Significant Cycle 24 sunspot group emerges

kim (12:23:04) :
Is your first hand-drawing on your website?
yes at
http://www.leif.org/research/A%20View%20of%20Solar%20Magnetic%20Fields,%20the%20Solar%20Corona,%20and%20the%20Solar%20Wind%20in%20Three%20Dimensions.pdf
or just go to the site and look at paper #70.
Werner Heil put in some planets, stars, and the milkyway [look really carefully]. Many people have published later images, but none matches Werner’s.

Sorry, Leif, Pamela, I’m playing catch-up in solar phyusics here.
What is “HCS”?

Should we also be keeping a metric upon the duration of a sunspot/sunspeck. That might resolve the issue of the significance of a spot or speck.
Basically, we would just be integrating over time; a completely normal procedure. It would be something like “size.hours” or “B-field.hours”

Robert Wood (15:30:43) :
What is “HCS”?
In space the magnetic field from the Sun is pointing away from the Sun in parts of the Heliosphere [“The extended solar system”] and towards the Sun in the other parts. The parts with different polarities are separated by a thin sheet of electric current, called the Heliospheric Current Sheet, HCS. Solar rotation curves the current sheet into spiral shape as shown here http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/helio.gif The ‘undulations’ in the current sheet are caused by variations over the solar surface of its magnetic field. At solar minimum when the polar fields dominate, the HCS can be very flat [almost planar]. At solar maximum when the polar fields are gone, the undulations warp all the way to the poles. A movie of the how the HCS’s inner edge projected into the corona varies since 1976 is here http://www.leif.org/research/WSO-SS.gif

Mary Hinge (15:43:50) :
J Ward (10:43:31) :
Nuttier than squirrel excrement!
Nevertheless, that was once established wisdom. Today the theory has been relegated to a historical curiosity.
Paul Charbonneau has written a wonderful review of the “Rise and Fall” of this theory: http://www.leif.org/research/Rise-and-Fall.pdf

lgl (02:22:01) :
TSI cycles and their causes
Yeah, it would be nice if it was that simple, but it ain’t.

kim (10:11:32) :
Well it is reassuring to believe that the sun is following a script, rather than making it up as it goes along.
Well, it is only a weak tendency. 80% [or some number like that] of what happens is random, so ‘made up’ on the go.

kim (14:25:02) :
I’m happy to posit that both the sun and the earth have internal cycles, but that the sun’s cycles impact the earth’s.
So, how to you tell them apart? And where in the correlations do you draw the line between them? People [Lean, Rind, Lockwood, Froehlich, and others] have actually tried to do this. The vehicle for this is called ‘multivariate’ correlation. For instance, Lean and Rind [GRL, vol35, L18701, doi:10.1029/2008GL034864, 2008] find:
“[17] None of the natural processes can account for the overall warming trend in global surface temperatures. In the 100 years from 1905 to 2005, the temperature trends produced by all three natural influences are at least an order of magnitude smaller than the observed surface temperature trend reported by IPCC [2007]. According to this analysis, solar forcing contributed negligible long-term warming in the past 25 years and 10% of the warming in the past 100 years”
I know these people well, they are good scientists, not rapid AGW alarmists. You may counter, that correlations are useless without causations, and I would agree, but then we are back to ‘convictions’ and there I might disagree with you, as I have no preconceived convictions to nurse, not being convinced of anything.

nobwainer (15:18:19) :
Thanks for interesting read Leif, dispels at least two theories on planetary influence. But hardly a conclusive document that closes the door on the subject.
Nothing can make a dent in the faith of a true believer 🙂

Glenn (16:30:41) :
Fer crying out loud, your own 1978 paper says
Somehow, I knew you would be there. The early paper did not use the actual polar field, because we had not measured it yet. Later papers by Schatten fared better, but my method [as spelled out in the paper with Cliver and Kamide-san] yields these numbers [where 2nd column is polar field, 3rd is observed, 4th is predicted – table 1]:
21 250 165 157 [added later – there is a poison pill in this]
22 245 159 154
23 201 121 126
24 119 ? 75
With the current polar fields, the prediction for SC24 comes to 71 which is not significantly different from 75. The issue is not when the ‘predictions’ were made, by whom, or what Ed Cliver said before our paper. The issue is what Rmax, the polar fields would predict had they been used, and the results are as shown.
There is an interesting aside: Schatten was on the SC23 panel and argued for Rmax(23) = 120, but was voted down by the rest of the panel that went with Hathaway’s 160.
As I pointed out, should the actual Rmax(24) be substantially different from 71, our method has no merit as the spread is too big for it to be useful. So, we shall see.

