Sun poised to make history with first spotless month since 1913

To me, this is the most fascinating time. When the Sun is blank, it whispers its secrets to those curious enough to wait, watch, and listen. When its noisy you can’t hear anything over the din and reminds me of when my kids were little when my only sanctuary was the locked bathroom and a tub filled with warm bubblies.

There was a stretch of 42 spotless days from 9/13/1996 to 10/24/1996. Today we have equaled this period. Check out Jan Janssens spotless days page http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html.

Here is some info from Wikipedia on 1913 weather:
The Great Lakes Storm of 1913, historically referred to as the “Big Blow”, the “Freshwater Fury” or the “White Hurricane”, was a blizzard with hurricane-force winds that devastated the Great Lakes Basin in the Midwestern United States and the Canadian province of Ontario from November 7 through November 10, 1913. The storm was most powerful on November 9, battering and overturning ships on four of the five Great Lakes, particularly Lake Huron. Deceptive lulls in the storm and the slow pace of weather reports contributed to the storm’s destructiveness.
The deadliest and most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes,[1] the Great Lakes Storm killed more than 250 people, destroyed 19 ships and stranded 19 other ships.

“So-post May/ June 1913 what did earthy temps do?”
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dtx/stm_1913.php
“..one could hardly deny that the fall storm of November 7-12th, 1913
ranks near or at the top! In fact, it is generally agreed that
the November 1913 storm (which concentrated more on Lake Huron
for its death and destruction) was the greatest ever to strike
the Great Lakes…
…The air behind this front was very cold for
early November with temperatures plunging into the single figures
across the Northern Plains….”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton
Endurance left Plymouth for the Antarctic on 8 August 1914.[36] After stops at Buenos Aires and South Georgia she departed for the Weddell Sea on 5 December. As the ship moved southward early ice was encountered, which slowed progress. Deep in the Weddell Sea conditions gradually grew worse until, on 17 January 1915, Endurance became frozen fast in an ice floe, and on 24 February, realising that she would not now break free until the following spring, Shackleton ordered the ship wintered.

So with 43 days we will almost certainly have the longest period of spotless days since 1913 tomorrow, almost 100 years.
Do you think this will make the New Scientist? or will it be knocked out of the news by a penguin with heat stroke?
Seven more days without spots, and it moves from the 10th longest period without spots since 1849 to the 4th longest period. Another five days would make it the 3rd longest period.
Its going to be an interesting few day for sun watchers.

We lived in Omaha NE for about five years and we always had a tornado or two, but the old times were always talking about the seven in 1913 that wiped out the City. It was over Easter week in March of 1913
1. The Omaha Tornado March 23, 1913 101 Dead
This was the darkest day in Nebraska severe weather history. A family of at least seven tornadoes moved across Nebraska and Iowa. The Omaha tornado was the deadliest. It started in Sarpy County, ripping its way northeast through Ralston, where seven people died. The twister then cut a quarter-mile wide path across Omaha and killed 94 people with 600 homes destroyed and over 1,100 others damaged in this tornado. Two children were killed Southeast of Beebeetown in Harrison County, Iowa.
Click here to see Photo Gallery
2. The Yutan Tornado March 23, 1913 20 Dead
The tornado crossed the Platte River 3 miles SW of Valley. 2 people died west of Logan, IA. This tornado, also on the outbreak of March 23rd, started 1 mile southeast of Mead. The tornado moved northeast and destroyed the northern half of Yutan, killing 17 people. The tornado continued moving northeast and killed another person just outside of town. The tornado killed two other people on farms northeast of Yutan. 40 homes and 4 churches were destroyed or damaged with losses at about $100,000. The twister crossed the Platte river southwest of Valley and continued to move northeast across Washington County. The tornado ended in Harrison County, Iowa where two people were killed in Logan.
3. The Berlin Tornado March 23, 1913 13 Dead
The “Berlin” tornado began 4 miles south of Douglas in southwest Otoe County. The tornado traveled northeast and leveled many farms as it passed 2 miles NW of Syracuse. The tornado hit the town of Berlin, now called Otoe, and killed 12 people and produced $250,000 worth of damage. The tornado continued into Cass County where it killed one person near Rock Cliffs, by the Missouri River. The tornado continued on into Iowa where 3 people were killed north of Bartlett and 2 people were killed SE of Glenwood in Mills County.

