Tau.Neutrino said:
Groundbreaking Sun Observation Could Help Us Prepare For Massive Solar Storms
Space weather forecasting — predicting the kind of energetic particles the Sun will throw at us — is years behind weather forecasting here on Earth. As solar physicist Scott McIntosh put it, “Our current model of space weather forecasting is, ‘oh shit a sunspot happened eight minutes ago, now we have to figure out what’s going to happen.’” It’s a shame we’re not better at predicting space weather, since it can bust up satellites and even electronics on Earth.
Read more at https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/03/groundbreaking-sun-observation-could-help-us-prepare-for-massive-solar-storms/#QD7SKHewx3sEQCsl.99
> McIntosh and his team used a trio of satellites to observe the entire solar surface at once for the first time.
The three satellites would be SOHO, Stereo A and Stereo B. This is what Stereo A and Stereo B were designed for, one of them is back from the dead.
> NASA lost contact with Stereo-B, a satellite on the opposite side of the Sun, in 2014. It regained contact briefly in September 2016, but hasn’t had contact with the spacecraft since then.
Oh dear, I didn’t know that it had died again.
> Rossby waves
“Rossby waves result from the conservation of potential vorticity and are influenced by the Coriolis force and pressure gradient.”
> The interior of the Sun has these jet streams at the interfaces of air masses, and that the sunspot cycle is a manifestation of that.
Yes, that’s well known now.
OK. Theoretically very important but not useful from the point of space weather prediction.
