Cellular telephones, global positioning signals and spacewalking astronauts all are at risk, experts said Monday at a national meeting of the American Astronomical Society.   There were two pieces of good news: The solar cycle is not expected to be as severe as some in the past, and, for the first time, there may be some warning, thanks to a government satellite that will detect bursts of solar solar energy and send about an hour's notice, said JoAnn Joselyn of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.   That warning, posted on the Internet and relayed through a special system, will give power companies time to align circuits to minimize or avoid damage from electrical surges, she said. Satellite operators can power down equipment or prepare to send corrective signals to their spacecraft.   Scientists have plotted 23 solar cycles, using historic and modern measurements. But the current cycle may be the most disruptive ever because much of the vulnerable communications technology now in use is new and has not been exposed to maximum solar activity, Joselyn said.   ``The explosion in technology is intersecting with an extremely disturbed space environment,'' Joselyn said. ``There is much higher risk now because we depend more on technology that is vulnerable.''   Joselyn said energy bursts from the sun can cause an electrical charge to build up on the surface of satellites, triggering phantom signals.   In an earlier solar cycle, she said, small rocket thrusters on a satellites suddenly started firing, sending the spacecraft out of position. Control of another satellite was lost when its gyroscopes were disrupted.   Joselyn said cellular telephone are vulnerable because they may use the ionosphere - the region of electrically charged gases in the upper atmosphere - to send radio signals, and bursts from the sun can disturb the ionosphere. Some cellular phone systems depend on satellites that are at risk, too.   Solar energy eruptions can cause warm air to surge up from the Earth. That can drag some satellites to lower orbits, forcing satellite operators to use rocket fuel to reposition the spacecraft.   Worldwide navigation, for ships and airplanes, relies heavily on the Global Position Satellite system, which uses a fleet of satellites that can be affected by the sun, said Joselyn.   ``I am worried about the GPS more than anything else,'' she said. ``We're starting to land airplanes with that system now.''   Electromagnetic energy from the sun can send huge waves of electrical energy surging along power lines, shorting circuits and burning out equipment. A 1989 solar storm caused a province-wide blackout in Quebec, and coils in a transformer station in Salem, N.J., melted and caught fire, causing a regional outage.   Astronauts generally are safe inside the shuttle or the International Space Station, but future missions to the moon or Mars will have to guard to solar radiation bursts.   ``On the moon, they could get enough radiation to be lethal,'' said Joselyn. ``If we fly to Mars, we'll have to consider the hazardous radiation from the sun.'' ==================   Unremediated Systems. Horribly Fragile Global Economy.     And now,...... The sun.   I particularly liked this part......   "The explosion in technology is intersecting with an extremely disturbed space environment,'' Joselyn said. ``There is much higher risk now because we depend more on technology that is vulnerable."       Have a nice day.     http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/ap/science/story.html?s =v/ap/199905 31/sc/solar_storms_1.html -- Paul Milne If you live within five miles of a 7-11, you're toast. Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Share what you know. Learn what you don't.

-- a (a@a.a), June 01, 1999.

cory--

The Old Farmer's 1999 Almanac, which came out in 1998, contains an article beginning on page 150 titled the "Great Arctic Outbreak of 1899" by Clifford Nielson. In the article the author looks at research efforts to explain the factors which produced plummeting temperatures in the Plains, snow in Tampa and fierce blizzards in the East one hundred years ago. Of course sunspot activity figures into the equation, but a relatively newly discovered factor identified as the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO,)--direction of the winds 20 plus miles above the equator. This factor helped make sense of the seemingly chaotic vortex expansions and identified a connection between vortex/wind activity and periods of high solar activity. (Prior to indentification of QBO, vortex expasion which occured equally as frequently during periods of low solar activity was not considered a possible predictive indicator of cold weather.)

The upshot is that based on new research using QBO the author indicated severe winter weather might occur by the winter of 1998- 99. March 1998 saw some below normal and near record lows...This past winter the same, but overall above normal temperatures.

Given that sunspot activity is due to peak late THIS year, perhaps this will be the year if the the current QBO indicator (strong winds from the west) holds into the 1999-2000 winter months. The last thing we need is severe winter weather akin to the winter of 1899 which produced -2 degrees F in Talahassee and -1 degrees F in Mobile. Yikes!