We need to refer back to 1912, when a massive chunk of ice broke away from a Greenland glacier, due to AGW, and the resulting iceberg ultimately sank the Titanic. We were unfortunate in not having the scientific acumen of an Al Gore who could have warned us in advance of the potential of such a disaster.
We should rejoice in the Sun’s reduced energy output and its masking of AGW.

Total Solar Irradiance continues to decline as well.
The PMOD composite has been averaging 1,365.0 W/m2 for the past three months, the lowest recorded since records began in 1978.
ftp://ftp.pmodwrc.ch/pub/data/irradiance/composite/DataPlots/composite_d41_61_0808.plt
The SORCE TSI plot continues declining as well – down to about 1,360.8 W/m2 – its lowest as well.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/cgi-bin/ion-p?ION__E1=PLOT%3Aplot_tsi_data.ion&ION__E2=PRINT%3Aprint_tsi_data.ion&ION__E3=BOTH%3Aplot_and_print_tsi_data.ion&START_DATE=1640&STOP_DATE=2050&TIME_SPAN=24&PLOT=Plot+Data

I’m interested to hear what you’all think of Drs. Dikpati and Gilman’s prediction of cycle 24 being 30% to 50% stronger than cycle 23 but will not start until late in 2008. They say they have a 98% accuracy rate going back over the last 8 cycles with their model.

I’ve always been of the mind that on a global scale very few people would notice any significant changes to climate. That’s why it is so difficult to track even major changes; for every region that had a significantly cold summer or winter, another place would see a corresponding warm episode. Real temperature or precipitation changes are too small to measure -especially using GISS or NOAA data. The changes accumulate over a generation or two before it becomes obvious to scientists -and by then it is too late. Even the LIA took 3 centuries to manifest itself, and to this day, we do not have a solid physical model that can coorelate climate with solar activity. I don’t think Lief is trying to be cantankerous; he’s just sticking to what he knows. Science is Science.
I’m a major AGW sceptic. But, I am also the first to say I haven’t a clue what’s caused climate variation since the beginning of the Roman Empire. What we do know is merely ancedotal evidence (albeit important evidence, but totally lacking in scientific precision). Most of our paleo climate reconstructions sufffer serious deficincies after 400 years , which means we have no real idea what the “global mean temp” was before 1650. What really is upsetting is the fact that there are today many climate scientists who claim to know the global temperature anomaly down to a hundredth of a degree C going back a thousand years. Yet, these same people have no issue with the constant GISS adjustments to the surface record.
Climate models like economic models are now in the purview of politics and not scientists. The lines have been drawn. In economics, there are liberal theorists such as Keynes, and conservative ones such as Friedman; niether is considered “scientific”. Climate Science has crossed that Rubicon. Even if next year we had several July freezes in Dallas TX, Rome Italy, and Hong Kong, there would be plenty of AGW Alarmists ignoring these events as weather, and the GISS folks would surely “adjust” these anomalies out of the record.

There’s an early warning on spaceweather.com about a ‘coronal hole’ due to shoot some solar wind in our general direction. Anyone out there understand what’s going to hit Earth? Or not?

Right. So as of Monday, September 1st, end of the day, we will have the longest spotless period since 1913, passing the 42 days recorded in the last solar cycle minimum in 1996. More significant, perhaps, is the fact that this period will have been preceded by a 25 day spotless period with only a brief 3 day period of spots in the third week of July. Of interest, I think, is the fact that the Dikpati model only went back the last 8 cycles, through solar cycle 16. Yet, that is the breakpoint at which we see a significant change in total spotless days in a cycle between the cycles 10-15 versus 16-23. So far, we have with cycle 24, 5 periods of spotless days greater than 20.
This is a larger number of such periods than any of the last 8 cycles. We have also exceeded 420 spotless days as of Monday without a minimum. It seems to me that we may be seeing some kind of change in the sun switching to a mode more similar to cycles 10-15 than cycles 16-23, thus negating the Dikpati model’s prediction for cycle 24.
I would be interested in knowing why Dikpati did not try to extend the model back through previous cycles. Was it due to the fact that the model broke down, or that they felt they didn’t have accurate data?
So whether solar cycle 24 is low or high will help science in a lot of ways in refining models of the sun.
And if Livingston and Penn are correct, we may be seeing a new Maunder Minimum, which Dr. Svalgaard has proposed we call the Eddy Minimum, in honor of Jack Eddy.
Kim

