[HCARC] "Grand " minimum

[Kerry Sandstrom]

Gary,

Actually we know what a normal minimum is like. We have made numerous 
scientific measurements and know what the sun's output is like. The Maunder 
minimum type minimums are a completely different ballgame. We know very 
little about what the sun was doing during that period. The evidence we 
have are things like tree growth rings of long lived trees, Northern Light 
reports which give us an idea of the behavior of the earth's magnetic field 
(the Northern Lights were unseen for many years!) and reports on the earth's 
climate. We really don't have any real data on the X-ray output of the sun 
which is what creates our ionosphere or the charged particle output which 
causes the geomagnetic disturbances. It is not clear what conditions will 
be like during an extended minimum like the Maunder minimum.

Kerry