As many regular readers know, I’ve pointed out several times the incident of the abrupt and sustained lowering of the Ap Index which occurred in October 2005. The abrupt step change seemed (to me) to be out of place with the data, and the fact that the sun seems so have reestablished at a lower plateau of the Ap index after that event and has not recovered is an anomaly worth investigating.
From the data provided by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) you can see just how little Ap magnetic activity there has been since. Here’s a graph from October 2008 showing the step in october 2005:
click for a larger image
However, some have suggested that this event doesn’t merit attention, and that it is not particularly unusual. I beg to differ. Here’s why.
In mid December I started working with Paul Stanko, who has an active interest in the solar data and saw what I saw in the Ap Index. He did some research and found Ap data that goes back further, all the way to 1932. His source for the data is the SPIDR (Space Physics Interactive Data Resource) which is a division of NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC). He did some data import and put it all into a mult-page Excel spreadsheet which you can access here.
I had planned to do more study of it, but you know how holidays are, lot’s of things to do with that free time. I didn’t get back to looking at it until today, especially after SWPC updated their solar datasets on January 3rd, including the Ap Index. Looking at the data to 1932, it was clear to me that what we are seeing today for levels doesn’t exist in the record.
About the same time, I got an email from David Archibald, showing his graph of the Ap Index, graphed back to 1932. Having two independent sources of confirmation, I’ve decided to post this then. The solar average geomagnetic planetary index, Ap is at its lowest level in 75 years, for the entirety of the record:
Click for a larger image – I’ve added some annotation to the graph provided by Archibald to point out areas of interest and to clarify some aspects of it for the novice reader.
The last time the Ap index was this low was 1933. The December 2008 Ap value of 2, released by SWPC yesterday, has never been this low. (Note: Leif Svalgaard contends this value is erroneous, and that 4.2 is the correct value – either way, it is still lower than 1933) Further, the trend from October 2005 continues to decline after being on a fairly level plateau for two years. It has started a decline again in the last year.
This Ap index is a proxy that tells us that the sun is now quite inactive, and the other indices of sunspot index and 10.7 radio flux also confirm this. The sun is in a full blown funk, and your guess is as good as mine as to when it might pull out of it. So far, predictions by NOAA’s SWPC and NASA’s Hathway have not been near the reality that is being measured.
The starting gate for solar cycle 24 opened ayear ago today, when I announced the first ever cycle 24 sunspot. However in the year since, it has become increasingly clear that the horse hasn’t left the gate, and may very well be lame.
That “its” should have no apostrophe.
Interesting article.
Yabut, wasn’t 1934 the hottest year on record? So a very low index in 1933-1937 would indicate that 2009 should be just as hot.
One should add that the 1930-50’s atmosphere, according DVI Dust Veil Index, was very clean of volcanic particles, and that the 1960-70’s was not.
Today’s atmosphere is mostly clean again like in the 1930-50’s, the last major eruption that had a large effect on the climate was Pinatuba in 1991.
If there is another large eruption now I think the UNEP/IPCC doctrine is dead?
Thnaks Anthony !
I had been looking for some time without success for this earlier data. Obviously we will need more time to see what the longer tem trend shows. It would appear likely that a longer term low AP is needed before it shows up in the temperature trends as in the 70’s cooler period. A sharp drop from a higher point such as in 1933 may not have been sufficient to cause any noticeable temperature drop.
What I do find most interesting about the AP index is that it always tends to rebound sharply upwards after the SC minimums of the past. This time however the opposite has occured.
Thanks for providing that link to SPIDR — I was wondering where the data was coming from for the pre-1991 period.
It is interesting to see low Ap indices matching up with solar minimums, especially during 1933 & 1996, two periods noted for record levels of heat. Which just goes to show that climate is a lot more complicated than pointing at levels of CO2 or various cycles of solar activity.
That being said, I think you may be onto something here. We may see the onset of a really protracted cold period as a result of the confluence of several events, including the negative PDO and a rather quiet sun. Should the sun stay at levels below NOAA predicted values and a negative AO/NAO kick in, I suggest we break out the longjohns.
Justin. Oh, crikey – can we finally put to rest the idea that 1934 was the hottest year?!? It was…in the USA! I know Americans think the US is the centre (see what I did there) of the Universe, and I know those poor saps at Hollywood put every major disaster/alien-invasion/major event directly in the good old US, but there are a lot of other countries out there. The hottest year globally was 1998, so can we ALL remember that please? This isn’t yank-bashing. I’m English, and we actually have an affection for the US since 1942 (even though you were late and made poor excuses. But you did more than make up for it when you finally arrived). I know your media is to blame for insular reporting, so try and listen to the BBC world service a bit. Yes, I know they lie through their teeth on climate, but they get their politics pretty much spot on. Listen to ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ on Radio4. It’s fascinating stuff and gives a superb picture of other countries. But don’t listen to the ‘Today’ programme which is the Beeb at its worst.
Justin,
No that 1934 record was only in the united States.
Seems like something is going on, however there appears to be a 6-7 year lag with temp, the abrupt spike in 1992 correlates with the temp spike in 1998,, and the abrupt uptick in 1972 correlates with the abrupt end of cooling in 1978, and so perhaps even if the US record temp would be seen, the Ap uptick would be in around 1928/27
Just an observation, may be totally wrong, but seems interesting
No, 1934 was not that hot globally, it was only the “hottest year on record” in the USA. Look at the global temperature since 1932 (same year range as the Ap graph) :
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1926/mean:132/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1932/mean:12
There are those (including myself), that trust the North American temperature record more than the “Global Reconstructions” and believe it is possible that it represents Global temperatures better than the Global datasets.
1. The US and Canada have a large number of rural stations (and just many more stations) which may have helped to reduce UHI contamination of the record compared to the rest of the world.
2. The sea surface temperature bucket adjustments make the entirety of the sea surface records suspect.
3. While NA may be just 4.8% of the area of the Earth, we are 16.5% of the land area, and that’s getting to be more than statistically significant as a percentage of land-based records.
4. I simply do not trust Jones and the Hadley Centre, or Hansen and GISS, their adjustments and extrapolation do not improve accuracy, they simply make up false accuracy and data.
5. If Mann thinks he can reconstruct the world’s temperature to a tenth of a degree from a couple of stands of bristlecone pines in California, it makes far more sense that we can measure the world’s temperature using all of North America.
6. Much of the Global warming signal of the 20th and 21st centuries is found in stations suspect because they suffered discontinuities through Mao’s cultural revolution in China or were outposts under the Stalinist Soviet Union.
7. If you take a handful of sand on a beach and measure its composition it is a pretty accurate representation of the sand on the whole beach.
Personally I believe the 1930’s were the warmest decade on record since we started measuring.
“….lot’s of things to do…” doesn’t have an apostrophe as well.
So speak the grammar-Nazis.
what happens if it hits zero?
With respect to the Ap index graph (1932-2008)
1.There wasn’t a 1970s cooling period. The cooling began in the 1940s and ended in the 1970s. The cooling began ~20 years before the dip in the Ap index.
2. As Justin Sane (post #2) points out the 1932 dip occurs just before the warmest period in the US record and at a time global temperatures were still rising.
Whatever the implications of the low Ap index, it doesn’t appear to have much effect on earth’s climate. I accept that is not what’s being implied in the article, but it’s certainly a connection David Archibald is trying to make.
Anthony:
It is hard to know what to say. I still don’t see much here. But congratulations about the work done with Stanko and Archibald. We now have a much longer set of data.
The argument you presented several months was a graph that indicated – to me at least – the current level looked roughly like 1995-1998. And I was one of those who said that big fall in 2005 didn’t seem important; this index jumps around quite a lot.
Now you have figures back to 1932 that show the current level is lower than any time afterward. Meanwhile you also got the benefit of a downward drift in the last several months. Impressive.
I’m glad to see the longest graphs back to 1932. I offer no opinion on what the low level might mean or foretell.
Steve Berry (00:56:55) : ‘…even though you were late and made poor excuses..’ The Americans should never have bothered have turning up at all? Look what ‘winning’ did for you!
Over the next two weeks all agencies that report global temperature will post their numbers for December. Although this is off topic for this particular post I figured I might as well post my SWAG’s for these metrics.
UAH: +0.05°C +/-0.05°C
RSS: +0.08°C +/-0.05°C
NCDC: +0.37°C +/-0.1°C
GISS: +0.31°C +/-0.1°C
HadCRU: +0.27°C +/-0.1°C
We’ll see in about 12 days where these estimates stand.
I might as well include NCDC US data estimate for December as well.
NCDC US: -1.6°F (-0.89°C) +/- 0.2°F (0.11°C)
Steve Berry, you sound like a flamin’ (hope I got that apostrophe right) [snip–I had to look that one up, and it may have been meant as a friendly cross cultural jest, but still a violation of blog policy ~ charles the moderator]
If we’re being Mr Picky today, is it not maxima & minima as opposed to maximums & minimums, I’m not a Latin scholar?
BTW it is jolly cold yet again in the UK today, more coal needed urgently it burns well & gives off something called heat! I do believe that we used to burn it to generate electricity before the lunatics took over the asylum!
As sunspot activity has for the moment ceased, I expect skirt lengths to start increasing – high sunspot activity in the sixties correlated with mini-skirt lengths pretty well! The Met Office are playing the “we thought this would happen” game before the raging heat of 2009 kicks in! I certainly hope it does soon. Brrr.
Was the Chaiten? eruption in Chille sufficient to assist in aerosol cooling anyone? It certainly looked to be a significant eruption to me.
BTW & slightly OT, Steve Berry:-) Yes, the US was a tad late joining the party, (& Hollywood always centres its disasters in the US rather predictably & the Brit always gets killed in the last 10 minutes by dying heroically), but don’t forget, that mighty “Sleeping Tiger” was keeping jolly GB in supplies well before 1942 or we would have gone under long before, & it is better to be late than never! They also designed & built for us that wonderful airframe that became the Cadillac of the Skies, the P51Mustang, to Air Ministry specs of course! It was perfectly produced with an excellent Allison engine with a ceiling of 15,000 feet, (Air Ministry specs again!). When it failed to perform above that height (needed to avoid air attack) – that equally wonderful design the Merlin engine was fitted to it. The rest is history fella! You are bang on re the Today programme, its bias towards the green lobby lets them avoid the science in favour of myth! I suspect there is a Ministry of Propaganda within the Beeb controlled by Richard Black & Roger Harrabin. As to the next Hollywood blockbuster disaster, which will presumably be yet another comet/asteroid crashing into the planet – in America of course, I hope they get the impact splash correct this time as in the last movie an angled object impacting into sea or land would NOT produce a vertical “splash”, & technically the US would have had little of a wave impact but Europe would have been awash! Poor show but a rip roaring yarn!
Thanks Jeez for furnishing the script for the next X Files movie….Spooky Mulder and his conspiracy buddies would have great fun with this!
“There are those (including myself), that trust the North American temperature record more than the “Global Reconstructions” and believe it is possible that it represents Global temperatures better than the Global datasets.”
Hmm… that makes sense. Yeah, why don’t we take data from 1.7% of the globe when we have data for (much) more than half… Yeah that makes sense.
“The US and Canada have a large number of rural stations (and just many more stations) which may have helped to reduce UHI contamination of the record compared to the rest of the world.”
The rest of the world (strangely) somehow also has rural stations. You know, what with America being a developed country and all that, developing countries tend to have more rural stations that America (!)…
“The sea surface temperature bucket adjustments make the entirety of the sea surface records suspect.”
But that’s no reason to disregard them entirely. The American data set is just as subject to strange adjustments anyway. If you’re so suspicious of it then just look at the land data.
“While NA may be just 4.8% of the area of the Earth, we are 16.5% of the land area, and that’s getting to be more than statistically significant as a percentage of land-based records.”
Actually the U.S. is 1.7% of the globe and 6.6% of land. Not statistically significant.
“I simply do not trust Jones and the Hadley Centre, or Hansen and GISS, their adjustments and extrapolation do not improve accuracy, they simply make up false accuracy and data.”
Funny. Because they’re the exact same people who run the American dataset… But of course they forgo their corrupt tendencies when doing it for the homeland. And it’s funny, because the satellites are in such good agreement with the surface data.
“If Mann thinks he can reconstruct the world’s temperature to a tenth of a degree from a couple of stands of bristlecone pines in California, it makes far more sense that we can measure the world’s temperature using all of North America.”
Well we know that his reconstruction is highly inaccurate, but at least you can argue he’s doing the best with what little he’s got. We have better and more extensive data than just America, so why not use it?
“Much of the Global warming signal of the 20th and 21st centuries is found in stations suspect because they suffered discontinuities through Mao’s cultural revolution in China or were outposts under the Stalinist Soviet Union.”
But they weren’t found BECAUSE of the discontinuities (which weren’t that big anyway), there just happened to be discontinuities. There’s been warming documented in many other places and in those places before and since.
“If you take a handful of sand on a beach and measure its composition it is a pretty accurate representation of the sand on the whole beach.”
…you know that’s entirely different…
“Personally I believe the 1930’s were the warmest decade on record since we started measuring.”
Well I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.
re its/it’s
…my name is famous
…your name is famous
…their name is famous
…her name is famous
…his name is famous
…its name is famous
No possessive pronouns have an apostrophe. It’s easy to remember.
Xavier Itzmann:
“That “its” should have no apostrophe.”
Anyone named Itzmann must know all about ‘its.’ And Xavier is, of course, correct. Here’s a useful graphic: click
Forgive me for asking the obvious, but if we are to accept that the solar actvity correlates closely with our temperature record, then surely the 1930’s should show up as a cooling phase as should the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. I know there is a “lag”, but this does’t seem to quite fit what we are seeing here.
If we accept also the 1970’s cooling happened as shown, then surely we should expect similar dips in global temps during the other periods I have highlighted. While I accept that we might be on the brink of experiencing a cooler phase due to the late 1990’s/early 2000’s dip in solar activity, how might we explain away the dip showing up in the 1930’s. Indeed, if we are to accept JEEZ’s contention that the 1930’s was the warmest decade on record, then our match of temp against sun seems pretty distant.
Having stated all of that, the extent of the recent dip in solar activity does appear a little alarming and it is difficuly not conclude that such an inactive sun won’t have some sort of effect on our climate.
Ben
Think I should point out that I was pulling the yank chain – or perhaps that should be yanking the chain! I’m full of admiration for the US and all that it has given, and continues to give. No nation is perfect. Even though we (England) gave the world much, we also gave it concentration camps. So, yes I was just having a little fun, and no nasty stuff intended at all. Although I do wish Hollywood would set films (movies) in other countries. Close Encounters got close at the start of the film. But guess where the aliens chose to actually make contact. And then they re-set War of the Worlds in the US when the story is near Woking in Surrey (if memory serves). When we were just about to break the sound barrier the US said they’d give us all they knew about building a Hydrogen bomb if we gave them the secret of how to break through the sound barrier. Seemed like a fair trade at the time. Ah, now I can hear the sound of a Merlin V12. Go to youtube to listen.
Parts of Britain to drop to -10 degrees C tonight!
Frankly, the correlation between that Ap index and global temperatures reminds me of the correlation between global temperatures and CO2 – largely non-existent. Look at 1998!
Alex Llewellyn:
Alex should brush up on his reading comprehension. I believe that jeez was referring to North America [NA] in his statement, as opposed to the U.S.
Alex had my attention, up until his deferential apology for Michael Mann’s bogus hockey stick data. What, Mann gets a pass, but jeez gets nitpicked on every single point? The fact that Mann refuses to disclose his taxpayer-funded data and methodology tells us all we need to know about his global warming agenda.
Overall, I thought jeez made a pretty convincing argument. Keep in mind that it is not the skeptics’ point of view that must be defended, but that of those purveying the AGW/CO2 hypothesis.
@Ben Kellett
IMHO, while there seems to be SOME correlation between sun activity & temperature, it is not the only thing going on! I would like to remind everyone of the wonderful Wood For Trees web site, here showing sunspots vs temperature since 1850, using an 11 year average:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/mean:132/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/mean:132/scale:0.01/offset:-0.8
Close, but no cigar 🙂
1933 is around solar minimum so I wouldnt get too carried away….plus 1934 showed no form on the world scale. One country’s record can be heavy influenced by local events.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
Because of the Earth’s “thermal mass”, peaks and valleys in global temperature changes due solar causes would lag the solar peaks and valleys. Thus, if the solar variation is annual, the corresponding temperature highs and lows (if any from that cause) would be offset by months. If the cycle being measured is decades (e.g. Sunspots or Ap index), then the offset could be many years — in proportion to the length of the cycle. The forgoing says nothing about the possible heating/cooling mechanisms, if any.
Hence, I would not expect global temperature cycles to precisely overlay solar cycles (of any type) even if they were related. Consequently, if this “low” in Ap index implies low temperature, we probably have not seen the lowest temperature from that cause.
Alex (00:59:53) :
Justin,
No that 1934 record was only in the united States.
“Seems like something is going on, however there appears to be a 6-7 year lag with temp, the abrupt spike in 1992 correlates with the temp spike in 1998,, and the abrupt uptick in 1972 correlates with the abrupt end of cooling in 1978”
The lag was also noticed by previous researchers:
http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/solarwind.htm
We’ll be feeling the real effects of the drop in 2005 starting in 2009-13
Brrrr. Snow on the ground this morning.
I’m with jeez. I like to look at long continuous temperature records from individual out of the way sites — I have an unproven feeling that they more closely represent the reality of global temperature change. And, I seriously question the technical validity and impact of all the “adjustments” affecting the official averaged records.
Smokey wrote…..
“Keep in mind that that it is not the skeptics’ point of view that must be defended….”
Sorry, but what kind of statement is this? Does that mean that we, as skeptics can churn out any old bunkum, while those holding more mainstream views must defend & justify?
If the skeptics’ stance is to be taken seriously, I’m sorry but our views have to be as (if not more) robust, defendable, well reasoned and backed up with solid evidence, as those views supporting AGW.
While I agree that there is an up hill battle to fight against alamism and in attracting funding for research that challenges AGW, I certainly do not believe that this battle is best fought by not having to defend our views. Indeed, the very opposite is true.
Ben
‘If we’re being Mr Picky today, is it not maxima & minima as opposed to maximums & minimums, I’m not a Latin scholar?’
‘Maximum’ and ‘minimum’ are, in origin adjectives of the first/second declensions in the superlative degree, the positives of which are ‘magnus’ (large) and ‘parvus’ (small’). The –um’ inflexional suffix indicates neuter gender and nominative case (masculine would be –us and feminine would be –a). The plural ending for neuter substantives (nouns and adjectives) with nominative singular in –um is –a. This latter fact can cause confusion, since the nominative singular feminine is also –a (a female graduate of a college is an ‘alumna’).
In ancient Greek, the equivalent endings are: singular –on, plural –a, e.g. one ‘phenomenon’, many ‘phenomena.’
SOLA EST LINGUA MORTUA BONA.
But when words have been used in English, or at least in everyday speech, for a long enough period of time, they tend to assimilate to English structures, which would mean, among other things, acquiring a regular -s plural. Thus the plural of ‘forum’ is forums, not ‘fora’.
Hey Steve Berry: I watch BBCA, mostly DOCTOR WHO, and it seems like England always gets attacked by aliens. And why does everyone in the whole universe speak with an English accent? Seriously, DON’T look to Hollywood for realism, or the Beeb. And you spelled center incorrectly!
OT (but no good threads for these):
1) 7,001,387 hits (and counting)
2) Dr. Heidi Cullen is subbing for Sam Champion on ABC’s (the US ABC) Good Morning America. I don’t know if this is a step up or a step down for her. They share the same climate views.
3) While I’m talking about ABC, last night their Evening News closed with a spot on the disappearing glaciers at Glacier National Park that was shot last fall before this winter’s snow. I later found on their web site it was first aired Dec. 18. One mentioned that to rebuild the glaciers the area needs 3X the average snowfall for years, I’m not sure what the current snow depth is, but they might be getting 3X this year. West Glacier’s forecast is snow each of the forecast days.
4) I would’ve been more interested in something on the Yellowstone earthquake swarm, but I guess it’s still the holiday season. Besides, this time of year I think snowmobiles are about the only easy access into the park.
Arthur Glass:
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Ben Kellett:
I agree with you. But the real problem is in forcing the pro-AGW contingent to defend their [failed] AGW/CO2 hypotheses — something they are very adept at dodging.
Chris H (04:06:33) :
@Ben Kellett
IMHO, while there seems to be SOME correlation between sun activity & temperature, it is not the only thing going on! I would like to remind everyone of the wonderful Wood For Trees web site, here showing sunspots vs temperature since 1850, using an 11 year average:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/mean:132/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/mean:132/scale:0.01/offset:-0.8
Chris, I’ve tweaked your graph to give you a better idea of what’s happening. Smoothing the temperature date at 1/3 of the solar cycle length brings out the solar signal in the temperature data better than smothing over the whole cycle length. I’ve also detrended the temperature data to take account of the 30%-50% inflation of the post 1970 trend brought about by the positive phase of the PDO and the *ahem* ‘adjustments’ introduced by Giss and Hadcru. It also gives a clue as to what’s going to happen over the next 5 years or so as the temperature seems to have resumed the lag behind solar activity it displayed a century ago.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/mean:43/detrend:0.4/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/mean:132/scale:0.01/offset:-0.9
On an off topic note in the fun weather category:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090104/national/prairie_cold_snap
“Residents of Saskatoon woke up to the coldest temperatures since 1966, with a wind chill of -45 C, leaving the city shrouded in ice fog. ”
Wow, now that’s cold.
“Seek and Ye shall Find!” Even a regular joe like myself can see there doesn’t (apostrophe ok here) seem to be any link between low AP and temperature. However, we only have a very short time frame as reference. Perhaps the AP was this low or even lower at different times in the past causing who knows what. But we don’t (apostrophe again ok here) have those records and cannot know what correlation, if any, to climate there is. Let’s (once again apostrophe ok here) not fall into algorean science and use a limited period to try to conncect dots that are not there.
As this is a new thread that will run some time can I state that the global temperatures since 1850 are not worth the time that is spent analysing them and global temperatures from any era are pretty meaningless.
I fully endorse the validity of using good national records-the longer the better.
I graph Hadley CET back to 1660 a lot. I have also done similar work on Swiss figures to 1860. I know Ellie from Belfast has graphed figures from Armagh and at various times I have seen German, US, and Dutch figures. If there is an existing site which links to long national records could someone point me in the right direction? If not, if people would place a link here to their national (or even regional) temperature data sets I will collate and publish them as a useful resource.
TonyB
Ric Werme (05:02:06) :
Oops – Heidi Jones (who?), not Heidi Cullen. Sigh. I wondered why they didn’t say she was from the Weather Channel.
Looks like I need to again refer to my article which points out that combining solar variability with ocean variability largely resolves the problem of time lags and poor fit between solar variability and temperature.
http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=1302
And one must remember to consider the net combined effect of all the ocean cycles at the same time, not just PDO or AO.
Oceans and sun in same phase for any length of time as from 1975 to 2000 can be expected to give the largest and fastes temperature changes.
I think it will be difficult if not impossible to correlate solar activity and gloal climate -at least in the short run. It is only recently that we’ve been able to measure precisely solar activity, and past proxy methods haven’t always delivered expected results.
A case in point in the timing of the LIA. Many scientists date the LIA incorrectly with the Maunder Minimum. However, ice core data from New Zealand, Africa, the Artic, as well as anecdotal evidence from North America, Asia, and Europe have it beginning nearly 3 centuries earilier. For it wasn’t just temperatures but precipitation patterns that changed. Was it just coincidence that much of the LIA occured during the negative phase of the Gliessberg Cycle (this 200 year period of solar inactivity that encompassed the Sporer, Maunder, and Dalton Minimums)? We simply do not know, but we do know that glaciers in both hemispheres began to grow around 1300, that is 300 years before the Maunder Minimum. The Gleissberg Cycle has been in a positive or active mode since 1820 and with it, a period of long term global warming). Some scientists believe that the Gleissberg Cycle cycles from positive to negative every 200 years. Again, this is more of a “guess”. Who knows, maybe the Russians are correct, and we are about to enter a 150 year “cooling” period.
Otherwise, our climate cycles for the last 12000 years appear to be determined primairily by the ability of our oceans to absorb and exhaust heat energy. Two fluids, our oceans and the atmosphere above it, oscillate in a very complex and chaotic way. Add it the short term effects of volcanic aresols (and other man made pollution), not to mention other things such as land use, and it is almost impossible to predict what determines our climate.
The Alarmist have spun thier entire arguement around the narrow bandwidth of infared absorbtion of a trace gas -namely CO2. Let’s us not make the same mistake.
About 1934.
Well first I question the temp datasets for the last 200 years.
Hadcrut tells me that South-Norway had its warmest year in 1934 and that the 1930’s where as mild as the 10 last years.
The same goes for Arctic in Hadcrut2 Jones et al, but that changed a lot with Hadcrut 3, with old “corrected” wooden seabucket measurements, surprise?
So why does the non-urban station in a large degree tell us that we today towards the polar regions do not have significant warmer weather than in the 1930’s?
When actually this is where it today should be much warmer to validate that the global temperature is warmer today than it was in the 1930’s.
You can only compare 1934 with other years that have the same PDO, ENSO, NAO, AO, Solar activity, volcanic activity(DVI) etc etc..?
