Maybe there is some hope for SC24 ramping up this year yet. This appears to be the largest SC24 spot to date. Previous SC24 spots have faded quickly, we’ll see how long this one lasts.
UPDATE: 9/23 It is already fading fast, see this animation that I’ve produced.
In other news, Jan Jansens reports that SC23-24 continues to behave much more like cycles in the late 19th and early 20th century. See this:
Click for the ful sized image
There is also a weaker, but distinct, level of activity at 22 years, the double sunspot of Hale cycle. The last three Hale cycles have been stronger than earlier Hale cycles. There is some indication of a double Hale cycle (~44 years) and at the top of the graph, we’re in Gleissberg cycle territory.
Now, for an interesting observation and speculation, note that at present, which is at the right edge of the chart, from the 11 yr line to the top it is all blue. There is only one other place on the entire chart where we can draw a vertical line from the 11 yr line to the top without it crossing some portion of color other than blue. Can you find it? (It is right at the beginning of Solar Cycle 5, i.e. the Dalton Minimum). Are we watching the beginning of a new 200 year cycle like what began with the Dalton Minimum in the early 1800’s? Obviously, no one knows. But the current transition is certainly unusual, and invites comparison to past transitions.
The magnetogram shows that there is one large ‘north’ (I think white is the North orientation) and at least three separate ‘south’ poles.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_mag/1024/latest.html
The magnetogram shows one large ‘North’ pole (I think the white is a the North orientation) and at least three smaller ‘south’ orientation (black) poles.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_mag/1024/latest.html
I’m waiting for more than one region in a rotation before I start to think SC24 is ramping up.
The heck with the spot, Basil’s graphic (did he do that?) is a wonderful, wonderful image. It’s the sort of thing Edward Tufte would be interested in. How many dimensions of data are in it? There’s time, intensity, sample size, and solar cycles and a bunch of relationships. Gonna have to read more about Morlet wavelet transforms.
If, indeed, we’re going to experience another Dalton Minimum, we can be thankful. Another Maunder Minimum will be a catastrophic event.
I bet this one will also go puff, gone! The other indicators are not showing any increase in activity.
I can see this spot, just projected it 1 minute ago with a 70mm F/9 Orion Refractor with Meade 26mm Plossl on a sheet of white paper, I see the main spot and the 2 smaller ones.
Interesting that the Maunder, Dalton and this latest big pause are all 200 yrs apart.
Will see if I can continue to see that spot later today and tomorrow.
And once again this web site shows why it has huge and growing traffic.
Fantastic graphic
(almost)..All I need to know the sun
Sun’s teeth (????)
I want to see a count of sunspots from Catania today. (1,2,3 or 5, 11…83.. etc)
If that’s the case we Americans have reason to be concerned because that is obviously deadly. NONE of the Native Americans present when it started have survived since the 1800s’ Dalton Minimum. 🙂
So, this is like a sliding fourier transform with a gaussian enevelope? Higher frequencies to the bottom, lower to the top, and magnitude ranging from blue (zero?) to red hot?
This is amazingly intuitive graph.
Just in time to confuse the NASA press conference tomorrow.
Aren’t the areas at the top of this wavelet graph increasingly affected by wider areas underneath? So the upper left and the upper right areas are most distorted by the adjoining missing data? If that is the case, we can’t draw any conclusions yet about the pattern in the upper right corner because it will be altered by the future…unless there is no solar activity to distinguish from data values of zero.
“Morlet wavelet transform ”
Oooh, cool. That took a little while but nice work! You guys are persisting.
I would say Janssens’ work makes 23-24 look like something new, outside his set of data of 10 and following.
“some hope … this year”
Like “change”, this is a bit wan & strained. By inauguration, an omen perhaps?
Basil,
Why use the smoothed sunspot numbers? Is there a real data set that can be used instead, i.e. one without smoothing?
Interesting that the Maunder, Dalton and this latest big pause are all 200 yrs apart.
Gleissberg (rhymes with Iceberg). DeVries (rhymes with Freeze).
This latest sunpot continues with the pattern that began 05/26/08, and that is at the bottom of both the Planetary A index and Solar Wind speed swings.
Isn’t that a tidy pattern?
This spot seems a bit oddly tilted.
“Joy’s Law” says the leading spot and leading magnetic polarity should be tilted so as to be closer to the solar equator.
This one seems to be tilted the other way.
Now, for an interesting observation and speculation, note that at present, which is at the right edge of the chart, from the 11 yr line to the top it is all blue.
These transforms are unreliable near the edges. Some information on that may be found on page 57 of here: here
provided I can get the URL to work. If not Google can find the reference: wavelet transform edge-effect addison 2.17
So speculation based on things near the edges is not well-founded.
John-X (12:09:30) :
“Joy’s Law” says the leading spot and leading magnetic polarity should be tilted so as to be closer to the solar equator. This one seems to be tilted the other way.
Joy’s ‘Law’ is only a tendency and does not hold universally, especially not for high-latitude spots where the ‘tendency’ is weak, anyway. Quite normal for this latitude and size of the spots.
Ric,
Yes, I did the graph (well, my software did it for me). I used the free PAST (PAleontological STatistics) software. Very easy, really.
Robert,
I agree that this is probably one of the best graphs I’ve ever seen to demonstrate a wavelet transform. We all (who are interested in this) already know the shape of SSN’s in the time dimension, so it is easy for us to see it in this graph.
Drew,
As for using SSN’s, I don’t know if the underlying raw data is readily available the way SSN’s are or not (frankly, I haven’t looked). But I doubt that it would change much, if at all. There’d be more noise in the chart, of course, but I think the main features would still come out the way you see them in this one.
Evan,
Thanks for reminding me of DeVries.
Drew Latta (11:15:46) :
Why use the smoothed sunspot numbers? Is there a real data set that can be used instead, i.e. one without smoothing?
Very good question ! and, yes, there is such a data set. The best would be to use ‘daily’ raw numbers, e.g. as found here: http://sidc.oma.be/sunspot-data/
How about it Basil?
Basil,
Further to Drew’s question are you using Leif’s latest modified SSN data?
http://www.leif.org/research/Corrected%20SSN%20and%20TSI.txt
http://www.leif.org/research/Corrected%20SSN%20and%20TSI.xls
This is unpublished, preliminary data [that can change at any time] so handle with care.
On the ” New paper from Christy….” post at 18:47:44
See 14:11:34 Line 6 for reference of modifications
Steve “This is unpublished, preliminary data”
Actually, isn’t that data from a paper by Lean?
Of course, any scientific finding can change at
any time.
SOHO image at 14-00 shows shrinking spots. Quoi?