The article in the Old Farmer's Almanac was an except from the author's booklength manuscript, The Sun, Changing Climate, and the Coming Ice. Since it is not a published work (last I looked) I have been unable to find any critcism of his thesis re: QBO or any follow- up predictions for this coming winter involving QBO.

Something to consider...

-- flatsville (flatsville@hotmail.com), June 01, 1999.

More twisters last night in Oklahoma,F3 type in sw oklahoma. I've lived here now after a 10 yr break, for 15 yrs, worst year of tornadoes I've seen. Just my two cents.

-- Barb (awaltrip@telepath.com), June 01, 1999.

It's also worth considering that a harsh winter followed by searious drought would be quite intolerable. For those of us proud of our wells....better consider what you'd do if they dried up! Storing water for the household is one thing....got livestock? In a drought, we wouldn't be able to rely on our creek too heavily! The preps never end, unless you started several years ago! By the way, how many remember the off record heat last summer? Those of us in Kansas are sure hoping we don't see any repeats of that for a long time to come!

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), June 01, 1999.

"DOD braces for space storms - Atmospheric disruptions in 2000 could interfere with satellite, comm systems"

http://www.ntgov.com/gcn/gcn/1998/october19/33.htm

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), June 01, 1999.

"Solar Activity Controls El Nino and La Nina" http://www.microtech.com.au/daly/sun-enso/sun-enso.htm

-- Barb (awaltrip@telepath.com), June 01, 1999.

The DoD report on sunspot maximum had an interesting statement in it:

Were going to have a huge storm [about] Jan. 1, 2000, so people wont know what to blame it on, said Ernie Hildner, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo

There is no way that anyone can predict a sunstorm on (or "about") January 1, 2000 -- or any other day for that matter. They are having a hard enough time predicting solar events within two days. I think that this is another attempt to shift responsibility -- "It wasn't our gross negligence, it wasn't broken computer code... it was the sun...yeah...sunstorms...that's the ticket!"

Gary Glynn

-- Gary Paul Glynn (gpg@bluemarble.net), June 01, 1999.

As a follow-up to my previous post re: quasi-biennial oscillation and solar activity here is a website that gives some info:

http://people.aero.und.edu/~schill/QBO/

The author notes, "The QBO has two main phases: an easterly one and a westerly one. On average the westerly phase typically lasts 14-15 months and the easterly phase has a period of 13 to 14 months."

According to the Old Farmer's Almanac article:

QBO winds from the west + high solar activity = Arctic outbreaks QBO winds from the east + low solar activity = Arctic outbreaks

Since we will be in a high period of solar activity at rollover the question becomes will we still be in QBO westerly phase at that time? According to the OFA article the cycle moved from east to west some time in March 1997, so add 15 mos. and that puts the end of the westerly cycle June 1998; add 14 mos for the easterly cycle which then ends August 1999. The beginning of the next westerly cycles then extends through the last half of 1999 and the first half of 2000...Oh great....

If some one would like to check my math on this, talk to a Big- Brained meteorologist, pursue this further, be my guest. It took quite a bit of searching just to find a plain English explanation of the duration of the cycles (cited above) v. looking at oscillation graphs/charts which made "flatsville's" head hurt. If I had only looked at them as stock chart oscillators I might have understood them better...Maybe that's where I went wrong!

-- flatsville (flatsville@hotmail.com), June 01, 1999.

And I thought I was up on current meteorological theory. Terrific find, flatsville. Thanks.

Hallyx

"Everything is deeply intertwingled." --- Tom DeMarco

-- Hallyx (Hallyx@aol.com), June 01, 1999.

Getting bored cory?

intertwingled! love it.

"plans within plans" frank herbert.

-- R. Wright (blaklodg@hotmail.com), June 02, 1999.

http://www.cbs.com/flat/story_157945.html

[snip]

Researchers using new techniques are forecasting the sun's cycle to peak during the months of January to April. The sun is expected to be busy with solar flares and coronal mass ejections, solar explosions that can equal a million 100 megaton hydrogen bombs.

[snip]

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), June 02, 1999.

I don't know from meteorology, but the sunspot cycle has been going on since before people showed up. Check out Suns pot cycle closely following prediction-- Maximum expected in the year 2000, and the chart at h ttp://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/images/sunspots.jpg

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), June 02, 1999.