There seem to be many ways to measure solar activity, and the ap index is but one. If memory holds, don’t the Danish solar researchers (Svensmark and Christensen) show that the 30s was an active solar period? They used a method that produced an indicator of solar activity using the length of the sunspot cycle, again if memory holds (from their 1991 article in Science). And sunspot activity per se wasn’t at a low in the 1930s, either, I don’t think.
So maybe what we are learning here is that we need to understand which indicators of solar activity are most correlated with temperatures on earth, and try to identify the physical mechanisms by which solar activity might cause significant temperature changes on earth. Judith Haigh’s articles suggest that when UV flux is highest (when the solar wind is lowest), more ozone is created in the stratosphere, which affects wind circulation patterns, and somehow causes polar weather to advance more toward the equator (both poles). So it would be interesting to see if the solar wind in the 1930s were very weak, or otherwise.
OT 🙂 Arthur Glass – thanks it was very informative! I actually get much of my Latin from the back of my 1925 P.O.D!
Hugo 🙂 God was supposed to be an Englishman so tradition has it in the UK, that would perhaps explain why the accent flows thro’ the Galaxy! Oh, & the Dalek did actually fall to Earth in the US in series 1! Curiously DR WHO has avoided mentioning Climate Change so far!
It is still very cold!!!!!
Forgive me for asking the obvious, but if we are to accept that the solar actvity correlates closely with our temperature record, then surely the 1930’s should show up as a cooling phase as should the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. I know there is a “lag”, but this does’t seem to quite fit what we are seeing here.
I would think PDO (and massive El Ninos) could determine whether the effects are enhanced or mitigated.
Smokey, I don’t think we’re yet at the point where we can say for sure that the AGW/CO2 hypothesis has failed. Yes, there may be some holes here & there. Problems with the “Hockey Stick” and yes, the rate of warming has definately slowed to mention but a couple!
There are however, as we are all of us very aware, some pretty complex processes out there and I actually believe it’s still too early to call. I feel that the time of some reckoning at least is drawing near. For example, should Ap Index continue to fall and things don’t change much or indeed if temps start to rise again, then I think we might need to start taking the CO2 thing a bit more seriously. Conversely, if we enter a sustained period of cooling, then I reckon the IPCC et al have some serious explaining to do.
As regards defence of theory dodging by those who support AGW, I have to say that I have been really impressed by some the extremely robust defending of AGW contributers such as (among others) Foinavon and Joel Shore particularly on the James Hansen “nailed it” topic back in December.
My point is that our views need to be presented at least as well as those supporting AGW and our science equally if not more robust – but only to the point where there continues to enough doubt in AGW to bother contending. By the same token, I would expect AGW scientists to eventually capitulate if reality doesn’t soon (10 years) start to match projection.
Ben
I have read nearly all the comments and I do not understand the link some people are doing between low Ap and temperatures.
The second graph is making the link with solar minimum which has nothing to do with temperature directly. Solar minimum is end of a solr cycle and it seems that end of solar cycle is combined with a low Ap.
Now what is interesting is that we are precisely at the end of a solar cycle and this end seems to refusing to end. We had in fact for the first time since 1913 a sunspotless month in August 2008 and we had also since 1913 the record number of spotless day for a year. Unfortunately we do not have Ap data for 1913 but what is interesting is that now we have record (for 76 years) low Ap. So this seems to be confirming that this end of solar cycle is quite unusual (for the last 90 years).
It seems also that Ap stays low while new Solar Cycle seems to start and then Ap is recovering.
Will Ap continue to go down? Will that announce a much longer end of the SC23?
Are the Sun cycles data available somewhere so that we could compare them with Ap and see whether we could take any conclusion from this low Ap?
Re:des332 (01:10:26) :
what happens if it hits zero?
Good question. Does anyone know the answer? Would it be something of significance, or is reaching zero somehow impossible?
The aa index is also low – here’s a picture of the period since 1878 of AA* >60
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/GEOMAG/image/aastar07.jpg
It’s too early to say if this is telling us much but if you look at this paper-
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/sonstige/solard.pdf
and especially the chart at ‘figure 2’ which shows the derived aa index back to 100 AD and highlights that there is a clear link with a very low aa index and Wolf, Spoerer and Maunder (interestingly Dalton is not as deep nor as prolonged a dip).
It will be interesting to see how this develops over the next few years.
JP (05:18:50) :
I think it will be difficult if not impossible to correlate solar activity and global climate -at least in the short run.
Not impossible:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/mean:38/detrend:0.4/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1980/mean:1/scale:0.0012/offset:-0.3/plot/pmod/from:1980/offset:-1368.9/mean:2/scale:0.12
Sorry my prior post should read “derived aa index back to 1100 AD”
My! It’s ‘discuss America’ time!
“‘…even though you were late and made poor excuses..’ The Americans should never have bothered have turning up at all? Look what ‘winning’ did for you!”
If I recall correctly, the main assistance the US provided in WW2 was economic. It’s hard to compare fighting in a meaningful way, but if we take ‘total deaths’as a measure of how ‘hard’ the fighting was, the US was the lowest ‘provider’, just above the Netherlands. But the US did very well out of the economic side afterwards, so it was well worth turning up for them…
Of course, if you measure things like this, WW2 turns out to be primarily a war between Russia and Germany, with a few other countries on the sidelines. Which I happen to think is pretty accurate.
“When we were just about to break the sound barrier the US said they’d give us all they knew about building a Hydrogen bomb if we gave them the secret of how to break through the sound barrier. Seemed like a fair trade at the time..”
AFAIR, the Brits STARTED building the A-bomb, moved all our people to the US when the Manhatten project started, and then got frozen out by Congress after the war ended. Hydrogen bombs came later. http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/nagasaki_2733.jsp refers.
The Sound Barrier was simply given to the US by the British politicians at the time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_M.52 refers. In fact, I suspect the decision made sense at the time – it was assumed that future air wars would be fought with robot missiles, so there was little point developing fast manned aircraft.
The December 2008 Ap value of 2, released by SWPC yesterday, has never been this low.
This is because the SWPC values are not correct.
Here are ap values for the past 12 months:
1 7.8
2 11.0
3 11.1
4 9.2
5 6.3
6 6.7
7 5.4
8 5.0
9 5.6
10 6.5
11 4.2
12 4.2
Use http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/gifs/apindex.html to get ap for any month.
REPLY: Alright, but don’t leave us hanging. WHY are they wrong? SWPC cites this as the source for the Ap data:
# Source Ap: GeoForschungsZentrum, Postdam, Germany
# Prior to January 1997, Institut fur Geophysik, Gottingen, Germany
– Anthony
I am not alleging a causal connection (with the sun activity) here, but I visited the AMU web-page today, and discovered some rather striking results (I think) .
At 5 mb, the temperature is now 0.30 warmer than same date (jan 3rd) last year,
at 10 mb , 0.30 warmer
at 600 mb 0.80 cooler, and
at 900 mb 0.42 cooler.
Are we moving towards a new reversal of the stratospheric cooling – surface heating trend we have seen the latter decade(s)?
If so, I assume this should have some sgnificance for the skill of the models?
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Chris Schoneveld
The paper I refer to above is the Duhau & de Jager paper you referred to in an earlier thread/posted comment.
After yesterday’s posting of the solar cycles graphsequations, I had an email from a solar scientist (not subscribing to the planetary link, wishes to stay anonymous) suggesting that if in the periodicity equation 2pi/3 factor is changed to 2pi/4 (pi/2) a far better agreement is reached between the periodicity and the amplitude waveforms. I agree: so here is the new issue.
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/combined.gif
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/combined1650.gif
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/GrandMinima.gif
Stephen Wilde: “combining solar variability with ocean variability largely resolves the problem of time lags and poor fit between solar variability and temperature.”
Then, what happened then, years before the big 1998 El Nino, which was the cause of all the global warming hysteria?, perhaps the 1989 change of direction in Sun´s orbit around the barycenter?
Tom Woods,
You can add 0.2°C to your estimates.
It wasn’t that cold!
January will be colder though.
The latest SSTs are charted:
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo&hot.html
Looks a little bluer than last week.
Adolfo,
The PDO went positive around 1975 which combined with a very active sun and caused the observed warming which continued up to the 1998 peak.
I would like people to stop talking about 1998 being the warmest year on record altogether. This only applies for the last 30 years if that, any farther back and you are comparing apples and oranges as far as the data available and it’s manipulation.
As to 1934 only being warmer in the US I would suggest the quality of the data makes the likely error far larger than the temperature variation both in the US and in the world as a whole.
Joseph (05:58:47) :
what happens if it hits zero?
Good question. Does anyone know the answer? Would it be something of significance, or is reaching zero somehow impossible?
ap can be zero. It is measured every three hours and a 3-hour value is often zero. Sometimes all eight 3-hour values in a day are zero, then ap for the day [called Ap] is zero. It has never happened [yet] that Ap for every day of a month has been zero.
An ap value of zero simply means that geomagnetic activity has been too weak to measure for that 3-hour interval. The 1st and 2nd of December 2008 had Ap=0, so did 12 Oct 1954 and 23 Dec 1935, but such day are rare.
The scientists have the UN’s permission for their experiment and that eliminates any possible danger to the environment.
The question is: Will Nature save us from the scientists?
————————————————————-
Amazing discovery of green algae which could save the world from global warming
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1104772/Amazing-discovery-green-algae-save-world-global-warming.html?printingPage=true
British scientists have discovered that green algae “could” bury CO2 omissions at the bottom of the ocean.
Lead researcher Professor Rob Raiswell, from Leeds University, said: ‘The Earth itself seems to want to save us.’
Scientists already knew that releasing iron into the sea stimulates the growth of algae. But environmentalists had warned that to do so artificially might damage the planet’s fragile ecosystem.
Leif Svalgaard (06:21:53) :
This is because the SWPC values are not correct.
REPLY: Alright, but don’t leave us hanging. WHY are they wrong? SWPC cites this as the source for the Ap data:
# Source Ap: GeoForschungsZentrum, Postdam, Germany
They lie to you. Or rather, they are sloppy. The Air Force [USAF, AFWA, Offutt AFB] has its own service to provide a preliminary ap value in real time. SWPC uses those real-time preliminary values and never bothers to replace them with the Potsdam values which are generally available a few hours later, e.g. right now Potsdam reports:
Date ap-indices Ap
01-01-2009 5 9 12 7 7 5 3 6 7 Est.
02-01-2009 2 3 0 2 2 6 7 15 5 Est.
03-01-2009 12 15 12 22 7 12 3 6 11 Est.
04-01-2009 7 3 2 4 2 7 5 2 4 Est.
05-01-2009 5 5 3 2 0 *** *** *** 3 Est.
REPLY: Great, just great. Who to trust these days? Which dataset is real? Which dataset is current? Which dataset is “adjusted”? The answers to these questions should NOT be known only to insiders. If the data is put out for public consumption, its is assumed to be correct. So much for data integrity. – Anthony
Stephen Wilde said….
“The PDO went positive around 1975 which combined with a very active sun and caused the observed warming which continued up to the 1998 peak”.
Well Stephen, don’t you think you’re sticking your neck out here just a little. To make this statement with such confidence strikes me as being every bit as contentious as stating that Anth. CO2 is the main driver of GW!! Suffice to say that time will very soon be the judge of whether you are right or wrong.
As regards solar activity and temp, I have to say that it seems a pretty loose fit to me. Yes, in a very general way they match excluding 1930’s-early 40’s. But of more concern to me is the radical deviation in recent decades where solar activity while dropping like a stone, is in stark contrast to temps going through the roof. While temps did indeed spike in 1998, we have still observed 7 of the hottest years on record since 2000, which for me represents continued warming.
Looking at the graphs, it feels a bit like being lost in the hills with map & compass. Desperately looking around to make features fit the map, I’m alarmed by the big hill right in front of me that doesn’t appear on my map. What is the more likely scenario?? – the map is wrong (unlikely) or I’m misinterpreting the map (probably)!
Ben
“The hottest year globally was 1998”
My, the historical revisionists are out in force!
The hottest year in the SH was 1941. The PDO and AMO went positive simultaneously circa 1930 releasing solar energy integrated over the preceding decade.
The PDO has just turned negative with the AMO to follow during this tenure. We, at present are experiencing a solar minimum of at least twice the length to which we are accustomed with all the consequences that normally attend.
Expect the next decade to be the coldest your memories, however acute they may be.
Ben,
I’m prepared to stick my neck out because the oceanic effect via multidecadal cycles is so large that it swamps pretty much everything else including (especially ?) anthro CO2.
I’m aware that time could prove me wrong but if I’m proved right I will have done the planet and humankind a service
If I pay attention to Leif Svalgaard, studying the sun is a waste of money. No matter what the sun does, there is zero effect. Why waste the money? In the end there is nothing man can do anyhow. Live in Sod houses and ride bicycles made and sold by some world Governement that is controlled by, MAN!
Anthony –
I see that Leif already answered your question. I was thinking that it was possible that the left hand (SWPC) and the right hand (SPIDR) don’t know what the other is doing. I just downloaded that spreadsheet that you’ve got on surfacestations that Paul Stanko created and the values shown there for 2008 are close to the values Leif listed and are different from those shown by SWPC. In any case, the most recent Ap values are still the lowest ever in the record as the previous low was set Nov ’34 at 4.8.
Re: Leif Svalgaard (07:30:59)
Okay… Then what does a graph of the 1932-2008 Ap index using the correct numbers look like? Does the same relationship still hold? Is the “Ap is at its lowest level in 75 years, for the entirety of the record”?
Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979
http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=13834
Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.
Another model bites the dust. Computer models are not science, when will we learn.
If the sun doesn’t control the climate, made we should check some boundary conditions. Let’s see, when the sun’s output doubles, and now let’s check when the output halves.
Ben,
If one encounters a peak or a trough then the highest/lowest are bound to be clustered around both sides of the peak/trough.
Thus the assertion that we have experienced x number of the warmest years since 2000 is not inconsistent with having passed the peak and being on a cooling trend.
AGW proponents are just trying to gain time by expressing the issue in the way that has confused you.
Good 2009 for all:
Personally, I agree with Jeez.
The confusion is caused by James & Jones Enterprises Climate.
Sir Anthony….Which dataset is real?
Once again big question.
I’m afraid the answer is J&J Enterprises Climate.
FM
Ben Kellet says:
I see you are not unfamiliar with hyperbole.
Latest SSTs: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.1.5.2009.gif
A bit cooler that last week. La Ninas coming…..
Pierre Gosselin (07:03:48) :
Tom Woods,
You can add 0.2°C to your estimates.
It wasn’t that cold!
January will be colder though.
You actually think it was as warm as October and November, globally??
Check out the ESRL reanalysis
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_30b.rnl.gif
We’re now a couple days past the period in question but this still gives a good enough sampling of December.
That’s the reason why I’m subtracting about 0.2°C from the global average from October and November. Recall those months (Oct, Nov) ended with ~0.2°C positive anomalies in the satellites and ~0.5°C in the ‘Big three’ surface temp agencies.
“If the data is put out for public consumption, its is assumed to be correct.”
Ahem!
With all the corrupt data out there in the field of climate science, this is a rather naive statement. Just think of Hansen and GISS! The field is indeed frustrating.
I beat you to it Matt.
See above ,)
Climate change policies failing, Nasa scientist warns Obama
Award-winning researcher James Hansen says new president’s rhetoric must be backed by action
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/01/scentist-letter-hansen-barack-obama
————————————————————-
Here is the link to the letter:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20081229_DearMichelleAndBarack.pdf
Here is the link to the letter:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20081229_DearMichelleAndBarack.pdf
Are there any theories out there which would explain why the sun goes through cycles?
Speaking of sea ice… is Cryosphere Today down?
Jeez,
Another way of looking at North American temperature is to consider it all of the land area of one quarter of the area of the globe. Basically, North America will be most of the land area of the Northern half of the Western Hemisphere. You can pretty much slice the world into 4 parts … North America, South America, Eurasia, and Africa. Of those areas, the North American quarter is probably most representative of global temperatures because it contains the best balance between sea/land and contains areas of both warm and cold ocean currents (Gulf of Alaska offsetting Gulf of Mexico).
So I agree that North American overall temperatures should be a good analog for global temperatures. Though having said that, a couple of months of polar “spillage” into the upper plains and into the Mississippi valley can skew things as can a couple of months of an unusual Bermuda High.
Leif Svalgaard (07:30:59) :
“This is because the SWPC values are not correct.
[…] They lie to you.”
REPLY: Great, just great. Who to trust these days? Which dataset is real? Which dataset is current? Which dataset is “adjusted”? The answers to these questions should NOT be known only to insiders. If the data is put out for public consumption, its is assumed to be correct. So much for data integrity. – Anthony
We have the same issues with the sunspot number, remember, and with the temperature records, with TSI, with aa-calibration, etc. This is partly a result of Nature just being messy and we are trying to compress all that messiness into a single number, an index, a proxy. Different people and groups and instruments do this slightly differently, simply because it is messy and we don’t have a point measurement every millimeter or millisecond. The remedy for all this is to look at the bigger picture, i.e. not get hung up on this or that year being the ‘warmest’, this or that value being the lowest ever, this or that count being an all-time high, and on and on. Scientists are [somewhat] trained to do this. It is called error bars, confidence intervals, statistical significance. The public [and many posters on this and any other blog] don’t really understand this and endless [and fruitless] discussions ensue over things that are below the ‘messiness index’ limits. Does this or that wiggle match up with this or that other wiggle? is 1934 warmer than 1998? etc…
There is, of course, a remedy: just use my aa-values, TSI-values, Sunspot Numbers, Solar Open Flux, etc. 🙂
Kidding aside, we have made some progress in cross-checking the indices and getting closer to a workable set. You see, it all has to make sense: the Sun’s magnetic field, the solar wind, geomagnetic activity, the ionosphere, and all the rest are interrelated and we understand the physics connecting them and in many cases can directly calculate one effect from the others [f.ex. from the Sun’s magnetic field we can calculate the solar wind, from the solar wind we can calculate geomagnetic activity, from geomagnetic activity we can calculate satellite drag, etc – it is called modeling]. Some scientists are trying to model the climate the same way [and many claim great success – the science is settled]. Now, every model has shortcomings because of insufficient data and insufficient computing power, but incremental progress is made on all fronts. I have been involved in forecasting the weather back in the 1960s using the meager data and computers we had then and when I compare our skill then with now, I can see great progress.
The problem is that the public [and the politicians and other forces leading and misleading them] wants ‘instant’ success or doom [either way seems to attract] and have no patience for a disciplined approach [we’ll give you the answer in 50 years…]. Many scientists [most are people too] bask in and seek attention [and funding – the latter not a bad thing] and their organizations {NASA, etc] hype every little thing as a gigantic breakthrough [solar winds lowest ever, magnetic portals, elves, doozy solar cycles, you name it]. The public duel among themselves with references and links to dubious ‘information’ found on the internet. and everybody gets hot under the collar [humans are a combative lot] and the science often takes second place to the satisfaction of ad-hom attacks. On the other hand, an informed public is vital to our civilization and some good stuff sticks. It has become harder to pull wool over their eyes [although some do a good job deluding themselves].
So, carry on, we’ll get there.
Nitpick: Doctor Who has mentioned global warming in Episode 2 of Season 1 (or season 27, or story #162, or Episode #706 depending on your method of counting Doctor Who.)
Doctor: “You lot… you spend all your time thinking about dying. Like you’re going to get killed by eggs or beef or global warming or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible, that maybe you survive.”
Can Dr. Pachauri be far behind? Pun intended.
—————————————————————
A Carbon Tax For Animal Emissions – More Unintended Consequences Of Carbon Policy In The Guise Of Climate Policy
http://climatesci.org/2009/01/05/a-carbon-tax-for-animal-emissions-more-unintended-consequences-of-carbon-policy-in-the-guise-of-climate-policy/
I can’t get any fresh sea ice data from any of the sea ice centers.
Are those folks there still sleeping off their New Year’s hangovers?
What’s going on over there?
And…
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/documenting_the_global_warming_1.html
Joseph (07:56:56) :
Then what does a graph of the 1932-2008 Ap index using the correct numbers look like? Does the same relationship still hold? Is the “Ap is at its lowest level in 75 years, for the entirety of the record”?
Ap is just one of several indices that describe geomagnetic activity [and is not one of the better ones]. There are several others [aa, am, IHV, …] that are either better or go much further back in time [to the 1840s]. You can get more info from:
http://www.leif.org/research/IAGA2008LS.pdf and
http://www.leif.org/research/Seminar-UCLA-ESS288.pdf
In short, solar cycle 23 is very much like cycle 13, and the values of these indices and of the solar wind during the drawn-out minimum of 1901 and 1902 were very much the same as during 2008 and 2009 [expected], so nothing new.
Joseph (07:56:56) :
Then what does a graph of the 1932-2008 Ap index using the correct numbers look like? Does the same relationship still hold? Is the “Ap is at its lowest level in 75 years, for the entirety of the record”?
Ap is just one of several indices that describe geomagnetic activity [and is not one of the better ones]. There are several others [aa, am, IHV, …] that are either better or go much further back in time [to the 1840s]. You can get more info from:
http://www.leif.org/research/IAGA2008LS.pdf and
http://www.leif.org/research/Seminar-UCLA-ESS288.pdf
In short, solar cycle 23 is very much like cycle 13, and the values of these indices and of the solar wind during the drawn-out minimum of 1901 and 1902 were very much the same as during 2008 and 2009 [expected], so nothing new.
Stephen (Wilde),
I know I might appear a bit confused but I don’t really agree that there has been deliberate fudging going on. Yes I agree that it is possible we’re at the beginning of a cooling trend, but the recent cooling will have be sustained for at least the next 5 years before I’ll see it as anything other than a blip within an overall warming trend. Even a 5 -10 year plateau of early 21st century temps might still be consistent with an overall warming trend given the deviation from the 20th century average.
Richard (Sharpe),
While you obviously believe I have over stated the case, please show where the main message I am trying to get across falls down.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/mean:132/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/mean:132/scale:0.01/offset:-0.8
If you click on the above link and take a close look at the recent time scale, I’m sure you’ll agree that there is a distinct and what looks like an “unprecedented” (am I allowed to use that term tentatively?!!) major deviation between red & green lines!
Now, if I were an alarmist, I might find it really quite disturbing that there remains a very high temp profile over the last decade despite lower solar activity. It might almost be described as an over ride or swamping of a natural forcing, but I’ll not go that far…yet. Whether this is down to AGW or not is in my opinion another issue.
You’ll be pleased to know that I am not an alarmist nor a “denier” and I accept the possibility of the “lag” effect described by Stephen Wilde among others. As I have already stated though, this turn around had better continue happening on a fairly sustained basis for my concern with the possibility of AGW to go away.
So in essence, please do not assume that I am concluding that all the raised late 20th and 21st Century temp profile (despite recent solar inactivity) is all down to AGW, but it would be foolish indeed to dismiss the possibility.
Ben
Crosspatch
I think you are spot on. The US is a good representation for the world. Even Hadley CET is said to be representative of the Northern hemisphere and we in the UK cover a much smaller area.
This is Hadley set against Zurich Switzerland-
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/beck_mencken_zurich.jpg
the mirroring is uncanny until very recent years, which we identfied as a severe case of UHI and coreected with a total of 0.4C over the last 4 decades to produce the following;
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/beck_mencken_zurich_uhi.jpg
(Both graphs available in excel if anyone else wants to use the data points)
It seems reasonable to me that a large country like the US spreading almost from the arctic to the tropics and bordering both the Pacific and Atlantic is going to have pretty representative temperatures of the world .
Has anyone graphed the US against other temperature data sets like Hadley/Zurich?
Also can I make a plea for links to national (or regional) temperature records as I want to collect them all together in one place for use as a general resource. The longer the better. I know there are good ones for Armagh (Ellie where are you) Germany and Holland amongst other places. If anyone knows if this has already been done please let me know.
TonyB
From all the graphs and indices posting in this forum the last couple of days, it sure looks like SC24 has crashed through the guard rail and is to be found plunging down a steep embankment.
It will take probably as long as it took descending into the abyss to climb back out of it. Once again, the data coming in show no signs of imminent reversal. It just sinks deeper.
“MattN (08:14:47) :
Latest SSTs: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.1.5.2009.gif
A bit cooler that last week. La Ninas coming…..”
La Nina has found me. Supposed to be 5-6000′ snow level here, woke up to 2000′ snow level and white stuff. The cold is winning.
We should not be paying any attention to ground-based temperatures really. The only two places that appear to be of worth would be the troposphere and the oceans. Even then you have to make a decision whether it’s ocean surface or deep. It would appear that only the troposphere is really worthy. What I find truly bizarre is that we should pay any attention at all to past-proxy temperatures. Thinking that you could possibly get a recording to a tenth of a degree from a bristle cone pine or whatever from a thousand years ago is Alice In Wonderland stuff, surely? shouldn’t we start a campaign to ignore ground-based temperatures altogether? Let’s concentrate on what comes out of UAH – whether it agrees with our viewpoint or not. realclimate will love it!
“I beat you to it Matt.
See above ,)”
Dang it. This blog is so popular with so many people, I’m not first with info anymore….
Alan the Brit (02:38:13) :
“Was the Chaitén eruption in Chille sufficient to assist in aerosol cooling anyone? It certainly looked to be a significant eruption to me”.
Alan,
No significant aerosols from Chaiten. Low SO2 output (insignificant) Low CO2 primaraly water vapor and
Anyhow, not yet.
The status of Chaitén is still code RED and the dome building process has filled up the old caldera which was in fact a hole in the ground.
