I was interested about that, because I guess CR could be a very different effect on climate over the poles in comparison to the lower latitudes covered by oceans. What do you think about that? Is it possible that GCR anisotropy originated by IMF has opposite configuration and trends over the north pole?
It shouldn’t matter where we are as far as real changes in GCRs are concerned. The thing is a bit of a mystery. I mentioned it mainly as an illustration of why one should not hang too much on what a single stations shows.

Thank you in advance

“Is that a small spot (two?) at about 4 o’clock near the limb?”

Not anymore. But look just up to around 3 oclock near the edge, looks like someone scratched the surface. Get it quick though before it gets cold.

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html

You have to say it fast, although I don’t know how it’d sound with a drawl.

YAHP

Regards,
Bob

http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif

I sometimes think he should replace the backdrop of the sun with a crystal ball.

He’s still picking a max of 100 sunspots so Lief has not quite convinced him.

Regards,
Bob

In that article was reported an evident cosmic rays decreasing in geographic south pole. What about the north pole? Any monitoring there,

Thule is near the northern magnetic pole: http://www.leif.org/research/thule-cosmic-rays.png

There are even indications that the primary cosmic ray intensity may be decreasing:
http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/reprints/2007bieber.pdf
That link also contains a good discussion of all the factors involved in long-term cosmic ray assessment.

In that article was reported an evident cosmic rays decreasing in geographic south pole. What about the north pole? Any monitoring there, I suppose…but it could be a relevant question in relation to possible long term climate effects of cosmic rays in artctic areas.

In other news, I hear Hathaway has come out with a new forecast. Sure hope they can do an update on what’s now showing at SWPC’s graphs. They’re showing an embarrassing disconnect between the old forecast and the current situation.

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html

Viewed (timestamped 2009/01/07 00:00)

I watched this on magnetogram since earlier today.

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/javagif/gifs_small/20090107_0000_mdi_mag.gif

Remember, you heard it here first. Get it while it’s hot.

“work by Drew Shindell at NASA points to these shifts in the jetstream
Shindell used what we today consider to be an obsolete reconstruction of the Total Solar Irradiance and the conclusion is therefore no longer valid.”

Indeed neither TSI or f10.7 are valid proxies for UV reconstructions as they do not capture the required frequencies for photochemical amplification or attenuation.(eg Rozanov)

Much the same for GCR and “averaging” where there are widespread discrepancies between neutron monitors and both balloon and satellite observations and latitude attenuation eg Bazilevskaya et al

http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/SSR_Baz_2008.pdf

I agree that there are too many convolutions intervening, but it is interesting that they are hitting the problem from many sides:

There is a previous article by the same authors, http://www.iac.es/galeria/epalle/reprints/Palle_etal_EOS_2006.pdf
and they are using not only earthshine but also satellite measurements and ground cloud measurements to estimate albedo.

For fun, I guestimated from the figure the values of albedo and derived a temperature and posted it on a previous thread. There is heating and then there is a steady state.

The Palle plot is also in
http://www.leif.org/research/albedo.png
with the temperatures either atmoz http://atmoz.org/blog/2008/02/27/4-global-temperature-anomalies-say-the-same-thing/

or junkscience ihttp://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/MSUvsRSS-m.html

I used the toy model at http://junkscience.com/Greenhouse/Earth_temp.html to turn albedo to temperature and got much greater swings in amplitude ( not surprisingly) than measurements.

Normalizing on the atmoz anomaly plot for of 2005, I get, starting from 1984, (accuracy not so hot, estimated by eye)

-1.3 C 1984
-1.46
-0.80
-0.63
-1.13
-0.47
-1.17
-0.15
-1.13
-0.01
0.44
2.69 1998
0.83
0.83
0.83
0.5
1.15
-0.96 2004
0.35 2005

I am waiting for the next years albedo values :).

Anna, I’m familiar with the “earthshine” concept for measuring earth albedo. Yes ingenious (maybe), but when I consider all the gremlins that can beset such a measurement method; I tend to want to say that it appears to be consistent with the obligatory 3:1 fudge factor of all climate modelling models.

So what do we know about the spectral emittance of the moon’s surface; as a function of the moon’s “lunography” ?. What do we know about the angular distribution of the moon’s spectral reflectance; again as a function of the lunography ? What do we know about the time variations of the earth’s spectral albedo as a function of both geography and also variations in clouds ? What do we know about the angular distribution pattern of the earth’s spectral albedo ?

