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Gerry Pease sends the following:
I believe this may turn out to be an important analysis, with significant consequences for Earth’s environment just five years from now.
An analysis of heliospheric magnetic field flux based on sunspotnumber from 1749 to today and prediction for the coming solar minimum
Molly L. Goelzer,1,2 Charles W. Smith,1 Nathan A. Schwadron,1 and K. G. McCracken3Received 4 September 2013; revised 25 October 2013; accepted 24 November 2013; published 20 December 2013.”[1]
It is now well established that many bulk properties of the solar wind rise and fall with the solar cycle, and the heliospheric magnetic field (HMF) intensity is no exception.The HMF intensity is seen to be maximum around the time of solar maximum, lowestduring solar minimum, and lower still during the recent protracted solar minimum2006–2009. One explanation of this behavior can be found in the theory of Schwadronet al. (2010) that argues magnetic flux is injected into interplanetary spaceby coronal mass ejection eruptions and removed by reconnection in the low solar atmosphere.
This produces an HMF intensity that is correlated with sunspot number, and the rapid injection of flux followed by the slow removal by reconnection results in a hysteresis effect that is readily evident in the observations. Here for the first time we apply this theory to thesunspot record going back to 1749 and compare favorably our predictions to the resultsderived from 10Be observations. We also make a prediction for the coming solarminimum based on results from the Dalton Minimum.” ”[25]…Because the HMF has not fully recovered to previous solar minimumvalues that are typical of the space age years, reconnectionand the associated flux shedding will drive the HMF to lowervalues than were seen in the recent protracted solar minimumof 2006–2009. The total field intensity at 1AU is likelyto be in the range 2.5 to 3.4 nT while the Parker component(the part of the field that follows the Parker spiral direction)will probably get as low as 1 nT.” !