A huge amount of silica could be blasted into the troposphere of Chaitén explodes.
But other volcano’s have been busy: Sheviluch (biggest SO2 output since 1991), Kamchatka, Souffre Hills and recently Kiuchevskoy
By the way, volcanic activity emits 20 times more CO2 than human industrial activity.
For continuing info about Chaitén Volcano:
1. http://www.seablogger.com/?page_id=11086 (also a link to the North Camara
for real time Chaitén observation.
2.http://volcanism.wordpress.com/
Should have added this link http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
Tom Woods,
Thanks for the link.
But I’ll stick to my assertion.
Want to bet a six-pack of Sam Adams?
Ed Scott
Pay no attention to Hansen. He’s a just a nuke-industry stooge.
Honestly, I see no reason why the greenie wackos like him so much.
Leif Svalgaard (07:30:59) : “This is because the SWPC values are not correct.”
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
This is a perfect example of why much of the data used in the AGW debate is not exactly what it may seem to be.
More to the point, does NOAA know that these values are forecast values (er, preliminary estimates) or not? Apparently, large portions of the data available via NOAA are no where near as reliable as one would think. Quality control at NOAA seems to need a bit of management attention.
I can report that in my days of sending weather data to Offutt’s forecast center that all data was not of equal quality. Anthony’s poking around has brought light to this otherwise non-discussed subject. Thank you too, Anthony.
As many regular readers know, I’ve pointed out several times the incident of the abrupt and sustained lowering of the Ap Index which occurred in October 2005. The abrupt step change seemed (to me) to be out of place with the data
The step is due to a very large sporadic storm Sep. 9-15, 2005. See the solar conditions [big red dots=flares] at that time:
http://hirweb.nict.go.jp/sedoss/solact3/do?d=2005,09,04
This was a one-off [although some people might try to convince us that it happened only a week before a syzygy of J+U+N+V or some such] event and does not portend the ‘end’ of SC23 activity.
As you can see from the first Figure at
http://www.leif.org/research/Most%20Recent%20IMF,%20SW,%20and%20Solar%20Data.pdf
solar wind magnetic field (B blue) has had a steady decline since 2003 and 2005 Sept-Oct does not show any special change. The steady decline is the main reason for a declining ap. Solar wind speed has been roughly the same with three progressively smaller bumps [2003, 2005, 2008]. Some three CME related spikes stick up, but nothing special [i.e. ‘out of place with the data’] happened Sep-Oct, The three bumps show up in ap. There is a simple formula that connects the variables: ap = 0.0404 * (B*(V/100)^2)^1.1642 [with R2 = 0.81], f.ex. if B = 4 nT and V = 400 km/s, ap = 5.1; B = 20 nT, V = 800 km/s will give you a major storm with ap = 167.
In my opinion, the is no significance to the ‘Oct 2005’ jump. The Sun did not undergo any qualitative change near that, just the regular decline we always have at the end of a cycle. Humans have a tendency to attach significance to random events, like “an eagle flew over the house the day my son was born, this must mean something”. Oct, 2005 was such an eagle.
Leif – I’m smiling.
Well.
It’s tough being human.
I’ve found myself irritated with your (Leif’s) unwillingness to clambor on board
with various assertions.
Now having read your latest statement – well . . . I’m humbled and smiling and taking a deep breath.
Your intelligent reasoning and knowing nod toward human foibles and calm encouragement to ” . . . carry on – we’ll get there” . . . .
It’s the best of our species.
It makes me smile.
Thank you.
I have a few questions that may or may not have been asked at some point in WUWT history:
1)The AP Index is a satellite-based magnetic field reading, correct?
2)How much of the sun’s B-field is caused by the solar dynamo current(s) and how much is caused by the rotation (26-ish days?) of the plasma ball?
3)Are there any other major contributors to the field?
If you look carefully at Anthony’s plot and compare it with the green curve [‘theoretical ap’] on the 1st Figure of http://www.leif.org/research/Most%20Recent%20IMF,%20SW,%20and%20Solar%20Data.pdf you will notice that the ap plot has two ‘rabbit ears’ in March and September during 2007, which do not appear on my curve. You will find the same ‘ears’ in other years too [even in 2005]. This is a manifestation of the so-called semiannual variation [more at http://www.leif.org/research/geoact.htm ] and is likely due to the size of the Earth’s magnetosphere changing with how much it tilts into the solar wind. This is a purely terrestrial effect and has nothing to do with the Sun [the Sun does not know about March and September – except if you belong to the astrology crowd]. The September storm in 2005 that is responsible for the visual abruptness of the ‘step’ was artificially enhanced [leading to a larger step] because of the semiannual variation.
Trying to find a correlation between surface temperatures and solar activity is not as easy as some comments here imply. If you want to see an almost instantaneous change in temperature associated with solar activity, you can watch the sunrise on a clear day, I suppose. 🙂
This article indicates there can be a lag of 10 to 30 years in “regional” temperatures:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081219180532.htm
I wonder if the probable lag time for “global” temperatures is known.
Leif Svalgaard (08:47:38) :
Many scientists [most are people too] bask in and seek attention [and funding – the latter not a bad thing] and their organizations {NASA, etc] hype every little thing as a gigantic breakthrough [solar winds lowest ever, magnetic portals, elves, doozy solar cycles, you name it].
Would that list include also climate prediction models with positive feedback built in? Is that not the longest gravy train, receiving the most attention?
I don’t think you can say that, since we don’t know how the sun “should” act, just like we don’t know how global climate (as silly a concept as that is) “should” act.
Robert Bateman (09:19:17) :
From all the graphs and indices posting in this forum the last couple of days, it sure looks like SC24 has crashed through the guard rail and is to be found plunging down a steep embankment.
Leif Svalgaard (12:44:45)
Since my prediction [of 75] back in 2005, the polar fields have weakened a tiny bit, leading to a prediction that now stands at 71, but since that is not statistically different from 75, I do not foresee any change in my prediction.
Graph
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/combined.gif
suggests range 79-85 for late 2013, which is not far of Dr. Svalgaard’s prediction. As I am well aware he doesn’t think much of it, but as an overall amplitude assessment, the periodicity graph (blue line) gives a reasonable approximation since 1920 and the amplitude envelope (red line) from 1890 (except for SC 20 in both cases).
p.s. (periodicity graph phase has now been revised from 2pi/3 to 2pi/4, thanks to an anonymous contributor) Rest of the material on my website may be corrected in due course
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk
@TonyB
re, your (05:16:52) :
Tony, the link to tempature sets from switzerland (meteoswiss) you may have already.
but they changed their webpages recently – different link, so I add it here:
http://www.meteoswiss.admin.ch/web/de/klima/klima_heute/homogene_reihen.html
(has monthly temperature and precipitation data for twelve stations)
WetterZentrale has some longterm temperature and precipitation datas
– source unknown –
http://www.wetterzentrale.de/klima/index.html
DWD has monthly datasets here for 44 stations in Germany:
http://www.dwd.de/bvbw/appmanager/bvbw/dwdwwwDesktop?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=_dwdwww_klima_umwelt_klimadaten_deutschland&_state=maximized&_windowLabel=T82002&T82002gsbDocumentPath=Navigation/Oeffentlichkeit/Klima__Umwelt/Klimadaten/kldaten__kostenfrei/ausgabe__monatswerte__node.html__nnn=true&T17403010631149843731916gsbDocumentPath=Content/Oeffentlichkeit/KU/KU1/KU12/Klimadaten/Teaser/Daten__Beratung__teaser.html&T55200343671181104940198gsbDocumentPath=Content/Oeffentlichkeit/KU/KU1/KU12/Klimadaten/Teaser/Veroeff.html&T17401010631149671087318gsbDocumentPath=Content/Oeffentlichkeit/KU/KU1/KU12/Klimadaten/Teaser/Daten__Entgelt__teaser.html&T17400910631149670782053gsbDocumentPath=Content/Oeffentlichkeit/KU/KU1/KU12/Klimadaten/Teaser/Daten__WiTech__teaser.html&T147600785081206012013169gsbDocumentPath=Content/Oeffentlichkeit/KU/KU1/KU12/Klimadaten/Klimafaktoren/KF__Teaser.html&T19607931211153805139770gsbDocumentPath=Content/Oeffentlichkeit/KU/allgemeines/klimadaten/teaser__datenservice.html&T19607831211153805134368gsbDocumentPath=Content/Oeffentlichkeit/KU/allgemeines/klimadaten/teaser__stationsinformationen.html&T21400353661157011331648gsbDocumentPath=Content/Oeffentlichkeit/KU/allgemeines/teaser__klimadatenzentren.html&T17402110631149838814972gsbDocumentPath=Content/Oeffentlichkeit/KU/KU1/KU12/Klimagutachten/Teaser/Mobile__Messungen__Teaser.html&T17402910631149843720977gsbDocumentPath=Content/Oeffentlichkeit/KU/KUPK/WetterShop/teaser__wettershop.html&_nfls=false
Datasets from Sweden/Finland here:
http://data.smhi.se/met/climate/time_series/day/temperature/
Datasets from russia here:
http://meteo.ru/english/data_b/
@tonyB
a good source for various data is the climate explorer fron KNMI, Netherlands
http://climexp.knmi.nl/start.cgi
Rod Smith (10:17:11) :
More to the point, does NOAA know that these values are forecast values (er, preliminary estimates) or not?
Yes, I have [and other too, I’m sure] pointed that out to them several times, but to no avail. The usual reply I get is that there is complaint form on their website that I can fill out if I have a problem with their service. To be fair to them, they ARE understaffed [quantity and quality] because of low funding.
EDT (10:37:57) :
1)The AP Index is a satellite-based magnetic field reading, correct?
No, ap is derived from ground-based readings [there were no satellites – except the Moon back in 1932].
2)How much of the sun’s B-field is caused by the solar dynamo current(s)
All of it [as far as we know]
3)Are there any other major contributors to the field?
No, not that we know of. From time to time people have talked about a ‘relic’ field in the Sun’s core stemming from when the Sun was formed. This was particularly popular back when the ‘neutrino problem’ was a problem [that the number of neutrinos observed is only a third of what our models show are produced]. A magnetic field at the core would help [perhaps] in explaining this. Now we know that the problem is not with the Sun, but with the neutrino [there are three kinds and a given neutrino changes kind as it flies along – and the early measurements could only measure one kind]. Also helioseismology has shown us that the internal structure of the Sun is just what our models predict, so the core magnetic field idea is not in favor anymore.
TonyB,
Armagh data at:
http://climate.arm.ac.uk/contents.html
I used the raw data, but there is a period with months missing that I fell foul of initally in averaging. Also there are actually several series. I’m checking back to see which ones I downloaded (in October).
I can email the spreadsheet – left contact on your website.
Dear vukcevic .Really beautiful curves. I would like to hear how it sounds. Low amplitude phases seem like gaps in the octave.
“” F Rasmin (01:59:07) :
Steve Berry (00:56:55) : ‘…even though you were late and made poor excuses..’ The Americans should never have bothered have turning up at all? Look what ‘winning’ did for you! “”
Well yes very uncool Steve. Might I suggest that you Google the “Lend lease” program; and then tell our Yankee friends they were late to the big dance.
Yes UK deserves to be honored. for standing up for Europe when the others had folded; but without Lend lease, it would have come to nought. The manufacturing powerhouse that WW-II USA became (Rosie the Riveter) is what sealed the axis fate.
And as the moderator says; not in keeping with this forum.
George A. Kiwi
Leif
Having studied the “Duhau and de Jager paper – The Solar Dynamo and Its Transitions during the Last Millennium” I am struck by their assertion that there was a step change in solar activity in 1923. Having read all your comments here and on CA I feel that you would not agree with this. Am I correct?
@Leif
re: …there were no satellites – except the Moon back in 1932…
– I liked that, was funny –
@TonyB
Data from Denmark, Faroer and Greenland from DMI, Denmark
http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/climat.htm
So can draw a relationship for the lowest point for Solar Geomagnetic Ap Index and the economy!? or the beginning of the green house effect? I want to know, as a scientist, what is the value of noticing the lowest Solar Geomagnetic Ap Index, and how to make a recommendation that we need to change direction.
Cheers!
Luigi
Ed Scott (08:54:35) : Wrote
Can Dr. Pachauri be far behind? Pun intended.
—————————————————————
A Carbon Tax For Animal Emissions – More Unintended Consequences Of Carbon Policy In The Guise Of Climate Policy
http://climatesci.org/2009/01/05/a-carbon-tax-for-animal-emissions-more-unintended-consequences-of-carbon-policy-in-the-guise-of-climate-policy/
———————————-
So it’s scientifically proven, debate over, that if you tax a cow, it stops farting ?? Wow.
Leif Svalgaard (08:47:38) :
“It is called error bars, confidence intervals, statistical significance. The public [and many posters on this and any other blog] don’t really understand this and endless [and fruitless] discussions ensue over things that are below the ‘messiness index’ limits.”
Excellent, excellent post, Leif. It should be the lead post of every discussion on this blog (conceptually, if not physically). If I had my way it would be nailed to the forehead of every alarmist, starting with Al Gore and James “saving the planet and creation ” Hansen.
This also caught my eye:
“…an informed public is vital to our civilization…”
Classic good news/bad news. 🙂
“” Mary Hinge (02:44:10) :
jeez (01:54:58) :
2. ………. make the entirety of the sea surface records suspect.
4. I simply do not trust …….. they simply make up false accuracy and data.
6. Much of the Global warming signal ……..suffered discontinuities through Mao’s cultural revolution in China………………. Stalinist Soviet Union.
Personally I believe…….
Thanks Jeez for furnishing the script for the next X Files movie….Spooky Mulder and his conspiracy buddies would have great fun with this! “”
Well Mary, I’m in total agreement with jeez on his number 2 point; except I’m not as charitable as he was. To me the the the historic record for 73% of the world’s surface (the oceans) prior to around 1980, is properly characterized (in a scientific sense) as “garbage”.
The story is often repeated as to how surfacew temperatures (at sea) were historically measured by tossing a bucket over the side; thereby grabbing a water sample from some totally uncontrolled water depth; and then measuring its temperature on deck where winds could cause evaporative cooling of the sample. Around 1922 or so I understand, they started measuring the temperature of engine cooling water from the sea; but now in the warmth of the engine room; thus causing a discontinuity in the temperature record; which anyhow was supposed to be a measure of the lower troposphere air temperature (see Anthony’s errant barn owl boxes).
Why anyone would believe that the near surface air temperatures and the oceanic water temperatures would be the same is way beyond my pay grade.
Well that issue was resolved in Jan 2001, in a paper in I believe Geophysical Research Letters, reporting on up to 20 years of data recorded from oceanic buoys which simulktaneously monitored temperatures in the water at a constant one meter depth, and air temperatures on a tower at 3 meters above the surface. With ocean currents perhaps a few knots, and wind speeds anything up to hundreds of mph, why would you expect the air and water to reach the same temperature. That 2001 paper reported that the warming observed during that 20 year period from water data, was inflated by 40% over what the actual air temperature measurements revealed, so the actual warming for that period was only 60% of what the water data claimed.
Now that does not mean that all the previous history needs to be corrected by that 60% factor.
The key piece of information from the buoy studies, was that the water and air temperatures ARE NOT CORRELATED.
So in fact the correct historic air temperatures over the oceans are not recoverable from the water data; and after all they only represent 70 odd percent of the total global surface.
So I don’t even care if the GCM climate models (video games) are correct or not; it is clear that the historic data that goes into them is pure garbage.
So I don’t believe any of this projected ancient history data; well at least no closer than the obligatory 3:1 climate modelling fudge factor. I would suggest that climate science as a science, probably goes back no further than the International Geophysical Year of 1957/58.
Even today when an oceanic research vessel returns to a set of GPS co-ordinates to take updated water temp measurments; there is no assurance that they are even in the same water as they were at some previous time; due to the meandering of ocean currents.
So when Jeez says “suspect”, I suspect he is too polite to say what he really believes.
Ben Kellett (04:44:14) wrote:
“…our views have to be as (if not more) robust, defendable, well reasoned and backed up with solid evidence, as those views supporting AGW.”
Constructive criticism seems to win out here, that and driving others to better and more accurate analysis. Cathy (10:32:36) I agree no one does it better – we’re priviledged aren’t we!
One thing though. There is a lot of discussion and analysis here. One thing scientists don’t always do well is communicate to to non-scientists (I mean the head-in-the-sand don’t-want-to-know-about-science general public). AGW has the hockey stick. While we’re looking for trends and influences to counter it, what images can be used that will stick in people’s minds if they get into to the MSM?
Re: Mike Bryant (08:42:35),
I wonder if Hansen is ‘adjusting’ their ice data? (only kidding)…
Leif, most interesting.
Steve Berry – very nearly agree
In ancient records the prime driver can be seen to be solar energy.
With a 6-year delay, and after UHI is properly subtracted, land temperatures reflect the solar patterns today.
But the oceans’ thermal capacity is around 1000 times that of the atmosphere.
So for close correlation, look at the solar links to sea surface temperature
And for high correlation to land temperatures, plot the ocean currents
Ron de Haan (09:35 today)…volcanic activity emits 20 times more CO2 than human industrial activity.
Reference? Perhaps a thread on the current Yellowstone earth tremors will flush this out… Anthony?
“To be fair to them, they ARE understaffed [quantity and quality] because of low funding.”
They may not have enough people, and the people they have may not be the best, but at least,
“NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun…”
Leif Svalgaard (09:16:29) :
In short, solar cycle 23 is very much like cycle 13, and the values of these indices and of the solar wind during the drawn-out minimum of 1901 and 1902 were very much the same as during 2008 and 2009 [expected], so nothing new.
I don’t get this. Last time I asked you about the other indices increasing over the C20th, you said there were instrumental errors and the readings were unreliable. Now you are saying thay are comparable.
Kaboom (01:10:08) :
“….lot’s of things to do…” doesn’t have an apostrophe as well.
So speak the grammar-Nazis.
Grammar nazis is not hyphenated, and nazis is not capitalized.
Capitalized Nazis were the National Socialists, who believed in a charismatic leader and believed government should regulate otherwise free markets. Thank goodness those beliefs have faded into history.
Mike
humble grammar nazi
We in the UK have been assured that there is a great deal of global warmth just around the corner. See the linked article:-
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-scientists-warn-that-there-may-be-no-ice-at-north-pole-this-summer-855406.html
“Ron de Haan (09:35 today)…volcanic activity emits 20 times more CO2 than human industrial activity.
Reference? Perhaps a thread on the current Yellowstone earth tremors will flush this out… Anthony?”
That number seems that it could be about right. A recent article I read showed human activity generating about 3% of global CO2 emissions. Decay of organic matter about 30% (about 10 times more than human activity) leaving 67%. So to say that volcanism accounts for 60% of the remaining 67%, that sounds reasonable with the other 7% probably due to such things fires, animal flatulence, etc.
Mary Hinge:
George E. Smith addressed your point 2.
on point 4:
So when the Hadley Center tells us that the average Central England Temperature on March 19th 1772 was 7.3 C, they have not introduced false accuracy? How accurate were thermometers in 1772?
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cetdl1772on.dat
on point 6:
Why don’t you ask Hadley for the station records for China? Good luck, here is their response to a similar request.
To quote Phil Jones:
So you can prattle on about peer review, but you are defending a cloistered community of unscientists that has built a moat around their data and methods, pulled up the drawbridges, put their fingers in their ears and are behaving like this.
And remember that undersea volcanism is going to be about twice what land volcanism is (but probably more since the mid-Atlantic ridge, for example, is basically one continuous volcano down the middle of the ocean).
PaulHClark (11:44:07) :
their assertion that there was a step change in solar activity in 1923. Having read all your comments here and on CA I feel that you would not agree with this. Am I correct?
Yes, but I have not read their paper. Do you have a copy? email to me if you don’t want to post the link.
tallbloke (12:34:50) :
I don’t get this. Last time I asked you about the other indices increasing over the C20th, you said there were instrumental errors and the readings were unreliable. Now you are saying thay are comparable.
One should, of course, use my version of the corrected indices. Here is a plot of Ap back to 1844 http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-2008.png . The blue curve shows 27-day Bartels rotation averages and the red curve is a 13-rotation [nearly one year] running mean. Because the values have been corrected for the semiannual variation and the averaging interval is shorter than a month, the values shown will be slightly larger than the monthly means [from SWPC] plotted by Anthony, but the relative variation [on a yearly basis] and the trend should be the same. And that is the important bit; the units don’t matter.
Mike McMillan (12:36:47) :
Capitalized Nazis were the National Socialists, who believed in a charismatic leader and believed government should regulate otherwise free markets.
Sounds very much like our government…
OT and slightly depressing!
The European Union (after donating £1m!) denounces socialite’s carbon offset project that pays poor farmers in Mozambique to plant trees, that absorb CO2, and, additionally, to protect existing forests
This project set up the N’hambita Community Carbon project five years ago in partnership with Edinburgh University attracted hundreds of poor farmers “Who were now cutting down trees”
The law of unintended consequences- rings a bell for anyone?
“http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5439366.ece”
Its open….
http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-science-blog/
oops – put quotes round link
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5439366.ece
meanwhile…quietly…
Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979
http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=13834
speaking of animal flatulence…LOL
EPA ‘Cow Tax’ Could Charge $175 per Dairy Cow to Curb Greenhouse Gases
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20081230165231.aspx
unbelievable…..
@TonyB
Tony, another item is: how to download datas frequently or scheduled.
One approach is: using R (like Steve McIntyre from CA, http://www.climateaudit.com)
For others, which are more accustomed to Microsoft and/or Windows environment,
in the MS Office is, since MS-Office 2000 a – programmable, using VBA – Webbrowser control. I did use this approach first, when I started to download various data, scheduled.
Nowadays, I do use the – free – express versions from MS Visual Basic and C# in combination with the – free- express version of the MS SQL server. The SQL server
has some limitations: the first is: any database file has to be smaller than 4 GB,
but that’s no real limitation for personal use. I do use more than 320 databases, which -each – are below that limit, but the sum is neary 800 GB now.
I don’t know, if this is helpful to you, or anybody else here, but there may be somybody here or there, where it may be helpful.
Another Great post and commentary. Thank you Anthony. And thank you Leif, mods and the rest of the bunch, you all make the commentary of this blog one of the best on the web.
Ladies and Gentlemen, don’t forget to vote for yhe 2008 Blog Awards!
It only takes five seconds.
“And remember that undersea volcanism is going to be about twice what land volcanism is ”
Why? Ocean floors are much closer to the heat of the interior. Land and ocean surface area ratio wouldn’t seem to be a valid gauge of the amount of heat, vulcanism or geothermal activity either.
“” Lucy Skywalker (12:16:04) :
Leif, most interesting.
Steve Berry – very nearly agree
In ancient records the prime driver can be seen to be solar energy.
With a 6-year delay, and after UHI is properly subtracted, land temperatures reflect the solar patterns today.
But the oceans’ thermal capacity is around 1000 times that of the atmosphere.
So for close correlation, look at the solar links to sea surface temperature
And for high correlation to land temperatures, plot the ocean currents
Ron de Haan (09:35 today)…volcanic activity emits 20 times more CO2 than human industrial activity.
Reference? Perhaps a thread on the current Yellowstone earth tremors will flush this out… Anthony? “”
Lucy, I can’t say that I correctly deciphered who said what in your post; hard to tell what was a reference ansd what your own words.
I’d like a dollar for every time I’ve read that the ocean’s heat capacity is 1000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere.
So what about that humungous piece of rock which acts as a substrate for bothe the oceans and the atmosphere; does it have a heat capacity of any consequence ?
Tracking heat capacity can be a misleading enterprise. Just consider some of the thermal energy exchange processes. In the case of the rocky part of the earth; including UHIs, we typically don’t see a whole lot of convection going on; at least not in time frames of much interest to us.
During the day sunshine, the earth surface heats up to hotter than its long term mean temperature from absorbed solar energy (less albedo losses). That temperature rise creates a thermal graident, that propagates energy downward at a rate proportional to that temperature rise. At the same time, that heated surface is also radiating EM radiation, at a rate limited by the Planck BB radiation limit; modified by the surface spectral emissivity; but also dependent on the fourth power of the absolute temperature rather than linearly with temperature rise. And from the point of view of CO2 resonance absorption in the IR, the EM radiation spectral peak emittance goes as the fifth power of the absolute temperature, while moving further to the short wavelength side of the CO2 absorption spectrum.
So the relative energy transport split between surface conduction to the deep crust, and also the direct thermal conduction to the atmospheric gases; and the EM radiated portion; it makes a great deal of difference if you use the long term flux averages of the official NOAA energy budget, or whether you use the actual real time fluxes which are four times as high at least. Thew energy split is quite different in those two calculations.
The oceans on the other hand throw us a real curved ball. The main heat driver; old Sol, deposits his energy at multi metre depths in the oceans, where it too starts to diffuse by conduction to the depths and surrounding waters; but it also unleashes an incessant upward convection, which acts to transport (over time) most of that heat right back to the surface. And most often; convection trumps conduction when it comes to heat transport in fluids. The return of that energy to the surface results in a delayed IR radiation cooling but also a delayed evaporative3 cooling which is a very powerful heat transport mechanism. On top of that, the re-radiated IR emissions from the atmospheric gases are completely absorbed in the top ten microns of the ocean surface and lead to a very prompt evaporative cooling.