nobwainer (19:23:55) :
Leif…i am not a religious person and prefer to keep an open mind. What I can see is lots of experts trying to predict this next phase using only the previous phases’s data and not based on a good understanding of the driver…because it doesn’t exist yet.
The smiley [ 🙂 ] indicated that ‘faith’ was not the standard religious faith. And the method does not just look at previous cases. Ken Schatten’s paper http://www.leif.org/research/Percolation%20and%20the%20Solar%20Dynamo.pdf spells out our understanding of the driver. We are not completely in the dark.
Its not good science to write something off when there is not evidence to do so and the theory is plausible
It is written off because it is not plausible. Let me give you an example on something that is not plausible: A ten-ton rock is lying in a field. An ant crawls up upon it, and the rock crumbles into dust. It is not plausible that the ant did it, even though the correlation is there [it happened ‘just when the ant came’].

anna v (21:27:58) :
I suppose the duration of the cycle is important?
No, not of the solar cycle, but of the life cycle of each spot [which may be what you meant]
Certainly in comparisons with pre-electronic data, cloud cover in winter, even in southern Italy, would miss low duration spots.
Zurich and Italy [where the backup station was] are on opposite sides of the Alps and usually have ‘complimentary’ weather: if one is cloudy, the other is clear, so didn’t miss much because of the weather. The real reason for the ‘correction’ is the deliberate decision of Wolf not to count small spots and of his successor, Wolfer, to count all spots. ‘Splicing’ these different series together is tricky business.

Glenn (23:42:24) :
And now to Glenn:
So we have at least two competing predictions, one for a weak cycle and one for a strong cycle, both “methods” claiming that models ran on previous cycles works well. Should both take credit, and should we assume that both theories are “right on”, that now we “know”, that both have “told us” what is happening inside the sun?
As usual you have no idea how science works. The reason there are competing predictions with very different outcomes is that we do not know enough about the conditions inside the Sun and how these affect the dynamo process. As long as the different models give the same result [the hindcasts] we cannot discriminate and decide. We have to wait until such time that the models diverge wildly. Now is such a time.
The issues are these:
1) is the dynamo deep or shallow? or a bit of both?
2) what is the speed of magnetic ‘diffusion’ inside the Sun? fast [our case] or slow [Dikpati]. This determines the time scale for the ‘magnetic memory’ [5 years or ~30 years]
We said in our prediction paper that “The coming cycle 24 has the
potential to become a test of their [Dikpati] model”. And of ours as well, of course. Even if the test comes out in favor of one of the models, that does not show that that model is ‘it’ [as there could be other explanations we just haven’t thought of]. And if the test comes out ‘halfway’ then all we know is that both models are wrong.
This shouldn’t be so hard to grasp.

Ric Werme (05:55:13) :
Perhaps you two are exploring different issues. Glenn is impatiently interested in knowing the strength of SC24, and Leif is more interested in learning the physics so that he can forecast the strength of future cycles.
As long as Glenn can prove me wrong in any way, he does seem to interested in anything else 🙂
Jeff Alberts (08:35:23) :
And Leif, didn’t you tell us not long ago that when a scientist states something with absolute certainty, they’re usually wrong… 😉
Especially an elderly, distinguished scientist. But, please, learn how to interpret scientific jargon [Joe Public often gets this wrong]. When a scientist says ‘can’ or ‘cannot’ or some other definite statement, he really means ‘as far as the evidence as interpreted by my theory with the usual caveats and uncertainties may suggest or indicate under the standard assumptions as they may be pertinent to the interpretation at this point in time’, but this is so cumbersome to append to every single statement that it, obviously, is left unsaid and simply understood.
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (09:11:07) :
So, according to you, the NASA predictions for SC25 are similarly unfounded?
No, my model can only do one cycle ahead. NASA/NOAA claim that they can do two cycles ahead, but clearly, if they are wrong on the first of these, the second one is worthless. Dikpati et al. have repeatedly said they would come with a prediction for SC25, but it has never materialized. Hathaway predicted a large SC24 [his prediction is steadily shrinking …] and a small SC25. So, if NASA etc’s prediction for SC24 turns out to be correct, there is a chance that SC25 will also be correct.