Could the same thing be done with the ice core data? In this graph we can see up to the 200 years cycle. It would be interesting and worthy to correlate this (if correlation exists) with the ice core data and maybe if that correlates than we could also see the longer cycles. Also, those cycles, do they show the same cycles that was shown by the Russian mathematician back then (sorry I can’t recall his name)?
wow, happy equinox! what pictures!
Just found this excellent website by Per Strandberg which if you scroll down the page shows sunspot cycles quite beautifully – 22, 52, 88, 105, 212, and 420 year cycles. He also shows 300 years of comparing sunspots with the predictions from his model (excellent fit) and predicted spots for the next century.
Despite explanations being a little thin, this highly-relevant page is well worth a visit from readers here.
This diagram illustrates the periodicities, but also the vagouries.
Someone else used a “wavelet coherence” method on solar data: “Analysis of Solar Magnetic Activity with the Wavelet Coherence Method“. It sounds interesting, but it’s only a poster session with little info. They question whether Fourier frequency patterns are valid.
I’m curious as to the edge effects of this graph. Would it be possible to create a couple of graphs with the end point 2000 and another with 1980? It would give us an idea as to the amount of ‘distortion’ that can be introduced.
Basil : please.
Looking at your graph. I can see three signs.
resistance, capacitor and inductor.
This makes some sense?
Or just wrap it with the end connected to the beginning… no ends!
Anthony, please email me and I will send you an interesting graphic that is pertinent to this post.
Leif,
Do you happen to have a mainframe I can borrow? I might need that if I’m to do this with daily data. I just gave it a quick shot. First issue was the lack of missing data prior to 1849. And I couldn’t get all the data to import into Excel, where I need it to import it into PAST. I did get the data from 1849 into Excel, but PAST ran out of memory. I’ll try again later with a machine I have at home with 6 GB of RAM. One can hope that would be enough, but who knows?
Steve, Drew, Leif,
I just realized that this is NOT the smoothed SN, but the monthly SIDC number. So until I can change the annotations on the graphic, just realize that you have the monthly numbers here, not the SSN’s.
As for Leif’s adjusted SN’s, here’s what I just quickly came up with:
http://i36.tinypic.com/2gwfe2x.jpg
I can see the effect of Leif’s adjustment, but the basic patterns are still mostly the same.
Damek,
That’s a good suggestion, to see if Leif’s point about edge distortion has any merit. Actually, my response to Leif on that is that at the edge of the current graph, there’s no distortion, because there’s no (or little) transformation going on. It’s all (or mostly) blue at the edge.
I’ll see what I can come up with.
new from NOAA:
“New Region 1002 (N25W27) emerged on the disk as an eight-spot Dso Beta group with new Cycle 24 polarity.”
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/forecast.html
So, if I understand this correctly… The onset of SC 24 is near. SC23 was a little bit long, but as not really exceptional in the grand scheme of things right?
No Grand Solar minimum is coming, no Dalton or Maunder Minimum, no Little Ice Age, etc. All of this talk about the sun doing something special this time which will cool the Earth off so dramatically that the Global Warmists will have to change their minds, is likely not going to happen, and most likely the Climate will stay pretty much the way it has always been, correct?
johnnyb (15:48:08) Nobody, not even Leif, knows. But then, neither the Dalton nor Maunder Minimums, nor the Little Ice Age were really exceptional in the grand scheme of things, either. This particular cycle transition has not been ‘really exceptional’ but it has been different than the last half dozen or so. Number of spotless days, and numbers of spotless days in a row, and length of spotless runs have all been more for this cycle than recent ones. The ramp-up to Cycle 24 is slower than usual, too. This long after the first spot of a new cycle usually has a lot more activity. Leif might be able to tell us better what this might say about Cycle 25.
But you could be correct. Also, don’t forget the 20-30 years of cooling we might expect from the PDO in its cooling phase.
======================================
You’re right, Damek. Appending red-top data would show if a later red period would spill over the current blue top. Also, variations of the graph but ending at the start of the last several cycles may reveal whether this graph tends to show blue all the way to the top at this point of a cycle.
Johnnyb (15:48:08) :
“…something special this time which will cool the Earth off so dramatically that the Global Warmists will have to change their minds, is likely not going to happen, and most likely the Climate will stay pretty much the way it has always been, correct?”
Global Warmists? I think they’re now called Climate Change-ists
or something.
The cooling trend of the past ten years, and the unusually cold winter of 2008-2009 we’re going to have, are the irrefutable result of _Climate_Change.
Please use the correct terminology.
@John-x
I don’t care what they want to call it, they still have to prove it is anthropogenic in origin.
All changes in climate are caused by Climate Change.
SINCE the industrial revolution, that is.
Prior to the industrial revolution, changes in climate were NOT caused by Climate Change.
@john-x
The correct terminology is “Global Warming” since that is the unproven hypothesis for the current climate variability caused by anthropogenic released CO2.
“Climate Change” in a nonsense word and is equivalent to “Appitite Change,” since people are always eating and getting hungry again.
In other words, the term “Climate Change” is an admission that the “Global Warming” hypothesis has not matched the actual conditions of the Earth in recent years.
I look at Basil’s graph and see 2 dozen smokestacks with CO2 billowing out.
Always refer to the scam artists as global warmers; hold their arse to the flame of history.
Basil, I did a lot of work in sound reconstruction for VOIP telephones. What to do when a packet is lost?
I found the two best were: 1) play the last packet backwards; b) repeat the last packet. Either way, the spectral characteristics were preserved. Either of these two strategies are best for the edge problem. As time continues, we can compare each approach with actuality, and adjust accordingly.
Steve Huntwork,
In th ’90s, I was working with some folks from what is now “Environment Canada”. They were all agog of “climate change” as they saw it as the gravy train.
How right they were….
….hey, from the horse’s mouth.
But they knew that that the scare had tobe in for the scam to work. They knew they had to prove AGW. It was never overtly expressed; just talk of UN and “cliamte change” being the next BIG THING. But, they knew. This fraudulant scam must be ended.
I generally think it is good to see a Cycle 24 spot because the Sun was looking a little too quiet.
With 6.6 billion people, we cannot afford to have a Maunder-type Minimum right now because food production has barely kept up with population growth over the past two years as a result of the slight decline in temperatures and another 1.0C decline would be a very big problem.
While we are all thinking that a quiet Sun will finally quiet the warmers, I am not worried that they will eventually be right. They are wrong about the how much temperatures will increase as a result of GHGs and this will be proven in time. We don’t need more food riots to prove it sooner.
