Click for magnified view of the sun showing the most recent spot.
Sunspot 987, 988, and now newly emerging 989 are shown above.
With all being near the equator, they are still a cycle 23 spots. A cycle 24 spot would be at a much higher latitude.
The most recent magnetogram shows them to have the magnetic polarity of cycle 23 spots, in addition to being near the equator.
Cycle 24 remains late. There was one sunspot of high latitude and reversed magnetic polarity on January 4th, 2008, but none have been seen since:
Click for a larger image
UPDATE 2: The solar holographic image shows a potentially large spot on the far side of the sun, we’ll have to wait until it comes around to see what it is. The method is not always perfect.
Darker area is the far side of the sun.
Seismic waves propagating through the sun are used to image potential spots on the far side. Here is a description of how it is done.
UPDATE 3:
It looks as if the spot seen yesterday on the far side of the sun via the holographic technique has disappeared. As I said “The method is not always perfect.”
The two spots above are earthward, 987, and 988.
Interestingly I looked at German Wikipedia and it states that cycle 24 already started in January!
Do they know something we don’t?
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnenfleck
” Anfang Januar 2008 begann ein neuer Zyklus, der mit nur 3 Monaten Ungenauigkeit vorhergesagt werden konnte [1]. ”
(A new cycle started at the start of january 2008, one that could be forecast with an inaccuracy of 3 months.)
REPLY: The wa sa single reversed polarity high latitude sunspot in January, which I announced here, but nothing seen since, as if cycle 24 has false started.
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/01/04/solar-cycle-24-has-officially-started/
NASA reported the start of solar cycle 24 in January
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/10jan_solarcycle24.htm
why the difference in opinion?
Very small, and probably won’t last much more than a day.
This is one weird cycle…..
The latest prediction from Hathaway at NASA would have cycle 24 starting pretty quickly in April and ramping in May:
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif
I don’t think it will happen that way
Am I wrong, or did NASA proclaim that Sun Cycle 24 arrived on January 4th, 2008? I’m not familiar with Sun science too much, but I know contradictory statements when I see one.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/10jan_solarcycle24.htm
The photo posted on this web site clearly shows no existing reversed polarity Sun Sport in the high latitudes, which is a tell tale sign of a new cycle. However, the images and statements in the link I provided state regarding an area of solar activity very recently:
“It was high latitude (30 degrees N) and magnetically reversed. NOAA named the spot AR10981, or “sunspot 981” for short.
However, you state, “the cycle remains late”. So which is it?
REPLY: here is the first cycle 24 spot, none since:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/01/04/solar-cycle-24-has-officially-started/
Cycle 23 spots continue to be produced, and it is normal to have an overlap during the transition from one cycle to the other. It’s just that more cycle23 spots have been occuring and no cycle 24 spots.
Very intresting. Another spot has appeared. It’s also a cycle 23 spot. Solarcycle24.com is reporting the possability of a third spot emerging on the eastern limb soon also on the equator.
Man, this is a weird cycle.
And yes, there is overlap between cycles. Usually 12-18 months, IIRC. But we’re quickly approaching 3 months since the last Cycle 24 spot. And remember there was one that appeared in 2006 (June?). So did the new cycle start in June 2006, January 2008, or has it still not started yet?
Yeah, weird…..
I guess in April the prediction will be for a quick start in May?
For an excellent paper on this by David Archibald: Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United States This is very readable and easily understood for the layman.
The overlap in cycle length is usually 12 to 20 months, meaning the actual start of the cycle would be towards the end of this year, to as late as mid-’09.
Another LIA type climate seems to be bearing down on us. And we’re worried about C02, which not only is NOT the enemy, but which we have benefited greatly from, and will benefit even more from predicted future rises. We’ll need all the growing power we can get!
Yes, cycles overlap. Perhaps the best demarcation of the border is flatlining of solar flux, and it has been flat around 70, lately. 72, yesterday, though.
=============================================
Cycle 24 does not officially start until there are more Cycle 24 sunpots than there are Cycle 23 spots.
From the time a sunspot of a new Cycle appears, it can take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years before we are officially in a new cycle.
So far there has only been 1 Cycle 24 sunspot and the most recent butterfly pattern of sunspots shows it will be at least 6 months before the the new cycle starts.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly_recent.gif
It is good to see the Sun ramping up again though because we certainly do not want any Maunder Minimums with the crop failures and poor golf seasons that one would bring. A nice normal Sun is a good thing.
I don’t believe he even mentions coronal holes, which aren’t connected to sunspots, but which also seem to have a large effect on the amount of solar wind streams effecting Earth. My rather limited understanding is that taking CH’s into effect means that the cooling will indeed be significant, and more similat to what occurred during the Maunder rather than the Dalton Minimum.
On Warwick Hugh’s blog, David Archibald is reporting current revised prediction of sunspot maximum being ~45.
“Things are pointing to a Solar Cycle 24 amplitude of about 45. That number is within Schatten’s error bar on his estimate of 72. A number of wavelet people have numbers in the 40s. ”
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=150
Bill Illis
We all know a cold spell would be bad news. But a warm spell would only confirm the AGW kooks, and they would lead us to an even greater disaster.
I’m hoping it cools. I crave the opportunity to rub it in their smug faces. Besides don’t worry – we all know how to heat the planet now, don’t we? 🙂
REPLY: Yes but no amount of heating we could conjure up will affect an approaching global glaciation. Let’s not wish for such things.
Yeah. (Shhhh! quiet! You’ll wake it!)
I usually just lurk out here, this site is fantastic.
Bruce – Thanks for the link to David Archibald’s paper. Easy read and very understandable. I’m curious if there are any further papers on the same line. Also, it seems the AGW proponents at other web sites sure don’t like this guy. Have there been any followup papers to David’s by anyone else as David himself suggests people should do?
Let’s not wish for such things.
