We are now at 21 days with no sunspots, it will be interesting to see if we reach a spotless 30 day period and then perhaps a spotless month of December.
From the data provided by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) you can see just how little magnetic field activity there has been. I’ve included it below with the latest available update from December 6th, 2008:
click for a larger image
What I find most interesting about the Geomagnetic Average Planetary Index graph above is what happened around October 2005. Notice the sharp drop in the magnetic index and the continuance at low levels. Read on for more.
This looks much like a “step function” that I see on GISS surface temperature graphs when a station has been relocated to a cooler measurement environment. In the case of the sun, it appears this indicates that something abruptly “switched off” in the inner workings of the solar dynamo. Note that in the prior months, the magnetic index was ramping up a bit with more activity, then it simply dropped and stayed mostly flat.
Currently the Ap magnetic index continues at a low level, and while the “smoothed” data from SWPC is not made available for 2008, I’ve added it with a dashed blue line, and the trend appears to be going down.
As many regular readers know, I’ve always pointed out the sharp drop in 2005 with the following extended period of low activity as an odd occurance. Our resident solar astronomer Leif Svalgaard disagrees with this. But I’d also like to point out that this was the time when global sea level as measured by the JASON satellite and reported by the University of Colorado began to lose its upward trend.
Source: University of Colorado, Boulder
Coincidence? Perhaps. But I think investigation is needed to determine if there is any mechanism that would explain or exclude this correlation.
(h/t Joe D’aleo
While the spate of SC 24 spots (as opposed to specks) last month surprised me the current spotlessness in light of the ap graph is restoring my expectation that the smoothed 13-month sum may yet have a new low ahead.
I was just doing research on this just before you put up this article. Actually if we count Nov 18 and today (Dec 9th, 2008) it is 22 consecutive spotless days. For a solar activity that is supposidly picking up… I think it is more of a grinding stop!!!
P.S. I like the snow on the site… maybe with an Artic blue background and icicles would make picture-perfect.
When the IPCC first presented its projections for sea level rise in the early 90s, the y-axis scale was in decimal meters (predicting a 0.64 m rise in 100 years). Subsequent presentations of the information was in cm. The graph above is in mm. On my screen at least, 10mm on the y-axis is longer than 10mm.
Does the general pubic (in the US) know what a mm really is, or are they more impressed by the steepness of the rise? Imagine a graph that is expressed in exact millimeters with the time scale moved out so that a decade gives a more reasonable impression of a ten years of time.
BTW: great snow effect — subtle, but meaningful.
Love the snowflakes!
Spaceweather says there might be a spot group appearing on the far side of the Sun.
Are there any data that go back beyond 2000 so we might be able to see if there were any previous “steps” of this sort? What I am particularly curious about is if there was a corresponding step up sometime in the 1970’s.
I have taken to looking at the video of the sun, linked at right, several times a week. It makes me cold just watching it.
The snow flakes I find a bit distracting.
Looking at that magnetic plot with its monthly data and then “smoothed” monthly data, it appears that the “smoothing is simply a data throwaway process.
Does anybody ever do a Fourier Transform on this raw data, to see what its frequency spectrum looks like.
Maybe it is the information that is being thrown away, and the “noise” is being kept.
George
I think we all are in the barrel on this one,and the Warmists will have no option.
However proving them wrong is not going to be fun…
I’ve always wondered how CO2 is supposed to warm the oceans, when it’s absorbed in the top1-2mm of water. Sunlight penetrates 100m into water so small variances in the sun should have more to do with cooling or heating the oceans than any change in CO2. IMO CO2 should have no heating effect on 70% of the planet.
Considering the huge difference in mass between the atmosphere and the oceans. The atmosphere has only 0.384% of the mass of the oceans (if memory serves me correct). The short term effect on the oceans should be negliable. Yet, oceans have warmed and temperature has increased. It should be a no-brainer which caused what.
[SARC]Of course it is increasing the amount of CO2 in mass A from 0.028% to 0.038% which weighs 0.384% of mass B. [/SARC]
The difference in mass between CO2 in the atmosphere and the oceans is so enormous that claiming the increase in CO2 has anything to do with the increase in ocean temperature is ridiculous
Perhaps an occasional Santa & Reindeer?
If GCR’s cause more clouds, and less magnetic fields allow more GCR’s, should we not see more of those white fluffy things? Some satellite has to record this. Has cloud cover changed at all in the last couple of years?
I see a couple of black spots on the sun, one at the equator near the east, another in the north east. Dead pixels, I assume?
OT: You don’t hate Windows Vista anymore?
Were I to adopt the writing style of the MSM alarmists, I might say that the latest value of the Ap index is the lowest in the current millennium!
As for spotless days, we’ve now reached 246 for the year, compared to 253 for 1912 and 311 for 1913. Won’t take much to exceed the level set in 1912. The sun’s just not getting with the program.
Month-to-month variation in the solar cycle seems to have damped down after Oct 2005 too. Not only are the values low, they’re lethargic.
so we are at 270 days for the year? and total 560 since the switch?
Tx Anthony
If Leif is reading this, does the linked graph of cosmic ray flux automatically update, and if not, how current is this graph? NASA recently announced the solar wind to be the weakest in 50+ years, and one would expect the cosmic ray count to go to record levels for the last 50+ years as well.
http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRayFlux3.png
Doesn’t look like an upward trend yet. We’ll see what happens in the next few months.
For anyone who could use some holiday joy, here are the first few verses of a Christmas carol by Bethany Cole, with her kind permission, which I have posted on my site:
On the first day of Global Warming,
my true love sent to me
Al Gore’s cap and trade policy.
On the second day of Global Warming,
my true love sent to me
Two Clinton thugs,
And Al Gore’s cap and trade policy.
On the third day of Global Warming,
my true love sent to me
No warming trend,
Two Clinton thugs,
And Al Gore’s cap and trade policy.
On the fourth day of Global Warming,
my true love sent to me
More falling temps,
No warming trend,
Two Clinton thugs,
And Al Gore’s cap and trade policy.
It only gets better:
http://talkingabouttheweather.com
OT, but the Surface Stations Gallery is down.
It certainly deserves more attention. Even the noise level in the graph dropped. It’s not like the AGW guys should mind more study because it gives an excuse for some of the less convenient trends.
Still they can always apply a correction to the Jason signal if it gets too far out of line.
I know WUWT stays away from politics most of the time but if you haven’t heard–
The US government is considering legislation which gives the government control over the types of cars that can be produced in exchange for the bailout. Of course the key is so that they are environmentally friendly.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/auto-industry-takeover/
So how many more spotless days before 2008 is the most spotless since 1913?
Have we passed 1912 yet?
It’s been hard for me to keep up with the exact number of spotless days.
I don’t see my earlier comment in the awaiting moderation queue, so forgive me if this is a repeat…
The Ap trend does not yet appear to be upward. It will be interesting to see where we are in a few months.
Anyone needing a holiday laugh:
On the first day of Global Warming,
my true love sent to me
Al Gore’s cap and trade policy.
On the second day of Global Warming,
my true love sent to me
Two Clinton thugs,
And Al Gore’s cap and trade policy.
On the third day of Global Warming,
my true love sent to me
No warming trend,
Two Clinton thugs,
And Al Gore’s cap and trade policy.
On the fourth day of Global Warming,
my true love sent to me
More falling temps,
No warming trend,
Two Clinton thugs,
And Al Gore’s cap and trade policy.
For the rest of Bethany Cole’s brilliant carol, feel free to visit http://talkingabouttheweather.com
All the best,
Harold
Anthony, I think the planetary index graph drop is interesting too. You say “This looks much like a “step function” that I see on GISS surface temperature graphs when a station has been relocated to a cooler measurement environment.”
Just to eliminate other possibilities: Has an instrument issue been ruled out for the AP graph?
P.S. -8C here, old fashioned winter.
OT, but I am just watching a live press conference where President-elect Obama is meeting with Al Gore, and the talk is about climate change. He said that “the time for delay is over” and “the time for denial is over.” He also said that all three (not clear who else is involved – Biden maybe?) are in agreement over the “what the scientists have been telling us FOR YEARS.” His plan is to re-energize America by creating ‘green’ jobs in all 50 states. He sees it not only as a problem, but also as an opportunity. More importantly, however, it is a matter of urgency and national security says our soon to be president. This does not look good at all.
Just 7 more days!!! 7 more days and 2008 will be in second place!
Magnetic field is going down, spotless days are going on and…what about solar flux? And solar wind?
I think is so far starting cycle.
I think about the only thing concrete that can be said at this point, is the sun “did something” and we for once in our existence had the instrumentation in place that could actually measure what happened. Past there, we know little about the why — But fortunately the instruments are still observing.
Oh yeah, we do know it’s getting quit cold on our little speck of a planet. What caused what is still conjecture.
Maybe if we forgot focusing on proving the hoax and got back to doing real science, mankind may actually discover some new science from all this. Ice ages have come and gone for millions of years, and we still don’t know why. Is a clue staring us in the face?
i know the number of spotless days per year is the metric, but it strikes me as an inconvenient metric in that, just like the scale on a graph, it can give the wrong impression. when i first saw that 1912 had 311 spotless days, i thought at first, “wow, this minimum has a LONG way to go before it’s anything like 1912.” then, it dawned on me that the timing of the onset of the minimum during the calendar year has a large impact on the number of spotless days observed in a year. for instance, if a minimum happens to coincide with the beginning of a calendar year (or even at the end of the previous calendar year), then that year will obviously have more observed spotless days than a year where the minimum begins midyear.
just my two cents….
also, if you add the number of spotless days for 1911, 1912, and 1913 (all in the top ten spotless years), you get a total of 764 (over two complete years-worth of spotless days)!
if you add 2007 and 2008 (also both in the top ten spotless years) and assuming we reach 253 for 2008 (the number of spotless days in 1912, which appears pretty likely at this point), you get a total of 416 spotless days….still a LONG way to go between now and the end of 2009 to reach the number spotless days observed during 1911-1913. essentially, nearly all of next year would have to be spotless to reach/exceed the same number of spotless days observed during 1911-1913.
only time will tell….
Per Bobby Lane’s note, see:
Obama vows action on global warming
Perhaps not so coincidently, Figure 2 of Josh Willis’ paper last June:
Assessing the globally averaged sea level budget on seasonal to
interannual timescales
Josh K. Willis,1 Don P. Chambers,2 and R. Steven Nerem3
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 113, C06015, doi:10.1029/2007JC004517, 2008
http://www.agu.org/journals/jc/jc0806/2007JC004517/
Shows that the steric component of sea level begins to decrease sometime in 2005. The steric component slope from July of 2003 through June of 2007 is calculated to be -0.5 +/- 0.5 mm/yr as seen in Table 1. This differs from the altimeter measurement for the same time period of 3.6 ± 0.8 mm/yr.
one more thing….if we were to get the 348 spotless days in 2009 to tie the total number between 1911-1913, that would exceed the all-time record number of spotless days set in 1913 (311) by more than 10%. i’m not saying it’s impossible, but it certainly is unlikely.
it is also possible that today’s mproved observational instruments are picking up smaller spot areas that would have been missed in the past with traditional observation methods, artificially lowering the total number of spotless days in the modern era.
David Hagan:
If Hansen and the other AGW scientists would change their tune, don’t you think Gore and Obama would as well?
Blaming the messenger for someone else’s message always seems like a cheap shot.
re:Stephen Hill’s son, I guess he is to be congratulated for having no impact on the climate. Not sure about the CO2 reference though.
