The NOAA Space Weather Prediction center updated their plots of solar indices earlier today, on January 3rd. With the exception of a slight increase in the 107 centimeter radio flux, there appears to be even less signs of solar activity. Sunspots are still not following either of the two predictive curves, and it appears that the solar dynamo continues to slumber, perhaps even winding down further. Of particular note, the last graph below (click the read more link to see it) showing the Average Planetary Index (Ap) is troubling. I thought there would be an uptick by now, due to expectations of some sign of cycle 24 starting up, but instead it continues to drop.
Meanwhile, the Oulu Neutron Monitor shows a significant up trend, reaching levels not seen in over 30 years. According to an email I received from Dr. David Archibald, GCR flux has indeed increased:
Oulu Neutron Monitor Data, plotted by David Archibald with prediction point added. Data source: University of Oulu, Finland
Svensmark is watching this closely I’m sure.
Looking at the SWPC graph below, it appears that we are in uncharted territory now, since the both the high and low cycle 24 predictions (in red) appear to be falsified for the current time frame. No new cycle 24 predictions have been issued by any solar group (that I am aware of ) in the last couple of months. The last time NASA made a change was in October 08. The question now seems to be, are we seeing the beginning of a cycle skip, or a grand minima? Or is this just an extraordinary delay for cycle 24 ?
Solar cycle 24: where are you?
h/t to Russ Steele
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There seems to have been a flurry of minor sunspots over the last few days:
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/
REPLY: True. But they are so small, one questions if they would have been seen, of if seen, noted 100+ years ago. – Anthony
Old Sol is winking at our folly for believing the carbon dioxide nonsense.
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I still think August ’08 was the minimum, and would be interested in an update of Bill Livingston’s measures of the magnetism of the few spots we get.
Anthony, maybe if you hammer a piece of gold to the mast someone will spy the spout of Cycle 24. She’s gotta be out there somewhere.
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Fred,
That may be more related to the coronal holes facing the earth than sunspot activity. Coronal hole CH 355 is currently facing the earth as well as a rather large one near the south pole. Solar flux continues to putter along at just below 70 (near the theoretical minimum around 65.4 or so).
Is there anything out there that shows the % of low level cloudiness over the last 10 years or so. If Dr Svensmark is right we should be seeing a small increase in low level cloudiness since late 2005 in response to the increase in GCR? Around 2% or so would be enough to account for the present cooling, although I’m not sure if we can measure that magnitude of increase/derease.
Sunspots : on a very strictly statistical point of view, the blue line (I guess the 12 monthes average) still can reach both of the red lines.
On a geophysical point of view, it seems totally impossible. We can hardly expect the sun to kick its activity from nearly 0 sunspots to 30 or 50 during the 6 next monthes – january begins very quietly.
Happy new year, and once more congrats for this blog, it is one of my every days reading.
I really hope NASA and whoever else is making predictions doesn’t just kick the SC24 prediction down the road another 6-9 months.
If they are using the scientific method for solar function, then the right way to do it is to explain that the model used to generate the previous prediction is falsified. Then, either develop a new hypothesis on which to base a prediction, or wait for more data to come in.
At this point, their models have been falsified 3-4 times over, and they ought to just acknowledge they have no functional model for what’s going on in the sun. That’s more honest then simply tweaking things so that the start is six months hence.
The official sunspot number has still been zero over the past several days so those micro-spots don’t seem to count for anything. Or are they simply magnetic anomalies and not even spots?
I also noticed that the neutron count has been on a nearly linear ramp up since July.
If you may be inclined to believe that solar activity and climate are linked, inclined to believe that a new Dalton minimum is on the way see:
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/combined.gif
As for the past see:
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/combined1650.gif
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/GrandMinima.gif
more on http://www.vukcevic.co.uk
If you may be inclined to believe that the solar activity meters, inclined to believe that a new Dalton minimum is on the way see:
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/combined.gif
As for the past see:
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/combined1650.gif
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/GrandMinima.gif
more on http://www.vukcevic.co.uk
The last with any number was 1009, a while ago. No new numbers in the link above.
Those spots aren’t even visible, they make tiny tims look like fully-fledged solar maximum spots.
Well, the one ‘prediction’ that is looking scarily accurate is the “Livingston and Penn paper: ‘Sunspots may vanish by 2015′” story you covered in June.
I have been trying to get up to speed on the Gleissberg cycle and came across this which I found of interest as the conclusion seems to be coming right and there is a notable link with SST and the Gleissberg Cycle (I think Bob Tisdale has hinted at such a link on his blog in the past).
http://virtualacademia.com/pdf/cli267_293.pdf
We are broadly at Gleissberg Minimum now.
Also of interest – to me at least – is that 2x Gleissberg is correlated with Spoerer, Wolf, Maunder and Dalton. Dalton was 2x Gleissberg years ago.
Note also the links with precipitation – I need to do more work on whether the correlations highlighted still hold. Others may already know better.
Every time I look at that comparison of the top ten spotless days since 1901, I notice that 1911,1912 and 1913 were all low sunspot years. We have had 2007 and 2008 in that list and maybe 2009 will be the same.
