The Sun today
Solar cycle 24 still getting a slow and very delayed start. This is the third one of these (that I know of) this past year.
From SIDC (Solar Influences Data analysis Center) in Belgium: http://sidc.oma.be/products/quieta/
:Issued: 2008 Dec 14 1156 UTC :Product: documentation at http://www.sidc.be/products/quieta #--------------------------------------------------------------------# # From the SIDC (RWC-Belgium): "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. #--------------------------------------------------------------------# # Solar Influences Data analysis Center - RWC Belgium # # Royal Observatory of Belgium # # Fax : 32 (0) 2 373 0 224 # # Tel.: 32 (0) 2 373 0 491 # # # # For more information, see http://www.sidc.be. Please do not reply # # directly to this message, but send comments and suggestions to # # 'sidctech@oma.be'. If you are unable to use that address, use # # 'rvdlinden@spd.aas.org' instead. # # To unsubscribe, visit http://sidc.be/registration/unsub.php # #--------------------------------------------------------------------# (h/t to sunspotter)
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
It’s a good thing, if this was not happening, AGW would be burning up the planet by now. Polar Bears would be dead, costal cities under water and gigantic massive hurricanes would be wiping man off the planet.
As soon as the sun comes alive again, AGW will take a giant massive heat wave all across the world and man will never be the same.
Obama must act now and quickly to shut down all Coal Burning power plants. Cars and trucks parked. Heating with NG and Oil needs to be stopped. We have a window of opportunity to save the planet while the sun us asleep!
Stop AGW now! Call Washington! If you need money 1-800-BAI-LOUT
Anecdotal, but;
Its minus 30 deg C here now, and with the wind chill, it was nearly -50 deg C last night. Its still only -41 with the wind chill.
The 14 day forecast is for at least 10 degrees under the historical average.
Right now, its nearly 20 degrees under the historical average.
Global warming?
BRING IT ON. PLEASE!
I think what bothers me most about this whole quiet sun thing is what the various “experts” seems to be saying. Every time a little spot group appears, they seem to rush out with press releases that cycle 24 is finally ramping up … and then it goes quiet again.
Many of these “experts” would gain more of my respect if they simply said “we don’t have a clue what is going to happen next but our best guess based on our theories of how the sun works is …” but they can’t seem to do that. Dr. Hathaway in particular seems to be “sticking to his guns” with regard to his earlier predictions for cycle 24.
Is it really that difficult to say something along the lines of “the sun is exhibiting a pattern we have never seen before in the modern era and we will have to watch it and learn from it in order to improve our future forecasts”?
And nothing on stereo behind, either.
Just have a look at the flux in my lower stitched graphic on this page:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin.htm
The long gentle dip in flux in 2008 culminating in July is purported to be from the orbital eccentricity of distance from Sun, making the reading lower.
Flux is flatlined for 2008, only the solar activity of late March and mid May showing the last gasps of SC23.
There is nothing going on up there.
Nothing, unless you count the co-rotating Equatorial Coronal Hole (Cyclops).
Including today, December 14, 2008 we have 491days without sunspots – possible minus those two days in August – according to NOAA solar indices log. When my counting is correct….Whether those 2 days, orginally pronounced blank by spaceweather.com, but later measured as sunspot days, are finally accepted as blank or as subspot days, will be decided by the Belgian SDIC. Those two days have spoiled the immaculate August, which Anthony has pointed to as a very long blank period. In August, there was also the last ‘all quiet alert’.
From spaceweather.com we have learned, that Dr. Hathaway has expressed his conviction that we are finally beyond the minimum between SC 23 and SC24. However, to my knowledge, he has sofar abstained from presenting another prediction for SC 24 maximum intensity, eventually to come.
When Hansen gave a big speech at the Houston Geological Society recently, he laughed at the solar cycle and, in typical fashion, cherry-picked some photos to ridicule the current state of the sun as a factor in the climate.
Crosspatch,
Hasn’t Dr Hathaway been saying SC 24 is about to start since 2005?
How long can one go on crying ‘wolf’?
To hunter (12:58:55)
We have a saying in Germany: who will laugh last, will laugh longest.
SC 24 has arrived, and the patient is DOA. Brain scans (flux) indicates comatose conditions. Should we plug in the life support system (AGW)?
Somebody should tap Hathaway on the shoulder, he’s wasting his breath trying to give SC24 mouth-to-mouth. What we really need here is a Coroner and an Autopsy. A priest (if the Sun is Catholic) to adminsiter the Last Rites.
Ok, I’m ranting, sorry.
I am wondering if the Co-Rotating Coronal hole will one day grow across the spectrum to be visible.
We could call it the Great Black Spot, along the lines of Jupiter.
Werner: Oh you mean those spots that only ‘Catania’ saw? That happended also on 9/11. I watched the Sun like a hawk every day, projecting, and I never found anything. I checked my seeing, 3 to 5 on the Bortle Scale. I can usually make out the tiniest of spot. Nada.
We should have had a 90 day spotless streak. 80 days minimum.
We wuz robbed!