So despite the higher thermal capacity of the oceans compared to the atmosphere, the thermal energy transport mechanisms in the ocean don’t look too favorable for transporting the bulk of arriving solar energy to the ocean depths as is commonly assumed.
The very difference in these thermal processes as a function of terrain; is one of the strongest arguments against the very concept of a “mean Global surface Temperature” as having any scientific validity or significance whatsoever.
Hansen’s GISStemp Anomaly plots, are just that; plots of GISStemp anomaly as he defines it, and reports it. There is no scientific connection between GISStemp anomaly and anything else physical on this planet; and the violations of the Nyquist Criterion, both spatially, and temporally, are so egregious as to completely invaildate any claim to them representing a “Mean Global Surface Temperature” or anything else. They have no more scientific validity than does the average telephone number in the Manhattan Phone Directroy; or the global mean number of animals per hectare on planet earth (animal meaning anything from ants to blue whales; and not plants).
I just voted for WUWT as my favorite science blog !!!
Leif your words sounded good. Can someone tell me if the sun doesn’t act on temperature then what does? A less active sun means a drop in input to the earth, that’s final.
[snip–out of bounds on this blog, please be more polite ~ charles the moderator]. Not in my name. Ed
“Why? Ocean floors are much closer to the heat of the interior. Land and ocean surface area ratio wouldn’t seem to be a valid gauge of the amount of heat, vulcanism or geothermal activity either.”
Most spreading centers, hot spots, and volcanic arcs are in the ocean. In other words, most of the places where there tend to be volcanoes are under water. A new Hawaiian island is being built as we read this off the coast of the island of Hawaii, for example. Some of the volcanoes have built up to the point where they have emerged from the sea (the Aleutian Islands, for example) but more lie under the sea such as a brand new one just reported within the past month or so off the coast of the state of Washington. There are several more off the coast of Oregon.
My main point was that when people think of volcanic activity, they think only of the volcanoes on land and forget that there are actually a lot more under the ocean and many of those are nearly constantly active. There are active volcanoes even under the ice in the Arctic Ocean and undersea volcanoes are suspected as the cause of at least one mass extinction event.
Basically, twice as many is probably low, the number of undersea volcanoes is probably much larger than that. Active volcanoes have even been found in the Antarctic Ocean.
Also at places like the mid-Atlantic ridge where you have nearly constant volcanism, it is hard for volcanoes to form the shape we generally recognize as a volcano because the crust spreads and pulls it apart. But they do generate a tremendous amount of CO2. Again, I would expect the amount of CO2 generated by undersea volcanoes to vastly outweigh that generated by volcanoes on dry land.
Would one expect CO2 released from deep ocean ridge volcanose to actually make it to the surface ?
So all that stuff about Hydrogen bombs is fine then Charles (moderator) and the insults to America???? That makes me sick but of course I’m right and this site is acting like another excuse for truth. Ed
Reply: I must have missed that. I’m not the only moderator, going back and looking now. The hazards of team work ~ charles the moderator
Reply 2: After much rereading, while I saw stuff I would disagree with and some politics, of the kind that I constantly remind people should be left off this site, all in all the previous comments were not as out bounds in use of language as you were. Even Steve Berry who apparently started it all has made it clear he was being tongue in cheeky (see, I can do it to). I’m a major supporter of the US, and if this were not a moderator reply I would give examples, but as it is a moderator reply I would remind everyone that we accept a plethora of opinions here, as long as users stick to polite and respectful manner of discourse. BTW for those interested in a very in depth story about the relationship between the US and Britain in technological cooperation in winning WWII and how it was a war won by advances in technology, I would strongly recommend this book. ~ charles the moderator
Leif Svalgaard (11:44:07)
Thank you – herewith the link
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/sonstige/solard.pdf
I profess to not understanding the finer points of their TP (Transition Point) analysis and I note that you have concerns over the aa index but I was taken by the general thrust of their thesis. Certainly looking at this chart:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/GEOMAG/image/aastar07.jpg
I could see a marked change from the end of the last Gleissberg and my interest is tweaked by the resonance with this longer term cycle. There does seem to be something about it that I cannot quite either dismiss nor get to a point where I would enthuse about it – I am merely curiously exploring.
Most importantly I value your thoughts and comments on such things enormously especially given the amount of time you devote to educating people like me.
Here’s the deal – their analysis seemed to suggest to me that the last 80 years was akin to a very active solar oscillation (I hope I have reflected their words accurately) but I know, from having ploughed through the extensive thread on CA and having read your comments here, that you would suggest solar activity has been rather more constant.
I very much hope you can find the time to read and comment on the paper.
Thank You.
Stephen Wilde (07:07:08) :
Adolfo,
The PDO went positive around 1975 which combined with a very active sun and caused the observed warming which continued up to the 1998 peak.
I dont think most people realize that that particular period was infact bonus time for the Earth, not since the MWP have we had that extra heat in the system. If you look at the patterns back to 1280, SC21, 22 & 23 would normally be in the grand minima phase….it tried hard in SC20 but didnt get there, the tipping point wasnt reached, so hence we have endured a short pseudo modern maximum.
But its time to pay the ferryman.
To apostrophe or not to apostrophe. That’s the question.
Stephen Wilde said……..
“AGW proponents are just trying to gain time by expressing the issue in the way that has confused you”.
I’m back to this one Stephen! Maybe I am confused, but I dont think so. The way the last couple of decades of global temps appears to me is fairly simple:
For the 10 years up to and including 1998, there were 8 of the hottest years on record. For the following 10 years up to the present, we have again seen 8 of the hottest years on record – only for the second set of 10 years, there has been a bigger leap up the way!
Now let’s assume 2008 falls suddenly below the average of the 1989 – 1998 period. That would be a fairly sizeable drop, but on its own, it would be meaningless if in following years temps were to rebound straight back up.
If we were again in the next 10 years witness another 8 of the hottest years on record (which is kind of what the IPCC is predicting) then the upward trend continues. This could happen with 1998 still remaining the hottest year on record. Would we still be trying to suggest that because of this, Global Warming stopped in 1998? I think not -the trend, while a smaller step up and a flatter plateau, would still be upward. Of course the IPCC is predicting that the 1998 record will fall in the next 10 years together with another raised plateau of global temps, in which case the impressive upward trend would be very clear.
It could well be however, that we have indeed entered a cooling period, but for me, it will take 8 years in the next 10 of significantly cooler global temps to suggest a downward trend.
While it now appears likely that we have indeed seen 2 consecutive years of cooling, by themselves they do not even constitute a blip. To illustrate the point, following the record breaking year of 1990 there were 4 years in a row of lower global temps than those recorded in 1990. Looking back at the record now, we can see clearly that even that 4 year period represents a mere blip within a definate warming trend.
We are therefore exciting times – a time within the next few years of some reckoning, because if you are indeed correct about the changing phase of the PDO together with less solar activity, we should see a sustained lowering of global temps. If however, this fails to happen, should we begin to accept there might be a problem?
Ben
Jon (00:25:35) :
One should add that the 1930-50’s atmosphere, according DVI Dust Veil Index, was very clean of volcanic particles, and that the 1960-70’s was not.
The Dust Bowl was generally 1930-36 in the American and Canadian plains, in some regions until 1940, according to Wiki. I wonder how far and high it carried.
Watt’s Up With That in second trailing “Pharyngula” (a blog that apparently openly celebrates the election of Al Franken to a seat in the US Senate and calls Climate Audit “faux science”) with Climate Audit in third. *Sigh*
I have recently discovered this web site and have found it very interesting reading, and a good source to find info that places some useful limits on the prevailing assumption that the “science” of global warming is all settled.
In regard to the suns impact on the earths climate I have a question about it that keeps nagging at me. Everyone seems to be focusing on the suns energy output primarily in the visible light spectrum (and near visible ie ultraviolet), but there seems to be a total lack of discussion of other energy inputs to the earth/atmospheric system that are driven by the sun but are not in that spectrum.
Specifically we have an electromagnetic coupling between the suns magnetic field and the earths that generates very large electrical currents in the atmosphere, and the earth (the Canadian power grid can attest to their potential).
I would assume that these magnetic interactions would be of considerable power and could rival the small changes in the visible electromagnetic spectrum that appear as the sun goes through its sunspot cycles from high activity to low activity.
I have seen no discussion at all regarding how much energy is dissipated in the earth/atmosphere by electrical currents and capture of ionizing radiation such as xrays, solar wind, ions that drive the northern lights etc. Is it realistic to assume these energy inputs are negligible or are they some how included as a hidden factor in the general solar energy output numbers?
Larry
Edward Morgan (15:01:00) :
Leif your words sounded good. A less active sun means a drop in input to the earth
Glad you liked them. And you are quite right. A 0.1% drop in solar input does indeed lower the temperature by 0.025%=0.07K. Hooray!
Re; Tom Woods (02:07:17) :
Here’s my 1.6 cents worth for December 2008…
Hadley 0.417
GISS 0.61
UAH 0.215
RSS 0.218
And last month my linear regression was 0.1 *TOO LOW*.
“Watt’s Up With That in second trailing “Pharyngula” (a blog that apparently openly celebrates the election of Al Franken to a seat in the US Senate and calls Climate Audit “faux science”) with Climate Audit in third. *Sigh*”
Carefull with the politics…..I sent money to Climate Audit, and WUWT, Obama and the DNC….and would have given some to Franken if I were in Minnesota. One thing I like about both websites is that we stick to the science, more or less.
Except of course where Al Gore is concerned……
Try looking beyond an incredibly small snapshot in time….
I hung out at Pharynx for a while. I didn’t see much science going on, but a great deal of anti-religion (which I don’t have a problem with).
I’m not sure PZ knows statistics, so not sure if he’d know if CA was faux or not. But I’m sure he didn’t offer any substance to his claim.
“One thing I like about both websites is that we stick to the science, more or less. Except of course where Al Gore is concerned….”
A fair point made.
However, political science tells us that Obama, the DNC and Franken are in full support of Al Gore, the IPCC, their sceince and their agenda.
“Would one expect CO2 released from deep ocean ridge volcanose to actually make it to the surface ?”
Of course, but not in an obvious way such as directly by bubbles. It would increase the CO2 content of the water. At some point the water would release that CO2 into the air. And the warmer the water gets, the less CO2 it can hold and it will release more of it. So lets say you have a deep current picking up CO2 that then circulates down to the equatorial region, wells up and is warmed and the water becomes a shallow warm current headed poleward. As that water warms, it will release CO2.
Also you have surf and wind-whipped storm seas. You have energy stirring up the ocean and mixing it with the atmosphere. There is gas exchange going on at the surface between the ocean and the atmosphere. I believe most of the exchange of CO2 goes from ocean to atmosphere and not the other way around. This is because the ocean would hold a lot more decaying organic matter, CO2 created by animal life (fish flatulence) and volcanic input. The ocean covers 70% of the surface of the planet.
But hey, the USGS says total global volcanic emissions are only 1% of human emissions so I have no idea who to believe. I can’t trust what I read from any source and I don’t have the resources to find every CO2 emitting vent and inventory the emissions over the entire surface of the planet. I certainly don’t believe the USGS claim and they give no data to back it up.
USGS says “Our studies show that globally, volcanoes on land and under the sea release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO2 annually. ” on one page and “Volcanoes release more than 130 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year.” on another page. UCSB says “Volcanoes contribute about 110 million tons of carbon dioxide per year” all these place say how much CO2 the ocean sinks in “billions” of tons per year and that makes me wonder how Earth kept itself alive before we started driving cars. If volcanoes were adding only 100 million tons and the oceans were sinking something like 10 BILLION tons a year, where was all that carbon going? Subducting sea crust should be giving that CO2 back up through volcanoes.
I haven’t seen any numbers that make any sense so I am talking through my pants to some degree. But it I sincerely believe people such as those at USGS greatly underestimate the amount of CO2 from oceanic volcanoes.
Leif Svalgaard 16:25:07:
A 0.1% drop in solar input does indeed lower the temperature by 0.025%=0.07K.
Assuming a spherical horse!
OK Let me explain. There’s an accountant, a statistican and a physicist having a beer at a horse race.
They all brag about being able to pick the winner.
The accountant talks of the track conditions, handicap and jockey. He reckons he migfht be able to make it all add up.
The statistician talks of form, of the betting odds and maybe he can get it right.
The physicist states outright that he can precisely calculate which horse will win, assuming a spherical horse.
Leif Svalgaard (16:25:07) :
Edward Morgan (15:01:00) :
Leif your words sounded good. A less active sun means a drop in input to the earth
Glad you liked them. And you are quite right. A 0.1% drop in solar input does indeed lower the temperature by 0.025%=0.07K. Hooray!
Even if there are no other consequences to reduced solar output that still equates to roughly 3.5K over 50 years the oceans didnt get? (Sporer, Maunder etc)
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2008/12/newc141.jpg
BTW Leif,
I’ve been enjoying the article on the time constant of the oceans you pointed me too. I will respond at rankexploits when I have digested it; it certainly was what I had in mind, but, of course, I disagree 🙂
Ben Kellett @ 15:45:12
Let me tell it to you this way. The terrestrial data is contaminated and corrupted. The satellite data only goes back to 1979.
We don’t actually know whether it has gotten hotter or colder historically; the best attempts show that there are cycles in “global temperature” {google co2science and Joe d’aleo icecap) and 1000 years ago, it was lot warmer than today.
Also, the actual reliable record shows that there has been no warming this century, in fact it is cooling.
The U.S.A was sold out to the Federal reserve by the British Empire. The British Empire has caused more problems in the world than any other country. I wish people weren’t so proud of this fact and could see where they are heading. In fact we are all slaves, literally owned because of the debt system. War is an atrocity and is needless.
[Evan the RoboMod says “SNIP”]
If every opinion has a voice without humanitarian change then there will be an endless war. I personally came on this site to find out about global warming as it was highly recommended not to hear (and this was where I came in) comments on Britain how great it is and war plus jibes at America being late and hydrogen bombs as a good thing. This is where the thread should have been moderated. I will not apologise for being angry about those things I find disgusting and if more people stood up we wouldn’t get pushed around so easily. Hope this gets past RoboMod who I suppose wouldn’t be angry if he was being ripped off. Ed
Micajah @ 10:52:26
I wonder if the probable lag time for “global” temperatures is known.
This is a subject I enjoy.
From my scuba diving experience, I can say that the time constant of the oceans, to a depth of 30 meters, or 100 feet, is 2 months. This is the section of the ocean that interacts directly with the atmosphere.
However, the oceans are deeper than that; the next level is the 100 meter, 300 foot, level, where approximately the major thermocline is found. The time constant here is under discussion.
Why am I interested in the “time constant” of the oceans?
It is the oceans that regulate the climate; they have the largest thermal inertia on the planet.
After the effects of Earth orbit, solar output, the oceans are the next most important factor in the “global temperature”.
Now, before everyone jumps upon me, remember that the oceans are the source and sink of water vapour and CO2.
Hmm… that makes sense. Yeah, why don’t we take data from 1.7% of the globe when we have data for (much) more than half
At most a surface station measures the temp over a few hundred square meters, which would make the 5 to 10,000 stations used in GISS/HadCRU about 0.00000001% of the Earth’s surface area.
Avoiding a long digression into statistical sampling, if we are measuring a global effect, one location should be pretty much as good as any other for measuring temperature changes, assuming local effects are avoided.
And,
The absence of rural stations in the rest of the world is a valid point. Australia has the second best network over the last 100 years and it has less than 20, and perhaps less than 10, true rural stations with daily records since 1900.
1933 wasnt a cooling because it was not an extended minimum like the 70’s was.
However, be that as it may, I would recommend that you guys take the data for that chart and redo it as an 11 year moving average of the monthly mean. This thus counts each solar cycle as a heat “charging” event and smooths it enough that you can see some obvious trends.
I did that with the sunspot records going back to the 1740’s and it clearly shows a very clear climate trend in the 20th that correlates with anybodys hockey stick, compared to the previous 150 years.
Robert Wood (17:17:39) :
“A 0.1% drop in solar input does indeed lower the temperature by 0.025%=0.07K.”
Assuming a spherical horse!
No, assuming that S = aT^4 (Stefan-Boltzmann law). This would be the same even if the Earth was flat.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (17:19:37) :
Even if there are no other consequences to reduced solar output that still equates to roughly 3.5K over 50 years the oceans didnt get? (Sporer, Maunder etc)
Let the Sun be like that for 500 years, the reduced solar output would equate to roughly 35K, and the oceans would be frozen solid. Or for 5000 years and the oceans wouldn’t get 350K and would cool to below absolute zero, or for 50,000 years, etc…
If ‘the oceans didn’t get’ means that. But you may want to tell us that ‘didn’t get’ means.
jeez (13:16:09)
When you’re hot, you’re hot!
Edward Morgan…
From reading your other posts, you’re on the right track, your heart is in the right place, and for the most part I agree with you.
And if it doesn’t violate your principles, another vote for WUWT certainly wouldn’t hurt. It’s only for bragging rights, but we need everyone’s help. Bragging rights matter!
“We’re Number One! We’re Number One!
& Etc.
Aww shucks, thanks, Smokey. At least I have an audience of one. My funniest post ever on WUWT went unnoticed a few months ago.
” A 0.1% drop in solar input does indeed lower the temperature by 0.025%=0.07K. ”
Leif, .07K per what? Day, month, year/decade?
If the effect is to input less than that output, the loss would then be cumulative.
And most importantly, if there is a pinhole leak in the gas tank, how long will it be before you realize you are losing gas?
Equilibrium, of course, eventually gets reached, as long as the loss does not escalate.
Exactly what do we know, and what do we not know?
Anthony, Has 36% of the vote!!!!
We just might win this yet!!!
Yay !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
wheeeeeeeeeeee
I don’t believe the energy that soaks into the Earth at the surface is very large compared to energy transfer to the atmosphere and ocean. Dirt is a pretty good thermal insulator, so the sink is limited to a foot or two, in my opinion. The ocean, however, with its low albedo (at low to moderate zenith angles), huge mass, high specific heat, and good convective properties, is a dandy heat sink. The atmospheric heat sink is roughly 1/1200 th as effective as the oceans; the dirt heat sink, at maybe 50 cm thick, only about 1/80 th as effective as the atmosphere, and probably a lot less.
Found this over in Solarcycle 24:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/SSN_Predict_NASA.gif
It’s an animated gif that shows how many goalposts moves have been made.
(Hope this isn’t a banned site for the SNIP).
From my experience in underground mines, approx 50 feet in the rock temp is
constant for the altitude and region.
As you go deeper down, the temp rises linearly.
I think ” hotrod” raises a very valid point. Especially the point regarding other spectrums of light and energy. During an eclipse, does the temperature in the shadow not drop substantially on earth? What would happen to the earth if the sun were turned off, even for a short time ( a day, a week)? These are common sense questions that cannot be disregarded. I always enjoyed visiting with my fathers colleagues and had great discussions with them. It had to be within their field of study, otherwise they were lost. Sadly, truth be told, we are a long way from understanding the mechanisms, and a long way from knowing all the mechanisms. Humility insists we admit how little we actually know, and set our egos aside. What we would like to see happen must not cloud our vision from what is actually happening. I am not minimizing the scholastic efforts of anyone, in fact, it is crucial that we have people who know a great deal about a given subject. I really like what Leif said about moving forward carefully and not jumping to confusions( I am paraphrasing and I am hoping this was what he meant). Weather is analogous to science in that it can change quickly and without warning, but it can also change very, very gradually. I am ok with either. We have come a long way, but we have a long way to go yet. Like looking at the stars at night, it is very humbling, yet at the same time uplifting and invigorating . Just my humble opinion.
Robert Bateman (19:37:53) :
” A 0.1% drop in solar input does indeed lower the temperature by 0.025%=0.07K. ”
Leif, .07K per what? Day, month, year/decade?
Per the time scale of the drop. Assuming that the drop is not too abrupt [e.g. hours]. The basic assumption is that what comes in must go out. Equating the two gives the rate quoted. If that assumption is violated, then you have to careful model where the heat goes. Just hand-waving won’t do. Talking about hand-waving, at the recent meeting in Napa in December, one speaker pointed out that there were many kinds of waves: sound waves, Alfven waves, shock waves, etc, but the most important waves seemed to be hand-waves judging from how often they were employed!
Robert Bateman (20:38:00) :
Found this over in Solarcycle 24:
It’s an animated gif that shows how many goalposts moves have been made.
Perhaps the last slide should read January 2009 and not 2008.
When I was young I kept my own temperature charts for 50 cities. I was shocked to see a partial eclipse in Sept. 1969 in Sacramento drop the daytime highs 10 degrees off it’s trend line and persist all the way into December.
One event.
Yes, it should be reading 2009 instead of 2008. Somebody just forgot to change the year.
Robert Bateman (21:05:55) :
I was shocked to see a partial eclipse in Sept. 1969 in Sacramento drop the daytime highs 10 degrees
I witnessed the total eclipse on June 30th, 1954 and still remember how quickly the temperature fell.
jeez (19:54:10) : Wrote:
Aww shucks, thanks, Smokey. At least I have an audience of one. My funniest post ever on WUWT went unnoticed a few months ago.
—————————————–
Audience of at least two actually, although you have to admit that there was some competition on here today. I’m not sure which was funnier, Mike’s comment, or Leif feeling the need to explain it.
I haven’t been on here long, but I take my hat off to Leif. Total, full-service explainer of everything:
Leif Svalgaard (13:30:00) :
Mike McMillan (12:36:47) :
Capitalized Nazis were the National Socialists, who believed in a charismatic leader and believed government should regulate otherwise free markets. Thank goodness those beliefs have faded into history.
Sounds very much like our government…
Yeah philincalifornia, although I personally liked the grammar nazi correcting the usage of Grammar-nAzi.
Perhaps, given the consensus on this forum that we may be entering a global cooling period, an update is warranted on the Wikipedia entry for “Global Cooling”, which takes a historical perspective on an apparently dead theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
Hi all,
I’d just like to ask Leif if he has a link to the Potsdam Ap data. I’d like to be keeping track of the most ‘official’ stuff possible. That’s why I started using SIDC data from Belgium for sunspots.
Speaking of Aa values, I was able to download values of that index from SPIDR since 1868. It’s going quite a bit slower as there are 8 values per day * 365 days per year * 140 years… I’m sure you all get the idea.
While I don’t know for sure that we will encounter global cooling, it seems a reasonable possibility. Leif is quite correct in his calculation that a 0.1% drop in solar irradiance would create a mere 0.07K (or C if you prefer) drop in temperature. However, if we have a Maunder Minimum style event, are we really sure the drop in irradiance would be only 0.1%? I don’t recall there being too many pyranometers in the 1600’s. What if the drop is 1%, 2% or even an awe-inspiring 5%?
I do think we’re going to learn alot if this is a repeat of the Maunder Minimum. We might learn how it started, how closely it was actually related to the Little Ice Age, and all kinds of other great stuff. I’m looking forward to it with an open mind.
Thanks for all the thought provoking content you all place here,
Paul Stanko
Paul S. (22:17:22) :
I’d just like to ask Leif if he has a link to the Potsdam Ap data.
http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/gifs/apindex.html
However, if we have a Maunder Minimum style event, are we really sure the drop in irradiance would be only 0.1%? I don’t recall there being too many pyranometers in the 1600’s. What if the drop is 1%, 2% or even an awe-inspiring 5%?
There are good reasons for the Maunder minimum not being 5% lower: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2470
Leif Svalgaard (19:16:08) :
Let the Sun be like that for 500 years, the reduced solar output would equate to roughly 35K, and the oceans would be frozen solid. Or for 5000 years and the oceans wouldn’t get 350K and would cool to below absolute zero, or for 50,000 years, etc…
If ‘the oceans didn’t get’ means that. But you may want to tell us that ‘didn’t get’ means.
Surprised I need to explain, but if we are at perpetual minimum the oceans are missing out on approx .1% of the solar input per day, year whatever. During the LIA we had approx 270 of those years, that has to equate to a decent reduction of thermal energy in our oceans.
SC21, 22 & 23 got the extra .1% that they might not have received going on history leading to the blow off valve situation with the 1998 ENSO event perhaps.
I wonder how this .1% figure is calculated, is it an average of all sunspot cycles?
I would expect quite a variance in solar output from trough to peak on the lowest and highest SSN this century.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (22:41:49)
I would expect quite a variance in solar output from trough to peak on the lowest and highest SSN this century.
Better fix that or the sarcasm would be deafening, meant over the last 100 years….
Paul S. (22:17:22) :
However, if we have a Maunder Minimum style event, are we really sure the drop in irradiance would be only 0.1%? I don’t recall there being too many pyranometers in the 1600’s. What if the drop is 1%, 2% or even an awe-inspiring 5%?
Interesting point, the aa figures seem to suggest during the Dalton that you can go lower than Svalgaard floor or normal solar cycle minimum (I am prob not looking at the Svalgaard adjusted aa count) and as the Dalton is no badboy, how low did we go in previous grand minima?
Ya know, if the guys that keep the records and use secret formulas to calibrate their data weren’t the same guys pushing their agenda I might be willing to buy into AGW more. Does conflict of interest ever come up with the IPCC + Hansen + Gore 3 Amigos?
If anyone can prove definitively that warming causes CO2 to increase and not the other way around they should speak up now or forever hold their peace. I know cold water can dissolve more CO2 but that doesn’t necessarily mean that CO2 lags temperature. Someone must have a 100% proof that will knock the IPCC off its High Horse and show the world it’s a Gore Ponzi con job.
