Watts Up With That?

Solar Cycle 24 just can’t seem to get rolling. IPS announced today (IPS is the Australian Space Weather Agency) ,  that it has changed its forecast for Solar Cycle 24, pushing it’s start into the future by six months. They write:

Due to the proximity of the IPS predicted rise of solar cycle 24
to observed solar cycle 23 solar minimum values, and the apparent lack
of new Cycle 24 sunspots, IPS has again moved the predicted solar cycle
away by 6 months.

The announcement came on the IPS web page, today, on the day that two small cycle 23 sunspots have started to appear near the solar equator. Many had expected more cycle 24 spots to be visible by now, but the sun remains quiet, and has been producing more cycle 23 spots than cycle 24 spots so far since the first cycle 24 spot was seen on January 4th, 2008

August 21st, 2008 spots – Photo: Pavol Rapavy

NASA’s David Hathaway is still expecting a start of cycle 24 this year, with an upturn soon, late in 2008 or early 2009.

Above: The solar cycle, 1995-2015. The “noisy” curve traces measured sunspot numbers; the smoothed curves are predictions. Credit: D. Hathaway/NASA/MSFC.

As many of you know, the sun has been very quiet, especially in the last month. In a July 11th 2008 NASA news release article titled What’s Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing) solar physicist David Hathaway goes on record as saying:

“It does seem like it’s taking a long time,” allows Hathaway, “but I think we’re just forgetting how long a solar minimum can last.”

The new IPS prediction puts the sunspot upturn to begin around April to July 2009. It will be interesting to see if Hathaway follows with a new prediction in the wake of the IPS announcement. There already has been one change in Hathaway’s prediction this year, so it would not be surprising to see another.

The IPS announcment is shown below.

big hat tip to John-X

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A guest post by John Goetz

In my post December 1986, I presented a histogram showing the GISS estimate of December 1986 minus the actual for GHCN stations in Europe and Russia. As noted, GISS under-estimated December 1986 for this region by a greater than 2 to 1 margin. The result was, when GISS combined multiple records for a single station, the stations with a cold estimate for December 1986 had their records artificially cooled pre-1987. By cooling the older record and leaving the current record unchanged, an enhanced warming trend was introduced.

I promised I would show other regions of the world in future posts. Therefore, in this post I present Africa, which essentially shows polar-opposite results from Europe / Russia.

In Africa, GISS tends to over-estimate December 1986 when combining records. Because the temperature is over-estimated, older records must be warmed slightly before they are combined with the present record. By introducing artificial warming in a past record, the overall trend through the present is cooled.

Following is a histogram showing the GISS estimate of December 1986 minus the actual for GHCN stations in Africa.

The implication is that the GISS algorithm introduces a cooling trend to most African records.

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Finally some recognition of all the anecdotal weather we’ve been talking about here – Anthony

World Meteorological Organization

Thu Aug 21, 2008 1:15am IST

LONDON (Reuters) – The first half of 2008 was the coolest for at least five years, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said on Wednesday.

The whole year will almost certainly be cooler than recent years, although temperatures remain above the historical average.

Global temperatures vary annually according to natural cycles. For example, they are driven by shifting ocean currents, and dips do not undermine the case that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing long-term global warming, climate scientists say.

Chillier weather this year is partly because of a global weather pattern called La Nina that follows a periodic warming effect called El Nino.

“We can expect with high probability this year will be cooler than the previous five years,” said Omar Baddour, responsible for climate data and monitoring at the WMO.

“Definitely the La Nina should have had an effect, how much we cannot say.”

“Up to July 2008, this year has been cooler than the previous five years at least. It still looks like it’s warmer than average,” added Baddour.

The global mean temperature to end-July was 0.28 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average, the UK-based MetOffice Hadley Centre for climate change research said on Wednesday. That would make the first half of 2008 the coolest since 2000.

“Of course at the beginning of the year there was La Nina, and that would have had the effect of suppressing temperatures somewhat as well,” Met Office meteorologist John Hammond said. 

Full story at Reuters