Anthony: Looking at the following graphs, I’d have to say that the decrease in Pacific Ocean SSTs is what’s driving the trend of global sea level after 2005.
The Pacific Ocean has been dropping since 2005:
http://i38.tinypic.com/2my3dzb.jpg
The trend in the Indian Ocean’s been relatively flat for a decade:
http://i33.tinypic.com/1z9pxj.jpg
It’s tough to tell what the Atlantic is doing:
http://i34.tinypic.com/11kfuop.jpg
And the Southern Ocean SST anomalies have been dropping like a rock for 20 years and showing no signs of increasing (Brrr!!!):
http://i35.tinypic.com/s3djds.jpg
I covered the big three in this post:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/10/atlantic-indian-and-pacific-ocean-ssts.html
I have seen nothing in Hansen or Gore’s characters that would indicate a willingness to change based on facts.
PearlandAggie is right: A calendar year doesn’t mean anything to the sun.
Apart from the La Nina induced pause and drop in SL, the trend is definately still up and is back to the rate of 3.3mm a year. There doesn’t seem to be any meaningful correlation between sun spots and sea level, if there was surely the sea level would be falling or at least static instead of rising 5mm since February.
Love the snow effect though!
Mary Hinge says:
Did you read what you wrote?
I love the snowflakes and find them strangely soothing. But something tells me we will be seeing a lot more of the real thing, as the northern hemisphere winter starts to settle in…
I’ve been a bit busy and out of touch with the sunspot situation, of late. Are we now definitely in Cycle 24, or is there still a way to go?
Maybe these aren’t snow flakes. They’re paint flakes from shattered Stephenson screens.
Love the snowflakes!!! I do not post often and have a question. I understand the concern about the sun’s activity. Here on earth our own magnetic field is in flux. It has decreased 10% in a short amount of time and appears to be shifting towards a polar reversal. These polar reversals occur about every 300,000 years and it’s been over 700,000 years since the last one. Instead of having magnetic fields from the poles, fields are forming in other areas. Does earth’s internal magnetic flux have an effect on weather patterns? Does this flux allow for more cosmic rays or less or for cosmic rays entrance at other points [not poles]? Thanks for any thoughts or information on this issue. Trying to understand all the interactions
“I see a couple of black spots on the sun, one at the equator near the east, another in the north east. Dead pixels, I assume?”
I can’t see one at the equator, but the one north east I think is a dead pixel. If the image is generated using some kind of micro-scanning technique, then it will give some weight to the surrounding pixels, hence, if you zoom it (I use Virtual Magnify Glass), you can see it’s actually 4 pixels in size. Still, it could be a spot I guess.
Well Leif’s Cosmic ray (neutron) graph is interesting, specially the match between the two detectors. Is the average, simply the average of those two sites or something else.
Also, what are you using these days as a Neutron detector; and what is the energy range of these neutrons.
I assume that the Neutrons are being generated in the atmosphere from charged particle collisions, rather than coming in from outer space (or solar)
So what happens if you plot sunspot cycles on top of the Neutron flux.
I haven’t played with Neutrons in right about 50 years, so I imagine that you do things differently today.
Enquiring minds want to know.
George
davidgmills wrote:
“If Hansen and the other AGW scientists would change their tune, don’t you think Gore and Obama would as well? Blaming the messenger for someone else’s message always seems like a cheap shot.”
I didn’t interpret his statement as a cheap shot. Being in a position of influence/authority means you are not just a “messenger.” There are thousands of scientists who have signed a statement indicating that they are unconvinced about the extent or importance of AGW. If you’re in a position of power, you have an obligation to listen to more than one voice and adopt a reasonable position based on all the facts you can reasonably gather. You ought not just regurgitate whatever nonsense is thrust upon you by the most extreme alarmists, such as Hansen, and certainly not if you are in a conflicted position of potential personal gain from the alarmism.
To Mary Hinge,
Here is the updated sea level chart from Jason-1 on the same basis as the University of Colorada chart.
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/images/news/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_J1_Global_NoIB_RWT_PGR_NoAdjust.png
The slope is down to 2.4 mms per year (since 2002) and there has definitely been a pause in sea level rise since the third quarter of 2005.
(Just further noting that the only ocean basin seeing sea level rise at all is the Indian Ocean and the far Western Pacific which has been recharged by all the El Ninos since 1998. All the other ocean basins are flat since 1992.)
Sorry, I meant to say all the other ocean basins are flat since 2002.
Stanford Uni have updated their solar polar strength graph showing continued weak strength and no indication of polarity change yet.
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Polar.gif
I am still trying to find data on any apparent slowdown of the solar differential rotation rate but without success…but would like to put money on it.
Meanwhile the planets align just like in the late 1790’s with matching sunspot activity, leading us into a mini Dalton?
The SC24 peak could be as early as Feb 2010.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/
ElphonPeedupon,
Typing to darn fast….brain was not engaged
A month ago, Hathaway was pronouncing that the Sun was returning to life.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/07nov_signsoflife.htm
He even still predicts a peak in cycle 24 for 2012. Really?
AMSR-E shows the ice approaching the highest levels compared to the data there. Will 2009 have the most ice of the period? I expect so.
OT, but this may be very important. The main company that validates carbon offset projects for use in emissions trading has been suspended.
This may be like the bond rating companies issuing high ratings for packages of mortgages. The whole cap and trade scheme seems to me to depend on an unachievably high level of trust – if people’s carbon offsets stand a chance of becoming worthless, the whole market could collapse overnight.
Via Icecap, http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081209/full/456686a.html says in part:
UN suspends leading carbon-offset firm
Emissions trading rocked as Norwegian company is left in limbo.
Quirin Schiermeier
As international climate talks began last week in Poland, the United Nations (UN) suspended the work of the main company that validates carbon-offset projects in developing countries, sending shockwaves through the emissions-trading business.
Based in Oslo, Det Norske Veritas has in the past four years validated and certified almost half of the 1,200 projects approved under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). At its meeting on 28 November in Poznań, the CDM’s executive board temporarily withdrew Det Norske Veritas’s accreditation after a spot check carried out in early November at the firm’s headquarters revealed serious flaws in project management.
The board did not specify which projects are affected, but cites problems with the company’s internal auditing processes, and says that one of its staff members was verifying CDM projects without proper qualifications. As a result, “validation activities could not be demonstrated to be based on appropriate sectoral expertise”, the board reports.
davidgmills
“Blaming the messenger for someone else’s message always seems like a cheap shot.”
The issue is not that Obama is repeating Gore’s message, but that Obama is President Elect and in his own capacity promises to act on what he perceives as “scientific fact”. That appears likely to have major detrimental consequences to the economy – but much more so the sever impact on the poor in developing countries – because it diverts key attention to a non-critical issue when the critical issue is to provide alternative fuels to accommodate the pending decline in light oil. If we don’t, we shut down the economy in proportion to decline fuel availability.
See Germany’s recognition of economic realities:
“Merkel: Jobs More Important Than Climate Change”
I blame global warming….ohhh wait a minute!
Of course, like global warming that isn’t global, there is no “the” sea level. Oceans rise in some places, and lower in others. Nothing to sea, er, see here…
Richard Sharpe (15:02:00) It appears Mary is ‘technically’ correct, looks like the smoothed line is up about 9mm since early this year. However, that is probably less than 2 standard deviations from the regression line, or just noise.
Lol, I guess they don’t occur about every 300,000 years, then. So much for predictability.
@Jeff Id (11:22:15) :
What the heck – buy a Toyota!
@Jeff Id (11:22:15) :
The US Govt may mandate what sort of car is built by the US Auto Industry – but will they be able to mandate that people buy them…
Oh you silly people. Isn’t it fortunate that we have Barack Hussein O’Bunko to “save the planet?!” He’s not going to let any old stinkin facts get in his way. He believes “what the scientists have been saying.” So, stop making up lies based on facts, and get with the fantasy program, OK! //SARC = OFF//
We are in for a rough four years.
And yes, the snowfakes are distracting. I’m glad other commented on them because I was afraid my computer might have picked up a virus that was doing that.
Hasse@Norway (10:29:47) :Considering the huge difference in mass between the atmosphere and the oceans. The atmosphere has only 0.384% of the mass of the oceans (if memory serves me correct).
…. and that doesn’t even take into account the specific heat differences – water has a specific heat just over 4 times greater than air (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_heat_capacity ). So if we are looking at specfic heat differences – which is ultimately what matters in translating energy to temperature – then the ratio reduces to 0.096% or so (assuming the 0.384% is right – if you have a reference, please post as I have always wondered what that number is). Basically what that says is that the energy carrying capacity of the oceans is just over 1000 times greater than the atmosphere. When you look at it that way, the atmosphere itself has very little to do with it’s own temperature – it can’t – it doesn’t have the heat capacity to do that.
Anyone who has been to the ocean experiences this. At night, does the temperature of the water change? No. Why? Because of it’s high heat capacity & high density (relative to air)- it contains a lot of energy that doesn’t instantly dissapate. What about the air temperature – anywhere? What happens at night? It quickly cools down. Why? Very low heat capacity & low density- there isn’t that much energy there to dissapate. What about nitefall in a dry area vs a humid area? Which cools down faster? The dry area. Why? Less moisture, lower heat capacity, less energy to dissapate. What air mass is more energetic / unstable? A dry air mass or humid air mass? The humid air mass. Why? Again, more moisture = higher specific heat = more total energy. Are seasonal temperature variations near the ocean higher or lower than continental areas at the same latitude? Take Denver & San Franscisco for example. Same basic latitude. How many times will San Francisco get below 32 F in the winter? How many times will it get above 90 F in the summer? Same question for Denver? There’s no comparison in the climates. Denver has way more variability. Why? Same answer again – the ocean temperature moderates the air temperature, NOT the other way around – due to total energy content (density & specific heat capacity).
The list could go on & on. This is thermodynamics 101 &/or Meteorology 101. The fact that the world wide ocean temperatures have a profound influence on world wide atmospheric temperature should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who has thought about it for even a few minutes. Even most laymen can relate & have experienced these effects.
…. in case you didn’t notice, this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine.
I have been planning some graphs for sunspots in bleak years, such as 1821, 1954, etc. that show a repeating pattern of March-April and Nov-Dec as remnant solar activity bumps.
We have the same scenario playing out in 2008. Going to be a while before I get them plotted out, but I can already see the similarities. On really bum cycles, the pattern disappears, and that’s when things get really cold.
Then there is the issue that Anthony brought up months ago …. how many of the spots that we count today would have been considered spots in 1911??
I’m not familiar with the advance in technology of astronomy, but it would seem to me that the satelite instumentation we use today would be significanly more powerful than a telescope used in 1911. You also have these neat little magnetic signatures we observe today as well. I’m certian that didn’t exists 100 years ago.
I think old Landscheidt is going to be vindicated at some point on all this. He predicted that 24 will be weak, and 25 weaker still, with maunder minimum like climate by 2030. He also predicted that La Nina’s would return, and it doesn’t take a scientists to notice even by the eyeball that the PDO has changed.
“Lol, I guess they don’t occur about every 300,000”
I think they occur on AVERAGE every 300,000 years which means they probably never happen every 300,000 years but sometimes at a much shorter interval and sometimes much longer.
Steven Hill (13:22:20) :
“The son has zero effect on global temp., only CO2 has.”