Leif Svalgaard (21:05:31) :
Robert Bateman (20:38:00) :
Found this over in Solarcycle 24:
It’s an animated gif that shows how many goalposts moves have been made.
Perhaps the last slide should read January 2009 and not 2008.
The most amusing thing about the last slide is the ‘prediction’ of an Rmax=110.
Down 30% from Rmax=160 in the 2006 ‘prediction’.
You’re looking good on this one Leif. 🙂
By the way, thanks for your Ap graph. By my ever so accurate cursory eyeballing, it does seem that the C20th was generally more active than the C19th, which is only to be expected given the sunspot numbers. It’s interesting to note the continued high activity following the dropoff in cycle Rmax after 1950, and I think this goes some way towards explaining the disconnect between sunspots and temperature in the late C20th. I think the plot Paul Clark posted gives a good visual representation of the cumulative increase too.
Given the warmer weather which pretty quickly follows a rise in Ap, and the evident 4-8 year lag of longer term temperature averages behind Ap, it’s clear to me that the big ocean heat battery has been losing more than it is has been gaining for quite a few years now. And given that the effects of the ‘step change’ downwards in Ap noted by Anthony haven’t really hit yet in terms of their effect on long term averages, we can see which way it’s going to go:
A drop followed by a small uptick in temperatures somewhere between late 2009 and 2012, followed by a steep decline. For me, it’ll be fun listening to the warmista crowing about temperature recovery knowing what coming afterwards.
Leif Svalgaard (22:38:37) :
Paul S. (22:17:22) :
I’d just like to ask Leif if he has a link to the Potsdam Ap data.
http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/gifs/apindex.html
However, if we have a Maunder Minimum style event, are we really sure the drop in irradiance would be only 0.1%? I don’t recall there being too many pyranometers in the 1600’s. What if the drop is 1%, 2% or even an awe-inspiring 5%?
There are good reasons for the Maunder minimum not being 5% lower: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2470
Thanks, Leif! I bookmarked the Ap page and will use that one from now on.
I read through the TSI discussion and am left agreeing that a 5% decrease would be kind of a 3+ sigma event, not one we should ever expect to witness. My calculations using the Stefan-Boltzmann law indicate a 2% drop would cut the temperature by approximately 1.5 Kelvin. So, perhaps that gives us a first guess at a ceiling due to solar variability?
Paul
Hi everybody,
I’m sure Leif and probably some others knew this already, but for the rest of us… the Aa index was lower in at least the first 6 months of 1912 than it was at any time in 2008, at least in the spidr data. So, we may end up rivalling the 1911-1913 minimum, but probably not exceeding it. I’m still very interested to see SC25 though which, as I recollect, Dr. Hathaway at NASA forecast to be ‘the weakest in centuries’. Do I have that quote correct?
Later,
Paul
Ron de Haan 🙂
Thanks very much for that very interesting piece & very much appreciated, I learn something every day from this site, thanks also for the web links, I owe you a pint:-)
Jeff Naujok:-) I think I remember that now – the little grey cells aren’t what they used to be @ half a century! It was probably my time to cook the supper that night so probably missed it first time round!
It is still very cold over here, yet another nob of coal Mr Crachet:-) I have a sneaky feeling that the weather forecasters are somehow regretting the climate scientists being under the same umbrella in the Met Office. It is all very well them saying the cold 2008 & this winter being “in keeping with our understanding of Climate Change, not every year will be warmer than the last one”. This seems to be in total contradiction to what the models have predicted/projected. I would venture to suggest that their “understanding of Climate Change” is rather limited!!!! Are we on track for a 0.2°C rise in global temps this decade?
“But it I sincerely believe people such as those at USGS greatly underestimate the amount of CO2 from oceanic volcanoes.”
Beck essayed that the 1812(Mayon? Some here so assert.) and 1815 Tambora eruptions raised the atmospheric CO2 to 450 ppm in early measurements by chemists. This required a decade or so to return to the ~300 average for the cooler 19th century.
The Tambora eruption was a VEI 7, to which we are subject a few times every millenium. The ejecta amounted to 100 km^3, of which, the ultraplinian column requires 20% be H2O and CO2 gas for support (as well as minor components like SO2). CO2 can be as much as 50% but usually is less than 5% of the gas when measured.
Chaiten is to this point a VEI 6 with little SO2 and at very high latitude, both factors unlike Pinatubo which similarly ejected more than 10 km^3. Isn’t it odd that 10 Mtons or so of SO2 can get all this play with the warmeners where a Gton of CO2 (from Pinatubo) is ignored?
Isn’t it also odd that Pinatubo isn’t obvious in the Mauna Loa data, if in fact, the trend is anthropogenic?
Beck reported the measurements but did not attribute the rise to volcanism.
It’s [that’s right I think] not just about cold weather. Sun spot activity increases the radiation we receive from the sun, which affects just about everything in life on Earth.
So LACK of activity/radiation is going to be felt in everything. It may be temporary, as I suspect it has happened before, but watch out for the other effects – food quality and production, insect and animal behaviour, including migration, political and social unrest, yes, the weather trends, especially wind, disease and epidemic outbreaks, human mental health [depression], and so much more. As all of life is cyclical, I am optimistic that an increase in activity will follow. Unfortunately I can’t predict when.
As in all statistics, they can either show what you are looking for or only give a partial picture. Trends are better than the statistics themselves, I feel.
Wear a hat when it’s cold, even in bed.
Wendy Salter
Justin Sane (00:06:52) Look at the ice core data Gore used, it’s right there, fully ignored.
Paul S (02:14:30) :
…
I read through the TSI discussion and am left agreeing that a 5% decrease would be kind of a 3+ sigma event, not one we should ever expect to witness.
I think it might be more accuratet to refer to it as a “Black Swan”
I’d like to know what mechanism could possibly lead to that kind of decrease.
Justin Sane:
“If anyone can prove definitively that warming causes CO2 to increase and not the other way around they should speak up now or forever hold their peace”
You can prove it definitively: Just put a coke in hot water for a while (because you are in wintertime) and open it afterwards…
A little OT but I just have to post this local article. http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/story.html?id=e25537cf-e677-4c20-a61c-8584a406604d It’s been a very long cold snap indeed.
tallbloke (00:27:52) :
By the way, thanks for your Ap graph. By my ever so accurate cursory eyeballing, it does seem that the C20th was generally more active than the C19th, which is only to be expected given the sunspot numbers.
Some comments:
1) the average before 1900 is 13.9, after 1900 14.9, so the difference is not great.
2) before 1900, the observatories often lost the strongest storms [trace went off the record]. You can see that in the diminished number of spikes in the curve. I have not yet ‘made up data’ to compensate for that.
3) the Earth’s magnetic field has decreased by 10% since the 1840s. This makes the Earth a bit more sensitive to the solar wind and slowly inflates Ap [and aa] as time goes by. I have also not yet compensated for that effect.
So it is quite possible [likely in my opinion] that there is no real difference.
Paul S (02:29:00) :
the Aa index was lower in at least the first 6 months of 1912 than it was at any time in 2008, at least in the spidr data.
The ‘official’ Aa-index from SPIDR [and elsewhere] is too low [by some 3 units] before 1957.
After doing checking, I’m inclined to agree with Leif that the December Ap value from SWPC is erroneous, and I’ve made a note in the post. – Anthony
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (22:41:49) :
I wonder how this .1% figure is calculated, is it an average of all sunspot cycles?
I would expect quite a variance in solar output from trough to peak on the lowest and highest SSN this century.
The 0.1% is the variation from max to min for the time where we have actual data [1978-2009]. It scales pretty well with the size of the cycle, so for the small cycles early in the 20th century it should be something like 0.05%. The cycle average would be about half of the max swing, so 0.05% for recent cycles and 0.025% for the small cycles.
Smokey thanks. I’ve calmed down now. You cheered me up. Lost my head a bit there. This site is the best. Its wonderful to read everyday. Thanks to everyone. All the best, Ed.
Over the past 10 years global temperatures have decreased, despite increasing amounts of CO2.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
I wonder if (wink-wink) the sun has anything to do with it? I suspect that as sun spot activity picks up again, so will temperatures.
HOWEVER…we are witnessing an ‘eerily’ quite sun. This may result in decreased amount of activity for SC 24. Fewer sunspots next cycle may result in a flattening or downturn of the recent temperature trend, depending on how far back you measure.
Our planet is a particle that absorbs and radiates the suns energy. The RESULT of this absorption is the atmosphere and biosphere. Everything is feedback from this mechanism of initial absorption. It is impossible for CO2 alone to destroy our progression, when our progression has been a result of CO2.
Question:
What is higher on the food chain, frogs or alligators?
–
–
–
–
Frogs are. They are plentiful, adapt and survive in various conditions. When humans stop cancer and disease, then and only then, will we be on the top of the food chain. Will we ever?
Think about this. The planet has already solved the cure for cancer. Through the light of God, our planet will always find a way to create life. A perfect self-stabilizing and life giving system. Did you think we could destroy the planet?
“The planet isn’t going anywhere! We are.”
-George Carlin
To reiterate. The science against carbon, is science achieved through carbon. What can I say, we are living in strange times.
One aspect of the volcanic eruptions is that large amount of sulphur dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere, where it combines with vapour to create a highly reflective layer.
Some ‘clever scientists’ from Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California, have suggested to do precisely that in order to combat global warming.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/01/climatechange.endangeredhabitats
Leif Svalgaard (07:21:05) :
Joseph (05:58:47) :
what happens if it hits zero?
Good question. Does anyone know the answer? Would it be something of significance, or is reaching zero somehow impossible?
ap can be zero. It is measured every three hours and a 3-hour value is often zero. Sometimes all eight 3-hour values in a day are zero, then ap for the day [called Ap] is zero. It has never happened [yet] that Ap for every day of a month has been zero.
An ap value of zero simply means that geomagnetic activity has been too weak to measure for that 3-hour interval. The 1st and 2nd of December 2008 had Ap=0, so did 12 Oct 1954 and 23 Dec 1935, but such day are rare.
I wonder, Dr. Svalgaard, as you have said here and elsewhere that the current solar minimum is unremarkable, if you could speak to the ap value of zero occuring twice, on consecutive days, in December, having only, according to the information you have provided, taken place twice before, and then separated by nearly 19 years?
Bad ital job. Here’s that again:
Leif Svalgaard (07:21:05) :
ap can be zero. It is measured every three hours and a 3-hour value is often zero. Sometimes all eight 3-hour values in a day are zero, then ap for the day [called Ap] is zero. It has never happened [yet] that Ap for every day of a month has been zero.
An ap value of zero simply means that geomagnetic activity has been too weak to measure for that 3-hour interval. The 1st and 2nd of December 2008 had Ap=0, so did 12 Oct 1954 and 23 Dec 1935, but such day are rare.
I wonder, Dr. Svalgaard, as you have said here and elsewhere that the current solar minimum is unremarkable, if you could speak to the ap value of zero occuring twice, on consecutive days, in December, having only, according to the information you have provided, taken place twice before, and then separated by nearly 19 years?
I give up. Too tired to create itals…
Still curious!
Gary Gulrud:-)
Thanks for responding to the volcano question. At the risk of opening the flood gates I owe you a pint too, they may have to be virtual ones. Very interesting response. I was fascinated by Chaiten’s eruption but reports all seemed to go quiet news wise over here, & I don’t think it made much of a splash on tv news either!
One of the four responses IPCC spokespersons made midway about the cooling of 2008 was volcanic activity, has there been sufficient eruptions in the last two years or so to cause any as I understood that it took around 12-24 months to have a full effect in the atmosphere. They also mentioned natural variations in the climate system, & reduced solar activity, which was something they appear to consistently play down.
Good point George Carlin!, we could turn gw´rs back into carbon (at the stake?).
As seen from above, at 45000 feet altitude, humanity, that mold which together with other living species colour a few spots on the surface of the earth, can not change anything. However we can wonder, seek and find how things work
Nice to see such a simple question as heat loss per what was totally sidestepped.
I’ll ask it again: This .0.1% drop in TSI, you say it translates to .07K heat loss.
Per what?
Year.
Month.
Solar Cycle
Day.
Harold Ambler (08:51:58) :
I wonder, Dr. Svalgaard, as you have said here and elsewhere that the current solar minimum is unremarkable, if you could speak to the ap value of zero occuring twice, on consecutive days, in December, having only, according to the information you have provided, taken place twice before, and then separated by nearly 19 years?
Geomagnetic activity [as many other natural variables like temperature or air pressure or sunspot numbers] has a large degree of ‘conservation’, that is: if one day is low [or high] then there is very a large chance that the next day will also be low [or high], so two consecutive low days are not two independent events. Furthermore, looking at days is not really appropriate because the Universal Time day is arbitrary. If one looks for intervals of eight consecutive zeroes [not constrained to fit into a day] there are many more of these [eight times as many from simple statistics]. Scientists are trained to take all such points into account. I grant you that the general public including you is not, and that you therefore often draw misleading conclusions.
current solar minimum is unremarkable
The current solar minimum is getting down to where many other ones have been, for instance, in 1901 more than half of all three-hourly intervals had a K-index [which is used to derive ap] of zero. Granted that these values are likely to be generally too low [see http://www.leif.org/research/Analysis%20of%20K=0%20and%201%20for%20aa%20and%20NGK.pdf ] it is certain that there were very many more zeroes back in 1901 and 1902 [and 1913]. More than we have seen in the current minimum.
The main point is that the Sun is just getting to where it has been a century ago [and many, many times more in the past]. For us that may seem remarkable, for the Sun not.
Robert Bateman (09:28:08) :
Nice to see such a simple question as heat loss per what was totally sidestepped.
The question was not sidestepped, it was ill-posed. If you add 1 W/m2 for a year, the temperature for that year will be 0.05K warmer, if you add it for 10 years, the temperature for those ten years will be 0.05K warmer, if you add it for 100 years, the temperature for those 100 years will be 0.05K warmer.
Gary Hladik (12:02:24) :
Leif Svalgaard (08:47:38) :
“It is called error bars, confidence intervals, statistical significance. The public [and many posters on this and any other blog] don’t really understand this and endless [and fruitless] discussions ensue over things that are below the ‘messiness index’ limits.”
My opinion of the “messiness” and “endless discussions” on WUWT is not concerning “error bars, confidence intervals, statistical significance” They are associated with but not limited to, complex statistical procedures employed to prove an agenda (for example, sigmoidal or sinusoidal cyclomania and the Mannian EVI, the errors of which you ascribe to), algorerithms which are not disclosed, and associations erroneously purported to prove causation.
BTW, algorithm was intentionally misspelled and no apostrophes were harmed in this message. That being said, though well-educated, I reserve the right to make numerous mistakes, in whatever incorrect fashion I chose. I speak for myself as a physically handicapped typist (two non-functional fingers) and for the foreign contributors to this blog. Since it takes so long for me to type without error, Anthony has already posted another thread before completion. So GRAMMAR NAZIS, please SHOW SOME PATIENCE. This blog is not a peer-reviewed publication.
Oh yes it is! I daresay it gets more rigorous review that most climate science papers these days by the journals to which they’re submitted.
No possessive pronouns have an apostrophe. It’s easy to remember.
Simple rule – re: its v. it’s – unless it is, it isn’t.
🙂
Leif
Did you get the Duhau and de Jager paper and if so do you have any comments?
See my post of 5/1/09 (15:30:34) if you missed it.
Thanks again.
It’s Robert’s award
It’s the statisticians’ award
The answer of what will Hathaway do, it now official, kick the can and hope. What else would you expect? http://solarcycle24.com/
The sun will awake suddenly on Tuesday night, while you sleep, and everything will be find. The hoax shall remain intact as long as possible. Afterall, the government needs the raxes.
This was mentioned on another thread, but check out the new Hathaway prediction for SC 24 (via solarcycle24.com)
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif
Looks like a maximum of around 105 in late 2012/early 2013 and a peak value less than that of SC23. Earlier predictions were greater than that of SC23.
Lief had mentioned in an earlier thread that he though Hathaway might be coming around to his point of veiw. Looks like he was right.
“Jeff Alberts (10:37:02) :
This blog is not a peer-reviewed publication.
Oh yes it is! I daresay it gets more rigorous review that most climate science papers these days by the journals to which they’re submitted.”
Let’s face it – this is the new peer review!
I mean this as a general comment on the ongoing transition of the web into a critical global citizens’ forum – and, indeed, WUWT is a true trailblazer. We are at the threshold of monumental changes in the role of science in society.
The “science is settled/consensus” controversy will be seen as a watershed…
so, folks, make sure to vote on weblogawards!
PaulHClark (11:38:48) :
Did you get the Duhau and de Jager paper and if so do you have any comments?
I did miss it. Too much numerology for my taste. And building on data that is not all that secure. Both the sunspot numbers and the aa index were underestimated in the past. The plot you showed of days when aa was above a threshold is particularly sensitive to the underestimate of aa. As far as I can tell, there is nothing special about 1923 and the even-odd rule is likely an artifact in the first place [it is strange that when a ‘rule’ is violated by observations that people invent new mechanisms to explain it rather than to admit defeat]. At http://www.leif.org/research/Storms150.png you can find the number of magnetic storms deduced from a dedicated storm index [Dst]. The number of storms simply follows the sunspot number [the red curve] without any discontinuity around 1930.
More on the underestimate of aa can be found here:
http://www.leif.org/research/Analysis%20of%20K=0%20and%201%20for%20aa%20and%20NGK.pdf
If Livingston and Penn theory is right then the Hathaway curves will change into straight lines (though they are already appearing on the x axis) and we´ll have another “lost cycle”. Could it be possible?
Jeff Alberts (10:37:02) :
This blog is not a peer-reviewed publication.
Oh yes it is! I daresay it gets more rigorous review that most climate science papers these days by the journals to which they’re submitted.
Touche’
crosspatch (15:18:31)
I would point out though that any deep sea venting of CO2 is not immediately available to the atmosphere as it is released under pressure and into low temperatures.
Leif
Thanks – as ever very helpful – I am familiar with your paper on the underestimate of the aa index – hence my comment that “I note you have concerns over the aa index”.
It is also interesting to note the different thresholds that scientists use in this area having read numerous papers.
As my learning increases I can now understand how frustrating it must be for you and all your colleagues to not have good accurate data over a ‘climatic timescale’.
All that said I still found the chart in Fig 2 in the Duhau and de Jager paper to be potentially very telling. Even if we accept that there must be increasing doubt as one goes back in history there is a marked trend which very broadly fits with the climate reconstructions of Moberg and Zhang.
Moreover I think there is a suggestion that the aa index reflects a much higher level of activity since 1923. I do not think we can discount geomagnetic activity as a key element in the climate warming of the last 80 years. How such enhanced activity impacts the Earth’s climate though is a complete mystery to me at least.
Thanks again for taking the time to respond.
“MartinGAtkins (13:58:39) :
I would point out though that any deep sea venting of CO2 is not immediately available to the atmosphere as it is released under pressure and into low temperatures.”
CO2 venting at mid-ocean spreading centers is an important and non-trivial issue. I haven’t been active in the field for almost thirty years, but would be happy to delve into it if there is an interest (under another thread?).
To illustrate some of the complexities: vast temperature gradients, pressure of the water column, internal pressure of the ejected gas; and there are the properties of the various components of the CO2/carbonate system. Add to this the fact that there is dissolved organic carbon in the seawater, and that, depending on physical criteria, bursting bubbles can form new organic particulate matter…
in short, submarine volcanoes play a hugely important role in the the global carbon flux and thus Earth’s metabolism and heat budget. A great deal of deep-sea observational work is required to reach an understanding beyond the simplistic models that are built on spot-checks using invasive robot vehicles…
(and the climate change warriors want to combat, fight and control all that before having the slightest idea of the dynamics of the presumed enemy…)
PaulHClark (15:06:47) :
I do not think we can discount geomagnetic activity as a key element in the climate warming of the last 80 years.
Not discounting is not the same as having evidence for. Solar activity and geomagnetic activity in the middle of the 19th century were on par with those of the later half of the 20th. Solar cycles 9, 10, and 11 were just like cycles 23, 22, and 21. I believe temperatures were rather different.
—-
a preview would be nice.
REPLY: Yes and so would a dozen other things, but beggars can’t be choosy, and I use the WordPress.com free hosting service. Complaining to them might help, as it if often requested- Anthony
Leif Svalgaard (07:49:35) :
The 0.1% is the variation from max to min for the time where we have actual data [1978-2009]. It scales pretty well with the size of the cycle, so for the small cycles early in the 20th century it should be something like 0.05%. The cycle average would be about half of the max swing, so 0.05% for recent cycles and 0.025% for the small cycles.
I smell a rat in here somewhere, the fact that the IPCC accept this figure for one and we also have examples where the sunspot activity has been higher than cycles between 1978-2009…..perhaps some re jigging is required.
Also on the subject of the solar floor, there seems no reliable record to prove this beyond doubt. Proxy records are doubtful and aa records starting in 1868 dont go back far enough. What is required is an accurate measurement taken during the lowest point of the Maunder.
It seems very possible to me the max variation could be a lot higher than .01% or 1.3Wm2.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (16:01:34) :
What is required is an accurate measurement taken during the lowest point of the Maunder.
First you tell me which year you consider the deepest part of the Maunder Minimum, then we’ll see…
It seems very possible to me the max variation could be a lot higher than .01% or 1.3Wm2.
Indeed it is possible, it even happened as the variation is 0.1%.
To say that “it seems very possible to me” is not science and is not based on anything [it seems].
Jeff Alberts :
Neither is the Royal Meteorological Society. They claim to be. But how can they “review” when there is no data or methodology provided in the submissions they publish? click
Oh, and don’t forget to vote. We need your help! You can vote once every 24 hours here: click
[The voting page may take a little time to load due to the high traffic, but once it loads, voting only takes about three seconds.]
You might be interested to know that terrible cold descended on Europe in the 1590’s ( just about the entire decade) before the onset of what is now known as the Little Ice Age and the Maunder Minimum.
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie , Times of Feast, Times of Famine (1967, New York, 1971).
A small new Cycle 24 sunspot has popped up today in the southern hemisphere.
Will it make it as a new sunspot is the question?
http://www.solarcycle24.com/
My back-of-the-envelope calculation says that it will take about a decade of very cold weather before we reach a tipping point and all of the global warmers become global coolers.
Leif Svalgaard (07:29:30) :
tallbloke (00:27:52) :
By the way, thanks for your Ap graph. By my ever so accurate cursory eyeballing, it does seem that the C20th was generally more active than the C19th, which is only to be expected given the sunspot numbers.
Some comments:
1) the average before 1900 is 13.9, after 1900 14.9, so the difference is not great.
2) before 1900, the observatories often lost the strongest storms [trace went off the record]. You can see that in the diminished number of spikes in the curve. I have not yet ‘made up data’ to compensate for that.
3) the Earth’s magnetic field has decreased by 10% since the 1840s. This makes the Earth a bit more sensitive to the solar wind and slowly inflates Ap [and aa] as time goes by. I have also not yet compensated for that effect.
So it is quite possible [likely in my opinion] that there is no real difference.
Paul S (02:29:00) :
the Aa index was lower in at least the first 6 months of 1912 than it was at any time in 2008, at least in the spidr data.
The ‘official’ Aa-index from SPIDR [and elsewhere] is too low [by some 3 units] before 1957.
Thanks again for all the time you are spending brainstorming this stuff with us Leif.
A couple more thoughts in response:
From the graphs it is clear that there is an upper threshold beyond which increased Rmax in the sunspot count doesn’t translate into higher Ap values. Maybe there is also a lower threshold below which the electromagnetic activity translates to less heating. The universe is full of non-linear dynamics after all. This is why I think the graph Paul Clark posted is interesting. It does no harm to look at the data in a variety of ways to see what stands out. (By the way Paul, when will we get a smorgasbord of e/m indices to play with on woodfortrees?? 🙂
If the post 1957 readings are reliable, Ap may be slightly inflated by the fact that the earth’s magnetic field has diminished, but if that lowering has been reasonably linear, we are only talking 3% or so for 1/3 of the period of record from 1840. During that period since 1957 until the current sudden dropoff, Ap has remained at averagely high levels with an increasing differentiation from TSI and sunspot numbers which far exceeds that 3%.
If the earth is “a bit more sensetive to solar wind” due to it’s lowered magnetic field, there’s a possibility it’s climatic responses to increased input and fluctuation may have been magnified in a non-linear way. If you do decide to “compensate” for that, I would hope you would present the resulting data alongside the existing graph and keep both data series available. We’ve had bad experiences of scientists who ‘adjust’ the data series in line with their theories and hide the originals. 😉
So many potential variables….
Leif (15:54:22)
The observation I would make (and it is only an observation) is that from 1870 to ~1912 the aa index was in decline and this corresponds with temperatures declining over the same period (HadCRUT3 Global Monthly Mean). see this chart from ncdc
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/GEOMAG/image/aassn07.jpg
From 1923 to the end of the C20th there is a marked rise in aa index (especially evidenced by rising aamin) and temperatures rise. The rise is most pronounced from 1985 when the aa index depicts very active levels.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see how this pans out – if geomagnetic activity falls off and temperatures continue to rise then I will assign this notion to the bin – until then my antennae are raised.
MartinGAtkins;
“I would point out though that any deep sea venting of CO2 is not immediately available to the atmosphere as it is released under pressure and into low temperatures.”