Anthony, as much as many skeptics want desperately to, as AGWscoffer notes; “rub it in their smug faces”, I can’t imagine anyone who lived through the harsh winters of the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s wanting a repeat of that era. Throughout the 70’s and early 80’s I had a vegetable garden in my back yard. I followed the general rule of thumb in northern Indiana and didn’t plant until after May 15th. And, even then, there were a number of years when I had to replant 2 or 3 times, sometimes as late as Memorial Day, due to late frosts and even hard freezes. And the mid-20th Century cooling was mild compared to a Dalton or Maunder minimum.
NASA has been announcing Solar minimum since March 2006, two full years ago, as this March 6, 2006 news release demonstrates.
Solar Minimum has Arrived
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/06mar_solarminimum.htm
To confirm the long anticipated arrival of Solar Cycle 24, NASA announced a Backward Sunspot on August 15, 2006, which was observed on July 31, 2006.
Backward Sunspot
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/15aug_backwards.htm
By NASA’s own admission this Backward Sunspot was atypical and they were not sure it heralded the arrival of Cycle 24.
Then in a January 10, 2008 press release NASA announced that a Backward or Reverse Polarity Sunspot appeared on January 4, 2008 and lasted for 3 short days.
Solar Cycle 24 Begins
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/10jan_solarcycle24.htm
In the press release the following statement was made:
“We predicted that Solar Cycle 24 would begin around March 2008 and it looks like we weren’t far off,” he says.
There is one small problem with the above statement, NASA has been predicting the start of Solar Cycle 24 for two years now and they have been consistently wrong! As Anthony has correctly pointed out in another post, NASA/NOAA has been moving the goalpost. What is really interesting is that the predicted start data for Solar Cycle 24 has been moved not once but multiple times. The number of such predictions is the subject for another post.
Mike
““We predicted that Solar Cycle 24 would begin around March 2008 and it looks like we weren’t far off,” he says.”
THAT is comedy GOLD, Jerry!!!!
Interesting.
Stan: While I agree, it’s getting to the point where I am looking forward to the day when they dig me out of the ice.
Frozen stiff, with a big grin on my face.
NAZA: Not this evening. Perhaps tomorrow.
VLADIMIR: We’ve nothing more to do here, Didi.
ESTRAGON: Ah, Gogo, don’t go on like that. Tomorrow everything will be better.
NAZA: Let’s say no more about it.
“I can’t imagine anyone who lived through the harsh winters of the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s wanting a repeat of that era. ”
Being born in 48, I thought harsh winter was what George Washington, Ben Franklin and John Adams lived through.
Nope we really don’t want a LIA. That would be terrible. The only problem is that if the warmers get their way fuel will be so expensive in another year that it will be nearly impossible to produce food crops and then when we do to move it to market. It isn’t hard to imagine food riots in the not to distant future if the carbon limits and cost are placed in effect and then we have serious cooling for several years. Here In Alabama we are feeling the crunch with the drought since 2005 and late freezes meaning late crops that last year produced less than 50% of normal production state wide.
Yep I can see things being rough if we have some serious cooling if the warmers gain the upper hand.
Bill
re: sun spots. This is like waiting for your pre-adolescent son to get his first case of acne. Two pimples does not an adolescent make.
” Could someone tell please me how one knows these are Cycle 23 spots?”
QUESTION IS NOW ANSWERED! So it does look as if Cycle 24 is gonna be really late…c’mon global cooling!!
STAN, with all due respect…
We’re left with choosing the lesser of two evils. Of course, in a normal world, cooling is worse news than warming. But we don’t live in normal times, do we? The world and climate science have been hijecked by kook-scientists who have some very scary ideas on how to solve this “global warming problem” and run things in general. These ideas are far more dangerous (i.e. bio-fuel fiasco, government intervention, high taxes, regulation, etc.) than a degree or two C of cooling, which I pray is in the pipeline.
So what do you choose? Kooks or kooling?
I choose cooling because, when this hoax is finally exposed and the masses wake up and realise how they’ve been duped, it’ll serve to put science back into proper hands, and remind the public of the importance of being skeptical of science and MSM, and that the person who screams the loudest is not necessarilly right. No – consensus does not make the science.
In USA you have a healthy degree of skepticism – not here in Europe. Here only politically correct thought is acceptable, and anything else, no matter what science and data you present, is wrong. I’ve had it with these pseudo-intelllectuals, who have not even bothered to read up a little about the science, lecturing me on “social responsibilities”. For all I care they can shove those responsibilities where the don’t sunspots appear.
These glittering jewels of arrogance have to be brought back down to earth.
If that doesn’t happen, then we’re in a heap of trouble.
Haven’t you read about these guys?
Please allow me to suggest the following link:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/20/the-sloppy-science-of-global-warming/
SOME EXCERPTS.:
” While it takes only one scientific paper to disprove a theory, I fear that no amount of evidence will be able to counter what everyone now considers true.”
” About the only thing that might cause global warming hysteria to end will be a prolonged period of cooling…”
” It is unfortunate that our next generation of researchers and teachers is being taught to trust emotions over empirical evidence.”
” Social and political ends increasingly trump all other considerations. Science that is not politically correct is becoming increasingly difficult to publish.”
“…the extreme reluctance for most scientists to even entertain the possibility that some of it might be natural suggests to me that climate research has become corrupted.”
Sound familiar?
The danger is neither the warming nor the cooling. Humanity is technically equipped to deal with both. The danger is the POLITICS.
Looks like a 3rd spot, also at the equator, might be emerging.
Bill in Vigo, truly I think cooling will come soon enough to stop the carbon craziness, but if we are in for decades of cooling, life will still get very tough for the poor and powerless(intended) of the world. A cooler niche will not sustain as much life here on earth and a human die-off of just a few percent is still hundreds of millions of people. It won’t just be freezing, or starvation, but disease and war from the associated social dislocations.
It is terribly ironic to hope for cooling to break the fever of carbon encumbrance. We are damned if it cools, and damned if it doesn’t. Why couldn’t we figure out the true role of CO2 in climate without a shocking cooling to awaken us to the facts? Some scientists we’ve turned out to be.