I suspect that 2009 needs to go spotless similar to 1913 before the start of calling solar minimum’s – or is that too simple an argument?
One coincidence is that the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century occurred in 1912 at Novarupta /Katmai Alaska
to Fred:
‘flurry of sunspots over the last few days’
The sunspots indicated in http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/
seem to be a summary over the last year or so, the last sunspot number given was 1009, and that spot disappeared on Dec 12 2008 over the sun’s horizon.
general comment:
The main question is, what would be the amplification factor, leading to cooling at periods of a quiet sun?
The JGR paper discussed previously in the Huffington post story: “Inter-annual Variations In Earth’s Reflectance” by Pallé et al 2009 does not seem to indicate a significant albedo change in recent years, which one would have expected, especially for 2008. But one should look at the error bars, and do the data include 2008?
Some solar physicists (Solanki, Lockwood, Froehlich) argue that in addition to TSI increases during solar cycles, there is a general increase of the ‘open magnetic flux’ of the sun, and this is supposed to be a proxy for long term TSI increases which happened since the end of the Maunder minimum.
Leif Svalgaard questions these claims – and he has good reasons.
A 0.5 Celsius global temperature increase since the end of the Maunder Minimum around 1700 up to around 1950 is estimated and attributed to a more active sun.
This means a 2 W/m2 additional forcing, yet per spherical m2 (per m2 surface of the earth), which translates to 8 W/m2 TSI increase since then. TSI variations bewteen minimum and maximum of recent solar cycles are 1.5 to 2 W/m2. Something is missing.
Every time I look at that comparison of the top ten spotless days since 1901, I notice that 1911,1912 and 1913 were all low sunspot years
Which were followed by global warming for the next 30 years. Ok – I accept that a switch to a warm PDO was at least partly responsible. But doesn’t this suggest that the sun has far less influence than many posters here seem to think.
Another example: The Dalton Minimum does not appear to have been any colder than several other periods in the 19th century. The DM cooling actually began at least a decade before the ‘low’ DM solar cycles.
Meanwhile, the press in the UK continues to produce rubbish like that given in the article linked below:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1104772/Amazing-discovery-green-algae-save-world-global-warming.html
OT but for those interested in this type of thing
AMUNDSEN OMEGA 3 SOUTH POLE RACE
http://www.amundsenomega3southpolerace.com/
The race started today.
Anthony says: “No new cycle 24 predictions have been issued by any solar group (that I am aware of ) in the last couple of months.”
Prof. C. de Jager in the Netherlands Journal of Geosciences predicts for cycle 24 to have a maximum sunspot number of 68 ± 17 to be reached only in 2014.
Plot that on your graph. It looks quite plausible. I keep on mentioning this paper since nobody seems to take notice, even not Leif.
REPLY: Do you have a link to the paper? Sometimes things just get lost in the volume of comments here. – Anthony
Temps over the last 25 years:
http://www.skepticsglobalwarming.com/global-warming-myth/disputing-global-warming/full-circle-global-warming-in-25-years/
In determining the low point of SC-23/24 it may also be possible to use TSI data. The TSI showed a steady drop until 20080726 at a value of 1360.7601. Since this time it has been slowly increasing in line with 70cm flux. The TSI data I used is from http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/data/tsi_data.htm
Unfortunately this data only goes back to Feb 2003 so it’s not possible to make comparisons from previous cycles.
From the TSI data, one can possible conclude we are already 5 months into the next cycle which does not help with NASA’s forcast since the general rate of increase should place us at a monthly SSN of ~ 25. My guess is that rather than SC-24 being slow to start, a more likely scenario is that it’s simply going to be a very small cycle of lower amplitude than the forcast.
In line with Anthony’s comments on the AP index it would now seem more likely for a grand solar minimun type event.
Interesting times ahead …!
I shall await George Monbiot’s view. Then Hansen’s. Then Mann’s. Finally Al Gore’s.
After all, they know Everything!
Clark (00:59:16) :
You’re right of course.
But it’s not easy for a prestigious institution, which has stubbornly insisted the science is settled, to admit they may be completely wrong. And you can’t blame them for playing “let’s wait and see” awhile longer, just to be on the safe side.
As it stands, it’s a stand-off between the CO2 theory and the solar theory – with the momentum shifting to the solar theory side. Once it becomes clear the sun is indeed the main driver, one of these prestigious institutions is going to have to be the first to out themselves, and then the whole house of cards will come crashing down.
Already more and more scientists are outing themselves – revealing that they are now SCEPTICS. Indeed for some it is beginning to get uncomfortably cold in that climate closet.
OT Rising sea level
I need a little help from you, dear readers. Could someone explain to me and other visitors to the blog (or point to appropriate sources) what is the real cause of the sea level rising? Or what are the plausible answers to the question?
1) ice melting
2) rising water temperature (resulting in increasing water volume)
a) due to accumulated solar energy
b) due to warming coming from sea bottom (vents, increased mantle convection, volcanoes, etc)
c) other reasons (biological, mineral – more dust in seas, etc)
3) Earth shrinking due to decreasing Earth angular velocity
4) ?
Thanks,
Przemysław Pawełczyk (P2O2)