Steve Hempell (14:10:33) :
I would be happy to send both of you my Excel worksheet with the data and charts on it
please do: leif@leif.org

moptop (14:08:14) :
Sometimes you have to go where the numbers or other evidence take you, whether it seems “plausible” or not. Time sorts out what is plausible.
The cases you refer to [you could have included Newtonian Gravity, Evolution, Dark Energy, etc] were accepted because of their great explanatory and predictive power, because they were a synthesis of a great amount of observations – they are in a sense just abbreviations for the corpus of observations. This does not apply to most ‘implausible’ hypotheses, e.g. that climate change is wrought by little green men from Mars running a physics experiment, that Uranus/Neptune control solar activity, that the mind can bend spoons, etc. Just because Quantum Mechanics doesn’t make sense, does not mean that any other idea that doesn’t make sense is automatically elevated to the same status, power, and demand for attention.

Leif
Re your post in response to Pamela Gray (third from the top here) which is most interesting, in terms of working out whether cycle minimum is here or not, and your paper at :http://www.leif.org/research/Asymmetric%20Rosenberg-Coleman%20Effect.pdf
I know you regard the notion that the sun affects the distribution of the Earths atmosphere on the dayside as insupportable. Consider then the exact conjunction of the recently observed (if not always present to the same intensity ) El Nino in the rising phase of the solar cycle with the peak frequency of BZ intensity as shown in your Morlet wavelet map analysis in Fig 1 of that paper. I would think that seven out of seven is a pretty good score. You could go into the long term climate prediction business on the bases of this observation.
Your paper argues that a more stable, plane heliospheric current sheet is present only in the rising phase of the solar cycle producing an annual variation in geomagnetic activity as the Earth is influenced in turn by the activity of the suns southern hemisphere and then the suns northern hemisphere. It would seem that the strength of the El Nino could be related to the strength of the solar activity in one hemisphere of the sun versus the other, depending upon which produced the greater BZ intensity.
Some queries: Is the southward component of the solar wind different according to hemispheric origin? Is one hemisphere consistently more active than the other and over what time scales? Is it possible to say from that observation whether peak impact is to be expected in January or July?
Please don’t give up on me yet.