====================================
Not being a sun spot expert, can someone comment on the reletive size of these spots? Are they small, normal, or large?
The cooler temperatures of 2007 have already had a huge impact on the prices on basic food commodities.
While there were only a few unexpected frost situations like for winter wheat in the US south and the ethanol fiasco has impacted corn prices, most of the world experienced lower than normal crop harvests due to the cooler weather. Stocks and inventories of basic food commodities are now are their lowest levels ever.
World wheat prices and soybeans recently reached $20 per bushel which is twice the previous record. These prices are nothing compared to what would happen if China, the US mid-west, Eastern Europe and Canada can only produce 25% of a normal crop like would have happened in the Little Ice Age.
Still a little too early to cry Wolf Minimum, but I hear some howling in the distance.
I hear some howling in the distance. That would be the anguished cries and fighting and squabbling of the AGW religionists
over how best to keep spinning the data, and keeping the whole fraud going long enough to pass their anti-carbon laws, taxes, and keeping all their various and sundry scams and schemes going.
Human food crops are going to suffer from significant cooling a lot more than they would suffer from warming or biofuels development. Global cooling could cause the deaths of hundreds of millions via starvation. What have we done to cause this cooling?
Quick! Sacrifice some virgins to the sun god!
I wonder how ocean coral will react to the coming Maunder-type minimum?
Modern corals evolved 250 million years ago, when oceans were far more acidic than they are currently. In other words, corals evolved in a very acidic ocean, and have survived large numbers of extreme climate fluctuations–warmings to glaciations to warmings etc.
Coral seems to be reacting badly to sunscreens, but a bit of experimentation should allow development of human skin suncreens that are coral-friendly.
Quick! Sacrifice some virgins to the sun god!
(Hey! I said that yesterday on consimworld!)
Just make sure you use Virgin 1.0.
JEFF
Compare for yourself…
http://images.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~sparke/ast103/sunspots.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~sparke/ast103/lecture11.html&h=800&w=800&sz=79&hl=de&start=10&um=1&tbnid=S5yvtTwUrWF0XM:&tbnh=143&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsunspots%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dde%26sa%3DN
The ones we have now I’d are small. But I’m not an expert either.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that there have been only two sunspots (one in January and one earlier this March) that would be considered part of 24. They were in the upper hemisphere of the pictures we have been studying and demonstrated reverse polarity thus would be new cycle spots. The current group near the equator would be from the tail end of cycle 23. The new cycle is still holding back, like an engine that just won’t turn over.
This March? Huh? When? (Looking wildly around.)
I thought we just had the one last January, with an arguable spitball back in ought-6?
Rev?
From Evan Jojnes:
“Still a little too early to cry Wolf Minimum, but I hear some howling in the distance.”
According to global knowledge (Google), the Wolf Minimum already happened between 1280 and 1340 (1,160 references). There are 869 references to “Gore Minimum.” Someone ought plot that count over time….
The timing is perfect in creating a human caused global warming hysteria, convince politicians and business people to push for bio-fuel and carbon tax when we are entering a solar minimum if your goal is to create mass famine and widespread poverty.
The Wolf minimum marked the start of the Little Ice Age and the end of the Medieval Warm Period.
Look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315-1317
I wouldn’t be surprised if the floods and rains in England and in many places in Western Europe of last year will be repeated in the coming years.
One problem is that the AGW people will claim these unusual weather patterns are climate change caused by CO2. And people will believe them.
oops my bad. I was referring to the one in 06. Spin this one around in our heads. If that was the beginning of cycle 24 (yes, I am talking way back in 06) and the next sun spot was in January of this year, the thought of a throwback to the mini-ice age minimum may be the elephant in the room having tea with the gorilla. Anyone want to speculate that we have been in cycle 24 for two years and have had only two sun spots that meet the criteria for “new” sunspots? It’s almost unthinkable isn’t it. But what if it were true?
“Anyone want to speculate that we have been in cycle 24 for two years ”
No, we haven’t. Sorry. The definition of when the transition officially occurs is when Cycle 24 spots out number cycle 23 spots. We’re not even remotely close….
According to global knowledge (Google), the Wolf Minimum already
Yeah, I know, that was why I made the ref.
From my handy-dandy “Solar Postcard”:
Oort (1010-1050)
Wolf (1280-1340)
Spörer (1415-1534)
Maunder (1645-1715)
Dalton (1790-1840)
Hmmm. Speaking of pattern recognition.
1010
1280
1415
1645
1790
. . .
2008?
Yoiks!
Evan Jones
From the pattern it would appear that we are overdue? Should the last year in the list really be 1998?
Get out the blankets!!!
The Great Famine of 2008–2010 (occasionally dated 2008-2015) was the first of a series of large-scale crises that struck the world early in the 21st century, causing millions of deaths over an extended number of years and marking a clear end to an earlier period of growth and prosperity during the 16th through 20th centuries. Starting with bad weather in the spring of 2008, universal crop failures lasted through 2010 until the summer of 2011; The world did not fully recover until 2015. It was a period marked by extreme levels of criminal activity, disease and mass death, infanticide, and cannibalism. It had consequences for Church, State, Western society and future calamities to follow in the 21st century.
From WikiFuture 😉
Evan Jones (12:28:38) :
“I thought we just had the one last January, with an arguable spitball back in ought-6?”
The current crop looks like some decent spots to me. I won’t have time, but in five days someone ought to post a theory about “retrograde” solar cycles where the sun’s conveyor belt not just slows down, but goes into reverse and starts sucking in the solar wind released during the previous years.
It’s kind of a pity that we didn’t have all the solar watching resources during the transition between cycles 22 and 23, I have little experience to compare the current minimum’s daily events with the last. OTOH, here are a couple links that show the last minimum was not like the current one:
http://www.dxlc.com/solar/cyclcomp.html
http://www.dxlc.com/solar/solcycle.html
To those who incline toward hoping for some cooling to cool the fever of AGW fanatics, they’ll just blame the cooling for masking the effect of global warming. They already do that with the mid-twentieth century cooling.
