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Subject: YOWUSA.COM -- Long Valley Caldera - November14, 2003

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Long Valley Journal: New Pressures Building Beneath California Caldera

YOWUSA.COM, 14-November-2003
Dave Wright

As the onslaught of solar flares, CMEs and coronal holes continue to beat the Earth, raising seismic and volcanic activity in Yellowstone and around the world to record heights, they us send a very graphic reminder that Yellowstone is not the only geologically active area, especially in the United States.? In California, six volcanoes/calderas are either active or potentially active.? One of these calderas, the Long Valley Caldera, located in the eastern part of California, is not as large as Yellowstone but is just as deadly and is showing signs of an impending eruption.? If continued solar activity continues at its record breaking pace our planet might receive a one-two knockout punch between Yellowstone and Long Valley.? If this occurs, our planet will experience catastrophic earthchanges that could change the face of our planet for all time.

In The News

Science@NASA, 12 November 2003
IS THE SUNSPOT CYCLE BROKEN?

Solar maximum is years past, yet the sun has been remarkably active lately. Is the sunspot cycle broken?

November 12, 2003: Imagine you're in California. It's July, the middle of summer. The sun rises early; bright rays warm the ground. It's a great day to be outside. Then, suddenly, it begins to snow--not just a little flurry, but a swirling blizzard that doesn't stop for two weeks. That's what forecasters call unseasonal weather.

It sounds incredible, but "something like that just happened on the sun," says David Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

Space Weather News for Nov. 12, 2003
SOLAR STORM STILL RAGING ON

FAR SIDE SUNSPOTS: Using a technique called helioseismic holography, astronomers can do something amazing: look through the sun to find sunspots on the far side of our star. On Nov. 11th their holographic maps revealed giant sunspots 486 and 488--the same active regions that caused so much intense space weather a few weeks ago.

These spots are still active. Explosions from their vicinity have been hurling clouds of gas over the sun's limb in recent days, e.g., on Nov. 11th and Nov. 12th. The sun's 27-day rotation will soon carry the pair around to the Earth-facing side of the sun. So get ready for more solar activity.

Tech Central Station, 12 November 2003
NEAR-EARTH HAZARDS: TOO HOT TO HANDLE?

The sun has exhibited surprising flare activity this year. In general flares tend to occur at times when sunspots appear in the greatest number -- that is, when the sun is most heavily covered by intense regions of intense magnetic field. The sunspot cycle brings high magnetism and the possibility for flares roughly every 11 years. The cycle last peaked in 2000-2001, and the number of sunspots has been dropping to the cycle's expected low around 2005. Despite the low number of sunspots, some that have appeared have been unusually large. There is no good explanation why large spots have been recently appearing.

The unusual Nov. 4 flare probably ranks with a few great flares of the past for which satellite monitoring was unavailable, but whose strengths can be inferred from supporting observations.

On the afternoon of Thursday, Sept. 1, 1859, Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson independently observed what is thought to be the first recorded flare in visible light. Carrington, observing the projected image of the sun, saw "a ray of light" whose "brilliancy was fully equal to that of direct Sun-light" that persisted for about five minutes.

Eurekalert, 11 November 2003
ARCTIC SEA ICE MELTING -
ANTARCTIC SEA ICE INCREASING

Arctic and Antarctic sea ice marching to different drivers.

A 30-year satellite record of sea ice in the two polar regions reveals that while the Northern Hemisphere Arctic ice has melted, Southern Hemisphere Antarctic ice has actually increased in more recent years. However, due to dramatic losses of Antarctic sea ice between 1973 and 1977, sea ice in both hemispheres has shrunk on average when examined over the 30-year time frame.

This study presents the longest continuous record of sea ice for both hemispheres based primarily on satellites, and the longer reading already begins to highlight some new information about sea ice trends over time, like the fact that more recently the Arctic has been losing ice at a faster rate.

"If you compare the rate of loss in the Arctic for the last two decades, it is 20 percent greater than the rate of loss over the last three decades," said Don Cavalieri, lead author of the study, and a senior researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

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