Ocean volcanism has been pumping CO2 and other material into the oceans for as long as there have been oceans. I don’t see what difference it makes that there is a delay before it could possibly reach the atmosphere. Whatever delay factor there is, CO2 was also being emitted before it.
The current rise in CO2 COULD be the result of under sea vulcanism in the past!!
tallbloke (23:35:05)
I may be being presumptive but I am not the same person as Paul Clark (woodfortrees) so I am afraid I can’t help with your request re the e/m indices.
@tallbloke (05:07:37) who said “Chris, I’ve tweaked your graph to give you a better idea of what’s happening. Smoothing the temperature date at 1/3 of the solar cycle length brings out the solar signal in the temperature data better than smothing over the whole cycle length.”
The reason I used the same averaging (smoothing) on both solar & temperature data is that otherwise comparisons of lag are incorrect. This is because averaging introduces it’s own lead/lag effect, so the only way to be sure you are not creating spurious lead/lag is to use the same averaging.
And 11 years of averaging is the minimum needed for sun-spot data to (mostly) loose it’s cyclic nature. Hence my previous graph:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/mean:132/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/mean:132/scale:0.01/offset:-0.8
As some people have pointed out, there is a large discrepancy after 1988. However, there have been previous discrepancies, such as around 1960, which eventually disappeared. To me this simply indicates that there are other factors at work than ONLY solar, but this should hardly be a surprise.
These other factors also make it hard to be sure that solar leads temperature, which would be one requirement for solar to be the cause & temperature to be the effect.
However, the 1988 discrepancy has been growing larger for ~15 years to the present (2003.5 on the graph, as 11/2 years are ‘lost’ due to averaging):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/mean:132/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1980/mean:132/scale:0.01/offset:-0.8
If I were to use AGW arguments, I would say that 15 years is only “weather”, and that we need to at least 30 years to be sure!
@Stephen Wilde
I am uncomfortable using PDO, AO, etc temperature trends to predict global temperature, because PDO/etc are temperatures themselves. It is not clear to me that this is not simply circular arguments, where the result (temperature) is being used to “predict” the result (temperature)…
Chris H
These other factors also make it hard to be sure that solar leads temperature, which would be one requirement for solar to be the cause & temperature to be the effect.
Since we agree that over the long term, there is a good correlation between solar activity and global temperature (notwithstanding lags, leads and divergences introduced by 60 year oceanic oscillations, accentuated by the Phil Jones effect, James Hansen effect etc), we can safely conclude that it solar which is the cause and earth temperature which is the effect. This is because if the line of cause and effect were to be the other way round, we would be living in a very strange universe indeed where the temperature change of a small planet affected the output of a G type star from 93M miles distance.
The contention of AGW is that the divergence is caused by increased atmospheric CO2, but I contend it could equally be many other factors. If the temperature continues to fall, while CO2 continues to rise, their hypothesis is looking shaky. If the proponents of AGW say that the fall in temperature is the temporary effect of soon to be reversing cycles, they need to assess how much of the late C20th warming was due to the positive phases of these currently downturning cycles rather than CO2. But I expect we’ll have to do that for them. 😉
PaulHClark (00:57:01) :
tallbloke (23:35:05)
I may be being presumptive but I am not the same person as Paul Clark (woodfortrees) so I am afraid I can’t help with your request re the e/m indices.
Paul, apologies, it was me who was being presumptive.
If the Paul Clark I thought you were is reading, my request stands. :o)
Actually, Paul and I have exchanged a few emails, and in my last I suggested he create a facility for uploading a background image for the graph output. This would enable us to fiddle with wiggle matching to our hearts content. Or insert our favourite picture of a polar bear, frozen mammoth etc. 🙂
Leif,
“If you add 1 W/m2 for a year, the temperature for that year will be 0.05K warmer, if you add it for 10 years, the temperature for those ten years will be 0.05K warmer, if you add it for 100 years, the temperature for those 100 years will be 0.05K warmer.”
Temperature where? Is your control in a vacuum?
RICH (07:47:03) :
“If you add 1 W/m2 for a year, the temperature for that year will be 0.05K warmer”
Temperature where? Is your control in a vacuum?
Temperature on the Earth averaged globally. And on the Moon, too, and anywhere else in the Universe, for that matter.
Leif Svalgaard (08:03:10) :
Temperature on the Earth averaged globally. And on the Moon, too, and anywhere else in the Universe, for that matter.
Should add: where you add 1 W/m2 to a radiation field of 1361 W/m2, just to keep the nitpickers at bay.
I think Smokey is being harsh on the Royal Met Soc’s International Journal of Climate by saying it’s not peer-reviewed. Even if IJC required data were to be delivered up with the manuscript, as we’d all like to see, the peer review would most likely not even touch upon it. Unpaid reviewers are only rarely going to do more than read the paper over, and this is a issue for every journal. The problem is with peer review as a process rather than the IJC.
Finding out if a paper is right can only be done by replication, and the most we can ask of the journals to this end is that they make sure the tools – the data and code – are available.
Leif,
“If you add 1 W/m2 for a year, the temperature for that year will be 0.05K warmer… on the Earth averaged globally. And on the Moon, too, and anywhere else in the Universe, for that matter.”
1 W/m2 is potential energy. It only becomes kinetic energy once it is absorbed. There are many variations into how much is absorbed. It depends on which body and how much that body absorbs, to determine how much warmth is radiated.
“Temperature on the Earth averaged globally.”
The term average, when explaining precision, can only lead to variability.
Maybe I was a bit harsh. My apologies. But I stand by my demand that public archiving of taxpayer funded data [especially the raw data and the methodology used to support a submission] must be publicly archived. We’re not talking nuclear secrets here, it’s the climate. If data were publicly archived, there would be a lot more review.
P.S.: Don’t forget to vote for your favorite site today! click
RICH (11:20:45) :
1 W/m2 is potential energy. It only becomes kinetic energy once it is absorbed. There are many variations into how much is absorbed. It depends on which body and how much that body absorbs, to determine how much warmth is radiated.
“Temperature on the Earth averaged globally.”
If you know so much about it, why do you ask?
The variations from body to body do not change the order of magnitude. The correct way of looking at it is this: Let S be the radiation and T the temperature, then we have S = a T^4 or dS/S = 1/4*dT/T, so a 1% change in S gives you a 1/4% change in T. Since the nature of the body is already contained in what T is, we simply have 1 W/m2 is 0.07% of total S = 1361 W/m2, so the temperature change becomes 0.07%/4 = 0.018% of 288K = 0.053K. Where I have used T=288K for the Earth as the place we really care about. If you use another [real] body with different properties, the 288K would be somewhat different, but not by an order of magnitude, so the 0.05K would be a good ballpark figure no matter what body you have in mind.
Leif,
“If you know so much about it, why do you ask?”
Because when we ask, we learn.
“The variations from body to body do not change the order of magnitude. ”
I think it does. However I am not sure to what degree? If you look at quark energy, specifically the elusive higgs bosun, the point in time in which the particle flips its charge, its field of energy is changed. Around that moment when the flip occurs, it changes the amount of energy absorbed due to changes in its field, despite any constant potential energy. Like I said, it all depends on how much is absorbed… and radiated.
Earth is an atom. The moon is our electron, like an electron in the orbit of an atom. There is a lot of room for error, because there are so many unknown variables, such as changes to fields of energy.
So… why are why are super colliders built? Because when we ask, we learn.
“the 0.05K would be a good ballpark figure no matter what body you have in mind.”
Perhaps. But inside that ball park, would that be a bunt or a homerun? And if a homerun, how far out of the park?
0.05K added per year for 100 years leads to an average global temp rise of only 0.05K assuming that the body is at equilibrium and no other changes are expected. If the body is able to retain all of the extra energy, in 100 yrs it will be 5K above the average started at.
If the body is only able to retain the 0.05K for the first year and reaches a new equilibrium, then after 100 yrs the new average is 0.05K higher.
If a body receives 0.05K less radiative energy and continues to radiate what it did before it received less, then the loss will be cumulative.
What means is there currently to measure what the Earth now raditates out into space?
Oh, just a pun here: SC24 – Start here, Start Now. 8 goalpost moves and counting for the NASA prediction.
Leif,
“If you add 1 W/m2 for a year, the temperature for that year will be 0.05K warmer, if you add it for 10 years, the temperature for those ten years will be 0.05K warmer, if you add it for 100 years, the temperature for those 100 years will be 0.05K warmer.”
This ignores the possibility that even a small change in overall temp may result in climatic changes that could change temp even more, ie “natural variability”, which is your pick out of other reasons for last century’s temp increase, such as solar or co2.
Glenn (20:07:54) :
which is your pick out of other reasons for last century’s temp increase, such as solar or co2.
I asked Svalgaard a similar question awhile back…his answer:”The sun shines on the oceans that store the heat for future use”
RICH (15:34:34) :
Like I said, it all depends on how much is absorbed… and radiated.
In the long run, what is absorbed is radiated.
Robert Bateman (19:15:25) :
What means is there currently to measure what the Earth now radiates out into space?
Satellites measure the infrared radiation. F. ex. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Radiation_Budget_Satellite
Glenn (20:07:54) :
This ignores the possibility that even a small change in overall temp may result in climatic changes that could change temp even more
This works the other way. To suggest what you do, requires you to show that there is mechanism for this or empirical evidence for this happening.
Geoff Sharp (21:30:08) :
I asked Svalgaard a similar question awhile back…his answer:”The sun shines on the oceans that store the heat for future use”
This simply meant that the oceans are a damper of short term variations. This works with cold too. Like where I live [northern CA], the ocean is COLD and lowers the temperature significantly.
Leif Svalgaard (16:44:20) :
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (16:01:34) :
What is required is an accurate measurement taken during the lowest point of the Maunder.
First you tell me which year you consider the deepest part of the Maunder Minimum, then we’ll see…
OK…lets go for 1695 and compare that to 1959, probably the lowest and highest point in solar activity in the last few 100 yrs. What do you think would be the W/m2 difference between those 2?
Geoff Sharp (00:37:22) :
OK…lets go for 1695 and compare that to 1959, probably the lowest and highest point in solar activity in the last few 100 yrs. What do you think would be the W/m2 difference between those 2?
1.3 W/m2
Leif Svalgaard (23:11:33) :
This simply meant that the oceans are a damper of short term variations.
??? simply looks totally disconnected from your original answer. So what was your your answer to Glenn’s question “This ignores the possibility that even a small change in overall temp may result in climatic changes that could change temp even more, ie “natural variability”, which is your pick out of other reasons for last century’s temp increase, such as solar or co2.”
Leif Svalgaard (00:48:55) :
1.3 W/m2
Surprising answer considering that figure is based on SC21,22,23…can you elaborate?
Geoff Sharp (01:02:43) :
“This simply meant that the oceans are a damper of short term variations.”
??? simply looks totally disconnected from your original answer.
The oceans holds 1000 times as much heat as the atmosphere and change on much longer time scales [perhaps 30-60 years or longer].
which is your pick out of other reasons for last century’s temp increase, such as solar or co2.
neither one of the two in the large. Both of the two for small changes of the order of 0.1K.
This ignores the possibility …
If you posit a possibility you must specify a mechanism or direct experimental evidence, otherwise it is just speculation and I’m good at ignoring speculation.
Geoff Sharp (01:26:05) :
Surprising answer considering that figure is based on SC21,22,23…can you elaborate?
Absolutely:
1:
The Total solar Irradiance (TSI) has several sources. The first and most important is simply the temperature in the photosphere. The hotter the sun, the higher the TSI. Some spectral lines are VERY sensitive to even minute changes in temperature. Livingston et al. has very carefully measured the line depth of such temperature-sensitive lines over more than 30 years spanning three solar cycles [Sun-as-a-Star Spectrum Variations 1974-2006, W. Livingston, L. Wallace, O. R. White, M. S. Giampapa, The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 657, Issue 2, pp. 1137-1149, 2007, DOI; 10.1086/511127]. They report [and I apologize for the somewhat technical turn my argument is taking, but if you really want to know, there is no avoiding this], “that both Ca II K and C I 5380A intensities are constant, indicating that the basal quiet atmosphere is unaffected by cycle magnetism within our observational error. A lower limit to the Ca II K central intensity atmosphere is 0.040. This possibly represents conditions as they were during the Maunder Minimum [their words, remember]. Within our capability to measure it using the C I 5380A line the global (Full Disk) and basal (Center Disk) photospheric temperature is constant over the activity cycles 21, 22, and 23”. I have known Bill Livingston [and White] for over 35 years and he is a very careful and competent observer.
2:
Since the 1960 we have known that the sun’s surface oscillates up and down [with typical periods of ~5 minutes]. These oscillations are waves very much like seismic waves in the Earth [caused by earthquakes] and just as earthquake seismic waves can be used to probe the interior of the Earth, they can be used to probe the solar interior. There are millions of such solar waves at any given time and there are different kinds (called ‘modes’) of waves. The solar p-modes are acoustic [sound waves] normal modes. You one can imagine a frequency increase with an increasing magnetic field, due to the increase in magnetic pressure raising the local speed of sound near the surface where it is cooler and where the p-modes spend most of their time. Of course one can also imagine higher frequencies may result from an induced shrinking of the sound cavity and/or an isobaric warming of the cavity. Another kind is the solar f-modes that are the eigenmodes of the sun having no radial null points [i.e. asymptotically surface waves; again I apologize for the technical mumbo-jumbo]. From the solar cycle variations of p- and f-modes [and we have now enough data from the SOHO spacecraft to make such a study] we now have an internally consistent picture of the origin of these frequency changes that implies a sun that is coolest at activity maximum when it is most irradiant. Now, how can that be? How can a cooler [overall, including the cooler sunspots, for instance, as the temperature of the non-magnetic areas of the sun didn�t change {see 1 above}] sun radiate more? It can do that, if it is bigger! The change in the radius of the Sun from minimum to maximum is about 1 km. Goode and Dziembowski (Sunshine, Earthshine and Climate Change I. Origin of, and Limits on Solar Variability, by Goode, Philip R. & Dziembowski, W. A., Journal of the Korean Astronomical Society, vol. 36, S1, pp. S75-S81, 2003) used the helioseismic data to determine the shape changes in the Sun with rising activity. They calculated the so-called shape asymmetries from the seismic data and found each coefficient was essentially zero at activity minimum and rose in precise spatial correlation with rising surface activity, as measured using Ca II K data from Big Bear Solar Observatory. From this one can conclude that there is a rising corrugation of the solar surface due to rising activity, implying a sun, whose increased irradiance is totally due to activity induced corrugation. This interpretation has been recently observationally verified by Berger et al. (Berger, T.E., van der Voort, L., Rouppe, Loefdahl, M., Contrast analysis of Solar faculae and magnetic bright points. Astrophysical Journal, vol. 661, p.1272, 2007) using the new Swedish Solar Telescope. They have directly observed these corrugations. Goode & Dziembowski conclude that the Sun cannot have been any dimmer, on the time scale shorter than solar evolution, than it is now at activity minimum.
3:
Foukal et al. (Foukal, P., North, G., Wigley, T., A stellar view on solar variations and climate. Science, vol. 306, p. 68, 2004) point out the Sun�s web-like chromospheric magnetic network (an easily visible solar structure seen through a Ca II K filter) would have looked very different a century ago, if there had been a significant change in the magnetic field of the sun supposedly increasing TSI. However, there is a century of Mt. Wilson Solar Observatory Ca II K data which reveal that the early 20th century network is indistinguishable from that of today.
4:
Svalgaard & Cliver have recently (A Floor in the Solar Wind Magnetic Field, by L. Svalgaard and E. W. Cliver, The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 661, L203-206, 2007 June 1, 2007) shown that long-term (∼130 years) reconstruction of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) based on geomagnetic indices indicates that the solar wind magnetic field strength [and thus that of the sun itself, from which the IMF originates] has a ‘floor’ a baseline value in annual averages that it approaches at each 11 yr solar minimum. In the ecliptic plane at 1 AU [at the Earth], the IMF floor is ∼4.6 nT [later revised to 4.0 nT], a value substantiated by direct solar wind measurements and cosmogenic nuclei data. We identify the floor with a constant (over centuries) baseline open magnetic flux at 1 AU of ~ Weber, corresponding to a constant strength (∼ Ampere) of the heliospheric current. Solar cycle variations of the IMF strength ride on top of the floor. They point out that such a floor has implications for (1) the solar wind during grand minima: we are given a glimpse of Maunder minimum conditions at every 11 yr minimum; (2) current models of the solar wind (both source surface and MHD models) are based on the assumption, invalidated by Ulysses, that the largest scale fields determine the magnitude of the IMF; consequently, these models are unable to reproduce the high-latitude observations; and (3) the use of geomagnetic input data for precursor-type predictions of the coming sunspot maximum this common practice is rendered doubtful by the observed disconnect between solar polar field strength and heliospheric field strength [the wrong prediction by the NASA panel for cycle 23 was based on this, and the prediction {of a high cycle} by one half of panel for cycle 24 is also partly based on this]. The constancy of the IMF also has implications for the interpretation of the Galactic cosmic ray flux.
5:
But maybe it is the Ultraviolet flux that varies and affects the stratospheric ozone concentration and thereby influences the climate. I have earlier in (Calibrating the Sunspot Number using the ‘Magnetic Needle’, L. Svalgaard; CAWSES News, 4(1), 6.5, 2007] pointed out that the amplitude of the diurnal variation of the geomagnetic Y-component is an excellent proxy for the F10.7 radio flux and thus also for the EUV flux (more precisely, the FUV, as the Sq current flows in the E layer). There is a weak trend in the amplitude of 10% since the 1840s that can be understood as being due to an increase of ionospheric conductance resulting from the 10% decrease of the Earth’s main field. Correcting for and removing this trend then leads to the conclusion that (as for the IMF) there seems to be a ‘floor’ in rY and hence in F10.7 and hence in the FUV flux, thus the geomagnetic evidence is that there has been no secular change in the background solar minimum EUV (FUV) flux in the past 165 years.
6:
Careful analysis of the amplitude of the solar diurnal variation of the East-component of the geomagnetic field [we have accurate measurements back to the 1820s] allows us the obtain an independent measure of the FUV flux (and hence the sunspot number) back to then. The result is that the Wolf number before ~1945 should be increased by 20% and before ~1895 by another 20%. The Group Sunspot number in the 1840s is 40% too low compared to the official Wolf number. When all these adjustments are made we find that solar activity for cycles 11 and 10 were as high as for cycle 22 and 23. Thus there has been no secular increase in solar activity in the last ~165 years [a bit more precise than the 150 years I quoted earlier]. Of course, there has still been small and large cycles, but we are talking about the long-term trend here [or lack thereof].
Direct measurements (although beset by calibration problems) of the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) from satellites have only been available for 30 years and indicate that solar irradiance increases with solar activity. Correlating mean annual TSI and sunspot numbers allows one to estimate the part of TSI that varies with the sunspot number. If TSI only depends linearly on the sunspot number then irradiance levels during the Maunder Minimum would be similar to the levels of current solar minima. But TSI is a delicate balance between sunspot darkening and facular brightening, and although both of these increase (in opposite directions) with increasing solar activity, it is not a given that there could not be secular variations in the relative importance of these competing effects. Several earlier reconstructions of TSI, reviewed in Frohlich, C. & J. Lean (Solar Radiative Output and its Variability; Evidence and Mechanisms, Astron..& Astrophys. Rev., 12(4), 273, 2004, Doi;10.1007/s00159-004-0024-1.[6] all postulate a source of long-term irradiance variability on centennial time scales. Each group of researchers have their own preferred additional source of changes of the ‘background’ TSI, such as evidence from geomagnetic activity, open magnetic flux, ephemeral region occurrence, umbral/penumbral ratios, and the like. The existence of ‘floors’ in IMF and FUV over ~1.6 centuries argues for a lack of secular variations of these parameters on that time scale. The five lines of evidence discussed above suggest that the lack of such secular variation undermines the circumstantial evidence for a ‘hidden’ source of irradiance variability and that there therefore also might be a floor in TSI, such that TSI during Grand Minima would simply be that observed at current solar minima.
Leif Svalgaard (01:43:29) :
Looks like a cut and paste job full of diatribe…a simple answer would be better.
SC19 was higher in solar activity than SC21,22,23….you dont know how low 1695 was in W/m2 terms. The jury is out unless you can come up with some facts.
Leif Svalgaard (01:32:25) :
neither one of the two in the large. Both of the two for small changes of the order of 0.1K.
If its neither, what does that leave….and internal oscillations doesnt cut it.
Dec. 21, 2006: Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one. Solar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 “looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago,” says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/21dec_cycle24.htm
Wrong. Back to the drawing board.
Jan. 14, 2008: One big puzzle revealed by previous flybys is the temperature of the sun’s poles. In the previous solar cycle, the magnetic north pole was about 80,000 degrees or 8% cooler than the south. Why should there be a difference? No one knows.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/14jan_northpole.htm
December 16, 2008. Giant Breach in Earth’s Magnetic Field Discovered
NASA’s five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth’s magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist. The size of the opening and the strange way it forms could overturn long-held ideas of space physics.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16dec_giantbreach.htm
Leif,
“But maybe it is the Ultraviolet flux that varies and affects the stratospheric ozone concentration and thereby influences the climate.”
Absolutely, most definitely… maybe. Thank you for your insight sir. I sincerely appreciate your tremendous work.
Plenty for us to chew over there Leif!
The part which is particularly interesting to me at the moment, is the change in size the sun goes through during the solar cycle as a result of the buildup of these ‘corrugations’ you refer to.
Do these take the form of standing waves running around the sun parallel to the equator?
The 2 km increase of diameter making enough of a difference to irradiance to offset the cooler faculae of the sunspots is of the same order of magnitude as the amount of movement of the solar core up and down (around +/- 0.2km) produced by Jupiter’s changing declination relative to the solar equator as it circulates in it’s 11.86 year orbit. This motion (Identified and quantified by Ray Tomes) could account for the arising of the surface corrugations, being the boundary expression of pressure waves emanating from the core as it gets dispaced from the suns centre.
The characteristic ‘double peak’ at the maxima of cycles dominated by Jupiter would be the dip in amplitude of the corrugations occuring as the velocity of the core’s motion tops out and reverse,s as Jupiter’s orbit transits the nodal crossing point of the suns equatorial plane (during an ‘in phase’ cycle).
I’d be very interested in finding out if there is any data regarding the cross section of the ‘corrugations’ as I would expect them to vary in proprtion to the amplitude of the core displacement, it’s changing velocity and the suns rotational period.
My speculation may be developing a theoretical mechanism with supporting observations. 😉
Oops, right turn Clyde.
as the velocity of the core’s motion tops out and reverse,s as Jupiter’s orbit transits the nodal crossing point of the suns equatorial plane
Should read:
occuring as the velocity of the core’s motion tops out and reverse,s as Jupiter passes the point of it’s maximum declination relative to the sun’s equatorial plane. (7 degrees).
Geoff Sharp (01:59:22) :
>i>Looks like a cut and paste job full of diatribe…a simple answer would be better.
It is indeed an earlier post of mine. The ‘diatribe’ is a the elaboration you asked for. The simple answer is that “all our data shows that the Sun was not dimmer during MM than a recent minima”. There is no evidence to the contrary.
you dont know how low 1695 was in W/m2 terms. The jury is out unless you can come up with some facts.
I just explained to you the detailed evidence for the assertion that the wattage then was as today. The way you should deal with this is to take each of the points and explain in detail to us why you think that that particular point is mistaken.
RICH (05:48:16) :
“But maybe it is the Ultraviolet flux that varies and affects the stratospheric ozone concentration and thereby influences the climate.”
Absolutely, most definitely… maybe.
You missed the point that this was a rhetorical question, and that the answer was in the negative.
tallbloke (06:14:33) :
these ‘corrugations’ you refer to. Do these take the form of standing waves running around the sun parallel to the equator
No they are ‘small’ localized hillocks like pebbles on a beach. http://soi.stanford.edu/results/agu96b.html
Leif (01:43:29)
Quiz in the AM, folks; study up.
Don’t you think the ocean oscillations have enough self-centeringness to prevent whatever does vary about the sun-earth interaction from being too sensitive?
====================
kim (08:30:41) :
Don’t you think the ocean oscillations have enough self-centeringness to prevent whatever does vary about the sun-earth interaction from being too sensitive?
It certainly looks that way. Although one can question the ‘anthropomorphic’ language.
Ooh, nice link, thanks Leif.
“its surface is covered with hills and valleys about 5 times the diameter of the earth in lateral size, but with a height of only about 1/2 kilometer.”
So, even closer in magnitude to the displacement of +/-0.2km Ray Tomes calculated!
Time to model the surface effect of an oscillating core in a weightless fluid sphere.
I’m getting goose bumps. 😉
Hi all,
Since Dr. Svaalgard has been looking at this data much longer than I have, I’m going to use his recommended adjustment for the Aa index in 1912 that I mentioned previously. He recommended we add +3 to the index values before 1957… so here are the average monthly index values with 3 added, compared to 2008 values…
Month 1912 value (+3) 2008 value
January 10.57 16.29 1912 is still lower
February 10.99 22.49 1912 is still lower
March 10.68 22.21 1912 is still lower
April 12.44 17.49 1912 is still lower
May 12.56 13.44 1912 is just a bit lower
June 11.38 14.38 1912 is still lower
July 10.81 11.17 almost a dead heat!