kim (14:48:18) :
I note that he did not point out to Pete his error last year.
I had not made my integration back then. Furthermore, I don’t think it serves any purpose anyway [preconceived notion here] so did not bother.
Erl Happ (16:11:44) :
Please don’t give up on me yet.
I have. But shall, of course, answer questions and provide whatever explanations I can, as for anybody else.
I know you regard the notion that the sun affects the distribution of the Earths atmosphere on the dayside as insupportable.
No, not at all. Just your specific mechanism(s).
Consider then the exact conjunction of the recently observed (if not always present to the same intensity ) El Nino in the rising phase of the solar cycle with the peak frequency of BZ intensity as shown in your Morlet wavelet map analysis in Fig 1 of that paper.
That figure shows the SIGN of the polarity [away and towards the Sun] of the IMF, not its strength, nor BZ. The polarity is a large-scale feature of the IMF that stays the same for many days. The sign of BZ changes from hour to hour. In very rare cases does it stay of the same sign for many hours. When that happens and its direction is South, we get a great geomagnetic storm [especially if the solar wind speed is also high], but this is comparatively rare [at most a few times per month at solar max].
I would think that seven out of seven is a pretty good score.
It is not conceivable that the polarity of the IMF has any effect, per se [apart from some subtle geomagnetic effect, hardly measurable – a long story can be spun on this, but that is for another post].
You could go into the long term climate prediction business on the bases of this observation.
There is a sucker born every day. I know people who give stock market advice on basis of this, and treatment schedules for inmates of lunatic asylums, you name it.
Your paper argues that a more stable, plane heliospheric current sheet is present only in the rising phase of the solar cycle producing an annual variation in geomagnetic activity as the Earth is influenced in turn by the activity of the suns southern hemisphere and then the suns northern hemisphere.
No quite the opposite as far as activity is concerned. In section [20] we say “this explanation is not enough to account [for] the variability in geomagnetic activity”.
Is the southward component of the solar wind different according to hemispheric origin?
In general not. There are some exceptions [see later], but Bz is generally a purely local effect generated by turbulence and waves
Is one hemisphere consistently more active than the other and over what time scales?
Depends on the timescale up to years. There can be some asymmetry for a time, see e.g. http://sidc.oma.be/html/wnosuf.html but none in the long run.
A CME gives rise to a magnetic cloud or tongue which sometimes retains its Bz structure all the way from the Sun. You will observe that Bz first goes, say, North for a few hours, then slowly swings South for the next several hours. Such occurrences are relatively rare.
Is it possible to say from that observation whether peak impact is to be expected in January or July?
There are three competing effects: the closer to the Sun [January 4], the stronger the IMF [and thus also Bz], and the solar wind speed is largest on September 7 and March 7 [because it generally increases with distance from the current sheet. These two effects are very small and hard to tease out of the data [requiring averaging over decades of data – c.f. section [62] and Figure A7 of http://www.leif.org/research/2007JA012437.pdf ] The third effect has to do with the seasonal and diurnal tilt of the Earth’s magnetic field into the solar wind, resulting in the solar wind ‘seeing’ a somewhat weaker geomagnetic field on March 23 and September 23 with resulting higher geomagnetic activity [see sections [17-18] and Figure 4 of the paper cited, or the discussion in http://www.leif.org/research/The%20semiannual%20variation%20of%20great%20geomagnetic%20storms.pdf ]. The latter effect is a modulation of existing activity, so does not ‘generate’ new activity. The modulation can amount to several tens of percents.
All these effects are subtle and complicated, but are unlikely to be primary drivers, simply because they are so subtle.

kim (17:31:50) :
Thanks for your confidence in me. I have a great admiration for Harry’s work. I corresponded with Harry briefly and recently invested in his book ‘The Stratosphere’. Harry has long been interested in the solar connection. In his correspondence he remarked that solar maximum is frequently marked by a La Nina, a point brought out in his most recent articles.
The big El Ninos that have marked the rising phase of the cycle in recent times add a lot of moisture to the atmosphere, particularly that in 1998. A precipitation response can be self reinforcing in that it produces surface cooling, atmospheric cooling, condensation, more cloud, keeps out the solar radiation hence more precipitation. La Nina represents the Earth taking over the reins for a while after a surfeit of solar influence. So, its not surprising that a big El Nino in the rising phase can produce a strong La Nina at solar maximum. This comprehensively masks any changes due to small changes in irradiance. It also makes complete nonsense of any expectation that the Earth should be warmer at solar maximum, even though Camp and Tung (if my memory is correct) happened to find that it was marginally warmer. If La Nina marks the minimum and also the maximum where are we?
Tropical warming and cooling events are what we observe in terms of temperature change. The first requirement of any climate theory is to explain what we observe.