Odd statement there. Somebody else’s conclusion, perhaps?
See, for the past 10 years CO2 has been steadily rising, yet temperatures have been steady for 5 years, and have declined for 5 years (1998-2000) and (2007-2008). One would think, if your statement is correct, that the reverse would have happened.
Further, from 1935 through 1972, CO2 rose for 35 years, and yet temperatures fell 1/2 of one degree.
So the sun has been nearly as quiet in 2008 as it was back in 1912 (as measured by sunspots)?
Or even quieter if we talk AA index? Or is the low AA index value only low when compared with as far back as 2000?
Average temperature according to GISS in 1912 was -0.3.
Temperature for the first 10 months of October was 0.405, or 0.7 degrees warmer.
Maybe next year will be colder?
Yeah, I figured that. If that’s the case, the average is going way out of whack if/when it happens again. Once again, so much for predictability.
Robert A Cook PE:
Correctomundo, Robert. As a famous philosopher once said:
We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
~George Orwell
The digital camera (a la CCD) is far more powerful in acquiring sunspots at the limits of detection than the human eye looking at projections. I aslo see evidence of another form of enhnancement, and that is from the use of Magnetograms, H-Alpha and bands outside the visible to indicate the presence of sunspots while either negligently or conveniently failing to mention that the spots observed were through ‘enhanced’ detection.
David L. Hagen (13:51:37)
‘.After huddling with former Vice President Al Gore about climate change, President-elect Barack Obama declared, “The time for delay is over, the time for denial is over.” “ ‘
More ‘Gore Effect’
In the news the meeting between elect Barack Obama and Al Gore was over shadowed by Illinois Governor being arrested.
@Jeff L
Here’s what I found, which agrees with your estimates.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/Topics/Thermal/HeatCapTable.html
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/LouiseLiu.shtml
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1998/AvijeetDut.shtm\
And, I agree. I have long said I don’t believe the scam because IT GETS COLD AT NIGHT.
However, that’s just a gut feeling. For a more accurate test there is this experiment that was prefored in 1909 at a cost of probably a few dollars, at most.
http://my.telegraph.co.uk/reasonmclucus/blog/2007/12/03/greenhouse_effect_disproved_in_1909
I don’;t know if anyone has duplicated his findings, but it would seem that should be the very fist place to start.
yonsaon (19:41:29) :
The link http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1998/AvijeetDut.shtm did not work. The other 3 did
old construction worker
I posted the link to that above, but as an html so people may have missed it. Here it is again.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/Topics/Thermal/HeatCapTable.html
Sorry, I cut off the “l” at of the “html”
Check out that video of the three stooges, Obama, O’Gore and O’Biden, telling us that the science is settled and how reducing emissions will make it all better. We know how he intends to do it, and it’s not going to improve the quality of anyones life (except to make a few crooks a little richer in the short term) or improve the security of America, but just the opposite, G-d help us!
oops, that’s
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1998/AvijeetDut.shtml
and it was the truncated suffix that caused the problem
“Average temperature according to GISS in 1912 was -0.3.”
“Temperature for the first 10 months of October was 0.405, or 0.7 degrees warmer.”
Was that before or after the data was Hansonized?
And what is “first 10 months of October” supposed to mean?
Sounds like fertile ground for some much needed experimentation, with various filters that allow or block IR (the 1909 exp.).
What effect would wind (fans) have on the exterior of the test enclosure, etc.
If one is going to ‘convince’ the AGW bought crowd, wouldn’t this be the way to do it?
Unfortunately the warmers will say the current cool period is weather, or that climate change effects different places differently, or that once the La Nina is over we will be back to out of control rising temps. The only way this is going to stop is if we A. enter an ice age, or B. Have a about 10 more years of neither hot or cold but non-discript temps without either a Nino or Nina to drive the temps. If temps dont go out of control with no Nina to blame it on .. then their house of cards will fall.
While I believe the sun has effects on our climate I think you will find it is more subtle than a sunspot count. There is a lag time, meaning the quite sun we see today might not be felt on the Earth for a couple of years. Dont forget that the last ice age had a volcanic helper(s) to drive down the temps even more. Just as it takes a while for the boiling pot to cool, it will take a while for our oceans to cool too. Mostly the earth has moderate warm and cool cycles, only occasionally is the climate driven to an extreme by and additive event. What kills me is that the fact that other planets experienced the same warming trend we did is totally ignored.
Personally I am praying it doesnt get colder, I dont like cold. But I would settle for some non discript “normal” years. We need to get our scientists back to scientific method and observation rather than predictors with a magical crystal ball (models).
Off topic a bit but Obama met with Gore today. I hopped on the change.gov site http://change.gov/page/s/yourvision and put my two cents in immediately. If a bunch of us did that maybe they would get the idea that were not buyin into the scam.
“If one is going to ‘convince’ the AGW bought crowd, wouldn’t this be the way to do it?” — R. Bateman
That would be true if they were rational, but by now we know that they are probably not.
Hi..this is not relevent to this article but am interested in the use of language around this topic..I am from Australia and there has been a subtle but significant change by those advocating AGW from “global warming” to “climate change”. The significance is obvious that “climate change” is much harder to prove or disprove than “global warming” and I am not sure if it ias deliberate or subconscious happening but in Austraia at least seems to me to be a positioning from certainty to uncertainty in AGW advocates..I would be interested to hear if this is an Australian only change.
Bobby Lane (12:26:10).
Link to this here, Bobby; and some expansion:
Investor’s Business Daily
Jeff L (17:26:48) : Nice peeve, Jeff. Impressed and educated this layman quite some.
Thank you!
crosspatch (10:00:22) :
Are there any data that go back beyond 2000 so we might be able to see if there were any previous “steps” of this sort? What I am particularly curious about is if there was a corresponding step up sometime in the 1970’s.
Yes we have a graph like that back to the 1840s [no typo] and there are lots of such steps. For a graph that I happen to have handy right now [I can update the graph both forwards and backwards if there is interest] check out: http://www.leif.org/research/IHV1882-2007.png
For the theory behind this, see: http://www.leif.org/research/2007JA012437.pdf
Some comments are in order:
(1) monthly averages are not very good to use because of a month being a bit longer than the rotation period of the Sun [not to speak about the varying number of days in a month]. The proper averaging interval is one 27-day solar rotation. That is used in my graph.
(2) there is a semiannual variation of geomagnetic activity [due to the aspect of the Earth – nothing to do with the Sun], with peaks in March and September, so October is coming down from the normal peak [kinda the opposite effect of using September temps for October 🙂 ] adding to the ‘step’. This purely terrestrial variation has been removed from my graph.
George E. Smith (10:25:18) :
Does anybody ever do a Fourier Transform on this raw data, to see what its frequency spectrum looks like.
Figure 8 of http://www.leif.org/research/IHV-Index%20(JGR%20-%20Version%201).pdf
Don B (11:09:42) :
the linked graph of cosmic ray flux automatically update, and if not, how current is this graph?
It does not, but the data is only a couple weeks old. If I updated it, you could not tell the difference.
NASA recently announced the solar wind to be the weakest in 50+ years, and one would expect the cosmic ray count to go to record levels for the last 50+ years as well.
NASA forgot to mention that at every solar minimum things quiet down and this minimum is not special. It is like saying that every year the temperature fall from a July high of 90F to a January low of 30F, but this year it has fallen to the all-time low of 29F.
You can see for yourself looking at my graph what the CGRs have been doing the past 50+ years.
George E. Smith (15:56:18) :
Is the average, simply the average of those two sites
Yes.
Also, what are you using these days as a Neutron detector; and what is the energy range of these neutrons.
http://ulysses.sr.unh.edu/NeutronMonitor/background.html
I assume that the Neutrons are being generated in the atmosphere from charged particle collisions, rather than coming in from outer space (or solar)
Correct.
So what happens if you plot sunspot cycles on top of the Neutron flux.
Lower panel of http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRayFlux.png
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (16:31:22) :
Stanford Uni have updated their solar polar strength graph showing continued weak strength and no indication of polarity change yet.
And you will not see a polarity change for another 5 years, as the polar fields reverse at solar maximum.
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Polar.gif
I am still trying to find data on any apparent slowdown of the solar differential rotation rate but without success…but would like to put money on it.
http://www.leif.org/research/ast10867.pdf has something on this, but don’t waste your money, though.
Meanwhile the planets align just like in the late 1790’s with matching sunspot activity, leading us into a mini Dalton?
The SC24 peak could be as early as Feb 2010.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/
And if that doesn’t happen [Feb 2010] the theory is falsified, right?
Michael Hauber (18:41:38) :
Or even quieter if we talk AA index? Or is the low AA index value only low when compared with as far back as 2000?
The AA index is wrong before 1957 [too low]. The solar wind [and the correct aa-index] during solar cycle 23 has been just as it was back during cycle 13, 107 years ago. We are just returning to that same condition.
MH: “Average temperature according to GISS in 1912 was -0.3.”
“Temperature for the first 10 months of October was 0.405, or 0.7 degrees warmer.”
Tom in Texas: “Was that before or after the data was Hansonized?
And what is “first 10 months of October” supposed to mean?
”
If you’d prefer the non Hansonised Hadley data then the temp difference between 1912 and 2008 (so far) is 0.8 degrees.
First 10 months of October is supposed to be the first 10 months of 2008.
Will the U.N. Chill Out on Climate Change?
The U.N.’s own observations show no warming trend, but things may still get hot and bothered in Poznan.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2NjZjg4YzMwMDU5YWE2ODYxMGJlNjkxOGNiMjc3ZjA=
Al Gore himself descends on Wednesday to personally bless the conclave’s work product — which, based on past history, we can be assured will range somewhere between flawed, fraudulent, and downright farcical.
Since Kyoto in December 1996, a very funny thing has happened to global temperatures: IPCC data clearly show that warming has stopped, even though its computer models said such a thing could not happen.
The U.N.’s own climate models have failed barely a year after they were made public. They have demonstrated a remarkable inability to even “predict” the present. Will 10,000 people in Poznan somehow ignore this?
It is obvious to the unbiased observer that the data is wrong. Computer models do not lie. Well maybe the programmers Finagle, Bougerre and Diddle fudge a little, depending.
-start quote
Coincidence? Perhaps. But I think investigation is needed to determine if there is any mechanism that would explain or exclude this correlation.
-end quote
Um, perhaps less solar activity leads to lower ozone levels (and ozone being a GHG) less heat retention? (Yes, rampant speculation…)
From http://www.ghgonline.org/otherstropozone.htm
“Tropospheric ozone can act both as a direct greenhouse gas and as an indirect controller of greenhouse gas lifetimes. As a direct greenhouse gas, it is thought to have caused around one third of all the direct greenhouse gas induced warming seen since the industrial revolution.”
[…]
“The largest net source of tropospheric ozone is influx from the stratosphere.”
I wonder if THAT is in the models ….
