Solar cycle minimum at the earliest in second half of 2008?

FYI—Leif Svalgaard has also updated his research page:
http://www.leif.org/research/Most%20Recent%20IMF,%20SW,%20and%20Solar%20Data.pdf

While Jan Janssens is not an astrophysicists, given the track record of the wise men in Boulder Colorado I am not sure anyone can predict what is going to happen next. If Jan Janssens is correct then there are only three questions which need to be answered.
1. Will the Gore Minimum be comparable to the Dalton or Maunder Minimum?
2. How long will the mainstream media keep the lid on?
3. How will the AGW spin machine respond?
I will keep the Solar Cycle 23-24 animation updated. I do suspect that we will be seeing revised predictions very shortly.
Mike

In the past, there were attempts to use solar activity as a leading indicator of wheat futures. Now, one might consider the same for rice and corn futures. Of course, correlation is not causation. But it is of interest nonetheless. I witnessed a rice run at a local store, over the weekend, right here in NoCal, a preeminent rice growing area. I cannot imagine being somewhere where domestic supplies cannot meet demand (even here we import as a matter of preference, since we only grow short and medium grain in Cali).

Is it reasonable to expect, all other things being equal, that the global temperature will continue to drop for at least the next year and maybe this is the preface to a longer colder period?

Jeff B. – were you thinking of William of Ockham, a Franciscan friar who gave us “Occam’s razor.”?

Indeed Aggie, but according to the principle, a simpler but less accurate theory should not be preferred over a more complex but more accurate one.
I would also be interested to hear speculations about what the Solar Minimum means with respect to our climate.

This is slightly off-subject, but since a less active Sun ultimately affects the Earth’s hydrologic cycle, making it snow, hopefully, in Tennessee, can someone point me to an actual PHYSICS TEXT in which “greenhouse effect” is defined? This term is used as though it is a natural law, yet in my personal schooling (ca. mid-1960s), the Earth’s climate and weather patterns were adequately described in terms of the hydrologic or water cycle, and not once was the term greenhouse effect used. Since even a glass greenhouse does not act like a “greenhouse” (it only traps air warmed by conduction from objects within the greenhouse, not secondary radiation), it seems unlikely that the chaotic, dynamic atmosphere could act in such manner. Any gas (e.g. CO2) warmed near the surface will simply expand (natural gas laws) and disperse to higher levels, thereby releasing its energy. The end result is warming near the ground, evaporating more water into the water cycle, creating cooler clouds, etc. In fact, all of the climate models or GCMs seem to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics by having the cooler troposphere warm the earth’s surface! The entire AGW hypothesis requires one to “suspend disbelief” and stand physical Laws on their heads! I know that definition must be out there, but please don’t pont me at Wikipedia — my Conservative computer doesn’t travel well there! My personal belief is that the greenhouse effect is an urban myth, but I could be wrong!

Steve Sadlov can you elaborate on this rice run you witnessed? I also live in NoCal, near ATT Park, and I know there are no food supply shortages here, although a particular commodity may sometimes be out of stock, but rice?
I was able to find this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/06/food.foodanddrink
Gotta love Guardian reporting: “But with rice relied on by some eight billion people”
I guess they got the scoop on that one a couple of decades into the future.
REPLY: It was probably Rice-a-Roni, I hear there was almost total crop failure for that this year. 😉

D. Dodd,
You might try “Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics,” Seinfeld & Pandis. Concise on greenhouse effect, and expansive in other sections on the related physics.

Jeez – it was at a Marina Market, a “chinese” market. You probably are not going to witness rice runs in Safeway, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Raley’s or Cala. There are certainly cultural factors involved. For, shall we say, those who do not eat rice as their main carbs, there is probably not (yet) the sense of foreboding that would drive one to hoard. Interestingly, there are also reports of hoarding presently from Hong Kong.

I’m ok with rice shortages. as long as I have moon cakes I’m happy.

The wreckage of his ideology still strews the beaches.
=============================================

Always the philosopher.

Questions and Speculation: Why would a Daulton Minimum be the expected outcome? It seems to me that volcanic eruptions affected the depth of the 3 solar minima of the Little Ice Age–it was all a perfect storm, so to speak.
other question: Could this minimum be like the Oort Minimum? Was there an appreciable effect on climate then?
last question: is there really a rice shortage? I eat rice for dinner almost every night…(no, i’m not Asian. I just like rice.)

The Little Ice Age lasted in the region of 400 years, so while volcanic eruptions made some years or groups of years colder they can not have be the cause of the LIA.
There is certainly a shortage of rice on the international market, although international trade in rice is small compared to overall consumption. The big unknown is China. They claim to have a 50 million ton stockpile, which is several times the annual international trade.
I don’t think we know much about the climate at the time of the Oort Minimum.

“NASA’s convened panel of scientists obviously missed their mark of consensus in predicting cycle 24 would start in March 2008”
According to Algorean science, consensus is always correct and this is just a case the Sun not being aware of it. Perhaps the IPCC should fine the Sun a couple of million Euros for it’s blatant disrespect of the scientists comprising the panel.