The thing to hope for is enough cooling to generate a Kuhnian paradigm shift in climate science that leads to proper recognition of the role of solar periodicities in climate cycles.
That would prevent IPCC types from being able to so easily dismiss the role of solar forcing. Having come to this party (the AGW controversy) and from another discipline (economics), I don’t know whether the forcing attributed to GHG’s is accurate or not, but having immersed myself recently in what the temperature record can tell us about solar influences, I’m quite certain that solar forcing gets short shrift in the IPCC analysis of forcings. This embolden’s the AGW alarmists, and gives them rationalization for ignoring solar influences.
One thing I’ve noted as I’ve begun to read various articles and abstracts in climate science is the number of them which report findings that are indicative of solar influences, but soft pedal the results somehow so as not to appear to be going against the AGW hypothesis. That is classic Kuhnian “normal science.” And it sucks. If it takes a period of cooling to generate a paradigm shift in climate science that will let climate scientists report their findings without kow-towing to those who have staked their careers and reputations on the AGW hypothesis, and who seek to protect the same by the power and influence they wield in the scientific establishment, then I’m for whatever amount of cooling that it take to do this. It won’t stop the “greenies” or those for whom the AGW hypothesis is not simply “normal science” but is part of an unscientific world view. But it will free science to be science again for a while.
Call me an antiantidisestablishmentarian. I’m all for disestablishing the Church of AGW. I’m also a credentialed minister, BTW, who understands the difference between faith and science, so I can say something like this with no slight intended to believers. In Kuhnian “normal science,” the reigning paradigm ultimately becomes an article of faith. Does “the science is settled” sound a bell here? Where is the Martin Luther of climate science when you need him?
Look at the tail (ending) of Cycle #4: http://www.dxlc.com/solar/cycl4.html
Looks like how #23 is finishing?: http://www.dxlc.com/solar/cyclcomp.html
Just when you think it’s done…..
“Anyone want to speculate that we have been in cycle 24 for two years and have had only two sun spots that meet the criteria for “new” sunspots? It’s almost unthinkable isn’t it. But what if it were true?”
The thought is actually relevant. We don’t have enough knowledge about the sun to predict a new Maunder minimum. A new MM would mean that the solarcycle almost disappear for decades. So it would in theory be possible that sc24 actually has started but it will not produce more than some random spots like in MM ~1650-1700.
Basil, they will probably beat the drums even louder, proclaiming that once the sun powers up again, AGW will be even more devastating, and that this is a reprieve that will allow us to repent our CO2 sins.
I know that currently, cycle changes are defined by the number of newbies out-pacing the number of oldies. But what if this time there is a long term pattern of change that forces us to use a new definition for this kind of change? What if these extremely low “minimum periods” we keep talking about also demonstrated a different pattern of change from old to new? What was the pattern of overlap like for these periods? Or IS there a pattern that we can discern with any degree of scientific theorizing that passes the smell test from the two or possibly three historic minimums? The end of 23 is still upon us but with very little activity, hanging on like a stubborn milk tooth refusing to fall out, and cycle 24 is either a few months old or TWO YEARS old if we dare to use a different definition for this odd case.
Pamela, I think I get what you’re saying now. OK, wow, that would be extremely interesting. I suppose only time will tell what’s going on there.
Basil: excellent post. I agree. If it takes a prolonged cooling with all that implies (possibly millions, if not billions lost to starvation) to return this debate to science, then so be it. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING will convince a True Believe(tm) we’re not to blame. As one of them keeps telling me, “even if we’re wrong, it’s the right thing to do.”
If they are wrong it is the wrong thing to do. (Horribly wrong; costly in human life). Even if they are right, it is the wrong thing to do because the proposed measures are ineffective for fighting GW but highly effective for crippling the wealth necessary to deal with AGW, if real.
They have Pascal not only half backwards, but completely backwards.
I’m wondering where all you people hoping for cooling hail from. While I anticipate cooling, I am NOT looking forward to it. Wisconsin is already cold enough, and there are only so many games at Lambeau I can take in below-zero temperatures!
Thanks for the list Evan. Anyone have a chart of actual sunspot data for these periods? I am especially interested in cycle change overlap data. I would also want charts of sunspot data for the periods in-between these minimums, say 10 cycles on either side for each period. I wish I had data for the other aspects of sun measurements, which I consider to be more predictive of weather change than just spot numbers. Oh well. What I am interested in is the time span between last one out and first one in as well as overall count of sunspots during cycle change, comparing normal cycles to minimal cycles.
Oort (1010-1050)
Wolf (1280-1340)
Spörer (1415-1534)
Maunder (1645-1715)
Dalton (1790-1840)
What a great way to spend my spring break. By the way, it is friggin cold in northeast Oregon with more snow on the way.
RE: DNorris (04:13:56) :
During the 2010s, a Great War started, which far exceeded the levels of destruction and death during the two Great Wars during the previous century. Adding to the already rising aerosol levels coming from Asia, additional aerosols were sent airborne by thousands of nuclear explosions. While not causing a short and intense “nuclear winter” as projected by certain 20th century alarmists, the additional aerosols serves as an additive factor to the effects of a solar minimum, combined with previously poorly understood negative feedback due to land use changes which had occurred during the previous 10000 years. Furthermore, the interglacial was nearing its end. The combined impacts caused the interglacial to arrive prematurely. The Era Of Great Change had begun.
Anyone looking forward to cooling as a technique to put the kibosh on AGW theorists, really ought to read “Fallen Angels”.
In that book, as part of the background, the North Dakota highway department is in a desperate battle to keep the advancing glacier from closing the cross-state freeway, and Chicago is being slowly dismantled by its own residents for firewood… and the US government is still fervently fighting against AGW, by such advanced techniques as denying allotments of paper to unapproved technologists and government critics.