From old construction worker (19:24:05) :
David L. Hagen (13:51:37)
[…] President-elect Barack Obama declared, “The time for delay is over, the time for denial is over.” “ ‘
More ‘Gore Effect’
-end quote
I fully expect that Obama will be ‘on board’ with the AGW agenda right up until the snow is record deep in DC, the people are screaming about the cost of heating houses, and it’s been 2 years of near zero sun spots. Then I think you will see him politely and intelligently distance himself from AlGore and his message…
This was a trial balloon and sop to the looney left that he’s kind of hacked off a bit with his appointments. He’ll be happy to drop it as soon as the DOD hands him an emergency snow equipment request 😉 It was mere minutes for him to be on TV saying “Governor Who?”…
Gordon,
The change from AGW to Climate Change is deliberate and global. The excuse for it is that a slowdown of the gulf stream due to Greenland melting could cause cooling of Europe so it would be wrong to call it GW. Expect them to forget the ‘melting of Greenland’ predicate this winter when its terrible cold…
Yes, the AGW movement is (oh so slowly) getting bogged down. Hopefully fast enough that they can’t get too much damage done. It has taken me about 2 years to convince one very close (and somewhat left leaning) friend to step away from AGW and be a skeptic. I count that as a double! (me,now me+him). So if we each pick one person to educate…
I expect this year winter to start putting nails in the coffin lid. To help it along I try to ALWAYS talk about global WARMING and not about Climate Change. If someone does use C.C. I like to either say “doesn’t it always?” or else say “In what direction?”… Either answer leads into a discussion of the little ice age, the medieval optimum, Bond Events and other climate cycles.
Ric Werme (16:48:32) :
Emissions trading rocked as Norwegian company is left in limbo.
Quirin Schiermeier
As international climate talks began last week in Poland, the United Nations (UN) suspended the work of the main company that validates carbon-offset projects in developing countries, sending shockwaves through the emissions-trading business.
Based in Oslo, Det Norske Veritas has in the past four years validated and certified almost half of the 1,200 projects approved under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). At its meeting on 28 November in Poznań, the CDM’s executive board temporarily withdrew Det Norske Veritas’s accreditation after a spot check carried out in early November at the firm’s headquarters revealed serious flaws in project management.
The board did not specify which projects are affected, but cites problems with the company’s internal auditing processes, and says that one of its staff members was verifying CDM projects without proper qualifications. As a result, “validation activities could not be demonstrated to be based on appropriate sectoral expertise”, the board reports.
Until June of this year, I had worked for DNV in Oslo for 23 years. For reasons other than the above (poor management in general), I had for some time considered quitting. As you can imaging it was a difficult decision after so many years, as the work was interesting.
But my decision was made easier by our section manager (of more than 200 people) telling us that DNV had started to focus on ‘climate change’. His main point was that the sea level would rise 75m (yes, 75 meters) in the coming century. That helped me confirm my suspicion that management really had lost its remaining sense of reality, so I signed my resignation in May.
I think the claim of 75m was founded on an article in April in Norways biggest newspaper Aftenposten, where NASAs James Hansen is interviewed and quoted as saying (my translation from Norwegian) “Even the most ambitious climate cuts will lift the sea level by 75 meters, according to the opinion of the NASA scientist)
http://www.aftenposten.no/klima/article2353729.ece
The article was part of Aftenposten’s “Het klode” (“Hot globe”) series.
DNV is mainly a ship classification society (self owned foundation), that earns a living from ensuring ship and offshore structures are safe, by issuing certificates on behalf of governments. It has a long history since 1864. It should know better, as the work force is really well educated and focused on quality.
Read DNVs pages on climate change here
http://www.dnv.com/focus/climate_change/
Very sad, really.
People, I’d like to point out what Steve McIntyre has said on issues like this: that if you were a politician, you’d have no choice but to listen to the scientists and take their best advice.
Obama is doing no more than that. There’s no such thing as a “republican” or “democrat” scientist, at least their shouldn’t be with respect to their work. I do think however that the job of politicians should be to ensure strong audit procedures around those scientists that government takes advice from! It seems to me to be self evident that this would be a basic requirement and that whatever systems we currently have in place are a massive failure.
pkatt et al:-)
You Colonials must get used to the appropriate forms of terminology as we here in the Peoples (non)Democratic Republic of Europe have had to do! The climate is not & does not “cool” or show a “cooling”, it displays only a “lack of warming”! Rather like the IPPC do to explain the lower temps in the Antarctic.
It makes complete sense that the sea/oceans give up heat & absorb it from the atmosphere, rather than the atmosphere controlling its own temp. The argument all goes to pot when AGWers claim the oceans are becoming more acidic absorbing CO2 from the saturated CO2 atmosphere when it has to be the other way round through simple thermodynamics, although nothing is ever that simple I agree.
Love the snow & just love all those Gorey scary stories.
Some half-wit professor @ Oxford has decided that it is time to prosecute power companies for crimes against humanity & the environment, some of which have yet to be committed?????? Oh well, must put another nob of coal on the fire to keep out the chilly weather we don’t have any more according to the Met Office.
‘The son has zero effect on global temp., only CO2 has.’
What about the Father and the Holy Ghost?
a tiny tim got the number 1009. So officially spotless days over.
http://solarcycle24com.proboards106.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1&page=30
If you look at 1911,1912 and 1913 you see the coldness around the years. 2007 and 2008 are in the top ten spotless years .(http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Sunspotless_days.JPG) What gets me is the graphs I’ve seen of solar cycles, they all have a little hump at around 90 to 100 days from beginning of cycle followed by a decline to minimum, except we haven’t had the ‘hump’ yet.(http://www.dxlc.com/solar/cyclcomp2.html)
I think it will be colder next winter. I’ve said it all here http://dreamofthought.blogspot.com/
Comments please? can anyone explain the freak weather of 1963?(http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/education/secondary/students/winter.html)
Gordon Smith,
In Denmark both our prime minister and our ‘climate minister'(!) have stated clearly that their views on ‘climate change’ is based on ‘expert’ advice from IPCC and specific parts of the scientific community alone.
They public acknowledge the fact that scientists can have a complete different view of reasons to & levels of climate change in 10 years time. But they see the changes in energy technology as an golden opportunity for Denmark, not matter what scientist say in 10 years from now – We don’t have any car industry, but a huge (Danish huge) wind turbine industry and we are in general fast movers on tech – opportunity knocks!
The whole European Community (EC) also sees investments in the energy sector as an opportunity to free Europe from Russian or Middle-East energy supplies, and at the same time a way to invest Europe out of the current economical crises with public money.
So no one really cares about climate – It’s just an opportunity to drive needed changes & investments.
The problem ? – One can ask why the economical crises is accelerating and world trade is dropping.
Rapid changes in consumer behaviour, due to uncertainty of the future, is absolutely a driver.
– Consumers don’t know what technology to buy – E.g. what types of cars will be outdated, un-sellable, in 2 years time?
– Consumers don’t want to buy stuff that has been transported half way round the world with ‘co2 polluting’ ships
So although politicians sees the investments and energy changes in a 10-20 year perspective – Consumers are already, due to the politicians doomsday statements, making huge changes in behaviour and as a consequence destroying whole industries and diminishing world trade.
The world trade, that any economist will tell you, always has been the prime driver of global growth.
So, in my view, the AGW theory that the politicians adopted, as a little white lie, and as an excuse for changing energy technology & energy suppliers, is now turning out to drive the economical downturn. And the new technologies, that are supposed to replace the old worlds tech., are far from mature yet.
The little white lie that ran amok……
Robinson:” I do think however that the job of politicians should be to ensure strong audit procedures around those scientists that government takes advice from! It seems to me to be self evident that this would be a basic requirement and that whatever systems we currently have in place are a massive failure.”
The mission of politicians is to keep themselves in power so they can make the rest of us foot the bill for their own ideals and pet projects. They do this by either promising us everything or using scare tactics. In AGW we have both, scare us into thinking we are doomed unless we do something, then taxing us to death to get it done. They are actually pretty good at using the common person’s short attention span and general ignorance about everything to accomplish their “mission”.
Leif (22:15:18) “NASA forgot to mention thatt at every solar minimum things quiet down and this minimum is not special.”
Actually, NASA implies that this minimum is indeed special, since solar wind is the weakest in 50+ years.
Yes, I can read your graph which I refered to, and I was suggesting the cosmic count might go to new 50+ year records, a forward looking statement.
and one of the first to propose the change was Republican strategist Frank Luntz in a briefing memo to candidates back in 2002/3 …
“”Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly.
“Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”
The phrase “global warming” should be abandoned in favour of “climate change”, Mr Luntz says, and the party should describe its policies as “conservationist” instead of “environmentalist”, because “most people” think environmentalists are “extremists” who indulge in “some pretty bizarre behaviour… that turns off many voters”.
Luntz says this was a legitimate approach at the time but has since distanced himself from the Bush Administration’s position, saying that he now believes in the reality of MMGW.
Leif Svalgaard (22:15:18) :
And you will not see a polarity change for another 5 years, as the polar fields reverse at solar maximum.
Granted…but as you know there is an inflow that starts the process…that is not happening.
http://www.leif.org/research/ast10867.pdf has something on this, but don’t waste your money, though.
Thanks Leif, but i am looking for current data…Aug 07 is not relevant, so i will hang on to my money.
And if that doesn’t happen [Feb 2010] the theory is falsified, right?
Not likely…the theory certainly doesn’t hinge on the solar maximum prediction, we both agree on the solar pole weakness for upcoming activity but i have a causation theory….whats yours?
People, I’d like to point out what Steve McIntyre has said on issues like this: that if you were a politician, you’d have no choice but to listen to the scientists and take their best advice.
Obama is doing no more than that.
—————-
Obama is not doing that, since there are many scientists who disagree with the positions he takes, and few scientists who take positions as extreme as those he takes.
What Obama has done is listen to the scientists who say what he wants to hear, and ignore the rest.
Interesting to look at the Cosmic Ray monitor at Oulu. This site allows you to plot neutrons across any time period since 1964. If you run a plot from Jan 2005 to Nov 2008, you can see a huge increase starting in about October 2005 (same time that the Sun’s magnetic field did that ‘step function’ thing). The site is titled ‘Cosmic Ray Monitor’ but, if it is only tracking neutrons it isn’t tracking all the particles that are Cosmic Rays. Interesting none the less.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/Request.dll?Y1=2005&M1=Jan&D1=01&h1=00&m1=00&Y2=2008&M2=Nov&D2=01&h2=00&m2=00&YR=00&MR=00&DR=00&hR=00&mR=00&PD=1
“The son has zero effect on global temp”
Said with your tongue planted firmly in your cheek I presume? We really need emoticons for this site. 🙂
Anthony…this is a top blog (my fav) and I know times are tuff. But is it possible to appoint more moderators to keep the conversation going…sometimes the wait for moderation just kills it.
REPLY: I had two on east coast time but they are dealing with personal crises due to economic downturn…I have to be very careful who I appoint, because the ultimate responsibility lies with me. – Anthony
Leif (22:15:18) To expand on what I said above, in Svensmark and Calder’s “The Chilling Stars,” they write “There is usually a delay of a year or two from maximum sunspots to minimum cosmic rays, ..” And so I assumed the maximum level of cosmic rays for this 50+ year period is yet to come.
“Some half-wit professor @ Oxford has decided that it is time to prosecute power companies for crimes against humanity & the environment, some of which have yet to be committed?????? Oh well, must put another nob of coal on the fire to keep out the chilly weather we don’t have any more according to the Met Office.”
The only upside to that is that Hansen will now fly over to the UK to testify…
Maybe he’ll start to really like it over there?
We’d miss him.
Terribly.
Really.