Kim, Jack Eddy liked words; he chose Maunder Minimum for the alliteration.
=============================================

I used to get excited about these “quiet sun” posts hoping that a longer solar minimum may help cool the planet and help discredit the AGW crowd. But I recently read in this blog or another that Leif Svalgaard doesnt believe the sun’s output is variable enough to substantially impact the climate. I also thought I read that he wasnt convinced that increased gamma rays from reduced solar flux did indeed increase cloud formation. Just curious if there are any experts that have documented a correlation between solar cycles and climate change.
And Leif, if I misinterpreted your views, I’m sure you’ll be quick to point it out!
REPLY: The question really is this. Is TSI the climate driver directly, or is it something else like magnetic/GCR interaction? The third possibility is a gate effect of some sort, whereby a small change in some aspect of of the sun is amplified on earth. – Anthony

Steph_LA,
All of this is based on theories. Until we have definite proof, Lief is correct. But then so are the people who theorize that climate is related to solar activity. Anthony begs a good question. All too often, we tend towards the “single driver” explanation. Solar activity may not be the forcing agent, but it could well be a catalyst (of sorts) that allows or facilitates other forcing agents to act. We see catalysts at work in many other situations, why not here as well? Being a biologist and not a physicist, I can’t say for sure, so I’m open to debate on the subject.
We have only one specimen planet. We are pretty well confined to observational study since it would be difficult to try out various tests like dosing the planet with enormous amounts of this gas or that radiation. We are, then, stuck with observing what ahppens when conditions change. This often means observing coincidences. CO2 is rising and the average temperature has gone up, whether a little or a lot is debatable. Is that cause and effect (CO2 drives temperature), or effect and cause (temperature drives CO2), or just coincidence? If you can’t change parameters its difficult to tell with any certainty unless it happens repeatedly and with significant similarity, all else being equal. There is a tral temptation to say I see two things happening together so one must be causing the other. In medicine, that kind of thinking has lead to some pretty amazing notions, most of them wrong, some disasterously wrong.
Likewise, solar minimums and cooling may just be coincidence. We can’t stir up the sun on September 1, 2008 and see if it gets warmer, then settle the sun down and see if it gets cooler again. We have to rely on historical records for solar activity compared with similar records for temperature. Both sets of records have enough problems to raise some doubts. There is a long history for sun spots, but the instruments used hundreds of years ago were pretty limited compared with those we use today. The record of temperatures that we would use in conjuntion with the sun spot records is likewise of limited value, before the invention of the thermometer and the telescope, which is a very short time, we are limited to what can only be called eye-balling. Until we have high quality records covering several hundreds or better yet, thousands of years, we are really speculating and theorizing. Even then, an experiment with one subject is still a pretty poor experiment.
For my part, I think that if the sun spots remain low or absent and the earth cools, then we can say that something happened. What that something is I’m not sure. So, for now, I’m willing to take Leif’s theories at face value. I also take opposing theories at face value. We can only wait and see.
But that shouldn’t stop us from having fun speculating.

Off topic, but here is an article in a mainstream news site over here in the UK (The Telegraph) that serves the IPCC up on a plate for the manipulative political organisation that it is.
The ‘consensus’ on climate change is a catastrophe in itself

“When its noisy you can’t hear anything over the din and reminds me of when my kids were little….”
Having watched my 6 month-old most days over the past 4, your metaphor is particularly significant.
‘Before everybody gets too excited about this spotless streak being in the “Top 10″’
I agree with Walter Dnes, we may well rival cycles outside those ‘recorded’, for spotless days. Although this is getting facile, I predict the current stretch will not be #24’s longest, whenever it ends, provided NOAA remains firm on it’s criteria.
We’ve waited since March for another #24 so I expect more #23s, and the the sun, though seemingly near flatline, is settling lower still.

impossible to see this sunspot of 18 july without equipment of 21th century

Gary Gulrud (03:15:15) :
We’ve waited since March for another #24 so I expect more #23s, and the the sun, though seemingly near flatline, is settling lower still.
As far as I know, we saw a #24 spot early May.
http://arnholm.org/astro/astro_home.htm#CYCLE24_SPOT_MAY4