Erl Happ (04:12:40) :
By what mechanism can the sun affect the Earths atmosphere in terms of density and distribution?
The first point of confusion is that the Earth’s atmosphere is too broad a notion. The higher atmosphere [Thermosphere, Ionosphere, …] responds differently than the lower atmosphere [Troposphere]. But at all levels there are ‘thermal winds’ caused by solar heating [often mediated by factors, such as the surface] which in combination in combination with rotation creates the winds we observe. So there are lots of ways the Sun can affect the atmosphere. What does NOT happen is a ‘compaction’ by the solar wind.
Erl Happ (04:32:07) :
The first requirement of any climate theory is to explain what we observe.
No, the first requirement is that it makes physical, and energetical, sense. If we relax that very first requirement it is easy to come up with a perfect explanation of the observations [e.g. angels pushing the stuff around for our benefit – this was once the explanation of what kept the planets going].
Andrea (07:19:07) :
Leif, do you think it’s possible to study sun’s activity via dynamical systems techniques?
This is [and has] been done, e.g.:
Prediction of Sunspot Cycles by Data Assimilation Method
by: IN Kitiashvili, AG Kosovichev
(22 Jul 2008)
Abstract
Despite the known general properties of the solar cycles, a reliable the forecast of the 11-year sunspot number variations is still a problem. The difficulties are caused by the apparent chaotic behavior of the sunspot numbers from cycle to cycle and by the influence of various turbulent dynamo processes, which are far from understanding. For predicting the solar cycle properties we make an initial attempt to use the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF), a data assimilation method, which takes into account uncertainties of a dynamo model and measurements, and allows to estimate future observational data. We present the results of forecasting the solar cycles obtained by the EnKF method in application to a low-mode nonlinear dynamical system modeling the solar αΩ-dynamo process with variable magnetic helicity. Calculations of the predictions for previous sunspot cycles show good agreement (with ∼10% error) with the actual data. This forecast model predicts that the next sunspot cycle will be significantly weaker (by ∼ 30%) than the previous cycle, continuing the trend of low solar activity.

kim (10:39:12) :
I’ll be fascinated to see what you make of Steve’s integration.
Steve describes his process thus:
“At first I divided the chart made from your data into various periods in Excel(5, 6, 7 years etc ) exported the chart to ImageJ and determined the area of each periodby subtracting each period area from the total starting at the LH side of the chart.. Filled the area under the curve I wanted, made a binary image and counted the particles. I then charted it and compared to Hadcrut (unmodified).”
I don’t know how I can respond to that. Since the data points are equally spaced [ignoring the slight differences between the lengths of months] integration over a cycle amounts to simply adding all the TSI values for each month belonging to that cycle. That is what I did [took all of 10 minutes].

Gary Gulrud (13:33:02) :
South-pointing Bz’s open a door through which energy from the solar wind can reach Earth’s atmosphere!
Southward Bz’s often herald widespread auroras, triggered by solar wind gusts or coronal mass ejections that are able to inject energy into our planet’s magnetosphere.
Except that that is not the way it works in a literal sense [there is no window through which pours energy directly into the atmosphere]. What happens is that more energy is fed into the magnetospheric tail from where it may be fed into the night side upper atmosphere [we were discussing ‘day side’ effects].
Were the teraWatts input in these events spread over the entire globe they might pass for insignificant.
TeraWatt input is rare. Typically, the input is of the order of 30 GigaWatt. To compare wtih TeraWatt would be like considering hurricanes as the normal state of the troposphere.
Erl Happ (16:05:22) :
As I said, I have given up already. You basically have the energy flows backwards except for the heating peaks at the stratopause and the ionosphere. Even the mesosphere is heated from below [from the stratopause at 1hPa] as is the troposphere [from the surface at 1000 nPa]. Your understanding of the ‘greenhouse’ effect is wrong too. The reason for the greenhouse effect is that the atmosphere contains molecules with more than two atoms [H20 being the most] so that they have more ways of containing energy, rotation, vibration, etc. These molecules absorb and emit at wavelengths corresponding to Earth’s radiation temperature, half of the re-emitted energy is radiated downwards and that is the cause of the greenhouse effect. This has little to do with CO2 compared to H20 and is not something that is ‘supposed to happen’ or ‘assumed by evil forces’. The effect of this half downwards emission is to raise the temperature by the fourth root [Stefan-Boltzmann again] or two, or a factor of 1.19 increasing the temperature to 255K*1.19 = 303K. The actual effect is a bit smaller, because the emitters aloft are of lower temperature than the surface, but you should get the idea. But enough already.

Erl Happ (16:05:22) :
there are no sharp boundaries between the stratosphere and the troposphere.
With a suitable definition of ‘sharp’ e.g. 1 inch thick, you could be trivially correct, but this is not of interest. What is important is that the stratosphere has a temperature inversion [people in Los Angeles can tell you what happens then], thus stable against convection [that’s why it is called the stratosphere in the first place: it is stratified], while the troposphere is heated from below, and unstable against convection. I could go on and on, but won’t [already been too much].