So we have some partial region of the earth illuminated at some oblique angle by the sun; scattering light both in angular space and spectral space, with geographical cloud variations so that part of that radiation falls on some partial region of the moon, reflecting back in some complex spectral and spatial distribution to either an extra-atmospheric satellite, or perhaps returning to earth through some other variable atmospheric transmission window.

Well you get my point. Earthshine is not unlike tree rings or ice cores or coral reefs, as a proxy for what is being accurately modelled by that real system called planet earth.

The earth is continuously making measurements of how much electromagnetic radiation it wants to emit into outer space, in order to prevent a planetary melt down; and what we really want to know is what the hell the earth thinks is the correct amount to report.

Earthshine is like asking your bookmaker’s gardner’s wife, for a tip on the big race this weekend.

But that refeerence you cited, seems to be saying that during the period (recently) when the earth temperature stood still, the earthshine didn’t show much cloud cover variation in albedo. Well I might say one could have predicted such a result; but I’m glad somebody is trying to measure such things. Perhaps one day we will get to the end of the claims that cloud cover is not chjanging and having no effect ont eh earth’s climate; which by inference absolves the sun from any responsibility either.

(CAN ANYONE TELL ME HOW A HIGH PRESSURE SYSTEM DEVELOPS OVER ICELAND IN WINTER WHEN IT IS DARK AND COLD?) -

I can point to the anomalies link http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-081228.gif, and the animation at the bottom of http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/.

4 degrees C extra, considering that the higher up atmosphere is much cooler might do it?

I have been hypothesizing geothermal sources, but I suppose confluence of southern storms around iceland might give a similar pattern ( I do not know enough to guess).

Peter Taylor (07:28:50) :
work by Drew Shindell at NASA points to these shifts in the jetstream
Shindell used what we today consider to be an obsolete reconstruction of the Total Solar Irradiance and the conclusion is therefore no longer valid.

You have touched on a number of things that I had intended to ask questions about. As a fellow Brit living a few miles away from the Met office in the ‘mild’ South West I am missing the warm wet westerly winds my geography master taught me about in the year…well let’s not go into that just now…

At present we are having a cold winter due to cold easterlies. The last two summers we had wet weather due to the position of the jet strream. Two Christmases ok we had a big high pressure which caused a long cold dry foggy spell which stopped snow falling in the alps (creating a scare about AGW threatening ski resorts)

If a high pressure moves slightly the winds change direction to a warmer/colder position. If we have an altlantic depression we get mild wet days and most notably mild nights and mild winters. In this respect has anything changed over the centuries? Arent the same things to blame/praise according to how good/bad our weather was. Our weather is famously variable as the Hadley 1660 figures -unsmoothed-demonstrate.
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/menken_hobgoblin.jpg

I saw a study of winds written around 1940 looking at patterns from 1860 to 1940 demonstrating they had notably changed and were causing mild weather over the western hemisphere.

So the question is-when we look at climate are we merely looking at a linked series of random weather events coupled with an unpredicable jet stream which, depending on how the cards fall on the table, might mean the weather is average, or warmer than normal, or cooler than normal, or wetter/drier/windier than normal, but that doesnt make it ‘abnormal’ because of co2.

I’m inclined therefore to see climate as a long series of weather events rather than something that is somehow independent of the weather events that created it. Over a long period of time -even someones average life span- it tends to even itself out as the following table shows.

Someone born in Britain in 1660 and living to 70- Average annual temp 8.87c
Some one in 1670 and living to 70 Average annual temp 8.98
1680 9.01
1690 9.05
1700 9.19
1710 9.21
1720 9.17
1730 9.14
1740 9.04
1750 9.03
1760 9.08
1770 9.10
1780 9.07
1790 9.12
1800 9.15
1810 9.13
1820 9.14
1830 9.12
1840 9.10
1850 9.14 (Start of the famously reliable Hadley global temperatures)
1860 9.17
1870 9.21
1880 9.30
1890 9.39
1900 9.40
1910 9.46
1920 9.497
1930 9.60
1940 9.70 (projected to 2009)
1950 9.76 a bit of a guess and assumes current trends continue
1960 9.83 a wild guess and assumes current trends continue

I decided to call people born in the period from 1660 to 1880 as ‘LIA Everyman’ in as much they lived part of their lives during the little ice age, and those born from 1890 to the present day as ‘UHI Everyman’ (although no adjustments have been made to correct UHI Everyman’s tendency to exaggerate temperatures)

So even through much of the Little ice ages temperatures during someones life span were barely 0.5C different to today. Not something we’d even notice-especially in our famously variable climate!

TonyB

“…the government [and the insurance lobbyists] wants a high solar cycle [=maximum risk=maximum premium].”

Must be Big Business with the boom in telecommunications satellites.