Where is the Martin Luther of climate science when you need him?
Think “95 postcards”.
Not sure how trading one myth for another would help. What we need are the Galileo’s, Copernicus’, Kepler’s of climate science.
PG: “Anyone have a chart of actual sunspot data for these periods?”
One can find historic data digging around at
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/
Recent data is more complete, however, comparing the 9/1996 cycle 22 minimum with today’s values is most interesting.
FYI:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0327/p01s02-woap.html
REPLY: Yes lets burn food to replace oil, great idea those biofuels. 🙁
Plus, the rice shortage, and to an extent, the wheat shortage, have been made worse by the horrible winter experienced in Asia. As you know, literally that whole continent has been affected, from the Levant, to the Yellow Sea.
I’ll wait in this place where the sun never shines;
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves.
Red is grey and yellow white
But we decide which is right
and which is an illusion.
Reply: Knights in White Satin
Solar cycle twenty four is already late enough, that we can be pretty damn sure that during the coming cycle, we are going to freeze.
This, however, is not going to unduly bother the church of anthropogenic Gaia warming.
It will probably not even enable science to recover. We see the same rot in every area of science, most notoriously string theory.
Anthropogenic Gaia warming is not causing the decline of science, rather the decline of science is has caused anthropogenic Gaia warming – see the famous essay “space aliens cause global warming” The rot set in science first, and only later did scientific theories become religions rather than science.
We are seeing a similar transmogrification throughout academia, indeed science is the second last and second least affected, the least affected being mathematics. History, for example, has been liberated from inconvenient facts thanks to the discovery that what dead white males thought was happening is of no account.
Evan Jones: Cream; White Room?
“Nights”, actually 😉
There’s a little black spot on the sun today
Its the same old thing as yesterday
Tex: Good call.
Sitting in an English garden
waiting for the sun…
Have to admit 988 especially is a shock after months without M-class flares. This abscence was itself absent during the cycle 23 minimum. There we had flaring even during Sept. 1996 during a month stretch without spots.
Jan Janssens indicates cycle ignition falls into two sets re: the delay before minimum following first day without spots. The curve fit implies 24 minimum coming mid-2009, it is already too late to take the preceding fork.
Prophets of a static sun CYA, the roof is coming down.
Don’t these sun spots have the (same) reverse-polarity of the previous ‘Cycle 24’ spot?
REPLY: They are rotated compared to the cycle 24 spot if you look closely.
See, global warming is even affecting the Sun.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Ok, time to get Evan away from the computer.
The sunspot cycle start has become the latest “hurricane naming” monkey football of science, all in the name of politics 🙂
Cycle 24 will start when it starts, the sun will let us know when it’s ready. And at that time, we all will know.
Anthony
It looks like a cycle 24 is coming. On the farside right now.
REPLY Yes I saw the hologram, but be cautious, these are resolved through methods that can make an erroneous position. Let’s see what it looks like when it comes around.
We really need a SOHO on the other side of the sun too.
Look at the isotherms on the US national map today. Compare with even early March, 2006. Highly abnormal, straight across the country with the exception of the immediate Atlantic coast. NWS progs the rain – snow line to reach the Long Island Sound by either late weekend or early next week. If we get a string of Tonopah / inside slider type systems on the West Coast, during April, consider the impacts that might have on agriculture. Snow level is down in the 2K – 3K foot range in NoCal, and could drop even lower. Last night was chilly. There is still a lot of very cold air near the Arctic Coast, which could slam down here, with only a 2 – 3 day warning.
REPLY: I was thinking the same thing last night. I had a low of 33F last night (Sac valley floor). A bit unusual for this time of year.
HMMM. What a dilemma. Should we be hoping that the world cools off to shut up the warmers? Or should we be praying that it doesn’t?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Consider albedo impacts of this. Now of course, in the area with currently growing ice, the sun angle is very low. However, in the area with shrinking ice (NH) the sun angle is getting higher. On the average, albedo impact must be considered. This, on top of a cold Pacific, and all other factors. If the Atlantic switches to cold mode, that would be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
To those hoping a bit/lot of cooling will force the AGWers to face reality.
The following is a direct quote from a recent documentary that hinted we may be in for some cooling. They said right at the end:
Voice over to a video of a polar bear on some melting ice:
This was immediately followed by a scientist (cant remember his name) stating the following:
It seems like the Pogies (anthropogenics) are hell bent in fighting back against Nature. Most of yesterday’s evening newscasts carried stories around the collapse of that little bit of the Antarctic ice shelf… A normal thing to occur at the end of a summer period.
But that was apparently a prelude to the $100 million advertising campaign about to be launched by Mr. Pogie himself… Goofy Gore. I think we can expect many more such “tie ins” to occur immediately before and after the AGW advertising fest.
Should we be hoping that the world cools off to shut up the warmers? Or should we be praying that it doesn’t?
Yes.
Pardon my ignorance, but what is the difference between a backward sunspot and a regular sunspot with regard to its effect on earth’s climate?
Evan
If yes is the answer to the first question, then I fully agree.
More warming would only embolden an already dangerous lot.
Gore ought to hurry up, as it appears the climate might be making a U-turn.
As I said, we are only about 0.5°C from exposing this huge hoax. It’s all coming home to roost.
There’s a link in this article to a data file ( spot_num.txt ) that contains sun spots numbers back to 1750.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml
Glad to see the sun active a little. Maybe it’ll help us warm up a little here in N.MN. Getting tired of the chilly weather.
Also get a chance to see some auroras. They’re cool.
AGWscoffer, don’t you know that no disproof is sufficient? Ever? Don’t question the Church, ye Heretic!
Seriously, though, they’ve been preparing, make stories suggesting that the sun may “save” us, but in the end AGW will come back to bite us later, so we can’t rest just yet, etc.
Anyone see this?
http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=130951
Pamela, I had the same thought.