This afternoon we witnessed the death of another AGW poster child. The Murray River in south eastern Australia has been used as a dire warning of what is happening (ignoring the water being taken by plantations) and yet today the following happened;
Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology
Victoria
This flood warning covers both the Victorian and New South Wales parts of the
Murray River catchment upstream of Lake Hume.
Initial Minor Flood Warning for the Murray River Upstream of Lake Hume
Issued at 3:47 PM on Sunday the 31st of August 2008
by the Bureau of Meteorology, Victorian Regional Office
Rainfall totals of up to 70 mm have been recorded since last night in the Murray
River catchment upstream of Lake Hume. This has caused stream rises in the
Murray River catchment upstream of Lake Hume. Rainfall will continue until this
evening, with general totals of up to 10mm expected, with some isolated higher
falls.
Areas of minor flooding are expected to develop in the Murray River catchment
upstream of Lake Hume during this evening.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/wrap_fwo.pl?IDV36910.txt

In the mid-Atlantic states, the winters of 1912 & 1917 were perhaps the coldest of the century (followed by 1977). Western MD recorded all-time record lows of from -25F to -40F in Jan 1912.

I was going to ask that question Mr White, one more point, it has been stated that Mars and Pluto were also warming, are they still warming.

My first time up on here!
A question was raised on the possibility of any biological effects on climate and another suggestion that the sun’s activities although not having a direct action on the climate may open a “gate” for some other action.
Suggestion only following;
In the 1970’s David Sands of Montana State University found ice nucleating bacteria in cloud droplets. This work has been verified in a number of other studies.
Global cloud cover is regarded as one of the finely balanced variables that can tip the global climate into warming or cooling phases.
Another major variable is the solar output.
It has been suggested that cosmic ray particle ionisation particles may be a nucleation source for cloud droplets and therefore for creating more cloud cover.
However, an active sun will deflect galactic cosmic rays through the medium of strong solar magnetic fields leading to less global cloud cover and therefore a higher solar heating effect at the global surface.
There is some minor evidence from the UK for this effect but a lot of doubt over the supposed mechanism and effects.
I humbly suggest an alternative biologically based mechanism for regulating global cloud cover.
An active sun will also produce a high flux of Ultra Violet light and I believe some very recent satellite data has indicated that the solar UV flux is a great deal stronger and far more variable than had been forecast in the solar models.
UV is also a very efficient destroyer of bacterial cells to the extent that it is used as a sterilising agent in some parts of the medical scene.
A highly active sun will pour out copious amounts of UV which on penetrating deep into the atmosphere would probably destroy a considerable proportion of the nucleating bacteria in the lower atmosphere which in turn would effectively reduce the droplet nucleating bacterial levels and therefore the formation of the global cloud cover.
If some recent work is correct, would have the effects of allowing more solar radiation into the very lowest levels of the atmosphere and onto the surface with a consequent warming effect.
Alternatively, low solar activity would of course lead to a lower level of UV penetration into the lower atmosphere, a lot lower level of mortality amongst the cloud nucleating bacteria, resulting in more cloud cover and a cooler surface temperature due to the increased albedo of the extra cloud cover.
There may even be a twist in the tail here as high level cloud cover will alter the solar UV penetration with a possible effect on the nucleating bacterial levels and therefore on the formation of the amount of low level, high albedo cloud.
As the amounts of cloud cover are postulated to be critical in any global temperature changes, this biological mechanism could be a very significant part of any climate change effects.
OK, I have had my chance so I will now tie the bandage over the eyes and wait for the bullets!

If a lack of sunspots causes cooling, then why didn’t we get cooling following 1913? If the GISS data is to be believed at all, the earth warmed from 1913 until 1940. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif

Thanks for the correction Carsten; as you may have surmised I seldom check my own ‘work’.
The point remains, as attested, apparently, by Mr. White, #23 spots are still more regular to date.

RayB (08:27:59) :
“All other lifeforms on today’s earth still don’t care about the sun’s activity. Why should we bother about it? ”
Here’s how this lifeform is affected:
I go to the store, pick out what I want, take it home and eat it.
That’s called being at the top of the food chain.
When this lifeform goes to the store and there’s nothing there, this lifeform quickly moves from the top to the bottom o’ the food chain, and before too long is supplying food for microorganisms, fungus, earthworms, flies, etc.

