New Sunspot emerging - looks to be cycle 24

Alert reader Andrew writes:

“I was just looking at the SOHO images and is it just me or does it look like there’s a sunspot developing in the lower left quadrant? If so, would this still be a cycle 23 spot given its low latitude?”

It appears that a new spot is indeed emerging, and unless I’m dyslexic about the polarity it looks as if this is the first cycle 24 spot in the southern hemisphere.

Compare it to the last cycle 24 spot, in the northern hemisphere:

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/04/13/second-cycle-24-spot-a-tiny-tim-spot/

Note the when crossing to the southern hemisphere, magnetic polarity reverses and you cross the equator and this spot is reversed from the polarity of the last cycle 24 spot in the northern hemisphere.

Michelson Doppler Image (MDI):

Magnetogram:

Now comes the volcano

In addition to the other observed factors such as a long sunspot cycle and minima and PDO flip, now we’ll add some aerosols to the mix. Volcanism has been quiet for the most part for a few years. This should have a cooling effect on the southern hemisphere.

I’ll point out that the effects on atmospheric albedo is yet unknown and depends on the strength of eruption, and quantity of ash and aerosols ejected into the stratosphere.

AFP/Getty

Chaiten volcano erupts, pouring a column of ash miles in to the sky

More than 1,500 people have fled their homes in southern Chile after the Chaiten volcano erupted, throwing a huge cloud of ash and lava into the sky.

The volcano, 800 miles south of the capital Santiago, had not erupted for more than 450 years and was considered dormant.

But it is now belching enormous clouds of thick ash that have drifted across a large area in both Chile and the Argentine province of Chubut, where an airport was forced to close.

Just six miles away, the town of Chaiten has a population of 7,000. Long used to the menacing form of the 3,000-foot mountain, it is now overshadowed by a towering column of ash.

Read more of this story at the UK Telegraph