August 13.50 9.57 2008 is now lower
September 12.79 10.95 2008 is still lower
October 12.50 13.13 1912 is just a bit lower
My conclusion from this data is that solar cycle 24 is rivalling solar cycle
15 for historically low values of the Aa index. The minimum for solar cycle 15 dragged on for years, reaching over 1,000 spotless days. Based on using solar cycle 15 as an analog, it seems that most of 2009 will also be spotless and perhaps a significant chunk of 2010 as well.
After that, I would of course expect cycle 24 to begin in earnest, though I like Dr. Svaalgard’s weak cycle prediction. Based on information I have in another spreadsheet, I would guess around 50 to 70 for Rmax. After that, of course, information gets sketchier. We have Dr. Hathaway using speed of convection currents to tell us cycle 25 will be the weakest centuries. We have the paper from Penn and Livingston stating findings that sunspots may be a truly rare event after 2015. Sounds like it might be the beginnings of a grand minimum! Will it bring global cooling? We’ll only know 100% in retrospect. But, it will be a great opportunity to study this type of event. I’m sure Dr. Svaalgard and all other solar physicists would welcome the chance to see ‘Maunder minimum 2’ in action and study what might be the causes of such events.
Not being a solar physicist myself, I guess my take on it is that the sun is in the same state as the economy… in its deepest slumber since the great depression.
Later,
Paul
A quick back of the fag packet calculation says there would be about 24 ‘hills’ around the circumference of the sun’s equator, a classic mainline harmonic number. I’m kind of being guided by the graphic here though, because the text is ambiguous.
“hills and valleys about 5 times the diameter of the earth in lateral size”
Does this mean the hill and the two downslopes to the valley centres are 5 earth diameters, or the hills are 5 earth diameters, and the two downslopes are 2.5 earth diameters each? The drawing would suggest the former, in which case the calculation gives 21.95028 ‘hills’ and the same number of ‘valleys’ round the suns equator. Satisfyingly close to a whole integer, but not such a major harmonic number. More investigation needed to work out the ‘best fit’ number for the whole surface. My able researcher has just emailed me the paper you cited.
tallbloke (10:01:32) :
24 ‘hills’ around the circumference of the sun’s equator, a classic mainline harmonic number.
The figure is for illustration only. Scientists usually do not engage in the sort of numerology you suggest being at work here.
Leif (08:48:30)
Yes. I have to fall back on anthropomorphisms for lack of precise mechanisms.
=======================
kim (12:08:15) :
Yes. I have to fall back on anthropomorphisms for lack of precise mechanisms.
Here is a good link:
http://www.leif.org/research/ENSO-Internal-Fluctuation.pdf
Leif:
Leif: “If you add 1 W/m2 for a year, the temperature for that year will be 0.05K warmer, if you add it for 10 years, the temperature for those ten years will be 0.05K warmer, if you add it for 100 years, the temperature for those 100 years will be 0.05K warmer.”
Glenn: “This ignores the possibility that even a small change in overall temp may result in climatic changes that could change temp even more, ie “natural variability”, which is your pick out of other reasons for last century’s temp increase, such as solar or co2.”
Leif: “This works the other way. To suggest what you do, requires you to show that there is mechanism for this or empirical evidence for this happening.”
This works both ways, and your claims about what temperatures “will be”
would appeal for the same.
Lief Svalgaard (08:24:09) :
“But maybe it is the Ultraviolet flux that varies and affects the stratospheric ozone concentration and thereby influences the climate.”
Absolutely, most definitely… maybe.
You missed the point that this was a rhetorical question, and that the answer was in the negative.”
Hmm now some interesting questions arise.
J. Lilensten et al
Review on the solar spectral variability in the EUV for space weather purposes
Annales Geophysicae, 0000, 0001–10, 2007
SRef-ID: 1432-0576/ag/2007-0000-0001
“Let us do a simple calculation for the case of the ionosphere: the primary electron production (due to photoionization) is roughly proportional to the total XUV-EUV
solar flux, as it is described by the Beer-Lambert law (Lilensten et al., 1989). The additional production from electron collisions (secondary production) is also sensitive to solar activity. In the E and lower F regions, this additional production may double (quiet conditions) or triple (active conditions) the primary production. At higher altitude, the effect is about constant (30% of the primary production). In the E and lower F regions, the electron density is roughly proportional to the square root of the production (Schlegel, 1988). A variation of the solar irradiance by, say, 33% then results in a variation of the electron production rate by less than 100% (3 times the irradiance variation) and a variation of the electron density of about 10%. This value approximately equals the error bar for the most accurate measurements made by incoherent scatter radars; it certainly exceeds the precision on the TEC, as derived from global positioning measurements. To conclude, even accurate ionospheric measurements presently remain too coarse to evaluate the contribution of various parts of the solar EUV-XUV spectrum. Establishing a correspondence between the two is important for research, but trying to retrieve the XUV-EUV fluxes from their impact is illusory.”
Indeed a problematic issue as correlation between “gross proxies” and instruments are at some distance
T. Egorova et al
Reconstruction of the solar spectral UV irradiance for nowcasting of
the middle atmosphere state on the basis of LYRA measurements
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 8, 2965–2973, 2008
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/8/2965/2008/
“Because the solar irradiance in Schumann-Runge band and Herzberg continuum is well correlated with LYRA-P and 205 nm proxies, the accuracy of the temperature simulation is rather high especially above 40 km. Below 40 km the influence of Hartley band is noticeable and the accuracy of the temperature simulations drops down. The results also demonstrated that the other proxies (including F10.7) do not provide sufficient accuracy for the simulation of all considered quantities.”
This is important for a number of reasons,for example, some chemical reactions are provoked only by light of frequency higher than a certain threshold; light of frequency lower than the threshold, no matter how intense, does not initiate the reaction. Similarly, electrons can be ejected from a metal plate by shining light of sufficiently high frequency on it (the photoelectric effect); the energy of the ejected electron is related only to the light’s frequency, not to its intensity.
Glenn (13:04:55) :
This works both ways, and your claims about what temperatures “will be” would appeal for the same.
Most certainly not. To say that there is a “possibility” of something means that you have at least a tentative mechanism that will allow that something to happen. I also ignore the ‘possibility’ that Little Green Men are manipulating the climate, because it is not a real possibility, as the mechanism is not credible.
maksimovich (13:14:02) :
ionospheric measurements presently remain too coarse to evaluate the contribution of various parts of the solar EUV-XUV spectrum
Luckily the ionosphere itself does a good global averaging with a result that is directly measurable by the magnetic effect of the Sq-currents regardless of the too coarse direct measurements.
Sorry for mistyping your name, Dr. Svalgaard…
I’m nearing the end of a long midnight shift.
After re-reading it a couple more times, I now understand your main points better. Since most of the sun’s TSI comes from its temperature, this is not expected to change much no matter how low the sunspot # goes (or stays).
Also that barring some unforeseen mechanism (which would just be speculation at this time), a grand minimum should have a TSI not much different from our current minima, the TSI floor concept. Makes the possible upcoming grand minimum that much more interesting to watch.
Thanks for sharing your considerable experience and expertise,
Paul
Paul S (13:44:36) :
Since most of the sun’s TSI comes from its temperature, this is not expected to change much no matter how low the sunspot # goes (or stays).
Precisely, and the sunspot number can’t go below zero [where is at now].
The difficulty is with people that in order to combat AGW think they MUST invoke the Sun and that therefore the Sun MUST vary enough [even if not observed to do so] or that the minute variations MUST be amplified by some mechanisms, because we MUST counter the CO2 argument with a simple-minded, single cause that can beat the hockey stick.
REPLY: So do you discount even the possibility of amplifying sun-earth linkages ? – Anthony
Leif Svalgaard (10:09:25) :
tallbloke (10:01:32) :
24 ‘hills’ around the circumference of the sun’s equator, a classic mainline harmonic number.
The figure is for illustration only. Scientists usually do not engage in the sort of numerology you suggest being at work here.
Two points.
First, the way standing waves, crystal lattices, and atomic nuclei organize themselves in ways describable by harmonic series is a feature of nature waiting to be discovered by those unblinkered enough to look for them, not a numerological scheme imposed on them by me.
Second, you should look at an image of Jupiter taken from above it’s north pole, count the numbers of storms in the concentric rings, and reconsider your words in the light of logic.
Now, you say the figure is for illustration only, but if so, why would the authors trouble theselves to informs me of the approximate number of earth diameters of each ‘hill’, the vertical scale exaggeration, and put the right number of hills round the equator?
I agree their representation is imperfect, which is why I want clarification. I suppose I should try to track down one of the authors to ask rather than subject myself to your appelation of demonologist, numerologist or whichever other soubriquet you like to bestow on those who step beyond the narrow confine to discover interesting connections between the phenomena of nature.
🙂
Leif Svalgaard (13:43:39) :
Glenn (13:04:55) :
This works both ways, and your claims about what temperatures “will be” would appeal for the same.
“Most certainly not. To say that there is a “possibility” of something means that you have at least a tentative mechanism that will allow that something to happen. I also ignore the ‘possibility’ that Little Green Men are manipulating the climate, because it is not a real possibility, as the mechanism is not credible.”
That’s crazy. To provide a kindergarten example: What is the difference between blaming Little Green Men and increased solar energy in your statement
“If you add 1 W/m2 for a year, the temperature for that year will be 0.05K warmer”
It may be self explanatory to you, but adding a certain amount of heat into the complex open system of the Earth and simply claiming that temp will increase does require more explanation, and evidence to boot.
Does the following not require further explanation, since the mechanism is credible?
“If you add 1 W/m2 for a year, the temperature for that year will be 200.00K warmer”?
Leif Svalgaard (01:43:29) on 08/01/2009 stated that the diameter of the Sun is a little longer at solar maximum than at solar minimum. He wrote
“How can a cooler [overall, including the cooler sunspots, for instance, as the temperature of the non-magnetic areas of the sun didn’t change {see 1 above}] sun radiate more? It can do that, if it is bigger! The change in the radius of the Sun from minimum to maximum is about 1 km.”
I would like to draw his and readers’ attention to the theory of the figure of the Sun developed by the French astrophysicists Sandrine Lefebvre, Jean-Pierre Rozelot and Sophie Pireaux, according to which the Sun shrinks at solar maximum and expands at solar minimum becoming more luminous as it shrinks. As I read this science, the French theory supersedes the results of Goode and Dziembowski to which Leif refers.
Here is a brief precise of the theory of the French astrophysicists.
The Sun’s shape, the Helioid, varies over the solar cycle resulting in luminosity varying as the shape varies. As a result, the Sun’s shape departs significantly from spherical symmetry. The Helioid is measured by several indices of asphericity. The degree of asymmetry is measured by the gravitational quadruple moments of the body. (The quadrupole moment is the standard measure of the extent to which the shape of a curved object departs from that of a perfect sphere. It has indices of prolateness (i.e. vertical stretch) and oblateness (i.e. horizontal stretch)). The shape of the Sun’s internal structures also varies, but not necessarily synchronised over time and location within the Sun. (Rozelot et al (2004) and Rozelot, Pireaux and Lefebrve (2004)). The main researcher is Sandrine Lefebvre.
The Helioid is like a football standing vertically, but slightly tilted forwards with a lumpy walnut-like surface whose exterior lumpiness is variably distributed over the Sun’s surface and which varies over time. The football expands and contracts over the solar cycle, contracting at solar maximum, but becoming more luminous, additional to that produced by the electromagnetic processes that vary over the solar cycle. The lumpiness is always changing.
The Sun’s variable shape appears to arise because of changes in the distribution of matter within the variably constituted Sun. Pireaux et al (2006) established that the mass of the Sun shifts within it during the sunspot cycle.
These shifts in the mass of the Sun introduce another matter for discussion which maybe should wait for another day. But briefly, given that the Sun is 1,000 times more massive than the rest of the solar system combined being 98 per cent of the solar system’s mass, significant shifts in the Sun’s mass within the body of the Sun may have gravitational consequences for the solar system.
If the changes in the distribution of mass within the Sun were sufficient to change the Sun’s gravitational field then the shifts may be sufficient to affect planetary orbits. The consequential interaction between the Sun’s shifting mass and planetary orbits could result in phase synchronisation between the Sun’s activity and planetary activity. Perhaps discussion of this chain of conjectures should wait for another day.
Pireaux, S., Fazel, Z., Rozelot, J P., Lefebvre, S. and Ajabshirizadeh, A., 2006. Solar gravitational energy and luminosity variations, Solar Physics, In Press.
Rozelot, J-P., Pireaux, S., Lefebvre, S., and Ajabshirizadeh, A., 2004. Solar rotation and gravitational moments: some astrophysical outcomes. Proceedings of the SOHO 14/GONG 2004 Workshop, New haven, Connecticut, USA, 12-16 July 2004
Rozelot, J-P., and Lefebvre, S., 2006. Is it possible to find a solar signature in the current climatic warming? Physics and Chemistry of the Earth Vol 31 Issues 1 3 pps 41 45.
Rozelot, J-P., Pireaux, S., Lefebvre, S., 2004. The Sun’s Asphericities: Astrophysical Relevance. astro-ph/04033082
Rozelot, J-P., and Lefebvre, S., 2003. The Figure of the Sun, Astrophysical Consequences: A Tutorial in The Sun’s Surface and Subsurface: Investigating Shape and Irradiance Rozelot, J-P., (Ed), Lecture Notes in Physics, Springer pps 4-25.
Preprints of some of the relevant papers may be found on the websites of Sandrine Lefebvre (http://astrosurf.com/lefebvre ) and Sophie Pireaux
(http://sophie.pireaux.neuf.fr/public_html/page_web_perso_boulot/index.html )
Dodgy Geezer (06:19:30) :
but if we take ‘total deaths’as a measure of how ‘hard’ the fighting was, the US was the lowest ‘provider’, just above the Netherlands.
Unlike European autocracies, the U.S. prefers to fight smarter, not ‘harder’. Deaths are not a good thing for your own side… Why we didn’t like to hand our troops over to Euro commanders to be squandered as cannon fodder like they did in WWI…
Of course, if you measure things like this, WW2 turns out to be primarily a war between Russia and Germany, with a few other countries on the sidelines.
I seem to remember this little thing called the Pacific Theatre and Japan…
Or maybe the dozens of aircraft carriers, hundreds of pilots et. al. don’t count as much in your view since they didn’t die enough?
Interesting weather bits in that war. Halsey sailed his fleet into 2 killer storms. The pictures of an aircraft carrier deck bent down over the bows is chilling…
Then there was the minor D Day thing with more plains, ships, etc. than anyone had imagined. Interesting weather event there, too, what with the surprise element being levered off of our willingness to trust our met office and Germany thinking we never would risk it…
Yes, the U.S. was largely the Arsenal of Democracy (sending a great deal of material to Russia via Alaska too… the AlCan highway was an astounding feat again in the face of brutal weather…) but then we did our share of the dirty work too. Just didn’t see much reason to die in the process if it could be avoided.
My mother was in England at the time my dad showed up for the D-Day event as a combat engineer. She was a British Volunteer putting out fires in the Blitz. My wife’s dad went in with the 101st Airborn.
And this, of course, ignores the actions in Italy, Greece, and north africa. But what’s a continent or two…
I find it interesting that our military has been very involved with building an all weather force and is keenly interested in good weather prediction. Halsey being blind sided by the cyclones made a big impression…
Leif Svalgaard (14:18:28) :
REPLY: So do you discount even the possibility of amplifying sun-earth linkages ? – Anthony
No, what I discount is the starting point: This MUST be happening because it fits with our bias/theory/belief/dogma/whatever. As in Glenn’s posts, “possibility” means that it must be possible, i.e. there is a mechanism, that is energetically viable.
Glenn (14:31:13) :
Leif Svalgaard (13:43:39) :
Glenn (13:04:55) :
Does the following not require further explanation, since the mechanism is credible?
“If you add 1 W/m2 for a year, the temperature for that year will be 200.00K warmer”?
I do not think your mechanism is credible, or rather, you have not specified by what mechanism the temperature will rise 200.00K.
tallbloke (14:20:42) :
those who step beyond the narrow confine to discover interesting connections between the phenomena of nature.
I agree that numerology can be fun and interesting and mostly harmless; the narrow confines of reality hopefully intruding before harm ensues.
Richard Mackey (15:12:00) :
[…] according to which the Sun shrinks at solar maximum and expands at solar minimum becoming more luminous as it shrinks. As I read this science, the French theory supersedes the results of Goode and Dziembowski to which Leif refers
The most up-to-date and accurate measurements of the shape of the Sun has been made by the RHESSI satellite experiment:
Solar Shape Measurements from RHESSI: A Large Excess Oblateness
Fivian, M. D.; Hudson, H. S.; Lin, R. P.; Zahid, H. J.
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #SH53A-1076
The Solar Aspect System of the RHESSI spacecraft scans the limb at the ~4 sec rotation period of the spacecraft, producing a large quantity of precise differential measurements of the solar radius at optical wavelengths (monochromatic at 670 nm). These data provide the most precise determinations of the oblateness prior in particular to the launch of the Picard mission in 2008. The observation of standing waves in the body of the Sun (helioseismology) provided the first direct way to study the interior of a star. The astrometric shape of the solar limb gives independent constraints on interior structures and flows; the surface rotation predicts an oblate ellipsoid with an equator-pole radius difference of some 8 mas (~0.001%). Here we report the most accurate observations to date of the solar shape, which show a much larger apparent oblateness with an equator-pole radius difference of 13.72± 0.44 mas. This new component can easily be distinguished spatially from the effects of faculae in the active latitude zones. Comparison with earlier observations suggests that this excess oblateness results from solar magnetic activity, as do the frequency variations of the helioseismic modes.
Here is a more popular account:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/02oct_oblatesun.htm
The point is that the hills and corrugations are more pronounced [‘bigger sun’] at solar maximum when magnetic activity is highest.
In a few years [after the data from the Picard satellite is in we shall know more].
Leif Svalgaard (17:45:42) :
Further analysis of the RHESSI data:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Sun-039-s-Sphere-Is-Not-Perfect-94896.shtml
Shows that if you subtract the extra oblateness due to magnetic features, the result is precisely what is expected from simple rotation, so no adjustment of solar models, interior structure, planetary tides, or general relativity is required.
Luigi (12:00:08) :
So can draw a relationship for the lowest point for Solar Geomagnetic Ap Index and the economy!? or the beginning of the green house effect?
There is a long observed correlation between low sunspots (low solar output) and the economy. Business cycles track sunspots with some fair accuracy. If you plot “Financial Panics” or “Banking Panics” vs sunspots they cluster at times of low sunspots.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stanley_Jevons
Why? Don’t ask why, down that path lies insanity and ruin…
The theory is that the lower output of light and cooler temps lead to lower agricultural output and that (hand waving) translates into lower demand for tractors, cars, train shipping etc. thus modulating the business cycle.
I’d be just as likely to believe that lower UV leads to lower Vitamin D levels and we all get a mild case of Seasonal Affective Disorder and pull our money out of the banks… which is to say that any mechanism is all hypothetical.
And you thought arguing about climate is fraught with dodgy fantasies…
You can make money trading stocks and ag commodities with sunspots. Due to the correlation between sunspots and planetary positions, there are folks who make money trading stocks based on astrology as a proxy for sunspots. Then again you can do the same thing with a decent trailing stop loss and random entries with a ‘buy if touched’ on the upside. (Trap in, exit on reversal, repeat).
Leif:
Does the following not require further explanation, since the mechanism is credible?
If you add 1 W/m2 for a year, the temperature for that year will be 200.00K warmer.
“I do not think your mechanism is credible, or rather, you have not specified by what mechanism the temperature will rise 200.00K.”
So you think your similar statement is “credible” and does specify a mechanism by which the earth will warm by a certain amount, but that my statement fails in both. And you think that your statement needs no explanation, yet my argument is that both statements would. Interesting.
By this one would assume you think that credible means what doesn’t need explanation or support beyond your assurance.
jeez (13:16:09) :
Mary Hinge:
So when the Hadley Center tells us that the average Central England Temperature on March 19th 1772 was 7.3 C, they have not introduced false accuracy? How accurate were thermometers in 1772?
And my favorite: Since the land data, at least for the U.S. are rounded to whole degrees, any use of precision greater than one degree is also false accuracy.
My high school chem / physics teacher pounded into our heads to never let our precision exceed our accuracy. Unless this rule is somehow not applicable, I don’t see how anything after the decimal point can have any value at all, no matter how processed.
There is a 1 degree F stochastic jitter in all the U.S. land data.
Glenn (18:07:32) :
And you think that your statement needs no explanation, yet my argument is that both statements would.
I have given the detailed calculation several times, so the explanation has always been there.
E.M.Smith (17:53:33) :
Due to the correlation between sunspots and planetary positions, there are folks who make money trading stocks based on astrology as a proxy for sunspots.
I once visited a research institution in the former Soviet Union and heard a lecture by one of the local buys how the interplanetary magnetic field influenced the wellbeing of inmates of their local lunatic asylum [more ‘agitation’ when the IMF changed polarity]. People have great capacity for believing weird things.
Leif Svalgaard (13:30:00) :
Mike McMillan (12:36:47) :
Capitalized Nazis were the National Socialists, who believed in a charismatic leader and believed government should regulate otherwise free markets.
Sounds very much like our government…
Not at all. The similarities are only superficial. We don’t have the funny pants, odd hats, banners and pageantry…
Leif:
And you think that your statement needs no explanation, yet my argument is that both statements would.
“I have given the detailed calculation several times, so the explanation has always been there.”
All I have seen is a *simple relationship, which does not take any climate variable* into consideration. Earth’s climate is a *complex system. And it just seems interesting that you would make this bald assertion, when you are supposed to be for the natural variability* point of view, however vague or unresponsive you are to identifying specific causes, with this “x solar energy would increase the temp of the earth by y degrees, period” position.
Leif Svalgaard (19:02:14) :
I once visited a research institution in the former Soviet Union and heard a lecture by one of the local buys how the interplanetary magnetic field influenced the wellbeing of inmates of their local lunatic asylum [more ‘agitation’ when the IMF changed polarity]. People have great capacity for believing weird things.
Yes the attachment of a number to anything always produces correlation in the general(and scientific)communities.
Geomagnetic forecasts are part of the general weather forecasts in Russia .And as such the “TV population “suffers from the influence of solar flares etc.This ailment effects males and females equally,whereas the western female ailment pms is unknown in Russia.
We can relate this to the the widespread understanding of energy flows as expounded by Tesla and is found in a number of school textbooks.
“Accepting all this as true let us consider some of the forces and influences which act on such a wonderfully complex automatic engine with organs inconceivably sensitive and delicate, as it is carried by the spinning terrestrial globe in lightning flight through space. For the sake of simplicity we may assume that the earth’s axis is perpendicular to the ecliptic and that the human automaton is at the equator. Let his weight be one hundred and sixty pounds then, at the rotational velocity of about 1,520 feet per second with which he is whirled around, the mechanical energy stored in his body will be nearly 5,780,000 foot pounds, which is about the energy of a hundred-pound cannon ball.
This momentum is constant as well as upward centrifugal push, amounting to about fifty-five hundredth of a pound, and both will probably be without marked influence on his life functions. The sun, having a mass 332,000 times that of the earth, but being 23,000 times farther, will attract the automaton with a force of about one-tenth of one pound, alternately increasing and diminishing his normal weight by that amount.
Though not conscious of these periodic changes, he is surely affected by them….
This enormous energy is, however, not constant, but varies with the position of the automaton in relation to the sun. The circumference of the earth has a speed of 1,520 feet per second, which is either added to or subtracted from the translatory velocity of nineteen miles through space. Owing to this the energy will vary from twelve to twelve hours by an amount approximately equal to 1,533,000,000 foot pounds, which means that energy streams in some unknown way into and out of the body of the automaton at the rate of about sixty-four horse-power.
http://www.pbs.org/tesla/res/res_art10.html
Indeed as soon as the new ‘disease of the week” arrives in the local woman’s magazine or Sunday paper micro epidemics of the new disease inundate the local practitioners.
“Fear feeds ignorance” said James Lovelock in the Ages of Gaia,*and a great niche was opened for fear when science became incomprehensible to those who were not its practitioners”
The attachment of a number to anything or anyone implies a significance that was missing from its physical description .A telephone number is valuable tool in comparison the observation that atmospheric abundance of perfluoromethyl cyclohexane is 5.6×10-15 ,or that whilst you have read this line of text a hundred thousand of the atoms in your body will have disintegrated.whilst interesting confer neither benefit or significance to your health.
But once numbers are attached to say an environmental property the means will soon be made to justify their recording,and before long a data bank of information about the distribution of substance x or radioactive isotope y will exist.It is a small step to compare the different databanks ,and in the nature of statistical distributions there will be a correlation of the distribution of substance x and disease Z
It is no exaggeration to observe that once some curious investigator pries open such a niche,it will be filled by the opportunistic growth of hungry professionals and their predators.A new subset of society will be occupied in the monitoring of substance x and disease Z as will as the makers of the instrumentation. Then there will be the lawyers who make the legislation for the beaurecrats to administer and so on.”
The entire new industry sector all funded and constructed on the raison d’etre that their continued employment and vested interests comes from more exaggeration of associated phenomena to maintain the gravy train. Crisis sells!
Glenn (20:24:45) :
Earth’s climate is a *complex system.
In the end, what goes in, must come out, no matter how complex. Of course, there is ‘natural variability’, but it will in the end all wash. The original question was what time scale we were talking about. My answer was that the warming would be the same on all time scales long enough. Each year we get a 90 W/m2 kick in January over July and yet that does not build up over time. People that claim 11-year or 22-year solar cycle variations generally don’t claim significant lags, so the evidence is that the variations don’t build up.