‘If a lack of sunspots causes cooling, then why didn’t we get cooling following 1913? If the GISS data is to be believed at all, the earth warmed from 1913 until 1940. ‘
Because the ‘triggers’ for Minimum were not met. The data of (minimum to minimum + maximum to maximum)/2 has a hysteresis point that seems to be somewhere around 14 yrs to trigger a really bum set of cycles that give us the decades long cooling.
That’s what I get from poring over all the excellent data and papers on the length of cycles.
For the periodicities of cycles that exist over many years, such as the 183 yr, 188 yr and 243 yr, I find that the culprit for generating the long 14yr+ min-min + max-max / 2 is the 243 yr cycle in relation to the 183 yr cycle.
Look at the last graph in this paper:
astro-ph, 2006 June 27
LONG-TERM VARIABILITY IN THE LENGTH OF THE SOLAR CYCLE
Michael L. Rogers, Mercedes T. Richards
Since it is the length of the current cycle 23 that keeps on growing that has us concerned (as well as the inability of sc24 to get going), any data on SC length in relation to other factors is a good place to look for answers.
I would hazard a guess that those two long periodicities have collided, and it takes down the inheritant cycle.

Mr. Bateman thank you for the information. I don’t mean to sound like a proponent of AGW because I am skeptical of that theory as well. My problem with the solar activity/climate theory is that there does not seem to be a correlation, at least none that I can find. While it is true that a correlation alone does not prove cause and effect, I think you must have a correlation as one of the conditions for proving cause and effect. Even if there is a 14 year time lag a correlation could still be demonstrated if it exists. If there are other factors that must be taken into account that could be done as well. But so far I haven’t seen such a correlation. If you have a source which shows a correlation I would appreciate it if you could provide a link to it. Thank you.

don’t know, but I guess that the real problem is that TSI does not vary enough to begin with. I’m willing to accept that even a tiny, tiny TSI variation can have effect if [and only if] a clear physical mechanism can be found that can quantitatively explain what is going on without recourse to unknown maybes.

That is right, and I will take it further. Even if there are still unexplained “coincidences” in the climate history, and the models have proven unable to predict the climate at any scale, we still should assume that we know every thing there is to know about the subject, and should never, ever aver that we may possess less than perfect understanding of the climate.. EVER! To do so will give the Yahoos talking points, and it is far more important to win the rhetorical debate than it is to honestly admit that there are holes in our knowledge, and to engage our critics in open debate. Honest debate is a TRAP! It just creates DOUBT! Better we should shut up and shout down these so called “scientists” like Svensmark, and start moving the populations into the collective yurts where we true scientist think they should live.
This has been an announcement from “Movement to enslave the west through environmentalism.” That is all.

FYI, if I may cite the Ri report of SIDC at Belgium:
Predictions of the monthly smoothed Sunspot Number using the last
provisional value, calculated for January 2008 : 4.2 (+-5%)
SM CM SM CM SM CM
2008 Feb 4 3 2008 Aug 2 9 2009 Feb 4 19
Mar 4 4 Sep 2 10 Mar 4 22
Apr 4 5 Oct 2 11 Apr 5 24
May 3 6 Nov 3 12 May 6 27
Jun 3 7 Dec 3 14 Jun 6 30
Jul 2 8 2009 Jan 4 17 Jul 7 32
SM : SIDC classical method : based on an interpolation of Waldmeier’s
standard curves; the estimated error ranges from 7% (first month) to
35% (last month)
CM : Combined method : the combined method is a regression technique
coupling a dynamo-based estimator with Waldmeier’s idea of standard
curves, due to K. Denkmayr.
ref. : K. Denkmayr, P. Cugnon, 1997 : “About Sunspot Number Medium-Term
Predictions”, in “Solar-Terrestrial Prediction Workshop V”, eds.
G. Heckman et al., Hiraiso Solar Terrestrial Research Center, Japan, 103
So I guess, the sunspotless time period will probably continue until mid 2009. I think this will become one of the longest cycles ever.