Leif,
Data trumps doctrine every time.
University of Alabama Huntsville satellite derived temperature anomalies in the tropical troposphere vary on an inter-annual basis a great deal more than surface anomalies. This requires an additional source of energy other than that emanating from the surface of the Earth.
Atmospheric moisture above 700hPa varies very little as temperature rises.
When temperatures rise above the 700hPa level, cloud albedo literally evaporates.
The problem is to work out how this variation in mid to upper troposphere temperature occurs.
Upper troposphere anomalies define the ENSO phenomenon better than surface anomalies.
ENSO defines tropical cooling and warming events that are related to changes in cloud cover that are in turn related to swings in temperature that largely manifest as summer warming in the tropics and winter warming at high latitudes.
Bury yourself in doctrine if you wish but the facts are unalterable.
First real day of summer warmth here (S.W. Western Australia) after a very long and miserably cold winter. Winter rainfall was about 20% above average. I have never seen the grass in the vineyard so high. Today the sun seems to have recovered its sting. The snakes are out.
Our inland wheat crops looked like setting a record till the frosts came a day after rainfall.

Arthur Glass (21:14:26) :
An alternative viewpoint on ‘stratospheric warmings’ that pays more attention to causation than to patterns of atmospheric movement that characterize meteorological (pattern recognition) explanations of the sort offered by Wikipedia:
SORCE meeting February 2008
Mean Circulation
Terrence R. Nathan [trnathan@ucdavis.edu] and John Albers, University of California, Davis; and Eugene C. Cordero, San Jose State University, CA.
An ever-increasing body of evidence shows that changes in solar spectral irradiance (SSI) over the 11-year solar cycle (SC) can produce changes in stratospheric ozone. Changes in stratospheric ozone can in turn produce changes in planetary wave drag (PWD) via longitudinal variations in ozone heating, which was recently expounded upon in a paper by Nathan and Cordero (2007, JGR-Atmospheres). Because SSI-induced changes in PWD may
have potentially far-reaching consequences for the global circulation, including the zonal mean flow, the Brewer-Dobson circulation and stratosphere-troposphere communication, it is important to understand the connection between SSI and PWD. In this study we employ analytical and numerical models of the extratropical atmosphere to examine the connection
between SSI and PWD. The models couple radiation, ozone and dynamics and provide in a relatively simple but self-consistent way the means to explicitly identify the pathways that connect changes in SSI to the wave-driven zonal-mean circulation. The sensitivity of the stratospheric circulation, particularly stratospheric sudden warmings, to changes in SSI associated with the SC is addressed.
The focus on solar spectral irradiance is noteworthy. I hypothesize that the relatively cloud free regions to the west of the major land masses that are the sites for generation of tropical warming and cooling events events exhibit a higher ozone content because of the dryness of the air. This then renders them more reactive to UVB explaining the strong fluctuation in temperature (and cloud cover) in the upper troposphere. Like these researchers I am also interested in ‘longitudinal variations in ozone heating’.
Temperature at 100hPa varies on solar radiation time scales. There is very little atmosphere between 100hPa and 200hpa.
It is no accident that the surface of the ocean is cool in this deep and prolonged solar minimum.

Erl Happ (04:58:55) :
Mean Circulation, Terrence R. Nathan
You miss the point that it is the upward traveling waves that are the cause of the ozone heating.

