What is a 22-year solar cycle?

Answer 1

Once every 22 years, the Sun's magnetic field flips, north to south. Since the sunspot cycle is 11 years, the magnetic flips happen every two sunspot cycles.

Answer 2

The sun reverses its magnetic polarity about every 11 years; therefore a full magnetic cycle is 22 years. This is also related to sunspot activity.

The number of sunspots on the sun does not stay constant, but varies. It increases for a number of years, hits a maximum, then decreases. At each maximum, the sun's magnetic field reverses. Some scientists believe the reversal is causes when the twisting of magnetic field lines on the sun reaches a critical point, but for now no one really knows what causes Actually the period of the cycle varies; at different times in the past it has been as short at 9 years or as many as 14.

The full 22-year cycle is called the Hale cycle, after George Hale, who discovered it in 1925.

Answer 3

The Babcock Model describes a mechanism which can explain magnetic and sunspot patterns observed on the Sun.

A modern understanding of sunspots starts with George Ellery Hale, in which magnetic fields and sunspots are linked. Hale suggested that the sunspot cycle period is 22 years, covering two polar reversals of the solar magnetic dipole field.

The Schwabe solar cycle or Schwabe-Wolf cycle is the eleven-year cycle of solar activity of the sun.

At periods of highest activity, known as solar maximum or solar max, sunspots appear. Periods of lowest activity are known as solar minimum. The last solar maximum was in 2001. The solar cycle is not strictly 11 years; it has been as short as 9 years and as long as 14 years in recent years.

Answer 4

The sun has "weather" on it just like the Earth but instead of clouds and rain and snow , all the weather is electro-magnetic.

There are great storms of plasma and jets of energy which burst out from the sun.

Many scientists have tracked the cycle of the weather (one could consider it like seasons) where there is increased magnetic activity and hence more storms and jets and such and less active magnetic activity the cycle is 11 years from minimum to maximum or 22 years from min/maximum to the next min/maximum.