I am more inclined to look at Leif’s data which takes into account measures other than sunspot numbers. I think understanding the mechanisms of the Sun will lead to much better predictions of its behavioral cycles. Sunspots by themselves just don’t seem to do it for me. Which is why I am so interested in the Sun even though it has fewer zits than granny.
There are 2 distinct spots, 5:30 pm PDT, and they are both elongated, forming a set of furrowed eyebrows. or an arc.
“Interesting that the Maunder, Dalton and this latest big pause are all 200 yrs apart.”
Actually the dalton, maunder, sporer and wolf are all 179 yrs apart and for very good reason. The oort min falls out of sync for the same reason. its all about neptune, uranus, and, Jupiter apposing saturn. very hard to argue against.
Still fairly small as sunspots go….
Tom,
If that is a joke, then I get it. If you’re serious, then I sincerely doubt you know much about CO2. Even in the amounts emitted by man, which are relatively little compared to Nature itself – and even in the combined (man and nature) effect CO2 is relatively weak. I’m all for regulations if it can be proven that such and such a gas has a damaging warming effect. But there are a lot of stronger industrial gases emitted that could be blamed. I think perfluorocarbons were among those, if I recall Anthony’s layout seemingly way back when of the relative strenght of GHGs. But C10F18 doesn’t quite roll of the tongue as well, nor do most people know what it is or what it is used for. CO2 is the equivalent of a straw man, or a scapegoat, or a whipping boy. It’s media friendly and easy to remember.
Most importantly, the most powerful GHG is water vapor. If the earlier article on the Arctic is correct, and if the planet is overall warming (surface station errors and other nonsense notwithstanding), then whatever mechanism is causing this (man-made or natural) needs to be pinpointed and explained sufficiently. If melting ice is putting more water vapor into the air (and that in itself is debatable as cold water is far from steam), then that would be important. But that would have to be shown to not be offset or to overpower agents that take water OUT of the atmosphere. Those infamous belching ‘smoke stacks’ like the cooling towers of nuclear reactors for example? Those big puffy masses coming out of them is steam. Of course, natural emissions of H2O by far outweigh anything man does, and that would quite spoil the AGW party.
Leif will surely tell us that a Maunder or Dalton minimum is not the end of the world by any stretch, so I guess this is nothing really significant. What is more important to my mind is why the Arctic is melting if it is not warming caused by CO2 emissions. Personally, I am leaning towards volcanic activity. Both the peninsula referenced in that article and the Arctic itself have significant volcanic activity, including underwater volcanic eruptions in the latter. Stronger and heavier winter storms would seem to be indicative of more moisture in the air, though one year hardly ‘proves’ anything. Plus we are just going into the Cool phase of the largest (and the shallowest too, I think) of all the Earth’s oceans. We shall see what effect that has on the ice and on global temperatures.
The GISS temp data I don’t trust as far as I can throw James Hansen. So if it is ‘global warming’ it needs to be demonstrated in some other way than through very questionable temperature derivations and their subsequent ‘adjustments’ and spurious claims of the power of carbon dioxied. Futhermore, as we have stated time and again, a modest warming would be a GOOD thing. And there is no known reason why the Earth should act like a nuclear reactor, the only process in the universe that is dominated by positive feedbacks. The ‘global warming’ contention may be correct, but it has not been demonstrated how or why. All questions must be thoroughly explored and answered. This is far from over.
Pamela, I am with you there; sunspots are merely a result of underlying Solar Physics. However, they are indicative of …? certainly activity, whatever that means.
Anthony,
I asked this of Leif once, but he seems not to know anyone of the sort. Do you think you could use your “connections” and snag us an “official expert” or two on oceanic circulation? I really feel that is a missing piece of the puzzle. As much insight as Leif gives us to the Sun, and as appreciative as people are of that, I feel it would have an equally positive reaction and contribution to have such an “expert.” Certainly one might be available to weigh in on things for your rather large audience here.
Reply: No, and here’s why. I’m getting DOZENS of requests now per day to “do something” for “somebody”. I can’t hardly keep up with the email I get from this blog, manage it, much less run the surfacestations project, run a business, be a dad and husband, and the dozens of other things I do.
I can’t be every person’s go-to guy on climate issues, I do the best I can, I choose what I can do and write about carefully, I’m sorry. If anyone has a contact feel free to invite. -Anthony
Depends on how the carpenter measures: Center to Center or the width of the non-minimal spacing.
nobwainer (17:44:32) :
“Interesting that the Maunder, Dalton and this latest big pause are all 200 yrs apart.”
Actually the dalton, maunder, sporer and wolf are all 179 yrs apart and for very good reason. The oort min falls out of sync for the same reason. its all about neptune, uranus, and, Jupiter apposing saturn. very hard to argue against.
Indeed, puny and hard to see, haven’t seen a good one in years.
The first one was distinctly dark this morning, before the sun set there were two equally faint & fuzzy arcs. Odds are they will be difficult for me to spot tomorrow.
MattN (18:01:10) :
Still fairly small as sunspots go….
The arc and the fading act reminds me of a bubble of tint in paint hitting the surface, expanding and blending into the background. Makes me think about why these things keep coming up at the low ebb of Planetary A index and Solar Wind Velocity.
Most intriguing this behavior.
Any takers on sunspot behavior?
Looking at solarcycle24.com’s picture, the 2008/09/23 00:00 version looks like the sunspot has shrunk somewhat and has changed configuration. It is now a “u” instead of an “n” shape. — John M Reynolds
Bobby L:
I thought it was a Rorschach inkblot test.
Maybe I should have added a smilely 🙂
Anthony,
Sorry! It’s easy to forget that. I’ll look on my own or if any others want to help that might be good too. Thanks for the excellent site and all your hard work.
I’ll see if I can dig up one.
Robert…
check out how the carpenter measures here:
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2007/05/sunssbam1620to2180.gif
as you can see we are in EXACTLY the same spot as the previous minimums.
the mind boggles as to why….but there is definitely a pattern.
@John-X,
Good one! 🙂 I actually had someone correct me for real on that once, something about how CO2 simply causes havoc, so it could warm here but cool over there, ja, ja, Chaos, I say!!
@Tom in Texas, what scared me is you can see the little lines of CO2 being squirted down into the blue ocean below. Scary! 🙂
@others: Please don’t read so defensively that you miss the humor when it shows up. Those little gems that lighten things up are part of what makes this blog a fun read.
I’m glad it wasn’t the U first, then the N…
Basil,
I was struck by how much your wavelet analysis looks like the kind of results that I am getting by playing with the idea of the area under curve of the sunspot graph. (I’ve tried it with the TSI Graph too with much the same results). I have also related these areas to the Hadcrut temperatures with tantilizing results. (Beats the crap out of the CO2 > temp relation). Also, the AUC certainly indicates that the 20th century was more active that the 18th or 19th. I would like your feedback on what I have done – could send you my Excel data. If interested could you get my e-mail address from Anthony? For example here hare the areas for the 23 cycles.