Leif:
My guess was just that, a guess. Some of us are thinking outside the box due to the failure of the current models to predict. I’m not trying to force a new theory down anybody’s throat there, or jump to conclusion or cycomania.
What I am doing is looking for things that have been missed along the way, like a harmonious relationship of cycle lengths that seems to have blindsided the current theories.

lotsa really interesting material to ponder here… yet I have a hunch, just a senior moment no doubt, that although people say there is no evidence for the Sun being the primary climate driver (in history, leave Milankovitch out), that the evidence does exist, and that I’ve brushed against it several times.
Svensmark?? Solanki/Usoskin?? I need to go back to check.
Anthony – it would be nice to see graphs of cloud cover, albedo, and solar magnetic flux for August, or rather, back to the most recent proper sunspots for comparison, if they’re available. Here in UK it feels like the cloudiest, coldest August on record.

Leif Svalgaard (09:50:43) :
“…To maintain that variations in TSI are the direct cause of LIA…”
Most people do not even reference TSI in talking about relationships between solar activity and climate, though it is used as a straw-man argument by those trying to dismiss such relationships.
The straw-man argument goes like this:
“TSI variance is too small to explain temperature variations, therefore there is no relationship between sun and climate change. End of discussion.”
I know you are aware that increased solar activity results in significant heating of the upper atmosphere. By definition then, an inactive sun results in a cooler upper atmosphere.
The thermosphere-ionosphere system is not static, passive, inactive. It is quite dynamic.
You may argue that expansion and contraction of millions of cubic kilometers of the atmosphere is too remote to affect terrestrial climate.
I would just state the obvious – too little is known to make such an argument.
For example, the daily weather balloons don’t make it even to the mesosphere; levels in the upper stratosphere and above are not routinely sampled, and there has been precious little work done to relate middle and upper atmospheric changes to tropospheric weather and climate.
In the stratosphere however, a definite solar-climate signal has been found. Karin Labitzke has been working on this for 20 years. The QBO (Quasi Biennial Oscillation of stratospheric and mesospheric winds), when ordered according to phase (east or west) and solar cycle, shows a definite relationship with northern hemisphere winter.
http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/labitzke/
I know you are also aware that the variance of solar ultraviolet is much greater than that of TSI, and that this must variance must affect the production of stratospheric ozone.
Ozone production is a heating process; less ozone production means a cooler stratosphere. Once again, we are talking about millions of cubic kilometers of air heating and cooling in response to the solar cycle.
The stratosphere, mesosphere, and the thermosphere-ionosphere system are not conveniently isolated from weather which occurs in the troposphere.
Changes in the upper and middle atmosphere cause changes in global climate.
What per cent of the physical mechanisms are known and understood? Rough guess – less than 1 per cent.
It’s going to take work. Frau Dr. Labitzke didn’t look out the window one morning and notice the QBO and the solar cycle combining to change climate.
“…The other popular culprit is cosmic rays. 10Be and 14C radionuclides show that the magnetic cycle was still operating during the Maunder Minimum [and earlier Grand Minima as well], so the Sun’s ‘magnetic shield’ against cosmic rays was still in place, so this mechanism does not seem to be viable either.”
Wow, I don’t understand this at all.
Of course the sun didn’t “die” during the Maunder Minimum. That was a question for a long time that now seems resolved: the Schwabe and Hale cycles didn’t stop entirely, they were just very weak.
Cosmogenic isotope production was much higher during the Maunder Minimum than at anytime in the last 2000 years!
The sun was giving us hardly any protection at all from GCR (galactic cosmic radiation)!
If the increased-nucleation-of-low-cloud-by-GCR hypothesis is correct, global low cloud cover and hence albedo must also have been higher than at any time in the last 2000 years.
So changes in the stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere-ionosphere system drives changes in tropospheric weather and climate in ways which are presently >99% unknown.
Increased GCR reaching the lower atmosphere during low solar activity MAY increase atmospheric aerosol production AND provide those aerosols with electric charge, making them doubly effective as CCN (cloud condensation nuclei).
What about the oceans?
Solar activity is now known to drive ocean cooling on a ~1500-year cycle (“Bond events”)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1500-year_climate_cycle
Does it also drive the shorter term (decadal and multi-decadal scale) oscillations, and/or influence ENSO (El Nino/Southern Oscillation)?
These are questions of HUGE importance, and simplistically or dismissively saying, “TSI variation is too small to account for that” is just absurd.