Matt N, my understanding is that sunspots in one cycle are (to the best of our knowledge) unrelated to sunspots in the next or preceding cycle. Therefore, measuring the start or end of a solar cycle by the sunspots in the next or previous cycle tells us nothing about the length of the particular cycle.
We should measure a sunspot cycle from the first to the last sunspot in that cycle. If we do, Pamela is right and we are looking at a very weak cycle.
Nothern lights forecast.
http://www.gedds.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast/Default.asp?Date=20080327
Upper left corner has little maps for your part of the world. Click the one for you.
You guys don’t get it. What you’re missing is that it doesn’t matter if it warms or cools. People like Gore are bent on control by the elite (meaning them). Gore will switch from AGW to Global Cooling in an instant and start proclaiming that his ilk must control the world’s food and fuel to protect mankind from the evil capitalists. Since no one wants to listen to them when things are going good they have to create a crisis that they proclaim only they can solve. Doesn’t matter what it is.
We need to still continue with that because when the sun finishes going through its 100 year period of low activity we are going to be right back where we started with a vengence
So… this scientist and others, believe that there will be not One Jot of improvement in energy technologies in the next 100 years?
I wonder if he any relation to the gentleman who said canons had reached their pinnacle in the war of 1812?
You guys don’t get it. What you’re missing is that it doesn’t matter if it warms or cools.
It does, though. To some people it doesn’t, but it does to the swing vote.
I remember when they “cleanued up” Times Square. A lot of people said, so what, the porno theaters would just move uptown two blocks. They did. And they were out of business in a couple of years. If being uptown two blocks made no difference they would have been there in the first place.
Same basic principle applies to the MSM. Most of them will never change. But the MSM itself is in the very process of being bypassed. To be largely replaced by the wattsupwiththats of the world! The MSM is being “moved two blocks uptown”.
In the time it took you to read this message, the New York Times has lost half a dozen readers . . .
The Daulton Minimum, the Maunder Minimum … the current minimum will need a name.
How about:
The AGW Alarmist Minimum?
The Gore Minimum?
The Carbon Tax Minimum?
Anyone?
I agree that this should be called the Gore Minimum.
This fraud must be remember for generations and never forgotten. The damage done to science is beyond calculation and the deaths will be in the millions.
The current minimum? You must mean the (very likely) upcoming one, in which case the name should be given to someone who has actually been studying sunspots, just as solar astronomer Edward W. Maunder did. How about the Watts Minimum?
REPLY: Absolutely not.
This predicted reduction in solar activity and the resultant cooling would be great as far as I am concerned. I would LOVE to see the AGW crowd laughed off the stage! However, I am not getting my hopes up just yet, I want to see the sun stay reletively calm for a little longer before I get too excited.
I have read about the Dalton minimun’s affects on society in one of Hubert Lamb’s outstanding books, and I have hoped to have the opportunity to live through a similar period. Maybe that sounds silly, but his writing captured my imagination!
One more thing: can it really get as cold as the Dalton period if solar activity were to become equally low as then, because we will be cooling from a higher starting point? (warmer oceans, less land ice, etc. than back then).
Great stuff here!
Anthony,
Your site is a lot of fun. I’m still chuckling over your Dragnet entry. Just keeps on getting more interesting. We’re still trying to deduce how those punks got away with taking a server out for a joyride.
Re: New Cycles: NASA Science Chief Dr. Alan Stern resigned today, and will to return to Boulder’s Southwest Research Institute. He was primarily a planetary scientist, and was noted for “keeping the cost of projects in check”, according to today’s NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/science/27nasa.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin
REPLY: I like to follow this maxim: “Science should be fun.” – Don Herbert, Mr. Wizard
Definitely the “Gore Minimum” that’s perfect. Gore will be remembered as only a laughing stock once it becomes clear to the rest of the world that the Sun and Earth failed to cooperate with his chicken-little blathering.
How about,
The Kyoto Minimum
The Greenpeace Minimum
or my personal favourite,
The WattsUpWithThat? Minimum
REPLY: No naming minimums after me.
Things are going to get disturbingly chilly over the next decade or so, but it will not trouble the global warmers much. Were Marxists upset because capitalism made the poor much richer, while socialism forced them into poverty and famine?
In all of academia, not just climate science, truth has become a crime, a thoughtcrime, deserving of punishment.
Climate science is just one part of a broader problem, the real problem being belief systems, memetic diseases, that spread by coercive means – climate science is just one part of political correctness, and political correctness is part of the same problem as Islam.
My formal education is in meteorology and my profession is Software Engineering. However, my love has always been astronomy and variable stars.
In the early 1970’s, a friend and were able to choose our field of study. I chose variable stars and he chose to study the Sun’s sunspot influence upon Earth’s weather. I “knew” that our Sun was not a variable star and just laughed at him and called him a fool.
Thirty five years later, I have learned that I was the fool. He was exploring a topic that nobody believed in, but had recognized a pattern in the data that that needed more study.
Once I realized how wrong I had been, the recognition that our Sun was a variable star was rather exciting to this astronomer. I began to study this subject more detail and obtain all the data which I could assimulate.
In my efforts to document our Sun’s variability, I stumbled upon Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre. What a wonderful breath of fresh air!
What physical processes are cause a star such as our Sun, to be variable in such an interesting way. And as an astronomer, this is a subject that needs much more detailed research.
Anthony, please keep up with this line of research. In many ways, you have been following along lines that were explored thirty five years ago.
I was the fool!
Satellite Makes First Ever Observation Of Regionally Elevated Carbon Dioxide From Manmade Emissions
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080318110330.htm
The Carbon Dioxide influence is so down in the noise, that scientists must work very hard to even detect it!
I was rather impressed with their research and can only applaud them for their outstanding efforts. That was not easy to do!
Clearly, this should be the Landscheidt minimum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Landscheidt
Some of his papers can be viewed here: http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/papers-by-dr-theodor-landscheidt
The Gore Minimum.
Definitely The Gore Minimum.