1 10494
2 11808
3 11672
4 14838
5 7938
6 7427
7 10030
8 12717
9 13382
10 11895
11 12349
12 9623
13 10185
14 8968
15 9823
16 9691
17 11812
18 11900
19 13657
20 11592
21 12814
22 12342
23 11757
@Pamela Gray
“I am more inclined to look at Leif’s data which takes into account measures other than sunspot numbers.”
Lief has EARNED my respected the hard way. I tend to listen to what he has to say and grant his research with a higher weight.
However, Basil has almost as much respect as Lief, and if these two can work together, then their debates will result in an advancement of our scientific knowledge.
Both of them simply want to understand what is happening, and that is the true definition of a scientist.
There certainly is a pattern there, and so is the cold that showed up 2 cycles later.
nobwainer (19:51:24) :
Robert…
check out how the carpenter measures here:
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2007/05/sunssbam1620to2180.gif
as you can see we are in EXACTLY the same spot as the previous minimums.
the mind boggles as to why….but there is definitely a pattern.
While it is nice that we finally have a decent cycle 24 spot cluster, I don’t think anything definitive can be said yet about minimums, size of 24 max, etc.
My question is, what about LIvingston? Has he measured the umbral magnetic field of the spots in this cluster? (or is he measuring something else?)
If he has, are we still following the trend toward no spots by 2015?
Since it seems likely that sc24 spots will now outnumber sc23 spots for September, will this month be considered the minimum? Or do we need a 3month running average where sc24 outnumbers sc23?
Johnnyb (15:48:08) :
You and others are pinning far too many hopes on one little sunspot group. Do keep in mind that the transition to SC24 doesn’t occur until the SC24 spots outnumber the SC23 spots in the 12 month smooth sunspot number. So even if this will be the transition, we have 6 months left before the official pronouncement. Meanwhile, the spot may not survive the night and we’ll be right back to a blank sun and uncertainty of what the next sunspeck might be.
Getting back to Basil’s graphic, I’m really impressed with the symmetry and periodicity in the data, especially how things like carrots, err, cycles 20, 21, and 22 join up much like the first three complete cycles on the left just before the Dalton Minimum. Bother occurred during a busy period in the 88 year period at the top of the graphic.
I did do a little reading about these, and got the sense that some of shapes fall out of how the convolutions with wavelets at not quite the right period interact, especially things like the tilting and hence some of the symmetry, but that may just help call attention to the interesting aspects.
I’m not sure how wide a Morlet wavelet is over time, but the edge distortion is probably limited to 1/2 or a bit less of the period, so the top power of 2 or so may have some problems, but the rest may be have very little distortion. That certainly is born out by the visible periodicity.
Very cool stuff.
Anthony . Reference the query by Bobby Lane(18:25:48) and your quite reasonable answer. Perhaps you could comply under a condition that all of the requesters are prepared to dig into their own pockets to assist you in renumeration for extra staff? I would be prepared to offer coin if you can come up with a reasonable fee (A fee that will probably only be able to be stated with any accuracy if you had the extra staff to calculate same!).
REPLY: Thank you for the suggestion, but I’d prefer to remain a journalist and scientist, rather than be a shopkeeper. Fees make me think of the DMV – Anthony
[…] Watts up with that? […]
Bobby Lane – “Even in the amounts emitted by man, which are relatively little compared to Nature itself – and even in the combined (man and nature) effect CO2 is relatively weak.” This is a bad argument. Nature releases much more CO2 than we do, though it also takes it all back so nature’s co2 usage is in a rather perfect equilibrium. Humans are then adding to that CO2 input, without then using it ourselves. Your point essentially argues that the modern increase in CO2 is not anthropogenic. This is a very hard case to make.
You also write – “Personally, I am leaning towards volcanic activity. Both the peninsula referenced in that article and the Arctic itself have significant volcanic activity, including underwater volcanic eruptions in the latter.” Arctic warming has followed the very same trend as global temperatures (stable from 1978 to 1995), step change from 1995 to 2001, and stabilization after that point. This seems to imply that something global is responsible for Arctic warming, for it caries the same warming signature as the rest of the globe does. So this rules out any regional activity. Perhaps Erl Happ’s theory that warming at high latitudes is just the product of tropical warming/cooling events moving toward the poles.
I agree with you conclusions about attributing climate change to humans, but I thought there were some details that needed to be clarified.
Unprecedented SC24 sunspot.
Clearly the largets SC24 spot in a milinnia.
If it continue to grow at this rate there will be over 1000 spots in less than 5 years.
Clearly a sign of MMS. (Mad Man Sunspots)
We must take action NOW!
Even if the periodicity of 179 years existed, it could have nothing to do with planets. The mean motions of the planets on their orbits around the Sun, in degrees per day, are
Jupiter 0.083091189
Saturn 0.033459654
Uranus 0.011730787
Neptune 0.005981826
Now calculate by yourselves. The heliocentric conjunctions of Uranus with Neptune (‘heliocentric’ means ‘as seen from the Sun’) occur at mean intervals of 171.4 years, NOT 179 years. The last three took place in 1650, 1821, and 1993.
Even if you consider the period of 171.4 years instead of 179, you get nothing. After 171.4 years (more exactly, 62620 days), Neptune moves 375 degrees in its orbit, that is 1 turn plus 15 degrees, Uranus makes 2 turns plus 15 degrees, but Saturn does 6 turns minus 65 degrees.
Johnnyb (15:48:08) :
“So, if I understand this correctly… The onset of SC 24 is near. SC23 was a little bit long, but as not really exceptional in the grand scheme of things right?
No Grand Solar minimum is coming, no Dalton or Maunder Minimum, no Little Ice Age, etc.”
Those who have made a prediciton that we will head into a Dalton Minimum or Maunder minimum state on the sun do not predict it to happen next year but in a dacade or 2. Some say as early as 2015.There is a possibility that a Dalton Minimum state on the sun could be initiated with SC24 but there are different opinions about this.
When it comes to SC25 it is predicted to be the weakest in centuries by NASA which could mean it will be comparable to Dalton Minimum or Maunder minimum. But we do not know enough about the sun in order to predict such events yet. We couldn’t even predict that SC23 was going to stretch out this much a few years ago.
And finally, SC24 has not ramped up yet even though there are signs that we have passed or are passing the deepest part of this minimum atm. (increased SC24 magnetic activity but too weak to form sunspots yet.)