Till the wolf bites you…
It is clear that sunspots/solar activity and climate are linked (IPCC Report AR4 1.4.3 “The solar cycle variation in irradiance corresponds to an 11-year cycle in radiative forcing which varies by about 0.2 W m–2. There is increasingly reliable evidence of its infl uence on atmospheric temperatures and circulations…could cause surface temperature changes of the order of a few tenths of a degree celsius“. But if the relationship was direct with simple mechanisms then there wouldn’t be any debate today.
There was a long period of low sunspot activity (37 consecutive months with sunspot number under 40) in the 1920’s, yet the global surface temperature (HadCRUT3) continued to increase quite strongly into the 1930’s.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/greenwch/spot_num.txt
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/monthly
The low activity came in the middle of a warm PDO, whereas this time it comes at the start of a cool PDO. Does that make a difference? Until we know the mechanisms, only time (and more research) will tell.
PS. One of the many problems in the IPCC Report is that it ignored its own statement as quoted above, therefore the figures it uses for solar influence are totally unsafe.
crosspatch (12:45:53)
Well said.
While SC23 seems to have finally passed from the scene, and other than a brief spurt of activity last month, SC24 seems to be mostly a no-show. Unless there’s a real surge in activity in 2009, the forecasts seem to be off the mark.
Sitting here in NE Oregon (La Grande) at my place it’s 19F. 7in of snow and the
rest of the week single digits and more snow yup, Global Warming all right..
(It’s not even mid December.)
When do we start to worry that the sun will not go back to its “normal” self
And when does the plan start to jump start the sun.
“normal” because what is normal for something humans have only seen miniscule bit of time in its history
Hathaways forecast for cycle 24 will be accurate…….. since he modifies it regularly as the cycle 23/24 minimum gets longer and deeper. His last modification was in November 2008. Unless December wakes up in a spectacular way soon then the official minimum is going to be July 2008 at the earliest.
Sitting here in NW Calif. (Weaverville) the snow is starting to pile up, 2 more days of it and more snow in the forecast for Thu/Fri. Snow down to 500′ in mid Dec. If this is Global Warming, chain me to the wall.
Trevor (tjexcite) (14:22:59) :
When do we start to worry that the sun will not go back to its “normal” self
And when does the plan start to jump start the sun.
“normal” because what is normal for something humans have only seen miniscule bit of time in its history
I would start to worry if the sun is still asleep in the middle of next year. This would put us into a very long cycle 23by historic standards and begin to cast doubt on cycle 24 happening at all. You can find all the stats on this at Jan Jaansens excellent Solaemon web site
The SC isn’t going to wake up anytime soon. I’d give it at least 6 mos. to do that, looking at the Dalton cycles and other examples that fit the pattern.
Scientists Issue Unprecedented Forecast of Next Sunspot Cycle
March 6, 2006
Predicting Cycles 24 and 25
The Predictive Flux-transport Dynamo Model is enabling NCAR scientists to predict that the next solar cycle, known as Cycle 24, will produce sunspots across an area slightly larger than 2.5% of the visible surface of the Sun. The scientists expect the cycle to begin in late 2007 or early 2008, which is about 6 to 12 months later than a cycle would normally start. Cycle 24 is likely to reach its peak about 2012.
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/sunspot.shtml
Beating on David Hathaway is not productive. He has other masters [e.g. a paymaster]. In addition, he does [did!] believe in his own forecast. Lately [for obvious reasons] he has mellowed somewhat. We both attended a meeting [ http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/RHESSI/napa2008/pts.php ] last week and David opened with this talk:
http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/RHESSI/napa2008/talks/MonI_Hathaway.pdf
Privately he is beginning to lean my way.
4:00 pm and the temperature is 0F here in Colorado. (Normal is about 43F.) I hate to think what winter will be like, if this is what autumn has in store.
It must be the CO2.
Robert Bateman (13:45:33) :
Think of the Livingston/Penn paper: ‘sunspots may vanish by 2015’. Then we are not in a Dalton-type, but in a Maunder-type minimum. Such disappearance of sunspot cycles for 70 years may happen again. The Maunder Minimum is more or less the heart of the so-called little ice age. It is not clear, whether the preceding Stroever Minimum also was of Maunder-type.
The theoretical models of sunspot cycles are mainly based on time series evaluations, similarly as the models for ENSO, PDO, AMO. It is very hard to do any better.
It is possible nowadays to study solar cycles on stars in the galaxy. There exist some data. If those stars are deliberately picked which are equivalent to the sun in size and age, one could make statistics, on how often Maunder-type minima occur. Such a program would last 20 to 30 years, before sufficient statistics was available.
But it could have been started 20 to 30 years ago – and has not been done, nor is it considered now.
Can someone explain how Hansen is apparently ignoring all this?
I have no scientific trainng or qualifications but do have an enquiring mind and loads of common sense and when I went to school I clearly understood that the sun heated the planet
I also know that the Aqua satellite found no hotspots in the Troposhere…and should have if the AGW theory is correct.
Just how is Hansen bluffing his way through…please someone explain?