Re your comment at Leif Svalgaard (18:25:33) :
Relating to the coincidence of El Ninos in the rising phase of the cycle with a strong incidence of an annual variation in the orientation of the HCS.
Your comment that : “It is not conceivable that the polarity of the IMF has any effect, per se”
I quote from: INCREASE OF THE MAGNETIC FLUX FROM POLAR ZONES OF THE SUN IN THE LAST 120 YEARS V. I. MAKAROV, A. G. TLATOV, D. K. CALLEBAUT and V. N. OBRIDKO
Near sunspot minimum activity there are two distinct solar wind regimes: slow and medium-speed wind flowing from the coronal streamer belt that encircles the equator, and fast wind from the polar coronal holes. Legrand and Simon (1989) have found that the geomagnetic activity depends on solar wind streams from coronal holes during 90% of the time.
The long-term increase of magnetic flux from the Sun and _aa_ index was caused mainly by growth of the area of polar cap of the Sun occupied by the unipolar magnetic field.
The area of polar zones Apz of the Sun, occupied by unipolar magnetic field at the minimum activity, has risen by a factor of 2 during 1878–1996. This means that the behavior of the index _aa_ and consequently the magnetic flux from the Sun may be explained by an increase of the area of polar caps.
The high-latitude zone boundary (θ2m), average N and S, moved nearer to the equator by about 15° during 12 solar cycles. In the northern hemisphere the latitude (θ2m) shifted from 55° in 1878 down to 36° (shift: 19°) in 1996. A similar process was observed in the S-hemisphere, where the latitude (θ2m) shifted from 51° in 1878 to 39° in 1996 (shift: 12°).
Given the relationships described above might I suggest that the differential between the polar caps in the solar hemispheres should produce an annual (rotational) flux in the strength of the solar wind that will be most observable on the Earth when the HCS is most stable, ie during the rising phase of the solar cycle?
If the relationship between the aa index and terrestrial temperature described by Cliver, Boriakoff, and Bounar (who are referenced in the article cited above) has legs, we then have an explanation for the conjunction of the El Nino in the rising phase and minimum variation in the HCS at that time. Any increase in geomagnetic activity will tend to be more sustained, less episodic when the HCS is more stable. As soon as we have 50 sunspots there is significantly more very short wave radiation (X rays). That should help.
One speculates that if the solar hemisphere generating the greatest geomagnetic activity happens to be proximal between September and April, when the southern hemisphere is best illuminated, the addition to the Earths heat budget will be greater simply because of the absorptive capacity of the ocean by comparison with the land.
And furthermore, that the puzzling swing between La Nina and El Nino dominance across solar cycles, and groups of cycles, could well be related to the size of the area of respective polar caps of the Sun occupied by the unipolar magnetic field and rotational aspects that determine which Earthly hemisphere is exposed to the solar hemisphere that is providing the greatest geomagnetic activity.

Gary Gulrud (08:14:16) :
They do not contain the energy absorbed. If the energy absorbed is not instantly re-emitted, it is lost.
There is no confusion. At Erl’s level [which is where I tried to be] this suffices. The energy is acquired and the re-emitted very shortly thereafter [there is no ‘immediately’ in quantum physics because of the Uncertainty principle]. One might argue that energy cannot be ‘lost’ as you claimed, since it is conserved. I classify all this as irrelevant [and not even wrong] nit-picking.

Mary Hinge (07:32:14) :
“Evidence suggests your theory needs major rethinking.”
I would be pleased to hear about that in more detail.
My reference for sea surface temperatures is here: http://www.eldersweather.com.au/climimage.jsp?i=sstag
Looks to me as if most of the Southern Hemisphere oceans have a negative anomaly along with the Arctic and a goodly part of the North Pacific.
The note beneath the map says “Positive SSTAs are usually correlated with increased regions of convection (cloudiness and rainfall) while negative SSTAs are usually correlated to reduced convection.”
That is certainly the case at the moment as you can see if you check the distribution of precipitable moisture at: http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/extreme/gfs/current/plan_water_000.png
As you can see, the cloud is streaming away from the tropics in warm wet air that tends to keep the skin of the ocean over which it travels warm. By contrast the relatively cool parts of the ocean have little precipitable moisture, which is contained in the main in the lower 2km of the atmosphere.
Iask you: What in your opinion keeps the cool relatively moisture free areas cool? if not upper atmosphere cloud due to the very low upper atmosphere temperatures that prevail at the moment then what?