Bobby Lane (18:19:38) :
. . . And there is no known reason why the Earth should act like a nuclear reactor, the only process in the universe that is dominated by positive feedbacks.
Nuclear reactors aren’t dominated by positive feedback. Well, Chernobyl, briefly.
I can think of three processes that are –
A- and H-bombs, stellar supernovae, and AGW alarmism.
Mike 😉
former B-52 driver
The SC24 spot I saw today had faded from distinct to fuzzy in the space of 6 hrs. It is now just barely visible on Catania’s white light image. That may be due to light overcast, so it will remain to be seen if it survives the night.
I believe that Leif despite his excellent work has doubts about the effects of the planets.
But the notion of the Sun being dragged forcefully, and reacting accordingly, when it is outside the solar system barycentre is very appealing, and suggests orderly, predictable, verifiable solar cycles that might finally establish a longterm climate standard. Visible effects have to be composites of the individual planetary cycles, and if I had the time I’d check nobwainer’s assertion of 179-year cycles currently operational, on his Geometry in Space. I also suspect that this research has already been done by others, if one could identify the right blog.
Ah, blog-mining! the science industry of the future!
Nobwainer:
No success, the tool you mention doesn’t seem to work on my computer.
If you are so certain that the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune line up every 179 years, just give me 2 or 3 instants of these line-ups. Then I can check it by means of one of my programs. Thanks.
Interesting thought of the Jovian influence on the Sun. So I went to see how far away Jupiter is from the Sun. The earth is 93 million miles or 150 million km from Sun, and the Sun’s actifity can be seen (aurora, etc). Jupiter is 483 million miles or 779 million km from Sun. How exactly does Jupiter influence the sun way back there? With a very big stick? I think not. Jupiter doesn’t influence the Earth in any way I know of (perhaps I’m wrong, and if so, I stand corrected) so how can it influence the Sun. Saturn is 886 million miles or 1428 million km from Sun and Uranus 1782 million miles or 2974 million km from Sun and neptune 2794 Million miles or 4506 million km from Sun. I think the arguments about gas giants are perhaps weak. By my math If you could travel at I mile per second, you could travel 3153600 miles per year and you’d take a long time to reach those gas giants. Even Voyager 1, travelling at 520 million kilometers per year took a long time.
On the sunspot front, remember “one swallow doeth not a summer make”
That is a wonderful image. Look at the apparent fractal nature of it. It seems chaotic and scalable; noting those shapes with legs on different scales (i.e. frequencies).
i stand corrected, just read this. “While the work of Mausumi Dikpati suggests that meridional flows in the sun’s convective layer may allow us to forecast sunspot activity , other forces may also be at work. In particular, the giant planets in the solar system may play a role through the gravitational pull they exert on the massive amount of fluid flowing in the outer layer of the sun.
Curiously, this gravitational force can be expressed as a Fourier series whose most important terms have interesting periodicities: one of these coincides with the 11-year cycle of the sunspots. What we may be seeing, therefore, is the direct influence of planetary tidal forces and their effects on the stability of the magnetic loops created in the meridional flows in the sun’s convective layer. These forces could be a major factor in the cycle of magnetic loops believed to create the sunspots.
Jupiter is the largest contributor to the solar plasma tides. It may eventually transpire that its influence contributes to our climate
from Sun. I think the arguments about gas giants are perhaps weak. By my math If you could travel at I mile per second, you could travel 3153600 miles per year and you’d take a long time to reach those gas giants. Even Voyager 1, travelling at 520 million kilometers per year took a long time.
from new scientist
I believe that nobwainer is referring to the work of Dr. Theodor Landscheidt. His theory is pretty well put forth in this paper: New Little Ice Age Instead of Global Warming?
I can hear Leif getting ready to bring out his solar pea again!
“With 6.6 billion people, we cannot afford to have a Maunder-type Minimum right now because food production has barely kept up with population growth”
You are mis-understanding how economies work.
Why on earth would food production ever exceed population growth?
Do you want to be the farmer who’s growing food that nobody will eat?
There is a very strong negative feedback mechanism called the market. It keeps production tied directly to demand. When the amount of food grown is too small, prices go up, and next year farmers plant more. If there is too much food, the opposite happens.
In the US we pay farmers to not grow food. Not only that, but farms that used to exist in the northeast were allowed to return to nature because it was not profitable to compete with the mid-west.
If the price of food became a problem we could stop converting much of it to fuel.
If the price of food became a problem, resistance to GM crops would drop.
If the price of food became a problem, then the price of meat would increase even more. A small drop in meat consumption would free up lots of grain for human consumption.
The food situation is not dire. Not even a new Little Ice Age would create a big problem in regards to food production.
nobwainer (00:39:08) :
Use this tool and you will see what i mean Jean
May I humbly suggest you do a Google search for “Jean Meeus”? Or “Meeus, Jean” if you want to see bibliographic references.
Lucy Skywalker (02:33:34) :
You may not have been around here when we had our biggest rumble over this, see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/28/astronomical-society-of-australia-publishes-new-paper-warning-of-solar-quieting-and-global-cooling/ for “just a few” comments on barycenters, barycentres, solar tides and the usual acrimony. Leif’s excellent work includes his doubts about tides. Perhaps we can move some of this dicussion over there.
I’d be a lot happier with the esthetic aspects of barycenters if the gravitational analysis was done rigorously with Newton’s Law before employing an unnecessary shortcut like barycenters.
Comparing photos of yesterday to those of today, I’d say this sunspot is fizzling out.
Off topic, and to break one of my own rules (weather anecdotes don’t make climate), it’s been cold in South Africa (via Drudge):
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=14&art_id=vn20080921084615870C810928
Aint that the 2nd year in a row this happens?
nobwainer wrote:
“Try 1650, 1830, 2010.”
In 1650, the four giant planets were more or less aligned, but not with the Sun. In 2010, the three inner giant planets will be almost aligned with the Sun: Saturn on one side, Jupiter and Uranus on the other side, but Neptune will be 30 degrees off (as seen from the Sun). So, sorry, but I really don’t see any 179-year periodicity.
MarkW
Correction:
We can’t afford NOT to have one.
Otherwise the AGW kooks will have the fodder they need to ram through an eco-dictatorship that would be far more destructive than any little Ice Age.
thanks for the heads up Ric…if he is the same person i am indeed humbled.
And if so he will certainly be able to verify my statements one way or the other.
btw Jean, Saturn needs to be lined up roughly opposite Jupiter, on the other side of the Sun
@Pierre:
Any change but climate ‘stability’ will allow an eco-dictatorship to arise.
Look at the following graph:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
I find it interesting that re-freezing started about 7 to 10 days earlier this year than it did during the previous 6 years. I predicted that earlier this summer.