JimB
Meanwhile Artic Ice extent appears to be accelerating. At the top of extent for this decade http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png and approaching the 1979-2000 average, certainly far ahead of the 2007 extent. http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
For the bloggers who claim that the sun has very little to do with our climate I refer you to the paper called LINKAGE BETWEEN SOLAR ACTIVITY, CLIMATE PREDICTABILITY AND WATER RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT by
W J R Alexander, F Bailey, D B Bredenkamp, A van der Merwe and N Willemse
TECHNICAL PAPER
JOURNAL OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN
INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERING
Vol 49 No 2, June 2007, Pages 32–44, Paper 659
This study is based on the numerical analysis of the properties of routinely observed
hydrometeorological data which in South Africa alone is collected at a rate of more than
half a million station days per year, with some records approaching 100 continuous years
in length. The analysis of this data demonstrates an unequivocal synchronous linkage
between these processes in South Africa and elsewhere, and solar activity. This confirms
observations and reports by others in many countries during the past 150 years.
It is also shown with a high degree of assurance that there is a synchronous linkage
between the statistically significant, 21-year periodicity in these processes and the
acceleration and deceleration of the sun as it moves through galactic space. Despite a
diligent search, no evidence could be found of trends in the data that could be attributed
to human activities.
The above paper can be found at
http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/alexander2707.pdf
Note also that there is rightnow an enormous coronal mass ejection heading towards jupiter. See the animation on space weather :
http://www.spaceweather.com/images2008/08dec08/cme_c3_anim.gif?PHPSESSID=si98gul2idvrr6jngj7djn0e27
Sorry Gordon, but that’s been going on for a few years now. Guess the news was a little slow to reach down there 😉
The Father, Son and Holy Ghost have complete control. I am glad you are having fun with my typo of Son vs. Sun. It’s good to smile, I laugh at UN everyday.
Wouldn’t it be great if our leaders would focus on coping with whatever weather we get instead of stopping it?
Anna v,
I’m no expert in these matters, but I don’t think that is a “Tiny Tim.” I had no doubt I was looking at a genuine sun spot when I saw it.
I just woke up to this. I guess ol’ sol heard us talking, and woke up a little bit too. 🙂
Basil
Looks like a SC23 spot has just poked through.
Sorry science guys.
This lawyer will not let you slide. I don’t care what political stripe a politician wears, the way law and politics works is that the law and government must rely on scientific consensus for answers. In a court of law, as in politics, often it is impossible to wait for scientific certainty before decisions must be made. In both politics and law, you have to make decisions based on the consensus of scientists at the time.
If the scientific consensus is wrong, and proved to be wrong, the law and the government will then go with the “new” consensus until it is proved to be wrong.
That is the way the law and politics works, and frankly has no choice but to work.
The scientific community still has not changed the “consensus” on global warming.
I hear every day that the scientific “consensus” is that we are facing global warming on a catastrophic scale.
The scientific community just needs to raise more hell and come up with better answers.
Part of the problem is that there is no working theory that has yet to get enough traction to challenge anthropomorphic CO2 as a contender for scientific consensus. Just saying that natural variations account for what has happened, will probably not work as a challenge to CO2. Some specific theory about natural variations has to become the new consensus.
That is why I think the sun’s magnetic field’s influence on cosmic radiation is an exciting idea. It is easy to sell this theory to the public if the evidence for it becomes more concrete. It is easy to explain to the public that the sun is not just a giant thermonuclear furnace, but that it is also a giant magnet. And while the temperature of the thermonuclear furnace may not change much, the sun’s magnetism varies greatly, and it is the variation of the sun’s magnetic output that causes climate change. I can sell that story till the cows come home. Actually, I find that most people are genuinely fascinated by it.
So Svensmark and Kirkby need to really crank up this CLOUD experiment at CERN and need to have more vocal support from the scientific community. This project keeps getting delayed and the silence surrounding what is going on with it is deafening. There needs to be support for these guys to finish this project and some heat put on them to get the results out.
If their ideas pan out, and especially if the earth continues to cool, this paradigm will shift and shift quickly. If you want to change politics, change the scientific consensus first.
Is it getting delayed? I thought they were still in the prototype building period. Data collection is supposed to begin in the 5th year, around 2011 thus. And in the absence of any result, I understand the “deafening” silence around it. BTW, I think they got all the support they needed: around 12 million dollars.
Bill Illis (16:16:48) :
The graph you linked to has not been seasonally adjusted (the sea level has a yearly cycle, reaching a peak in the Southern hemisphere summer and a dip 6 months later). You will notice that this years ‘dip, is higher than last years so, as I said before, the rate of sea level rise is increasing again.
Errr…that’s why we use mean levels…
Enisor
Delayed in the sense that it was first proposed about 2000 and didn’t really get started till late 2006 or early 2007.
Also:
Initially they thought they would have some results by 2009 and now I understand its 2011.
If I am wrong about this please someone correct me.
“davidgmills (07:20:26) :
Sorry science guys.”
Great post. I need to think on it more.
I agree that it IS that way…just not sure it has to STAY that way.
You can show something is clearly WRONG without having to prove what’s RIGHT.
I don’t have to prove WHO murdered someone in order to prove someone DID NOT murder someone.
JimB
Don B (04:38:42) :
“NASA forgot to mention thatt at every solar minimum things quiet down and this minimum is not special.”
Actually, NASA implies that this minimum is indeed special, since solar wind is the weakest in 50+ years.
NASA is economical with the truth. Here is a plot of all the solar wind observations ever made. The top panel shows coverage. The rightmost point goes to zero as only a few hours worth of data go into the latest 27-day average, so ignore that in the lower panels. The next panel shows the magnetic field strength, then the solar wind speed, and bottom, the ‘pressure’ of the solar wind.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (04:46:29) :
And you will not see a polarity change for another 5 years, as the polar fields reverse at solar maximum.
Granted…but as you know there is an inflow that starts the process…that is not happening.
The ‘inflow’ comes from new SC24 spots, and is happening. It just about a year for the flux to get up into the polar cap, so you don’t se it there yet, but the flux is on its way as we can see by looking at lower latitudes.
Thanks Leif, but i am looking for current data…Aug 07 is not relevant, so i will hang on to my money.
The changes don’t happen from month to month or from day to day or from minute to minute.
we both agree on the solar pole weakness for upcoming activity but i have a causation theory….whats yours?
http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%2024%20Smallest%20100%20years.pdf
http://www.leif.org/research/Percolation%20and%20the%20Solar%20Dynamo.pdf
Now, let people compare this with yours…
Leif Svalgaard (08:11:28) :
Here is a plot of all the solar wind observations ever made.
Here is the plot:
http://www.leif.org/research/OMNI-data1.png
Which is pretty much meaningless. Taking the mean of things that aren’t homogeneous gives you something that is worthless in this context. The same as taking a mean global temperature. Climate is regional, there is no “global” climate.
jonk,
That’s a cycle 24 spot. Southern Hemi black-white == Cycle 24 Northern Hemi white-black == Cycle 24.
*See. I have paid attention to previous posts*
Don B (05:51:48) :
Svensmark and Calder’s “The Chilling Stars,” they write “There is usually a delay of a year or two from maximum sunspots to minimum cosmic rays, ..” And so I assumed the maximum level of cosmic rays for this 50+ year period is yet to come.
You confuse max and min, perhaps. Anyway, no need to be confused:
http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRayFlux.png
http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRayFlux3.png
matt v. (06:31:06) :
For the bloggers who claim that the sun has very little to do with our climate I refer you to the paper called LINKAGE BETWEEN SOLAR ACTIVITY, CLIMATE PREDICTABILITY AND WATER RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT by W J R Alexander, F Bailey, D B Bredenkamp, A van der Merwe and N Willemse
This paper is total garbage as has been pointed out many times, both here and elsewhere.
davidgmills (07:20:26) :
David, the problem isthat the science HAS BECOME politicised. It no longer is providing reasoned answers, but politically convenient ones.
JimB, exactly right!
Skeptics don’t need to provide an alternate explanation for any warming, since it has yet to be shown that we’re seeing anything out of the ordinary, or that anything we are seeing is due to human activity (beyond minor regional effects due to land use changes).
Bill Marsh (05:20:38) :
same time that the Sun’s magnetic field did that ’step function’ thing). The site is titled ‘Cosmic Ray Monitor’ but, if it is only tracking neutrons it isn’t tracking all the particles that are Cosmic Rays. Interesting none the less.
(1) there is no particular step thing in October 2005.
http://www.leif.org/research/IHV1882-2007.png
(2) the neutrons are generated in the atmosphere by incoming cosmic rays, so the neutron monitors do track the cosmic rays.
The project was initially proposed in 2000, but for some reason got accepted in 2006. There could be many reasons to that, so let’s not get paranoid about it. Actually, the CERN webpage published a dedicated press release about it when it got accepted.
But it’s true that the first results were expected in 2007. Those preliminary studies were supposed to prove/disprove the existence of the supposed mechanism of aerosol formation. I’ve heard nothing about it, but I don’t know whether it’s because they did not get any results or if they go “in the wrong direction”.
Basil (07:09:04) :
Right, it is respectable now, and a second one is developing. When I first saw it it was iffy.
JimB:-)
We’d love to have g’d ol Jimbo Hansen over here, we have a real soft spot for him -it’s a bog on Dartmoor!
After his last little outing I am eagerly awaiting his return to tesify in support of some eco-protestors after they kill or maim some poor innocent bystander with their crazy antics, they can now legally damage property in the name of “saving the planet”, so what’s next?
AtB
If we were to get the 348 spotless days in 2009 to tie the total number between 1911-1913, that would exceed the all-time record number of spotless days set in 1913. It is interesting to note that the winter of 1912-1913 is the second coldest on record since statistics have been kept.
JimB (06:10:15) :
“Some half-wit professor @ Oxford has decided that it is time to prosecute power companies for crimes against humanity & the environment, some of which have yet to be committed?????? Oh well, must put another nob of coal on the fire to keep out the chilly weather we don’t have any more according to the Met Office.”
The only upside to that is that Hansen will now fly over to the UK to testify…
Maybe he’ll start to really like it over there?
We’d miss him.
Terribly.
Really.
JimB
Hey. Don’t you dump your “alarmists” on us thank you very much. We’ve got enough of our own as it is with “Moonbat.”
davidgmills:
The scientific community still has not changed the “consensus” on global warming.
I hear every day that the scientific “consensus” is that we are facing global warming on a catastrophic scale.
There is no “scientific consensus” on global warming. What you are hearing is simply political hype and propaganda. It all comes down to the herd instinct, unfortunately, and has nothing to do with science. Many scientists who are part of the AGW industry have to “go along to get along”. Grant money is at stake, and so are jobs and careers. Those who dare step out of the fold risk everything to do so, unless they are already retired, but they still become targets for the inevitable backlash. Since AGW is essentially little more than a pseudo-scientific ideology, this battle is necessarily a two-pronged one, both scientific and political. Both are equally important, in order for the AGW behemoth to be brought down.
“” Also, what are you using these days as a Neutron detector; and what is the energy range of these neutrons.
http://ulysses.sr.unh.edu/NeutronMonitor/background.html
I assume that the Neutrons are being generated in the atmosphere from charged particle collisions, rather than coming in from outer space (or solar)
Correct. “”
Thanks Leif for that info. I couldn’t access the Spectral content link, but the neutron Detector artilce was quite interesting, if not particularly specific. Reading between the lines, I gather that the basic detector is a proportional gas counter tube with internal organic materials to give you knock on Protons to detect.