Btw, didn’t he invent the sunspots?
Anthony:
Thirty five years ago, this same kid (that I called a fool ) studied the effects of the City of Atlanta upon the local weather.
The TV meteorologist at WSB supported him and allowed him to ask for help on TV for volunteers with his project. He asked for people around the city of Atlanta to place coffee cans in their yards, and measure with a ruler the amount of rain after each storm. He got over 200 people around Atlanta to report their results.
After a few months, he was able to make contour plots around the city of Atlanta. There was a very obvious pattern of rainfall between the West side of the city and the East.
This High School student was able to demonstrate in a remarkable way, how a city can influence the local weather.
He taught me to be rather humble and follow the data, no matter where it may lead.
REPLY: GREAT STORY -Anthony
He got over 200 people around Atlanta to report their results.
Hint, hint, hint….
Anthony, we all know about the urban effect upon local weather, but to document it has always been difficult.
It is amazing how people will dedicate a little of their time, if it can be made simple and easy to do.
But, you already know that….
Absolutely 100% agree with Gore Minimum.
Eddy Minimum. He liked words.
==================
Is it just me or are the 3 spots we see on the sun right now already shrinking? To me, they look smaller than they did earlyer today.
Just checked out the last 22.5 hours of history. Spot 989 is definatly shrinking. Not sure about the other 2
Svalgaard likes Eddy Minimum, too. I think solar physicists generally would agree with him, so if it develops, consider it named.
We could call the recent warming peak the Gore Maximum. I like that. It would memorialize him as a fool, and serve forever as a cautionary tale to scientists, who apparently repetitively need the lesson.
=============================================
Or the patent official around the turn of the 20th century who said there was nothing left to invent.
Alarmist Sunspot activity article…
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-04/st_spaceweather
I expect that CO2 levels will be dropping very soon as the ocean will likely be in it’s absorption phase for the next 10-20 years. An interesting study done on Mars suggested that as the polar regions warmed, the ice-bound CO2 was released into the lower stratum of the planet, thus contributing (they said) to the warming-cooling cycle pattern evidenced by landmark boarder changes. Once the poles cooled again, CO2 became bound once again in the ice. Of course, the scientists used this conclusion to show that CO2 warms planetary bodies, thus would account for global warming here on earth. This is an excellent case of flying the plane in the fog by looking out the window instead of flying by the dials. Atmospheric CO2 on Mars is part of the cycle there as told by these scientists. But the “fog” prevented these same scientist from seeing the cycle we have here on earth as well.
Hmm. I wonder. From what I know, the ocean variation is only around 10 ppm. per 1 degree celsius delta. Measurable, but not a whole lot.
Correct me if I’m wrong, someone.
OTOH, once CO2 levels stop increasing, the persistence/sink lag will catch up with it and it will stop accumulating @ c. 3ppm/year.
What i think is that what little effect CO2 has is quickly swamped by negative feedback, resulting in homeostasis.
Evan: I agree – Lovelock’s idea of planetary homeostasis had a huge effect on me as a young Green way back when. What I can’t work out is why he’s abandoned this in favour of runaway positive feedback when the geological record and the very fact of our existence confirms it.
I have just been reading a paper by Gerald E. Marsh that is an excellent critique of the recent IPCC (2001) report “Climate Change 2001…”. Towards the end of the paper, he demonstrates the possibility that the ocean’s ability to cycle CO2 (absorb vs repel) has been underestimated. There are many other parts of the paper that are very interesting, including the millenial cycles (yes, cycles) demonstrating leaf stomata numbers during times of high atmospheric CO2 (at times 20% higher back then than it currently is). He also notes that temperature change during these high levels of CO2 (which according to the boob tube will be 6 degrees warmer and will kills all living things plus God) did not change that much and completely fly against the change in temperatures predicted by our current models.
Thank You for the images-but I still don’t get it. I can’t ‘see’ the differience between these sunspots-I thought the polarity should be revered and that I should see new cycle sun spots with the white part (North) on the right of the image as opposed to the white part (N.) on the left hand side of the image. Or am I completely off base and the only diff is the lattitude? P.S. I LOVE your site and visit it every day!
A late season Arctic storm is affecting the Pac NW and is toying with NoCal. It’s really quite impressive. The precip is not concentrated, but is widespread. There are places incredibly close to the coast with Snow Advisories, Heavy Snow Warnings and the like. It’s like January. Who would have ever thought we’d be sitting here in 2008 discussing about something like this, way back when the AGW hype first started getting going (and, I sheepishly admit, I was still an arch warmer.) “It will happen in 1997.” Yeah, right.
It seems Hathaway has chimed in on these new cycle 23 spots. Interesting that he seems to be waffling.
http://www.physorg.com/news125930707.html
Oops, I meant 3 BTMC (Bil. Tons Metric Carbon), not 3ppm. The atmosphere contains c. 750 BMTC total.
Eddy Minimum would get my vote. JAE ddy made significant contributions to climate research by looking at both solar physics and history together.
re: the “shadow” of a possible cycle 24 sunspot on the other side of the sun. Right place. Timing is right. Magnitude may be small or diminishing very fast. Might not last long enough for us to see it or even be given a number (like the one in 2006?). May be something else. These kinds of sightings are confirmed or disregarded about 7 days from initial signature when that area of the sun faces our satellites. When was it picked up? Is its disappearance maybe related to the areas of the backside of the sun that our instruments can’t see?
A shadow on the sun
Staring at the loss
Looking for a cause
And never really sure
The latest on sunspot 23
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/28mar_oldcycle.htm?list181784
I don’t know about “Eddy Minimum”, but Landscheidt Minimum sounds good. “Eddy” seems disrespectful.
In terms of snow, here in New Hampshire (measured in Concord) we have just moved into the #2 spot in terms of seasonal snowfall records, with over 115″. We need only about 6.5″ more to beat the all-time record of 122″, set back in 1873-74. That is doable, as snow in April here is not at all unusual.