Dee
I respectfully disagree. If it gets cold, people will only realise what a bunch of charlatans the AGW kooks were, and run them (hopefully) out of town.
Carlwolk,
Nature releases much more CO2 than we do, though it also takes it all back so nature’s co2 usage is in a rather perfect equilibrium.
You have no reason to say that. Where is your evidence. The current “carbon balance” numbers don’t add up. CO2 varies continuously. Wait for AIRS to finally come clean.
@Pierre:
Notice that I didn’t specify from where it would arise.
Thanks Jean thats exactly what i see and 1830 the same….the 30 deg offset of Neptune in 2010 in my mind is still close enough to have cause but perhaps means this coming cycle may not be as strong as 1650. In 1650 my chart shows a very close alignment of all the planets and the sun but not quite exact. The program url i supplied very clearly shows how this line up happens every 178-9 yrs and is interesting to watch as everything lines up.
Human being seem to be quite adept at making patterns out of noise, so I am skeptical about any 179 year periodicity, but given the propensity of the sun to have a bias toward cycles at multiples of 11 years, could it be just a higher order multiple?
11 … 22 … 44 … 88 … 176~179
I think: “we” should only discuss the idea of the oscillation of baricenter only after NASA says: The Voyager is in the wrong place.
If. no measurable gravitational disturbance. The idea seems astrology. Absence of evidence…or Velikovsky: Handbuch der Babylonien Astronomie.
Anything can be written. And then be written as a series of anything.
Someone will do: Morlet wavelet transform of Smoothed barycenter date…
Steve (20:01:32) You should look up Pete’s graph in comment #454 of the Svalgaard #2 thread at climateaudit.org and associated commentary.
============================================
One of the very first things one should look up when using a new method is its limitations. As Svalgaard commented, a wavelet will be distorted towards the edges, increasingly so with decreasing frequency. So to say much about today from that plot is at best guessing, or misleading at worst.
This is what I don’t understand in the presented figure: If there is a persistent 11yrs cycle, why is it not continuously red over the whole time span? The way it looks now, it seems like it’s a cycle that dies and comes to life again over and over. Any mathematicians care to comment?
NASA does seem interested in Planetary tidal theory with regard to flares and sunspots. Here is a link to their site showing a recent NASA paper that is very detailed. They have mostly looked at Mercury, Venus, Earth & Jupiter with surprising results (maybe its not in the pseudo arena any more?) I have just skimmed the document but it looks comprehensive and seems to support the idea.
http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/Citations.aspx?id=330
there is a link to the actual paper at the bottom of the page.
Perhaps if they included the other gas planets they may have reached an even better conclusion?
Anthony, how about putting a graph of GISS and Hadcrut temp overlayed on the Morlet Wavelet of the SSN?
For those of you interested in whether a problem with “edge distortion” seriously detracts from the original image, I’ve done a “quick and dirty” analysis as suggested by Damek. In the following image, we have the original wavelet, through the most recent month of 2008, at the bottom. Above it, in the middle, is the wavelet cut off at 2000. And at top, is the wavelet cut off at 1980.
Here’s the link:
http://i33.tinypic.com/qpf0ic.jpg
There are two things to observe here, I think. For evidence of “edge distortion” look at what happens in the top two images where the edge splits an 11 year cycle, revealing only the first part of it. What you see of it is more elongated than in the bottom image. But something else is happening too. The pattern of lower frequency signals is being altered. This isn’t “distortion.” It is the result of the pattern “weak” signals being altered simply because we’ve altered the length of data period used to divine them. For instance, when I do a periodogram on the entire period of data, there is a peak at ~104 years. When I cut off the data at 1980, that peak shifts to 92 years. Now given that we’ve only got a little over 250 years of data, it is not surprising that these low frequency spectra are going to be very sensitive to changes like this. And so we try not to read too much into the lower frequency results.
But personally (here’s where Leif and I may differ) I don’t think that means that we don’t look at them at all, or ignore them completely. Obviously, the 11 year pattern is itself uncontroversial. I think Leif has conceded the existence of ~100 year cycles in solar activity, but would be quick to add that the exact duration of them is highly uncertain, and that would be right. In between, I think, that the wavelet analysis, wherever you end it (and arbitrarily ending it before the most recent available data strikes me as a kind of “cherry picking”) shows some heightened activity on a Hale cycle frequency. And it — the 22 year cycle — is there in the sprectrum/periodogram data as well. It is certainly not as strong as the 11 year cycle, but it is there.
Barely Visible
The new sunspot group seems to be fading fast
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html
Bangshui,
The colors represent the amplitude of the signal. And of course, the amplitude of the 11 year solar cycle does die and come to life every 11 years or so. It is pretty dead right now, and we’re all curious about when it is going to show signs of life. That’s what this discussion is really all about.
Onamyn,
If you will give my words their original intent, you will realize that I simply offered a “speculation” and said as to the reality of it “no one knows.” So yes, at best, it is just a guess. And since it was never offered as any more than that, I think your remark about “misleading at worst” was unjustified.
[…] Watts Up With That has a fascinating analysis of sunspot 1002. Posted at 11:17 AM | […]
I think the sun is absorbing all the magnetic activity and will release it abrubtly
also every measurement that has been made so far suggest that solar cycle 24 will be at least 50 % stronger than the previous one with a lot of x solar flares.
But then on the other side this event is unprecedented so none knows for sure.
One thing is sure society as we know it is coming to an end it has happened before with massive flooddings this time i think it will be with fire. The fire of our own sun who knows. Let’s hope it will not be the case…
Basil (07:26:54) :
But personally (here’s where Leif and I may differ) I don’t think that means that we don’t look at them at all, or ignore them completely.
I’m not sure where the is disagreement. I pointed out that edge-effects always are a concern.
I think Leif has conceded the existence of ~100 year cycles in solar activity
Here the may be disagreement, as I don’t think the ~100 year variations are a ‘cycle’. But rather a random variation of varying length, figures like 88 years have also been advocates, but when that didn’t fit anymore, it became ~100. To fluffy for my taste.
And it — the 22 year cycle — is there in the sprectrum/periodogram data as well. It is certainly not as strong as the 11 year cycle, but it is there.
I think the ’22-year’ cycle is an artifact: since no two 11-year cycles are alike, there will be differences between two cycles and these show up as power at 22-years. Especially because of the existence of the ~100 year wave, which will cause neighboring cycles to show systematic differences: on the upswing, every odd [say] numbered cycle will be larger than its previous [even] numbered one [on the downside, the other way around], this also induces some 22-year power. When people appealed to the 22-year cycle in forecasting cycle 23, they failed miserably, same thing with cycle 22 [which should have been significant smaller than 21, but wasn’t.
