I’m a little disappointed that this science blog has seemed to take a step into “activism” territory. The solar observations don’t match what was expected/hoped for by the temperature crew, and now that crew is complaining bitterly to get the record corrected so it suits their needs. The whole thing seems to be somewhat hypocritical.

During my short life I’ve learned that nothing stays the same – technology evolves and (usually) makes things better. Just because something was done one way ~100 years ago doesn’t mean we should keep doing it – why doesn’t everyone drive a Model-T or use a graphophone to listen to music?

And instead of just flaming the comments, I’m proposing a solution. If we have technology that can detect a sunspot when our eyes can’t, then we should keep track of that. Perhaps everything (specks/spots/disturbances) should have size, polarization, location, and duration (and temperature?) recorded. By building the solar observance dataset can we analyze that data and get into discussions about what a spot is or isn’t. We can then embrace technological advances that give us more data to analyze because we stand to gain more knowledge from the analysis of those richer datasets.

Sunspot Record Reveals Little to Space Weather Watchers
Irene Klotz

Abstract

Despite a month of nearly spot-free conditions on the surface of the Sun, solar physicists with NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who keep a sharp eye on solar activities to forecast space weather, are no closer to assessing the nature of the next sunspot cycle.

Published 20 September 2008.

I have prepared the paragraphs below to indicate my evaluation of the magnetic field/ CaK spectroheliogram history of solar activity during three solar minima.

A set of pretty large pdf files for the 1933/34 and 1954 minima can be found at:

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~ulrich/MW_SPADP/CaK_RM_flat_sum/

in case anyone wants to review these earlier minima. This page is not linked to any active pages but can be accessed by the above.

I have looked at the current minimum and the minima preceding cycles 17 and 19. It is a bit difficult to be precise in this comparison because of the different sizes of magnetized regions on the solar surface. The operating active sun almost always has a magnetized region or several on its surface at any given time. Often the sun is unbalanced with an active region on one side and not on the other. During all three minima there are episodic times when very small features appear for one to several days. These features are much smaller than are the typical active regions. I think I have to count the time of quiet minimum as that period between the last region is seen and when the next region is seen. The small features confuse the description because they have been seen during the quiet minimum phase for all three minima but they are distributed in time differently in each case [I don't know what he means by this - Leif]. If I just take the intervals between last region and first region as the quiet period the interval of cycle 16/17 was from 11/27/1933 to 2/10/1934 with marginally large feature/region present from 1/12/1934 to 1/18/1934, approximately 2.5 months. The quiet period for cycles 18/19 was from 4/19/1954 to 8/29/1954 (just over 4 months) with the month of June, 1954 being extremely quiet. The present quiet period began June 27, 2008 and is continuing so we are coming up to 3 months. The current month of September is so far as quiet as was June 1954.

The current quiet period is unusual but not unprecedented. It is on the edge of setting a record but not there yet.

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/spotless-days-400-and-counting/

July had 3 or 4, and I think Aug 21, 22 each had a small sunspot, so I count 6 since June 30. Am I missing any? “Region 1001 (N06, L =
179, class/area Bxo/020 on 11 September) emerged on 11 September,
but quickly decayed to plage.” (see http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/latest/WKHF.txt ) Does that one count? The http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/indices/DSD.txt page gave it an SESC Sunspot number of 12 and area of 20 x10^-6 Hemis, but that page does not have a sunspot number for Aug 21 nor 22.

Taking 4 for july, 2 for August and 1 for sept, I get 436 so far.

Before it is lost:

:Product: Daily Solar Data DSD.txt
:Issued: 1425 UT 19 Sep 2008
#
# Prepared by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, NOAA, Space Weather Prediction Center
# Please send comments and suggestions to SWPC.Webmaster@noaa.gov
#
# Last 30 Days Daily Solar Data
#
# Sunspot Stanford GOES10
# Radio SESC Area Solar X-Ray —— Flares ——
# Flux Sunspot 10E-6 New Mean Bkgd X-Ray Optical
# Date 10.7cm Number Hemis. Regions Field Flux C M X S 1 2 3
#—————————————————————————
2008 08 20 66 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2008 08 21 67 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2008 08 22 68 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2008 08 23 68 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2008 08 24 67 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2008 08 25 67 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2008 08 26 67 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2008 08 27 67 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2008 08 28 66 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2008 08 29 67 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2008 08 30 67 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2008 08 31 67 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

John M Reynolds

If you were to assert that there is a ‘conversation’ between the sun and the oceans then I’d agree with the bulk of your picturesque description.

Sometimes the oceans supplement solar changes, sometimes they oppose them and at other times changes in oceanic influence balance out solar changes for a while.

See my various articles on this link, especially the one about the Hot Water Bottle Effect.

http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?tag=stephen+wilde

well that’s something at least, though it still seems to be a bit of wagon circling…

The real question is of course justification of events like August 21st.

Now that is a low blow.