What happened to the page
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/our-changing-sun-and-colony-collapse-disorder-in-bees/
?
I was going to return to it for a thorough reading but it seems to have disappeared. If it is still available, tell us where.
Thanks,
– Gene
I miss the reason you consider ‘Eddy Minimum’ disrespectful, Bruce. Jack Eddy is the one who named Maunder Minimum, at least partly because of the alliteration. He could have called it the Oerter Minimum after the one who really discovered it, but called it Maunder Minimum instead after one who ballyhooed it.
Read up on Jack Eddy. He is the one who brought the concept of minima back into the consciousness of climate scientists. Well, some of them. The ones who believe there can be great natural variability of climate.
It really amazes me the scientific ignorance of some of the defenders of AGW. They catch a mole tail, and raise a mountain. Sure, CO2 must have some physical effect, but the fierce adherence by some advocates to the IPCC’s mistaken conception of that effect, and the perverted modeling done thereby, simply amazes me. Look at the resistance to reconsider some assumptions even in the face of seven years of leveling, and now dropping, of temperature.
It is indeed heartening to hear some public wondering by Pachauri about the recent cooling. The buck does stop, after all, at his desk. Surely not all of the warmistas harbor a deep desire to become gigantic fools. Gore, and Hanson, I’m not so sure about; the desire by them to be giants may overshadow any caution about what sort of giants.
Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum
Pachauri smells a bad sum.
=================
Re: The “Gore minimum”. Even if meant in derision that a$$hat does not deserve to have his name preserved that way.
I propose the Gorebull Minimum, as in Gorebull warming.
Has anyone noticed that 250 of the last 1000 years have been major solar minimums?
The age of shadows has begun
Giant machines blot out the sun
Frozen lands becoming known
The age of shadows has begun
Just to mention again, the first potential cycle 24 spot occurred July 31st, 2006. The second was in March of this year. The first one lasted hours. The second one seems to have also disappeared. If one were to say that cycle 24 started back then, it is now 1 yr, 8 mo old. Normal overlap is between 6 months and 2 years as the old cycle ramps down and the new one ramps up. It looks like this overlap will be greater than two years. If the entire sun quiets down into a long sleep, it seems to make sense that the old one will drag on but in a very quiet pattern and the new one will seem to never get into its maximum. Has this been the pattern before?
REPLY: The second was January 4th, 2008
my bad. above post done this AM while freezing in NE Oregon. thanks for the correction.
Haven’t you read about these guys?
I live in New York. #B^1
[…] The recent spots all bore magnetic and positional signature of the previous sunspot cycle. The new cycle has still failed to makea normal start. Posted at 11:07 AM | […]
To lighten the mood a bit:
The sun appears to be shooting blanks
All talk, no “backbone”
Just…can’t…rise…to the occasion
Isn’t ejecting anything at all
snip if you need to…wait…that’s not what I mean. Clip if you need to.
Kim, I didn’t know who Jack Eddy was, and mistakenly assumed Eddy was a nickname for Theodor Landscheidt. I have since read a bit about him, including an Interview with Jack Eddy by Spencer Weart, in ’99. An excerpt from it is below. Very interesting that he initially set out to debunk Maunder who got a lot of his ideas from Sporer, and decided on the name Maunder because it sounded better, with all the m’s.
So when I read Maunder’s and Sporer’s claims from the 1890’s that several hundred years before that the sun had behaved strangely for seventy years, it seemed almost preposterous. And in the long-standing traditions of the High Atltitude Observatory, where I had been trained, it needed to be shot at, even after all these years, and dismissed once and for all. So I set out to demonstrate that what Maunder had claimed was really nonsense. I felt I could do that by applying other tests that Maunder didn’t have: like our better understanding of aurorae and so on. And so I tried them. And every one I tried seemed to confirm what Maunder and Sporer had said.
After reading about him, I now think “Eddy Minimum” would indeed be appropriate.
Pamela,
The old man sun is 7 billion years old. When I get that old, I won’t be ejecting anything either.
To put the whole Climate Change issue into perspective vis-a-vis the Peak Oil Crisis, everyone needs to ask themselves, their associates, all sitting elected officials and those seeking office, especially the office of President of the United States, “What is more threatening in both the long and short terms, a beneficial 1 degree F rise in average world temperatures over the past 100 years, or a 1 percent decline in world oil production over the last 100 weeks – with steepening declines forecast? Furthermore, can our economy better deal with declining fuel inventories in an environment of persistent warming, or in an environment of declining average temperatures over the next several decades, the most likely scenario given the highly reliable solar inertial motion (SIM) model forecasts of climate change?” Solar cycle # 24 will tell the tale. The problem is not AGW. The problem is the end of cyclical warming coincident with the onset of Peak Oil. And, who would make $300M available to Al Gore to convince us that we are responsible for Global Warming and must pay dearly to reverse it? Pay a tax and change the weather? I don’t think so.
Bruce Cobb, yes, that is a wonderful interview with Jack Eddy. He liked words.
================================
New forecast out for SC24. Not before July 2008 or could be mid 2009:
http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Engwelcome.html
REPLY: Thanks Bob, I’ll post this.
Interesting on Eddy (post-minimum years):
http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/starkno7.html
After that… (What?)
An interesting article on John Eddy in his “post-minimum” days:
http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stars/starkno7.html
I’d be curious to know what came next in his career, and don’t recall Wear’s interview covering it.
[…] why were these five sunspots fingered as old solar trekkers rather than members of the next generation? It all comes back to what a solar cycle is–and sunspots, flares, prominences, and plage are […]
no one seems to no how bad the sun spots have got to.you all will do when the iceage comes with speed.and your thinking were the next meal will come from.be serious all of you. this is a big threat.and you think its a game
and dont beleive what nasa allways says.they are controled by the illuminati.and they want controll.and make us feel thick by brain washing us with the tv -radio-and pappers witch are all controlled.its been happening for years.look it up for your self.the illuminati