Try this experiment: pick a random cycle [or compute the average cycle]. Replicate that 20 or 40 times. Then pick a different random number [between 0.5 and 1.5] for each replicated cycle and multiply the monthly values by those numbers. Then make the plot. In another experiment have those altered cycles put on top of a steady increase over the 1st half of the total time, with a decrease during the 2nd half, and make the plot.
BTW, the wavelet plots are usually made with the long periods [low frequency] at the bottom rather than at the top. This freaked my out when I first saw your plot until I realized that it was upside-down [compared to the usual way].
23
The movie sequence today 23rd September, shows the spots appear and disappear but it is still evident in the magnetic domain.
Basil,
I still don’t get it. Let me use an example.
Take a sinusoidal timeseries, with a frequency of 1/11 yrs^-1. Then apply wavelet analysis to it. At any given time, the result should show the 1/11 yrs^-1 signal equally strong. The wavelet analysis does not care at which phase the signal is in, just it’s spectral components.
I guess that Wattsupwiththat is not the place to post this, but the presented analysis has been looked into elsewhere as well:
http://tinyurl.com/3ooqxj
Looking at Jan Meeus’ butterfly diagrams at Janssens’ at the link in Anthony’s post I get the feeling the qualified 24 spots to date point to an emerging ‘sparse’ pattern for 24, in the early going.
Just eye-balling, but their latitudes in preceding diagrams are heavily populated where the next 24 spot seems to be expected, say December? Jan., May, Sept., Dec. If this is a ramp, most of the members are missing (or invisible as you know who has suggested).
In any case, 23 counts should equal 24 sometime in 2009 and the 13 month SSN minimum no earlier than Dec., Carl Smith’s prediction in July 2007 (we shall speak of the entrails augured).
Basil’s graph is looking good in context.
“Do not despise humble beginnings.”
The latest magnetogram shows that it is dissipating now but they are not putting up the gpeg up to now. They just show up to when it is the strongest.
GONE!
Pierre, not quite, still visible on this image
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html
Their stupid .RAM file does not work!
Leif,
Thanks for the comments. Your explanation of the “22 year cycle” is something to think about.
As for the “upside down” presentation of the wavelet diagram, that’s the way it is presented in the software I use, which anyone can download here and use themselves:
http://folk.uio.no/ohammer/past/
I’ve seen it the way you describe, in one of your own papers, in fact. Is there other software that you would recommend, that doesn’t take a mainframe? OS is not as important (I’m also using the SSA-MTM Toolkit, running under Linux, for some things). But I don’t have access to enterprise or university level resources. I’m just a little guy crunching away on a personal computer.
I’m talking about the audio file of the Live Conference on the State of the Sun (NASA).
The new spot is now a speck. Unless some more appear soon, this will just have been an anomoly.
faded
This sunspot is at the hairy edge of visibility in my 70mm Orion refractor 26mm Meade Plossl. It has faded further since I saw it yesterday late afternoon.
Since yesterday morning, it has faded several mangnitudes. The weaker area is nothing more than a blush.
Hey, that Orion refractor I got is mighty good. I’m doing just about as good as the pros.
Cheap, too.
Just another sunspeck and a wimpspeck that blushed out in the pigment of the Sun at the ebb of the Planetary A Index and Solar Wind speed.
The Big Bang of SC24 is a peeled retread.
“Human being seem to be quite adept at making patterns out of noise, so I am skeptical about any 179 year periodicity”
While not a ‘raving cyclomaniac’, I believe the idea is the eletromagnahelic cycle is perturbed by the Jose cycle. I.R.G. Wilson used CAM synthetically to model this ‘teleconnection’.
As anna v. points out, “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
Boy that one didn’t last long. You can see it disappear on the MPEG video here.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_mdi_igr.mpg
John Andrews, Knoxville, Tennessee
Basil,
If it would be useful, we have a linux cluster that will handle quite large problems. We have a short period now when it is not being fully used and could do some number crunching for you.
For those interested:
00:00 mdi image:
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov//data/REPROCESSING/Completed/2008/mdiigr/20080923/20080923_0000_mdiigr_1024.jpg
latest image from 19:12
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov//data/REPROCESSING/Completed/2008/mdiigr/20080923/20080923_1912_mdiigr_1024.jpg
carl,
Your statement of “Nature releases much more CO2 than we do, though it also takes it all back so nature’s co2 usage is in a rather perfect equilibrium” is interesting. I don’t think that this is so. And indeed plants can absorb more CO2 than whatever Nature might put out by itself. There is no distinction with them what is man-made and what is natural. So I don’t buy that. At any rate, my point on CO2 was as a warming gas, which it is exceedingly weak at compared to other GHGs. So overall I may agree that, yes, human activity has increased the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, but given its weakness as a GHG that does not equal the current warming. I think that would be my point, though perhaps not properly stated the first time around.
Yeah, you are probably right about the volcanic activity if it does have a global signature. But if the upper atmosphere is cooling and only the surface is warming then that goes against the AGW hypothesis, which provides for the top-down warming only. But if tropical oscillations are the theory, then that belongs in the domain of oceanic oscillations it would seem. Since those don’t operate in isolation, but have their own causes and connections, it would seem that they need further explaining too. That and cloud formation. It may just be that we do not know enough at this point about either, but I haven’t seen anyone say anything that would give us even a creative hint on which to work concerning those.
Back to volcanic activity for a minute though. That is happening world-wide. And many volcanoes are underwater too. Thus the gases get dissolved in water, but they may make their way up to the surface through current changes and evaporation. I may be way off of course, but it would be interesting all the same. We are prone to look at above-water eruptions because those are the ‘prettiest.’ But a great many volcanoes are at the ocean bottom and out of reach of easy observation. I don’t say it is THE cause. I don’t even know if it is A cause. But it is at least a reasonable inference of possible contribution. After all, scientists thought Arctic volcanoes could not erupt because of the water pressure down there, but they were wrong. So who knows.
Mike McMillan,
Yes, another slight mistatement on my part. I should have said nuclear fission uncontrolled. A nuclear reactor would be controlled nuclear fission, which as you said accurately is not dominated by PF or the thing would explode in a meltdown (i.e., Chernobyl). My mistake. The A bomb is a good example of what I meant, and it is dominated by PF.
Carl,
Correction on CO2. I should say Nature may keep an general and probably cyclical equilibrium, and that only for now. That may not always be the case. But in general for now there is most likely a general equilibrium. My main issue was with use of the word ‘perfect.’ That’s a little too tight for me. But that it does keep some sort of equilibrium I would agree with.