Very first Transistor circuit I ever built, was a detector circuit to go with a Tissue Equivalent Neutron detector tube to use as a safety monitor in an accelerator Lab. (University of Auckland circa 1959-60) We had a 600KV Cockroft Walton accelerator that was used to shoot Deuterons, at heavy ice targets to create neutrons in the 14 MeV range (Protons too). Students were doing double scattering polarisation measurments on the emitted neutron beams, and werer using proportional counters that were somewhat innefficient as Neutron detectors (but had zero gamma detection efficiency, so they didn’t get a lot of background noise. But the count rates were pitiful so it took days of running to get any statistics.
I built a Scintillation Counter Neutron Detector, using a Stilbene crystal, which was about 10,000 times as efficient as the gas tubes; but also responded to gammas. The discrimination method took two signals out of the photomultiplier, from the anoded and the last dynode. The final dynode signal was peak detected with a fast amplifier to collect the pulse height, and the anode signal was integrated to give a total pulse are signal.
The result was I could discriminate pulse shape from the height and area, and heavier particles like alphas had a big long time constant tail, knock-on protons had a smaller tail, and electrons (from gammas) had very little long decay component; so I could selectively count alphas, Neutrons, or gammas by selecting the right area to pulse height ratio. So I eneded up with a much higher neutron count rate, which speeded up the double scattering experiments.
There seems to be a typo in the detector paper you cited, since they talk about neutrons in the hundreds of MeV to 1 GeV range, but then talk about 1-20GeV as being the low energy portion of the spectrum. I suppose that’s possible with cosmic rays. I seem to recall looking at a cosmic ray emulsion track photograph that somebody studied to add up all the components, and came up with something like 10^19 eV total energy for the shower. I think the primary must have been a bolt off an alien spacecraft or something.
I can see that proportional counters would have been a good choice for IGY time frame, so it is interesting to find that you still use the same general things. Presumably with the tube stacks you can also get some telescope effects to look for sources?
I guess at one time or another I have been from the sub audio to the outer limits in the EM spectrum; never worked with X-rays though.
I’ll try again to see if I can get to that Fourier spectrum you cited; the link didn’t work for me.
Thanks again Leif.
davidgmills (07:20:26) :
The claim that there is a “consensus” regarding CO2 and warming is nothing more than good PR. Any survey’s of actual scientists show that there is no consensus.
As to the claim that CO2 is the only theory behind the warming, that too is nothing more than good PR. There is no theory, there are just climate models. The reliability of such models is still to be demonstrated.
Leif,
Thanks for the effort on this thread. I lost some time reading but it was very worthwhile.
The snow in the European Alps is just amazing at the moment. I presume the lack of sunspots is related to this…
Leif Svalgaard (08:16:13) :
Don B (05:51:48) :
Svensmark and Calder’s “The Chilling Stars,” they write “There is usually a delay of a year or two from maximum sunspots to minimum cosmic rays, ..” And so I assumed the maximum level of cosmic rays for this 50+ year period is yet to come.
You confuse max and min, perhaps. Anyway, no need to be confused:
http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRayFlux.png
http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRayFlux3.png
Pretty striking, at least to my admittedly not so well trained eye.
This is OT, but the absurd Pachauri interview linked below, requires comments and analysis by real scientists. My BSmeter broke while reading it.
http://www.physorg.com/news148067188.html
Is it possible that current reduction in the size of the heliosphere may well be due to an increase in the strength of the interstellar field as well as corresponding weakness of the solar wind?
Any past references on the matter?
A souther Hemisphere cycle 24 spot has appeared so the long spotless run is over. It is, I think the largest SH cycle 24 spot so far. Pictures on
SOLARCYCLE 24.com
“Grant money is at stake, and so are jobs and careers. Those who dare step out of the fold risk everything to do so, unless they are already retired, but they still become targets for the inevitable backlash.”
Therein lies the problem in a nutshell and why the non-scientific world is disenchanted with the scientific community. The scientific community has no spine, no guts, no moral compass. And that has left the rest of us wondering whether any of the scientific community can be trusted.
Every time a doctor prescribes a prescription for me, I wonder whether the science behind the approval of that drug was legit, or whether someone sold his soul to the drug company just to get a paycheck.
It used to be that the non-scientific community revered the science community and the science community was trusted. Not anymore. We simply don’t know who to trust because science now has a price tag.
Despite what someone posted above that there is no scientific consensus, I disagree because I am told that every single day. And whether it is true or not, it is all about the “framing.” And the frame is that there is a consensus and nobody has seemed to have been successful in destroying this frame.
And that is why I think simply arguing that the global temperature rise of the 20th century was natural rather than anthropogenic will not be sufficient. Arguing generally that the changes were natural will not dislodge the present framing. The only way to dislodge the present framing is to come up with a new frame that has a new picture in it.
“This looks much like a “step function” that I see on GISS surface temperature graphs when a station has been relocated to a cooler measurement environment.”
I think the answer is clear… The sun has been moved to a cooler environment.
Leif Svalgaard (08:11:28) :
The ‘inflow’ comes from new SC24 spots, and is happening. It just about a year for the flux to get up into the polar cap, so you don’t se it there yet, but the flux is on its way as we can see by looking at lower latitudes.
Agree but no effect at the poles of any kind yet, suggesting a very slow flow. This minimum is way more prolonged than the previous 2 cycles.
The changes don’t happen from month to month or from day to day or from minute to minute.
But your data is still too old for my purposes, and I am not sure you could say that a sudden change in the differential rotation rate is not possible, in fact I would think it more likely. i think it would be a great area of study to check if there is indeed a slowdown….someone must be working on it?
I said “we both agree on the solar pole weakness for upcoming activity but i have a causation theory….whats yours?”
http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%2024%20Smallest%20100%20years.pdf
http://www.leif.org/research/Percolation%20and%20the%20Solar%20Dynamo.pdf
Now, let people compare this with yours…
Your paper unless I missed it doesn’t explain why the solar pole strength is weakening and neither does Schattens….so we don’t have anything to compare with my theory?
I have added quite a bit of new research to my theory and have added some further research into Hung’s and Desmoulins work, I also have one of your MWO graphs looking at SC20. Ian Wilson has also released one of his papers on my blog which some may find interesting.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/
LEIF
Here are just three examples which support the paper posted.
Link Between Solar Cycle And Climate Is Blowin’ In The Wind
ScienceDaily (Apr. 12, 1999) — Researchers have found that the variations in the energy given off from the sun effect the Earth’s wind patterns and thus the climate of the planet, according to results of a new study published in the April 9 issue of Science.
Sun’s Direct Role In Global Warming May Be Underestimated, Duke Physicists Report
ScienceDaily (Oct. 2, 2005) — DURHAM, N.C. — At least 10 to 30 percent of global warming measured during the past two decades may be due to increased solar output rather than factors such as increased heat-absorbing carbon dioxide gas released by various human activities, two Duke University physicists report.
Sun’s Magnetic Field May Impact Weather And Climate: Sun Cycle Can Predict Rainfall Fluctuations
ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2008) — The sun’s magnetic field may have a significant impact on weather and climatic parameters in Australia and other countries in the northern and southern hemispheres. According to a study in Geographical Research, the droughts are related to the solar magnetic phases and not the greenhouse effect.
yonsaon (20:24:03) :
“If one is going to ‘convince’ the AGW bought crowd, wouldn’t this be the way to do it?” — R. Bateman
That would be true if they were rational, but by now we know that they are probably not.
Sources say Obama is likely to choose Steven Chu of Lawrence Livermore Lab., a physicist as his energy secretary. Chu runs the lab. I would fully expect him to be rational as well as very scientific. Give that man some Carl Sagan lessons and stand back.
I could easily see the 1 spots today, the leading one looked like an ameoba about to split, and the trailing one a dark dot.
Orion 70mm F/9 25mm Meade Plossl.
Oop… 2 spots . Sorry about that.
davidgmills:
“Despite what someone posted above that there is no scientific consensus, I disagree because I am told that every single day. And whether it is true or not, it is all about the “framing.” And the frame is that there is a consensus and nobody has seemed to have been successful in destroying this frame.”
I agree with you here David. That is why every time I hear this, from whomever I hear it, I challenge it. I call radio talkshows, I email the Oprah show, I challenge friends and associates…anyone who spews the consensus crap. It simply cannot stand, now more than ever. Write your local paper, editorial page, politician…let them know that there are people that are keeping score now. Let them know that not everyone is rolling over on this and giving the press a free ride. Give them pointers to here, Climate Audit…anyplace else that points out the lucicrous claims.
And hey…you folks across the pond?…I wasn’t trying to be mean. I really like you folks. Alot. It’s just that we’ve had enough of him here. There are a lot of things we can be proud of over here…(forget that whole tea thing), but he really isn’t one of them.
Btw…if you take my advice up top?…you’ll be amazed at how open your social calendar becomes :>)
JimB
and ludicrous claims, too.
JimB
Bruce Cobb (09:37:59) :
“…Those who dare step out of the fold risk everything to do so, unless they are already retired, but they still become targets for the inevitable backlash. …”
Perhaps some dissenting scientists are starting to awaken. (http://icecap.us/)
George and Lief,
You two sound like farmers talking about farm equipment round the kitchen table. We women folk didn’t have a clue what they were talking about since they used numbers instead of names to refer to parts, processes, and models. “How is that 367 workin fer ya Bill?” “Awright I reckon. But did’ya see that thar new 3859A at the farm fair?” Now thet gal war sweet!”
Pamela: We sure do miss Carl Sagan, do we not?
Everyone understood him.
Bjorn Lomberg has an interesting take on climate change, whether or not you think CO2 is to blame. His thirty minute presentation is well worth watching.
http://www.reason.tv/video/show/621.html
Bill Marsh (11:24:58) :
Pretty striking, at least to my admittedly not so well trained eye.
Yes, it is, indeed, strikingly clear that at every minimum the GCR intensity returns to the same level, and that 2008 = 1987 = 1965. Does not take fancy statistics to see.
matt v. (17:59:58) :
Here are just three examples which support the paper posted.
‘report’ is not the same as ‘support’. The paper is garbage on its face.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (16:48:48) :
Your paper unless I missed it doesn’t explain why the solar pole strength is weakening and neither does Schattens….so we don’t have anything to compare with my theory?
No explanation is needed. A solar cycle has 3000 active regions. The polar magnetic flux is very small compared to the magnetic flux in all those regions. In fact, the polar flux is equal to about FIVE of those regions, thus a very, very small percentage. When you are down to FIVE events, pure chance can give you 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7. No further reason needed. You can, in fact, see the individual ‘streams’ of flux that go to the poles in this MWO plot: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/torsional.html
Leif,
The link does not work.
Please post it again.
To Mary Hinge.
I’m sorry, but I have to ask this question. Are you related to Dr. Evadne Hinge?
http://www.hingeandbracket-official.co.uk/index_1.htm
http://www.hingeandbracket-official.co.uk/tribute.htm
Regards,
Perry
Ron de Haan (23:37:09) :
The link does not work.
Please post it again.
Which link?
For the bloggers who claim that the sun has very little to do with our climate I refer you to the paper called LINKAGE BETWEEN SOLAR ACTIVITY, CLIMATE PREDICTABILITY AND WATER RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT by W J R Alexander, F Bailey, D B Bredenkamp, A van der Merwe and N Willemse
This paper is total garbage as has been pointed out many times, both here and elsewhere.
I never trust people who say that a paper is garbage in the case when the paper questions the warmers dogma .
Almost alwyas it turns out that the person didn’t read the paper and was only repeating what he heard/read somewhere .