Erl Happ (21:16:53) :
Is ‘the size of the polar cap [as measured by the latitude of the filaments]‘ related to the strength of the solar wind from that hemisphere, and given that the other hemisphere has a smaller or larger polar cap will the solar wind from that hemisphere vary accordingly?
First, the size of the polar cap is only very crudely given by the latitude of the filaments, so any kind of quantitative comparison is suspect from the outset. Second, the ‘strength’ of the solar wind? [here we go again: what do you mean by ‘strength’?]. Here http://swoops.lanl.gov/data.html you can see how several solar wind quantities vary with latitude. In a sense the momentum flux can be said to be the ‘strength’ and it does not vary with latitude.
There are several points to be made: 1) the emission of the solar wind is a local process depending only on conditions at the point of emission. 2) the solar wind does not come from the polar caps per se [c.f. at solar maximum when there are no polar caps]. 3) there is thus no hemispheric asymmetry related to the size of the polar cap.
You can see more here:
http://www.leif.org/research/A%20Floor%20in%20the%20Solar%20Wind%20Magnetic%20Field.pdf
This paper was written before the data from the last polar passes of Ulysses were in. The latest data show a somewhat diminished magnetic field strength and solar momentum flux. What should be taken into account, though, is that the previous polar passes were two years before minimum, so the data do not refer to the same point of the cycle. At http://www.leif.org/research/HMF-Owens.png you can see the open flux measurements from all deep-space spacecraft compared.
Don’t over-interpret the Makarov paper

Gary Gulrud (20:08:45) :
derivation from first principles, maybe?
A good discussion of the basic physics can be found here:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0802/0802.4324v1.pdf
especially section IV.

Leif Svalgaard (02:29:15) :
Consider not two slabs but three and let us assume that the energy radiated downwards from the topmost gets only as far as the second topmost from where it is convected away.
Add another slab, and another, in fact add lots of slabs.
Add a slab that is made entirely of greenhouse molecules but at such a density that any intercepted radiation upon re-emission moves freely in the space between the molecules where the downwards radiating portion gets only as far as the next atmospheric molecule from where 50% is radiated away from the Earth and you have something like the stratosphere where strong seasonal heating produces no response whatsoever in the layer immediately below. How many downwards transfers does it take for the energy to become insignificant?
Mathematics is no substitute for common sense. A lousy model is just a lousy model no matter how it is dressed up.

a better link to Beer’s Law: here
I wish there was a preview [Anthony?]. Too much of a struggle against the blog software.
REPLY: I wish there were too. But WordPress.com free hosting doesn’t offer one. – Anthony

Erl Happ (07:50:36) :
There is a small difference between the hemispheres, more noticeable perhaps at aphelion, but the diagrams give a static picture at a point in time. Is there a record of the change over time?
Once the train has derailed, putting it back on track again seems to be very difficult.
Am I correct in assuming that any increase in the energy coming from the suns southern hemisphere plays out between January and June tending to reinforce the influence of the March magnetosphere coupling effect?
First, there is no generally accepted difference and persistent increase from either hemisphere. There are no shortages of wild claims, of course, here is one of the worst http://spaceweb.oulu.fi/~kalevi/publications/Mursula_ASR_2007.pdf [even using my IMF polarity data]. I’m sure you’ll find in it ample material to further your speculations.
Second, the [small, perhaps 15%] part of the magnetospheric coupling that maximizes in March for one polarity of the IMF will minimize in March for the other polarity [reversed in September]. Since the poles change polarity at cycle max, the result is a [weak] 22-year cycle of geomagnetic activity. This is explained in [too?] great detail in the papers referred to, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/suipr699.pdf
Ken McCracken on the radio tonight saying that the next twenty years will bring cooling […] I believe his temperature projection is based on ice core data. I imagine that the mechanism that relates low amplitude solar cycles to reduced terrestrial temperature remains unexplained.
Not only that, but also un-demonstrated, so no wonder is it not explained.
Erl Happ (08:23:49) :
the stratosphere where strong seasonal heating produces no response whatsoever in the layer immediately below.
It seems that you have seen the light, good, finally.
The two-slab model is a teaching tool to make you grasp the physics at work [it apparently failed to do so]. A more realistic atmosphere has more than one absorbing layer, which will just further decrease outgoing thermal radiation and increase surface temperatures. You see, the main point is that the downward directed radiation heats the surface, not the atmosphere, but since the atmosphere is heated from below, a higher surface temperature leads to a higher atmospheric temperature the usual way.
Mathematics is no substitute for common sense.
First, common sense is not so common [to wit …]. Second, Mathematics is the most powerful tool we have to understand how the universe works. It is a bit unreasonable [ http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March02/Wigner/Wigner.html ] that it should be so, but without Mathematics, you cannot really understand [and apply that understanding] the physical world. You can still be awed by its beauty and violence.