“What would cause the big predictors to think small.
If solar minimum drags out beyond March, 2008.
What would cause the small predictors to think big.
If either the magnetic field at the sun’s poles increases in strength or geomagnetic activity increases before March, 2008.”
Hmmmm, it looks like a small cycle. Good thing the sun has absolutely no effect on climate.

“Algorean science” – I love it. 🙂
Sometimes the humour here is just so delicious and spot on.
Bit like chocolate drops on my wife’s mouth-watering brownies….

I agree. Buy heating oil/gas futures. Invest in coal processing plants. Buy a mature wood lot now because if you heat with wood, it will also get very expensive. There will be a run on wood/pellet stoves so get your’s ordered now. Buy any kind of grain crop future. Buy any kind of fruit crop future. The prices will likely soar.

Cool, I don’t quite understand though. But I do love astronomy. Tell me more!

Jeez,
Regarding the Guardian’s 8 billion figure, they’ve revised the figure down to 3 billion (let’s hope that the revised figure was derived more scientifically than the former), but still failed to come to grips with the real issues. Or deliberately skirted them.
The Guardian doesn’t mention the normal, long-term supply fluctuation; just the _predicted_ one of a 3.5% reduction. Nor how much of the rice produced goes to waste before reaching the table.
The 50% increase in price is akin to that of oil. Largely due to speculation and profiteering. As a result, tiny negative changes in supply produce enormous, positive price responses. -3.5% => +50%
OTOH; it takes a large positive increase in availability for a small reduction in price. If not also an increase in price to hedge “instability of supply”.
Methinks that the machine is broken.
A very small number of the three billion would be at risk if their portions of rice were reduced by 3.5%. It’s the speculation that results in their portions being 33% smaller. I guess one could call that making a killing on the commodities market.

I’m not entirely on the side of algorean science on the issue of global warming (and certainly not on that of the magical power of consensus!), but it bears pointing out that whatever may happen to climate because of the solar cycle has nothing to do with the hypothesis that anthropogenic emissions have a radiation forcing impact. (I dislike the misnomer “greenhouse effect” because, as someone has pointed out, the glass in a greenhouse doesn’t do anything like the same thing.) Senifeld and Pandis has a good discussion of the mechanism behind this forcing.
To D. Dodd I will only point out that gas warmed by absorption of longwave radiation does *not* lose energy upon the ensuing expansion, although its temperatures does decrease, since it gains potential energy along with height. On your hypothesis, even increasing solar energy wouldn’t be able to warm the atmosphere, since that would equally result in expansion! Clearly, increasing incoming radiation, whatever the source, tends to warm the system. “Greenhouse” gasses have that effect, because they absorb outgoing longwave radiation from the Earth, which would otherwise escape to space, and re-emit it in a random direction. Sometimes that random direction is directly outward, in which case there is no effect, but usually it is either downward or obliquely into the atmosphere, in which case the net temperature of the surface and the atmosphere is slightly increased. The magnitude and secondary effects of this process are not yet well known, nor is the potentially mitigating effect of changes in the solar cycle, but the basic physics of changing atmospheric temperature as a result of changing atmospheric composition are relatively simple. Now, leftist politicians have latched on to this bit of science to sell scaremongering scenarios of molten ice caps and the like, without any proof. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater! As usual, there’s a kernel of truth behind the propaganda, and it may even be one that warrants action. Please let me know, or check out Seinfeld & Pandis, if you have any questions. (It’s good to question the conventional wisdom.)

No entries since June… March passed, July passed and now it’s August and no blog entries since June. Hasn’t the Gore minimum continued and deepened? Too busy trading corn, oats and hog bladders? Reality is much more exciting than ideology, doctrine and paradigm. So, let me tell you about my 1/2 acre of fingerling potatoes in Philadelphia PA. They turned off 12 days early. In fact they turned off very quickly and by 7/25/08 I realized something beyond the usual factors was amiss, that is when I started to look for answers. I found the answer in the NOAA Solar graphs, which are astonishing…right!? So should we expect a repeat of the winter of 1977, the romance of Victorian winter or something a bit colder.

Oh, and a minor note on the “rice shortage”. Little mentioned was the fact that Bayer Crop Sciences had an escape of a GMO rice that contaminated a nearby foundation seed stock for two of the major varieties planted in the Texas to Arkansas belt. This wasn’t found until too late. Many countries forbade the import of US rice (fearing, rightly, that it could contaminate their stocks…). Most of the U.S. farmers had to choose to roll the dice on more bad rice seeds of unfamiliar varieties or just plant something else for a year or two… lots of them chose to go the proven corn, soy, whatever route.
OK, take one of the largest rice exporters out of the market and the rice importers have shortages. Take many farmers out of the US market and the US production drops. We have plenty of rice, though, due to the lack of exports… California rice was not impacted, being a short grain or mid grain types. Only the long grain from “back east” was a problem. The oriental markets were hit by panic buying from oriental restaurants…
Doesn’t have much to do with global warming (other than to point out that the US production hit was not weather related…).
As a weather side bar: Skiing resorts in South America are reporting great snow this winter (i.e. right now…)!
Oh, and the solar cycle was predicted some time ago; the predicted sunspot minima is already named for the predictor, so it can not be named the AlGore Minima… BUT we can start taking about the “AlGore Cold Period”!
😉