So I read the referenced paper in detail and here are the findings .
Let’s begin with the conclusion :
The paper is not total garbage .
It is rather long (I think sometimes unnecessarily so) and contains 3 parts .
Part 1
====
Evidence in the data . The data shows statistically significant 21 year period signal . The statistics used are basic and classical .
I would have liked to see Hurst coefficient calculation (they talk about it but don’t do it) and a power spectrum (they evoke it but don’t do it either) .
Unless their data are wrong what doesn’t seem to be the case , the conclusions are standard statistics on time series .
Part 2
====
They discuss and develop correlations between Sun parameters and the data of part 1 . This is again classical statistics . The Sun has been chosen because 21 years is an important period for the Sun .
Of course this kind of approach asks the question if correlation is causation which can never be answered by statistics alone .
This is exactly equivalent to the statistical AGW theory that tries to show correlations between CO2 and GMT and illegaly confuses correlation and causation .
The advantage of the paper compared to the AGW theory is that it uses local experimental data (instead of arbitrary space averagings) in which case the probability that correlation is causation is higher .
However if one stays at the statistical level only , it is still impossible to exclude the case that the correlation is a coincidence due to the finite length of the time series and the behaviour of chaotic systems is known to exhibit all kinds of such coincidences when the data sampling period is poorly chosen .
Part3
===
To be fair , I admit that I skipped this part when I noticed right in the beginning that they were showing the Earth’s trajectory in an unusual referential .
As the laws of nature are invariant in any galilean transformation of referentials (as long as the speeds are small compared to c and the space-time flat) , there is no need to choose exotic and complicated referentials .
So whatever they wanted to show , it is probably irrelevant to part 1 and 2 because if they wanted to examine orbital matters , they should have chosen the usual heliocentric referential where the equations are the simplest .
Leif Svalgaard (23:05:13) :
No explanation is needed. A solar cycle has 3000 active regions. The polar magnetic flux is very small compared to the magnetic flux in all those regions. In fact, the polar flux is equal to about FIVE of those regions, thus a very, very small percentage. When you are down to FIVE events, pure chance can give you 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7. No further reason needed. You can, in fact, see the individual ’streams’ of flux that go to the poles in this MWO plot: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/torsional.html
No expanation needed?…but would have thought that’s a standard way of stating your point, but anyway we seem to be getting down to some basics, you think there are many functions within the sun that can generate random events which cannot be predicted over a long time scale if i am understanding correctly?…it is the master of its own destiny….but at the same time you follow the precursor theory and predict the next cycle from the previous cycle and also keep account of the polar field strength…I must be missing something.
The sunspot peaks create patterns that are far from random in my opinion, and seem to follow a fairly smooth curve with abrupt changes of Grand Minima on a predictable cycle. This could not happen with random events?
Perry Debell – I suspect that Mary is more closely related to the famous Reverend Spooner…
Sunspot 1009 does seem fairly close to the equator….would that be normal at this stage of the cycle?
Perry
You are showing your age and your nationality! Obviously I’m far too young to remember them!
TonyB
It is snowing here in New Orleans right now.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (04:34:22) :
“you think there are many functions within the sun that can generate random events which cannot be predicted over a long time scale if i am understanding correctly?…it is the master of its own destiny
You confuse a random event with a random process. Consider the throw of a die. The throw is deterministic [I decide when and where to throw], but the outcome is random [with a fair die]. The outcome determines what happens next, e.g. if I collect some money from the game. Same thing with the Sun: Only about one-thousandth of the magnetic flux ends up in the polar caps, and the transport of magnetic flux is a random process brought about be supergranules see, e.g. http://dot.astro.uu.nl/rrweb/rjr-publications/2001encyclopedia-AA.pdf
….but at the same time you follow the precursor theory and predict the next cycle from the previous cycle and also keep account of the polar field strength
Here we consider the result of the random outcome: the magnetic field at the poles is the seed for the dynamo-induced amplification process. This process is not random, but has substantial order to it, therefore the next cycle depends deterministically on the random outcome of the flux transport toward the poles.
The sunspot peaks create patterns that are far from random in my opinion, and seem to follow a fairly smooth curve with abrupt changes of Grand Minima on a predictable cycle. This could not happen with random events?
And it does not. Careful analysis of the Grand Minima over 10,000 years shows that the time between Minima [or Maxima] is random. See e.g. http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/Moss_SP_2008.pdf
TomVonk (04:25:04) :
I never trust people who say that a paper is garbage in the case when the paper questions the warmers dogma .
Almost alwyas it turns out that the person didn’t read the paper and was only repeating what he heard/read somewhere
You cannot just jump to such a conclusion based on your own dogma. The paper has been discussed extensively at ClimateAudit and most people there agreed it was substandard [to be mild]. Part 3 [that you did not study] is a give-away, as it shows the shallow science acumen of the authors.
So Leif,
I know nothing about how the sun works or sunspots, but I have a seat of the pants mental image of what I think may be going on in the surface layers of the sun. Just for laughs let me lay this on you.
Imagine a vortex of rotating plasma (I assume it is all plasma) that is boring down into the surface, somewhat like a tornado funnel.
So I have a rotating plasma which is pretty damn big by earth scale things, and all that rotating charge creates a huge circulating current; let’s say it is rotating clockwise as we look down on it, so it creates a nice big bar magnet, with I suppose a south magnetic pole sticking out of the surface (hope I got that polarity right from the right hand rule).
Now that tornado may come popping up to the surface from down below (I dunno) or perhaps it starts turning right at the surface and goes down.
The column of rotating plasma, also has a substantial mass of material associated with, so it represents a significant angular momentum spinning there like a flywheel.
It seems as though from Anthony’s pictures, that the sun is rotating left to right, at least that’s the way this latest spot seemed to move, so now I have a rotating mass with a positive angular momentum vector, and I am twisting it with the sun left to right. Now if I did that with a bicycle wheel; turn the handle bars to the left; the bike is going to flop outwards and fall over to the right, so that means that the top visible end of my sunspot, wants to move southwards, and the deep end inside the sun wants to move northwards, so eventually the thing would seem to want to dive under the surface and proceed in a northerly direction, still spinning clockwise, as it proceeds through the solar outer layer, and maybe eventually the deep end, will come back up to the surface, but now the exposed end, will be rotating anti-clockwise, so I will be seeing a north pole.
So I have this mental image of these tubular tornado worms boring into the sun, and flipping over due to gyroscopic precession, caused by the sun’s rotation on its axis. So that would explain why the fileds reverse between cycles; assuming of course that this little boring expedition of mine takes about 11 years.
So Leif, have a good laugh if you like; but does any of that picture make any sense at all ? I’ve been meaning to ask Willie Soon about that picture, but never got around to it, so I might as well ask you.
George
Leif Svalgaard (08:00:06) :
You confuse a random event with a random process. Consider the throw of a die. The throw is deterministic [I decide when and where to throw], but the outcome is random [with a fair die]. The outcome determines what happens next, e.g. if I collect some money from the game. Same thing with the Sun: Only about one-thousandth of the magnetic flux ends up in the polar caps, and the transport of magnetic flux is a random process brought about be supergranules see, e.g. http://dot.astro.uu.nl/rrweb/rjr-publications/2001encyclopedia-AA.pdf
So its a random process that ultimately controls modulation of each cycle using the polar seeding from the previous cycle (and the dice is tossed approx every 11 yrs by an unknown player). So a flaw still exists, the cycle peaks do not follow a random outcome, but in general shows a wave pattern with slow rises and falls except when Grand Minima interrupt.
And it does not. Careful analysis of the Grand Minima over 10,000 years shows that the time between Minima [or Maxima] is random. See e.g. http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/Moss_SP_2008.pdf
Usokins work in this area has 2 major weaknesses in my opinion. He bases his conclusions on 14C records which he himself questions the accuracy of, and if you look at his graph it completely misses the Dalton minimum. If every medium trough was “Dalton like” then we have far more minima than suggested via his plot….so its accuracy has to be questioned. Recent minima back to the Oort (1000 yrs) certainly shows a predictable pattern.
His graph can be viewed here http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/previousgrandminima.png
George E. Smith (16:54:48) :
does any of that picture make any sense at all ?
It may make sense, except it’s not how the Sun operates. You can google things like ‘solar cycle’ solar activity’ solar magnetic field’ to get more info on what is going on.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (18:16:49) :
So its a random process that ultimately controls modulation of each cycle using the polar seeding from the previous cycle (and the dice is tossed approx every 11 yrs by an unknown player). So a flaw still exists, the cycle peaks do not follow a random outcome, but in general shows a wave pattern with slow rises and falls except when Grand Minima interrupt.
The transport of flux to poles is a random process. In general though, there will be a tendency for a big cycle to have more surviving flux than a small cycle, so several big cycles often occur together as well as several small cycles. This is not a sure thing, though, and that is where the random element comes in. Like, cycle 19 was very large, yet somewhat less polar flux was produced, so cycle 20 was small. This is not a ‘flaw’, but is very characteristic of such chaotic variations. The ‘technical term’ is that the process has ‘positive conservation’ or ‘memory’
Usokin’s work in this area has 2 major weaknesses in my opinion. He bases his conclusions on 14C records which he himself questions the accuracy of, and if you look at his graph it completely misses the Dalton minimum.
The 14C record is not perfect, but it is not so bad as to obscure the variations. And the Dalton minimum was not really a Grand Minimum. Usokin is not the only one that has come to this conclusion. In fact, that is the generally accepted wisdom. There is no predictable pattern in the Grand Minima.
Jørgen F. (04:16:03) :
The little white lie that ran amok……
Very interesting perspective….
Leif,
What is your opinion about the NASA publication Chilly Temperatures During the Maunder Minimum, by Drew Shindell stating the following quote:
“The drop in temperature was related to ozone in the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere that is between 10 and 50 kilometers from the Earth’s surface. Ozone is created when high-energy ultraviolet light from the Sun interacts with oxygen. During the Maunder Minimum, the Sun emitted less strong ultraviolet light, and so less ozone formed.
The decrease in ozone affected planetary waves, the giant wiggles in the jet stream that we are used to seeing on television weather reports.
The change to the planetary waves kicked the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)—the balance between a permanent low-pressure system near Greenland and a permanent high-pressure system to its south—into a negative phase. When the NAO is negative, both pressure systems are relatively weak. Under these conditions, winter storms crossing the Atlantic generally head eastward toward Europe, which experiences a more severe winter. (When the NAO is positive, winter storms track farther north, making winters in Europe milder.) The model results, shown above, illustrate that the NAO was more negative on average during the Maunder Minimum, and Europe remained unusually cold. These results matched the paleoclimate record”. – end of quote.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=7122
A possibly stupid question to Dr Svaalgard: If the sun has little effect on climate variations, how does this affect climate science and climate models? I belive the sun has been used as an explanation of climate variations in the past (?) – if we now know that is not the case, how do we know that current variations is not due to some unknown factor? Have your findings been discussed by climate scientists?
Pardon my bad english, my native language is swedish…
Leif
never trust people who say that a paper is garbage in the case when the paper questions the warmers dogma .
Almost alwyas it turns out that the person didn’t read the paper and was only repeating what he heard/read somewhere
You cannot just jump to such a conclusion based on your own dogma. The paper has been discussed extensively at ClimateAudit and most people there agreed it was substandard [to be mild]. Part 3 [that you did not study] is a give-away, as it shows the shallow science acumen of the authors.
