On top of everything else, expect a cold winter!

[gazbom]

If things couldn't get any worse folks!
The solar wind - the stream of charged particles billowing away from the Sun - is at its weakest for 50 years.
Indeed, one impact is to diminish slightly the influence the Sun has over its local environment which extends billions of kilometres into space.
The solar wind, which originates in the Sun's hot outer atmosphere known as the corona, gusts and calms with the star's familiar 11-year cycle of activity (but also over its less well known longer cycles, too).

Calmer wind conditions would be expected to prevail right now, but the Ulysses data indicates circumstances unprecedented in recent times.
The Sun is a variable star; activity rises and falls in cycles
"The entire Sun is blowing significantly less hard - about 20-25% less hard - than it was during the last solar minimum 10-15 years ago.

"That's a very significant change. In fact, the solar wind we're seeing now is blowing the least hard we've see it for a prolonged time, since the start of those observations in the 1960s at the start of the space age."

In addition to being calmer, the wind measured at Ulysses is 13% cooler.
Expect a cold winter!

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