Hi,
the use of wavelet methods for the analysis of the sunspot signal is not new and doesn’t bring anything “new” that couldn’t be obtained with other methods.
What you call the “edge of distortion” is well known as the cone of influence. It is related to the size of the support of the wavelet mother; here the morlet mother. It’s called a cone because it is also related to the scale. For small scales (high frequencies) the edge effect is small, but for large scales (low frequencies) the edge effects are very important. You have to plot the cone of influence on top of your graph, and I guess all the top part (from 22y period) of it is “contaminated” by the edge effects.
Don’t take it bad. I am a regular reader of your blog.
There seems to be sets of mirror image repeating on the chart. On the left the plumes around the Dalton Minimum are a mirror image of each other. I would wonder if there is a way to review this and find out what the patern is. As you go across, almost every feature on the left half is repeated on the right half.
Well Andrew, that Morlet Wavelet Transform graph has to be either the most informative; or maybe the second most informative graph that I have ever seen.
I quickly discovered that at least two of my colleagues who do digital signal processing algorithms were aware of Wavelets and the Morlet variety. I can plead ignorance since my BSc in Physics and Maths dates from 1957 when Morlet was not even a twinkle in his father’s eye. Right now I haven’t the foggiest notion how my brain should interpret Basil’s fancy graph; bloody good work Basil; but I know that my brain says there’s a very important message on that page.
My other candidate for graphical immortality was located at:
http://www.mlo.noaa.gov/Projects/GASES/co2glob.htm and is a decade from 1987 to 1997 of the atmospheric CO2, ala Mauna Loa, but measured from pole to pole.
How could anything on planet earth be that assymmetrical. NOAA pulled that graph; probaly because it is as revealing as a naked blonde roller skating on the Malibu Pier. Of particular interest is the fact that at the North pole, the environment is able to take out 18 ppm of Atmospheric CO2 in just 5 months.
So much for the allegation that man made CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 200 years. Baloney, the removal time constant can’t be any longer than maybe 2 years at the most. Of course all those high paid NOAA scientists who have the actual raw data, must have already reduced that cyclic information to the exponential time constant decay form for a square wave input; so they must know what the best fit time constant really is; I’m sure they are too embarrassed to publish it.
Thanks for Monday’s sunspot picture Andrew; just in case I don’t live long enough to see any more; it was good while it lasted.
I’ll tell you Watt’s upwith that !! ; my !@#$%^&*() keyboard insists on typing Andrew, instead of Anthony; thereby confusing the site host with than Revkin churl at the NYT.
My humble apologies for the fox pass.
George
Re Carl/Bobby Lane/Mike McMillan, I don’t think you can describe the CO2 in the atmosphere as being anything like equilibrium.
For a start, at the south pole and well up into the southern ocean, the annual cyclic CO2 variation is no more than about 1 ppm p-p amplitude; whereas at the north pole it is about 18 ppm amplitude; and the down portion of that cycle is only five months; so whatever is absorbing CO2 in the arctic is doing so much faster than the atmospheric mixing can reach any sort of equilbibrium.
Then there is the exchange between the Atmosphere and the oceans. Virtually everywhere in the oceans, there is a downward temperature gradient down to the thermocline, and a slower decline below that; and it is well known that CO2 is more soluble in colder water. So the CO2 doesn’t just stagnate in the surface layers; but it is being constantly pumped into the ocean depths by a pseudo segregation coefficient due to the temperature gradient; which constantly depletes the surface waters of CO2 allowing for a continuous uptake from the atmosphere.
This same mechanism prevents the warm surface waters from becoming too acidic, so it prevents higher atmsospheric CO2 from influencing coral growths.
Also I don’t understand the concept of AGW causing a heating of the upper atmosphere.
At the surface where earth’s IR is mostly emitted, you have both the highest temperature, and the highest atmospheric pressure, so the Doppler and the Pressure broadening of the CO2 15 micron resonance line is maximum at the surface, so the influence of CO2 is maximised at the surface. The re-emission from the surface CO2 is inherently isotropic, so about half goes back down, and half goes up.
As you go up, the pressure drops, and the temperature drops; so both the collision broadening (pressure) and the Doppler broadening (temperature are reduced, so the CO2 line narrows as you go up in altitide, so much of the re-emitted IR radiation, now escapes capture by CO2 and exits the atmosphere. So the atmospheric warming by CO2 diminishes steadily as you go up in altitude.
At present CO2 levels it is approximately 14 molecule spacing between nearest neighbor CO2 molecules; so any CO2 molecule is quite unaware of the presence of any other. So the statistical mechanics are entirely dependent on the ordinary atmospheric gases of Nitrogen and Oxygen, with the occasional visit by one of those monoatomic Argon creatures.
It will take some kind of argument to convince me, that CO2 warming is supposed to increase at higher altitudes. Just compare the absorption by ozone, in the 9-10 micron range with the CO2 at 13.5 to 16.5 microns, to see the effect of line broadening. The ozone is a thin layer at altitude where it is cold and low pressure, so the line is much narrower than the surface CO2 line.
“Of particular interest is the fact that at the North pole, the environment is able to take out 18 ppm of Atmospheric CO2 in just 5 months.”
The daily variance in mid-tropsheric CO2 at AIRS and Mauna Loa at 10,000′ are on the order of 10^1 ppm, i.e., some 100 Gtons. How can anyone imagine that of man’s 8 Gtons per year 4 remains?
Didn’t Freshman Chemistry teach us that the oceanic partial-pressure of CO2 determined its atmospheric abundance, or did I skip that lecture?
Patrick Fisher,
I’m aware of some instances of wavelet transforms in publications on solar science. Could you refer me to the ones you are referring to regarding sunspot cycles?
Also, references to good software would be appreciated. The package I use doesn’t plot the cone of influence.
Basil
definition of global warming…
This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring…
“daily variance”
I have been admonished by the good Dr. S, that ‘variablility’ is the correct term on another thread and must be here as well.
[…] the original post: New Cycle 24 Sunspot and SSN wavelet analysis Tags: arctic, basil, climate, Climate Change, morlet, north, robert-bateman, sunspot, wavelet […]
[…] See the rest here: New Cycle 24 Sunspot and SSN wavelet analysis […]
Hi, I wrote the PAST software, and have taken note of your criticisms of the wavelet module. In the latest version (1.84) I have turned the scalogram “the right way up”, as requested, and also added an option for plotting the modulus instead of the real part (“amplitude”). Download at
http://folk.uio.no/ohammer/past
I don’t like “smoothed” when you say “smoothed sunspot numbers”. Why smooth them? The wavelet should smooth them. Maybe you are throwing away data in your smoothing when it would be better off left in for the analysis.