I jump to this conclusion because it is a good empirical rule . I have observed both on the net and especially in the RL that people who design skeptic papers as “garbage” have in 9/10 cases not read the paper and rely on some third party who said that it was garbage .
So I always check by myself .
I didn’t read CA but as I read the original paper , I confirm that the first 2 parts are standard statistics . One could certainly refine but the period is there .
It is actually very easy to read and to check for everybody even if they are sometimes much too long compared to usual scientific paper standards .
On top when the question is climate statistics I always heavily weight all local analysis while I attribute a weight of epsilon to “global” analysis . Here we are local .
So 7/10 for the first part and 7/10 is not “garbage” in my book .
I agree with you that their first chart in the third part looks … strange .
By strange I do not mean wrong but unusual and probably irrelevant .
I also agree that it suggests that they will probably go orbital (in literal sense too :)) and that’s why I skipped it because I’d be loosing my time .
It might be that they deserve 1/10 for this part what would be “garbage” .
But as I mentally “cut off” the third part , I am left with the first 2 that are interesting , classical and largely correct .
N Sweden (04:28:12) :
Pardon my bad english, my native language is swedish…
Your english is better than most native speakers around here… and far better than my Swedish!
Hey, it’s english… There is no equivalent of the French Academy, you can do pretty much whatever you want with the language…
Leif Svalgaard (22:14:07) :
The transport of flux to poles is a random process. In general though, there will be a tendency for a big cycle to have more surviving flux than a small cycle, so several big cycles often occur together as well as several small cycles. This is not a sure thing, though, and that is where the random element comes in. Like, cycle 19 was very large, yet somewhat less polar flux was produced, so cycle 20 was small. This is not a ‘flaw’, but is very characteristic of such chaotic variations. The ‘technical term’ is that the process has ‘positive conservation’ or ‘memory’
Not really answering the question of random events which still stands, but cycle 20 is indeed interesting, I suspect you have no reasonable accuracy of what the polar strength was at cycle 19 which keeps your theory alive (the proxy records are considered week) and SC20’s low activity is completely expected from my side, in fact SC20 would have started a Grand Minimum in the same time scale of the Dalton and Maunder and Sporer. But little use using SC20 as an example, its part of the Grand Minima disturbance, before that we rose from the Dalton with a pattern that is quite smooth, not what u would call random?
The 14C record is not perfect, but it is not so bad as to obscure the variations. And the Dalton minimum was not really a Grand Minimum. Usokin is not the only one that has come to this conclusion. In fact, that is the generally accepted wisdom. There is no predictable pattern in the Grand Minima.
Yes its far from perfect….
Granted, the Dalton is a weaker Grand Minimium but as you know there is a floor to solar activity…its a matter of how long we stay at that floor, and 3 or so cycles is not chicken feed. How some can claim the Dalton is not part of the Grand Minima cycle is not credible in my view.
Can you list some papers from the “accepted wisdom” I would be very interested to read.
davidgmills wrote:
This lawyer will not let you slide. I don’t care what political stripe a politician wears, the way law and politics works is that the law and government must rely on scientific consensus for answers. In a court of law, as in politics, often it is impossible to wait for scientific certainty before decisions must be made. In both politics and law, you have to make decisions based on the consensus of scientists at the time.
If the scientific consensus is wrong, and proved to be wrong, the law and the government will then go with the “new” consensus until it is proved to be wrong.
That is the way the law and politics works, and frankly has no choice but to work.
From what I remember of U.S. criminal law, the accused is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. In the same way, climate change is presumed to be natural variation until the change is proven to be unnatural. AGW (man-made catastrophic climate change) supporters haven’t proven their case. Skeptics don’t have to prove any separate causation. The “scientific consensus” you claim is a political illusion, as seen from that recent Senate minority report.
TomVonk (04:50:15) :
I didn’t read CA but as I read the original paper
And you think that I did not? This is completely unjustified.
http://www.leif.org/research/DavidA10.png
http://www.leif.org/research/DavidA11.png
show that I did. And I’ll jump to an equally unjustified conclusion: I read it much more carefully than you.
The ‘statistical analysis’ in the paper is unsatisfactory [you are correct that it is like so many others – but they are just as bad. Being in bad company does not make you good]. If you want to argue otherwise, look first at their Figure 2 and tell us what is so convincing about that one].
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (05:08:09) :
Not really answering the question of random events which still stands
What question?
I suspect you have no reasonable accuracy of what the polar strength was at cycle 19 which keeps your theory alive (the proxy records are considered week)
We have magnetic measurements at the minimum in 1954 and in 1965, see http://www.leif.org/research/Polar%20Fields%20and%20Cycle%2024.pdf
and SC20’s low activity is completely expected from my side, in fact SC20 would have started a Grand Minimum
Except that it didn’t
Can you list some papers from the “accepted wisdom” I would be very interested to read.
I doubt very much that you would be really interested [or that your interest would quickly wane], but here is a typical one:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/nlin/pdf/0107/0107007v1.pdf
One of their conclusions is: “In this Letter, we show concrete evidence that the switching back and forth from grand minima to the “regular” 22–year cycle is a manifestation of a known dynamical process called attractor–widening, resulting in crisis–induced intermittency”
I think we have a high latitude spot!!
Leif,
I refered to this link but now it works.
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/torsional.html
everybody tells me with simple words its getting hotter . now I dont use as big of words as you guys and gals but I shovel my own snow and I`ve been doing alot more of it over the last couple of years . so which is it parka or fans . I just cant decide between a wood burning furnace or solar assist cooling system .
Katherine:
I guarantee you that if you go into any court in the US today and try to argue that Global Warming has not been proven, you will be the one asked to prove it.
It would not be the other way around.
N Sweden (04:28:12) :
how do we know that current variations is not due to some unknown factor? Have your findings been discussed by climate scientists?
We do not KNOW that. We also do not KNOW if the climate is manipulated by little green men from outer space, but from what we do know about how Nature works, we can hold both propositions for highly unlikely. And this has been discussed for almost 400 years. You can find thousands of posting [both pro and con] on the internet. Here is one of them:
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2004/wigley.shtml
For every article you find, you can find a contrary one.
Another spotless day!
PRESTO FROM SIDC – RWC BELGIUM Sat Dec 13 2008, 1140 UT
NOAA AR 1009 rotated over the west limb, the solar disc is spotless again.
http://sidc.oma.be/index.php
A couple days ago I downloaded data file dssn2008[1].dat
from the SIDC. http://sidc.oma.be/sunspot-data/dailyssn.php
Then manipulated the data by blocking the columbs into
spotless days, and then added a columb at the right for a
running total of spotless days. The data only extended to
Nov.30, but as of then, the total was 230.
NOAA AR1009 broke the spotless run started on 2008/11/18-
spotless day #218. I haven’t been able to find any day-by-day
data for Dec. 2008 to finish my count.
The SIDC won’t update the data again untill Jan.01,2009.
Is there anywhere else I can get daly data for the current
month?
Egad, what happened to my formatting?
Sunspotter (08:36:54) :
Is there anywhere else I can get daly data for the current
month?
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/alerts/solar_indices.html
and on that page:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/indices/quar_DSD.txt
The NOAA numbers are bigger than SIDC numbers. You have to multiply the NOAA numbers by 0.62 [approx.] to convert to SIDC Brussels numbers.
UPDATE
Upon reviewing my data, an accounting error was discovered.
The value should be 238 as of Nov.30, not 230 as stated
above. I guess that’s what happens when one proof-reads
one’s own work.Sorry.
P.S. Thanks for the links, Leif.
Thanks for your answer Leif. If I have understood you correctly, your findings mean that the planet either must be supersensitive to the changes in the sun, or that the planet is not sensitive at all to changes in the sun (almost).
What are the implications for climate science? If climate science has assumed that the sun has been a “player” in the past I guess that your findings should require climate scientists to find new explanations? Has this happened?
Does someone else perhaps know? I realize Dr Svaalgard may have better things to do than answering questions here…;)
brian notsobright (18:39:28) :
I just cant decide between a wood burning furnace or solar assist cooling system .
If you need a heater and don’t have it you die. If you need a cooler and don’t have it, you drink another beer (or soda…). Get the heater.
I have done a comparison graph of Solar Cycle 4 to 23:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin.htm
I have the beginning of SC23 set at mid 1996.
Sources disagree as to when it actually started, but the gist is the same.
One more year of this wimpy SC24 and we get a Dalton 50 max for Christmas.
Otherwise Leif wins with a SC24 65-75 max.
Robert Bateman (06:41:55) :
I have done a comparison graph of Solar Cycle 4 to 23:
One thing to be aware of: The lower panel plots use the ‘observed’ values for the solar flux instead of the ‘adjusted’ values. For radio communication, the observed values are appropriate, but for solar comparisons, the adjusted values must be used, otherwise the July values will be 7% too low [as we are further away from the Sun] and you get a spurious minimum in July [as is even visible on the graph].
N Sweden (03:25:01) :
should require climate scientists to find new explanations? Has this happened?
Yes, indeed, they call it AGW.
Things are VERY quiet. SIDC Belgium issues
All Quiet Alert.
“START OF ALL QUIET ALERT
The SIDC – RWC Belgium expects quiet Space Weather conditions for the next 48 hours or until further
notice. This implies that: * the solar X-ray output
is expected to remain below C-class level, * the
K_p index is expected to remain below 5, * the
high-energy proton fluxes are expected to remain
below the event threshold.”
Leif – Well, yes. But I thought that your findings makes it harder to explain climate change in the past – when there was no AGW. And isnt part of AGW-theory that the “usual” factors (such as solar) cannot explain todays warming, and therefore human factors are likely to play great part of current warming?
If we then learn that the way we explain climate change in the past perhaps does not work, what does that mean for AGW-theory?
In your opinion, how should climate science react to your findings about solar influence on climate?
Lief: Yes, the flux dips in July and reaches a peak in January, and all because of our orbital eccentricity. The flux is basically flatlined, as you point out.
When I look at the sunspot vs flux, I don’t see much movement in the flux from the sunspot activity (sic) directly below. This tells me that there is precious little activity in the Sun.
The whole idea of the page was to illustrate the pattern of progression SC 3-4-5 to SC 22-23-24.
The daily sunspot data (I surmise) from 1817 and below may be lost and all we have left is the monthly averages that were gleaned from them. Finding it’s way into somebody’s papers or reports the monthly survived but the daily counts disappeared.
Robert Bateman (12:44:57) :
The flux is basically flatlined, as you point out.
The year 1954 was as quiet [ http://www.dxlc.com/solar/history/hist1954.html ] and yet cycle 19 was one of the biggest one ever observed.
The daily sunspot data (I surmise) from 1817 and before may be lost
Hoyt and Schatten list the original observations for every day since 1610. The list may be found here: http://www.leif.org/research/rawgssn.txt
It’s now December 15, and still no sunspot activity.
Should we update the title? 8<)
Start a “countdown-until-2008-beats-1913-days-without-a-spot” thread?
I just went back and did a little googling around. It seem the sun went spectacularly active in September 2005 … and then went very quiet the following month in October. There was one sunspot group that generated several x-ray flares in September.
On this page if you scroll down and see the number of flare events in September, then go to this page for the following month, difference is night and day.
Another article quote’s NASA’s Dr. Hathaway as saying:
So not only did the sun get very quiet in 2005, but it got REALLY active immediately before in September.