Leif, thank you for your response. I’ve read much of what you have posted on ClimateAudit.org. I accept what you have to say about TSI and appreciate your willingness to participate on these Blogs.
If the sun is what drives climate from one century to another, then I think cosmic ray theory has a good chance of being the reason why. One of the aspects of CR theory that I like is that it explains the extensive ice ages farther back in the geological record. Do you have an explanation for the earth almost totally freezing over 700 million year ago?

Leif,
How does the earth avoid getting a net positive charge if cosmic rays are mostly protons? If I was rich, I would put you on a retainer for answering ignorant questions.
TIF(thanks in advance)

While there is little to be seen from projecting the Sun these days (well over a year now), there sure is a lot of phenomena outside for those of us willing to stick thier head out the window.
Something on the order of a heat wave with high winds on whose heel is followed by a Polar Low with high winds and Frost.
Now where do you suppose that blasted Solar Wind has gotten off to again?

Why does everybody keep focusing on this blasted TSI? It is not synonymous with total solar output, as it only includes the portion of the spectrum traditionally considered “light” (from infrared to UV), or <50% of the traditionally recognized spectrum. The TSI measurement is centered around 1ev, but cosmic ray particles incident on the earth are centered at a photon energy of ~3 Mev, and vary from solar min to max (in number) by approximately an order of magnitude. (from the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics) The most powerful cosmic ray measured to date had a calculated photon energy of ~3x10e23 ev. This does not seem inconsequential, at least to myself, but all I ever hear anybody quoting is TSI.
Comments?

I know I asked this question before, and as I am one of those pesky ones who bugged their teachers relentlessly, here I go again:
When it is spoken that the output of the Sun is diminished during solar minimum (if that’s the accepted way of putting it), are they meaning the visible or the total spectrum? It would be interesting to know if there are specific portions of the spectrum that are diminished as opposed to generally diminished. Or is this merely an effect of diminihed solar wind causing cosmic ray interaction in the lower atmosphere?

CORRECTION:
Is there any specific wavelengths of light emanating from the Sun that are measured during minima and found to be diminished that are otherwise not?

Joel,
You asked,
“Could you name one of these many…Or were you using major hyperbole here?”
Mmmm…Let’s see. How about you checking the Osbourne and Biffra paleo data, much of this was used by Mann in constructing his hockey sticks. The tree ring data is rounded to the nearest hundreth, and the time period of AD800 to AD1400 (the MWP) is of special concern.

I’m not a meteorologist but I’ve always wondered why the current methods for measuring temperature are so embraced and the resulting data is taken so literally. If temperature readings are taken near the ground and within a housing, albeit white and ventilated, the resulting temperature data will heavily reflect the amount of daily sunshine, rainfall, and of course wind velocity. Surely we need to embrace a new standard using updated techmology that can accurately measure air temperature with being compromised by external infra-red interference. This should be particularly important now with AGW.

what is a sun spot?

Here’s something for everyone to chew on:
http://www.solarcycle24.com/ and check out the trend charts, then look at the solar wind chart 3mo. Seems that a lull in the cyclic swing of things has started. Co-rotating coronal hole closing?

It’s nice to have Leif around.
Patient he is often.
And when we post a cranky thought.
He puts it in a coffin.

What I claim is that we do know enough to recognize a blind alley when we see one, even if, perhaps, not all of them.
I disagree, I guess we are agreed on that much, anyway.
If solar activity stays low and GW takes off like is predicted, then I will have to say you are right, but until that happens, I hope you will forgive me for suspending judgement.

So, this Aug 21st sunspot, was it a visible sunspeck that won’t relate to the 150 yr record?
Did we count sunspots that small since 1857 or whenever the unbroken line of records began?
All I care about is that we continue to compare apples to apples.

Works for me Leif, thats 45 days all right.
Good work!

yes it is feb-apr 1879
then 69 days mar-may 1901
9-12-2008 then
9-26-2008
LOL we well see

Look at the Main Characteristics per Solar Cycle on the
http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html
page.
With a tentative April 2009 as SC24 start, we are going to make it into the older group with 63 months since SC23max. And no doubt easily 500 spotless days if thing keep chugging along as they did the last 2 months.