Leif Svalgaard
I agree that numerology can be fun and interesting and mostly harmless
Ignoring the ‘numerology’ jibe, harmonic theory is also pretty useful. Tomes used it to predict the existence of a sub atomic particle at around 37.5Mev two years before it was discovered. And found it fitted with the discovery of periodic ‘walls’ of galaxies in space at around 72Km/sec which weren’t explicable using big bang cosmology, among many other ‘numerical coincidences’. The ‘narrowness’ of the confine of reality mostly depends on how your blinkers are adjusted. 😉
the surface rotation predicts an oblate ellipsoid with an equator-pole radius difference of some 8 mas (~0.001%). Here we report the most accurate observations to date of the solar shape, which show a much larger apparent oblateness with an equator-pole radius difference of 13.72± 0.44 mas. This new component can easily be distinguished spatially from the effects of faculae in the active latitude zones. Comparison with earlier observations suggests that this excess oblateness results from solar magnetic activity, as do the frequency variations of the helioseismic modes.
Here is a more popular account:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/02oct_oblatesun.htm
The point is that the hills and corrugations are more pronounced [‘bigger sun’] at solar maximum when magnetic activity is highest.
A lot of the heioseismic modes are subharmonics of a 5 minute lightspeed wave. The inner planets also (allowing a bit of latitude for inter-orbital settlement) lie on the nodes of a 5 minute wave. There is only a 7 degree difference between the planetary plane and the solar equatorial plane. It would be interesting to know if the observations are sufficiently sensitive to be able to determine whether the maximum oblateness is on the solar equatorial plane or the on the plane of invariance. This might go some way to settling the question of whether the changing oblateness is purely an internal ‘sun thing’ or whether the planets are also involved. Do you think the new experiment might be able to resolve that?
Further analysis of the RHESSI data:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Sun-039-s-Sphere-Is-Not-Perfect-94896.shtml
Shows that if you subtract the extra oblateness due to magnetic features, the result is precisely what is expected from simple rotation, so no adjustment of solar models, interior structure, planetary tides, or general relativity is required.
The quantification of the displacement of matter in the sun due to magnetism would seem on the face of it to be an issue which would have to have quite a few assumptions built into it. It may well be right, but I think that to exclude other possibilities on this basis would be to unecessarily limit the options for understanding. Does the current mainstream theory of the sun have an explaination for why there is an ~eleven year periodicity in the cycle of increasing/decreasing oblateness and magnetic activity?
Thanks as always for your time, knowledge, humour and patience Leif.
Considering it some more, I think that even if the standing waves or ‘hills’ were being brought about by an interaction between the motions of the planetary masses above and below the solar equatorial plane and the matter in the sun, the centrifugal forces within such a fluid body would pull the oblateness changes into line with the solar equatorial plane.
Perhaps a more subtle way to detect possible influence would be to analyse the relative preponderance of northern and southern hemisphere sunspots for cyclicities.
Is there any data on that which is accessible by us Leif?
I really ought to read the links you provide before littering WUWT with extra posts Leif. The NASA link shows an interesting diagram of oblateness which definitely isn’t in line with the solar equator. It’s a shame the diagram doesn’t provide any clues as to what it might be in line with though…. I’ll track down the paper to see if it lets us know where in the sky the satellite was when it made the 10 day reading.
Thanks hugely, Leif, for the reference to the Fivian, Hudson, Lin and Zahid paper. I will study it carefully. We do live in exciting times!
I thought it might be interesting to note another take on geomagnetic activity in the last century. The attached paper supports Leif’s analysis but goes onto show “that geomagnetic activity has increased during the last century at all stations. Also, the Ah indices prove our earlier finding that the amount of centennial increase varies greatly with latitude, being largest at high latitudes, smaller at low latitudes and, quite unexpectedly, smallest at mid-latitudes.”
http://spaceweb.oulu.fi/~kalevi/publications/Martini_Mursula_JASTP_2008.pdf
Centennial geomagnetic activity studied by a new, reliable long-term index – D. Martini and K. Mursula – Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 70 (2008) 1074–1087
Could this explain some of the arctic melt I wonder and indeed the warming trend that we have seen through the latter part of the century?
You forgot the silly walk…
Leif (19:02:14)
The Argentinian movie ‘Hombre Mirando al Sudeste’ is about an institutionalized man who believes he’s alien and receives direction from the southeast. My precis doesn’t give enough credit to the excellence of the film. Thanks for the link about the oceanic oscillations. It’ll all be in there with clouds and some spectra of energy from the sun. After all: The sun is very sultry and we must avoid its ultry-violet rays.
H/t N. Coward
========================================
tallbloke (01:15:14)
I may be mistaken, but I believe one of those minimums had its few large spots in the southern hemisphere only.
=============================
PaulHClark (02:59:11) :
I thought it might be interesting to note another take on geomagnetic activity in the last century. The attached paper supports Leif’s analysis but goes onto show “that geomagnetic activity has increased during the last century at all stations. Also, the Ah indices prove our earlier finding that the amount of centennial increase varies greatly with latitude, being largest at high latitudes, smaller at low latitudes and, quite unexpectedly, smallest at mid-latitudes.”
The authors are misleading you [and their readers]. The first claim is disingenuous, because the last century goes from 1901 [a minimum year] to 2000 [a maximum year]. If they have extended the analysis through 2008 they would have found that activity now is as low as in 1901. The second claim just shows that they do not understood their own index. Solar activity and the Earth’s magnetosphere’s reaction to it does not depend on the latitude of the measuring station. As explained in section A5 [and figure A6] of http://www.leif.org/research/2007JA012437.pdf the second claim is spurious because of changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.
tallbloke (00:54:53) :
The quantification of the displacement of matter in the sun due to magnetism would seem on the face of it to be an issue which would have to have quite a few assumptions built into it.
No, this is an observational fact. The assumption is that what we observe is what happens.
Does the current mainstream theory of the sun have an explaination for why there is an ~eleven year periodicity in the cycle of increasing/decreasing oblateness and magnetic activity?
Indeed, yes we do. We are quibbling about the details, but they are just that: details.
@tallbloke (04:01:15) who said “Since we agree … there is a good correlation between solar activity and global temperature … we can safely conclude that it solar which is the cause and earth temperature which is the effect.”
Wrong, or at least not totally correct. For any correlation between S & T, there are always four possible reasons:
1. S causes T.
2. T causes S.
3. S & T are caused by X.
4. S & T only happen to correlate by accident (random chance).
So while it is true that global temperature cannot affect sun activity (which rules out reasons 2 & 3), we cannot be sure that 1 is the answer, because there is still option of 4.
While I do *favour* sun spots (due to sun activity) causing temperature, IMHO 150 years of inexactly correlating data is not enough for be totally sure:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/mean:132/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/mean:132/scale:0.01/offset:-0.8
If we could find the “other factors” that influence global temperature, and remove their effect, then it would be much easier to be sure whether sun activity is the main cause of global temperature variations.
BTW, one nice reason for choosing sun spots over some other proxy of sun activity, is that sun spots have been explicitly recorded by man, while “sun activity proxies” may be measuring something other than what you think (just like tree rings & temperature).
Because of the semiannual variation of geomagnetic activity [which has nothing to do with solar activity] ap is 25% lower near the solstices [e.g. December], so when comparing single data points that has to be taken into effect.
Leif
Thanks – I clearly need to do more reading and I really appreciate you taking the time to respond.
As ever, deeply grateful for your input.
Does the current mainstream theory of the sun have an explaination for why there is an ~eleven year periodicity in the cycle of increasing/decreasing oblateness and magnetic activity?
Indeed, yes we do. We are quibbling about the details, but they are just that: details.
Quick praisee or a linky? 🙂
I’d really appreciate an answer to this one below:
Perhaps a more subtle way to detect possible influence would be to analyse the relative preponderance of northern and southern hemisphere sunspots for cyclicities.
Is there any data on that which is accessible by us Leif?
tallbloke (11:06:23) :
Quick praisee or a linky? 🙂
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/322/5901/560
is a good place to start.
analyse the relative preponderance of northern and southern hemisphere sunspots for cyclicities. Is there any data on that which is accessible by us
Yes, you have to do some work, but Hathaway’s website has all you need back to 1874:
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/greenwch.shtml
A simple plot since 1945: http://sidc.oma.be/html/wnosuf.html
A google search on ‘north south asymmetry sunspots’ gives you lots of pointers. Most of the papers pointed to are of low or mediocre quality [as most cyclomania stuff is].
E.M.Smith (17:53:33) :
Luigi (12:00:08) :
So can draw a relationship for the lowest point for Solar Geomagnetic Ap Index and the economy!? or the beginning of the green house effect?
[…]
The theory is that the lower output of light and cooler temps lead to lower agricultural output and that (hand waving) translates into lower demand for tractors, cars, train shipping etc. thus modulating the business cycle.
Found an example. I’ve Bolded the temperature bit. From last year, an announcement by Maui Land & Pineapple:
Maui Land & Pineapple swings to 1st-quarter loss
By Robert Daniel, MarketWatch
Last update: 6:18 a.m. EDT May 4, 2008
TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) – Maui Land & Pineapple Co. swung to a first-quarter loss from a year-earlier profit on fewer land sales and weaker operations in fresh-pineapple sales.
The Kahului, Hawaii, company (MLP) posted a loss of $740,000, or 9 cents a share, compared with net income of $15.7 million, or $2.12, for the year-earlier period. Shares outstanding rose 6.1% to nearly 8 million.
Revenue slumped 58% to $25.4 million from $61 million.
The company said in a statement late on Friday that its revenue from land sales is sporadic, so figures in one quarter may not reflect the results for a full year.
In addition, colder-than-average temperatures at its plantation in Hali’imaile meant its fruit took longer to ripen. The agriculture segment thus reported an operating loss of $5.6 million, wider than the $2.4 million year-earlier deficit.
Supposedly, repeated thousands of times around the planet and filtered through the rest of the economy and the warm / cold flip drives a rich / poor flip.
Chris H (07:59:13) :
1. S causes T.
2. T causes S.
3. S & T are caused by X.
4. S & T only happen to correlate by accident (random chance).
So while it is true that global temperature cannot affect sun activity (which rules out reasons 2 & 3), we cannot be sure that 1 is the answer, because there is still option of 4.
Um I think that T not=> S only rules out #2. #3 ought to stay in since, as a bogus hypothetical, our solar system position relative to the galactic plain might drive both S & T (i.e. be X) and is not falsified by T not driving S.
That little nit harvester, me … 😉 (Anyone remember “That little Wine Maker” tag line from long long ago commercials?…)
@E.M.Smith (13:58:32)
I didn’t explain why reason for #3. There are two cases for X:
(A) X originates on Earth.
(B) X originates in space (e.g. the Sun).
Clearly X cannot affect the Sun if #A is true, which is why I said it “rules out reasons 2 & 3”.
Where-as if #B is true, then it doesn’t really matter whether X originates in the Sun (most likely) or whether somewhere else in space, since for the argument in question we are only interested whether something outside Earth is causing temperature changes (reason #1) or not (reason #4).
Chris H
So while it is true that global temperature cannot affect sun activity (which rules out reasons 2 & 3), we cannot be sure that 1 is the answer, because there is still option of 4.
If we could find the “other factors” that influence global temperature, and remove their effect, then it would be much easier to be sure whether sun activity is the main cause of global temperature variations.
I agree with E.M. Smith that logically (3) is still in play, but notwithstanding the gas giant baby elephants in the room which I’m sure have an influence on modulating the cycle, the sun is still the big boy on the block.
The “other factors” are mainly the big battery oceanic cycles, whichever way their ~60 year cycle is modulated (Albedo, GLAAM, lunar modulated wind patterns, insert favourite hidden driver here). Their quasi periodicity certainly skews the direct solar-temperature correlation, but in the end, more energy comes from the sun than comes out of the earths core by a factor of lots of OOM.
It’s the most fascinating puzzle ever, and by swapping ideas and progressed data, we’ll get there.
I’d still like to try to squeeze six solar cycles into the approx. 60 year cycle of the PDO, then find something, like the shape of cosmic ray peaks, that alternates in solar cycles, leaving three solar cycles in each 30 year heating or cooling phase of the PDO. I don’t think it fits very well, though, and, of course, I lack a mechanism how shapes of cosmic ray peaks alternately cool and heat oceans.
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Thanks Leif,
I will download the North and South data from Hathaway’s site and start playing with R.
Found this paper which looks useful too if you are familiar with it please comment.
The Long-term Behavior of the North – South
Asymmetry of Sunspot Activity
K.J. Li · P.X. Gao · L.S. Zhan
kim (04:03:01) :
I’d still like to try to squeeze six solar cycles into the approx. 60 year cycle of the PDO, then find something, like the shape of cosmic ray peaks, that alternates in solar cycles, leaving three solar cycles in each 30 year heating or cooling phase of the PDO. I don’t think it fits very well, though, and, of course, I lack a mechanism how shapes of cosmic ray peaks alternately cool and heat oceans.
Kim,
You may also want to look at the ~60 year fluctuations in Global atmospheric angular momentum (GLAAM) and it’s correlation with Length of Day (LOD).
tallbloke (04:53:41) :
The Long-term Behavior of the North – South
Asymmetry of Sunspot Activity
Is typical of the scores of papers on this subject [I have one myself coming out shortly]. Nothing significant has ever emerged from these studies. Here is another one of the same ilk: http://www.chjaa.org/Papers_Accepted/08072_arnab_v2.pdf
Leif Svalgaard (09:06:30) :
Because of the semiannual variation of geomagnetic activity [which has nothing to do with solar activity] ap is 25% lower near the solstices [e.g. December], so when comparing single data points that has to be taken into effect.
I wonder just how much this effect is contributing to the current historic
low in the Ap index. Will be another interesting item to watch over the next several months.
Paul
Thanks Leif,
interesting that all the studies I’ve looked at so far treat the asymmetry over complete 11 year cycles, rather than the Hale cycle. You’d think that the magnetic polarity would have a bearing on this somehow. Also, I think an analysis of the predominance of one hemisphere over the other on the ascending and descending parts of the cycles might be worth checking too. Are you aware of any previous studies which have taken either of these two periods into account?
Paul S (13:23:44) :
I wonder just how much this effect is contributing to the current historic low in the Ap index.
This is easy to quantify: add 25% to the current December values to get ‘an uncontaminated’ number. To correct any given value of ap multiply by (1 + 3*(cos(psi))^2)^(2/3), where ‘psi’ is the angle between the direction to the Sun and the Earth’s dipole axis. See section 7 of http://www.leif.org/research/suipr699.pdf or see http://www.leif.org/research/The%20semiannual%20variation%20of%20great%20geomagnetic%20storms.pdf
tallbloke (14:34:14) :
Are you aware of any previous studies which have taken either of these two periods into account?
The asymmetry has been studied by many people. Scientists would love to discover any laws or regularities so are very creative in analyzing a thing this way or that, up and down, in and out, ad nauseam. Most of time, these researches do not show any effects, and [this is important] no paper is written announcing the null result. Trust me, ‘everything’ has been tried and failed. Null results are only written about if someone else claims a positive result.
So what are the conclusions of your forthcoming paper Leif. Are you going to buck the trend? 😉
tallbloke (02:12:09) :
So what are the conclusions of your forthcoming paper
The paper is on predicting the cycle. The asymmetry is larger when cycles are weak, but that itself is but a weak tendency, so nothing earthshaking.
I’ve downloaded Hathaway’s data and have been fiddling with graphing. On one run I subtracted south from north and then took the absolute value to see asymmetry against overall cycle strength, so I saw the same tendency. As you say, it is fairly weak. Overall the asymmetry is less variant than the total sunspot area variation, so maybe it’s more the other way round: When cycles are weak asymmetry stays roughly the same as in larger cycles.
What I saw as more interesting is a potential longterm periodicity around 170-190 years and a lot of short term swings around 250-300 days. Until I do some fourier analysis it’s just first impressions though.
Interesting data to read; liked very much “tallbloke’s” comments. It would appear that the earth’s magnetic poles reversed suddenly way back when “Neanderthal Man” began to fade away.
Leif Svalgaard (08:08:38) :
tallbloke (02:12:09) :
So what are the conclusions of your forthcoming paper
The paper is on predicting the cycle. The asymmetry is larger when cycles are weak, but that itself is but a weak tendency, so nothing earthshaking.
This might be only a weak tendency, Dr. Svalgaard. but quite interesting due to the developing cycle 24 asymmetry. So far cycle 24 has 5 spot regions in the northern hemisphere and only 1 in the southern hemisphere, according to a graphic by Kevin on http://www.solarcycle24.com . Sounds pretty asymmetric to me! By itself that might not mean much, but taken together with all the other evidence for a weak cycle… one more piece of grist for the weak cycle mill.
There does look to be some evidence that previous grand minima had a tendency for a single hemisphere sunspot activity, or both poles having the same polarity or the Hale cycle not changing polarity. Its early days and the “phase catastrophe” hasnt happened yet. New evidence from Ian Wilson suggests a trigger mechanism for grand minima, since 1700 (and possibly before) every time J+S line up (minor & major) before solar max we have had greatly reduced sunspot activity, this also correlates with the changes in momentum created by N+U being together. If SC24 max is after March 2011 it will fit this criteria.
I have plotted this phenomena on Carl’s graph. The black dots are J+S together, blue is J+S opposed and red is cycle max.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2009/01/ssbscmax2.jpg
Ian’s paper can be accessed here.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (18:34:28) :
There does look to be some evidence that previous grand minima had a tendency for a single hemisphere sunspot activity, or both poles having the same polarity or the Hale cycle not changing polarity. Its early days and the “phase catastrophe” hasnt happened yet.
The Hale cycle has changed polarity already.
Leif Svalgaard (19:37:58) :
The Hale cycle has changed polarity already.
Like I said “early days”. It may also stay like it is for 22 yrs.
Leif Svalgaard (19:37:58) :
To be more precise, proxy records taken from the Maunder (as i have shown you before) suggest the Schwabe cycle goes for 22 yrs rather than 11…which would entail a polarity change, but over a longer period than normal….but who knows, it was way too long ago.
We will know this time.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (20:17:32) :
To be more precise, proxy records taken from the Maunder (as i have shown you before) suggest the Schwabe cycle goes for 22 yrs rather than 11
McCracken has recently analyzed the 10Be record for 1428-2004. He expresses the 10Be content as ‘equivalent’ heliospheric magnetic field. Although I don’t like that method, the relative variation from year to year should be OK. http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle-10Be-Maunder-Min.png shows the result. The FFT power spectrum on the right shows that the cycle period was 12.5 years [frequency 0.08/yr]. It is amazing that some old myths gets perpetuated forever.
Similarly Hiroko Miyahara and her colleages [where I was visiting professor once] in “Variation of the Radiocarbon Content of Tree Rings during the Spoerer Minimum” [28th International Cosmic Ray Conference] measured the radiocarbon content of tree rings from the Spoerer Minimum and found that the 11-year period was dominant [FFT peak at 10.9 years].
Leif Svalgaard (21:12:47) :
The FFT power spectrum on the left
Leif Svalgaard (21:12:47) :
The McCracken graph looks to have a 22 yr cycle in it ….But we can throw proxy reports at each other and not get anywhere, they are proxy reports. You have ones showing normal cycles, others show 22 yr cycles. You cant tell us exactly what happened during the Maunder with any absolute certainty with regard to the solar poles, so lets wait and see.
I suspect we will witness some unusual conditions at the poles in the next cycles, but perhaps not a 22yr Schwabe cycle. That might be reserved for grand minima that is triple punched by strong angular momentum….not like the single punch we are most likely heading into.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (22:43:27) :
The McCracken graph looks to have a 22 yr cycle in it
This is where wishful thinking takes over. The FFT power spectrum clearly shows the 12.5 year peak instead. There is no evidence for the ‘phase catastrophe’.
Leif Svalgaard (04:24:28) :
There is no evidence for the ‘phase catastrophe’.
There is evidence for and against a 22yr Schwabe cycle , it just depends which one you choose.
I think you misunderstand the phrase ‘phase catastrophe’. It should be used to describe the overall grand minimum action affecting the Sun. There is multiple causes in theory, one of which is a 22yr Schwabe cycle. “Phase catastrophe” can still occur without a 22yr Schwabe cycle.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (06:41:34) :
There is evidence for and against a 22yr Schwabe cycle , it just depends which one you choose.
I have shown you the latest version of proxies which supersedes all earlier versions. So, let us put this to bed. There is no evidence of a 22-year Schabe cycle. If the two 11-year cycles are slightly different [there are those who think there is a difference between even and odd cycle], that will show up in the power spectrum at 22 years, but this does not mean that the cycles lasted 22 years.
Leif Svalgaard (09:12:45) :
Usoskin disagrees with you.
The Maunder minimum is a representative of grand minima in solar activity (e.g., Eddy, ), when sunspots have almost completely vanished from the solar surface, while the solar wind keeps blowing, although at a reduced pace (Cliver et al., 1998; Usoskin et al., ). There is some uncertainty in the definition of its duration; the “formal” duration is 1645 – 1715 (Eddy, 1976), while its deep phase with the absence of apparent sunspot cyclic activity is often considered as 1645 – 1700, with the low, but very clear, solar cycle of 1700 – 1712 being ascribed to a recovery or transition phase (Usoskin et al.). The Maunder minimum was amazingly well covered (more than 95% of days) by direct sunspot observations (Hoyt and Schatten, 1996), especially in its late phase (Ribes and Nesme-Ribes, ). On the other hand, sunspots appeared rarely (during ∼ 2% of the days) and seemingly sporadically, without an indication of the 11-year cycle (Usoskin and Mursula, 2003). This makes it almost impossible to apply standard methods of time-series analysis to sunspot data during the Maunder minimum (e.g., Frick et al., 1997)). Therefore, special methods such as the distribution of spotless days vs. days with sunspots (e.g., Harvey and White, 1999) or an analysis of sparsely-occurring events (Usoskin et al.,) should be applied in this case. Using these methods, Usoskin et al. have shown that sunspot occurrence during the Maunder minimum was gathered into two large clusters (1652 – 1662 and 1672 – 1689), with the mass centers of these clusters being in 1658 and 1679 – 1680. Together with the sunspot maxima before (1640) and after (1705) the deep Maunder minimum, this implies a dominant 22-year periodicity in sunspot activity throughout the Maunder minimum (Mursula et al., 2001), with a subdominant 11-year cycle emerging towards the end of the Maunder minimum (Ribes and Nesme-Ribes, 1993; Mendoza, 1997; Usoskin et al., ) and becoming dominant again after 1700. Similar behavior of a dominant 22-year cycle and a weak subdominant Schwabe cycle during the Maunder minimum has been found in other indirect solar proxy data: auroral occurrence (Křivský and Pejml, 1988; Schlamminger, 1990; Silverman, 1992) and 14C data (Stuiver and Braziunas, 1993; Kocharov et al., 1995; Peristykh and Damon, 1998; Miyahara et al. ). This is in general agreement with the concept of “immersion” of 11-year cycles during the Maunder minimum (Vitinsky et al.). This concept means that full cycles cannot be resolved and sunspot activity only appears as pulses around cycle-maximum times.
The time behavior of sunspot activity during the Maunder minimum yields the following general scenario (Vitinsky et al., 1986; Ribes and Nesme-Ribes, ; Sokoloff and Nesme-Ribes, 1994Jump To The Next Citation Point; Usoskin et al., 2000, 2001a; Miyahara et al.). Transition from the normal high activity to the deep minimum was sudden (within a few years) without any apparent precursor. A 22-year cycle was dominant in sunspot occurrence during the deep minimum (1645 – 1700), with the subdominant 11-year cycle, which became visible only in the late phase of the Maunder minimum. The 11-year Schwabe cycle started dominating solar activity after 1700. Recovery of sunspot activity from the deep minimum to normal activity was gradual, passing through a period of nearly-linear amplification of the 11-year cycle. It is interesting to note that such a qualitative evolution of a grand minimum is consistent with predictions of the stochastically-forced return map (Charbonneau, ).
Although the Maunder minimum is the only one with available direct sunspot observations, its predecessor, the Spörer minimum from 1450 – 1550, is covered by precise bi-annual measurements of 14C (Miyahara et al.). An analysis of this data (Miyahara et al., 2006a,b) reveals a similar pattern with the dominant 22-year cycle and suppressed 11-year cycle, thus supporting the idea that the above general scenario may be typical for a grand minimum.
A very important feature of sunspot activity during the Maunder minimum was its strong north-south asymmetry, as sunspots were only observed in the southern solar hemisphere during the end of the Maunder minimum (Ribes and Nesme-Ribes, 1993; Sokoloff and Nesme-Ribes, 1994). This observational fact has led to intensive theoretical efforts to explain a significant asymmetry of the sun’s surface magnetic field in the framework of the dynamo concept (see the review by Sokoloff, 2004, and references therein).
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (17:46:58) :
Usoskin disagrees with you.
He disagrees with me on many things. The sunspot record is too spotty to analyze during the Maunder Minimum. That is why the 10Be record and the 14C record must be used. And Mayahara’s paper is clear: http://www.stelab.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~kmasuda/C14_km/C14_publ/icrc03_sp.pdf
see Figure 3 and 4. The notion of a 22-year cycle comes from the 11-year cycles being of uneven size. That gives rise to the two smaller side peaks at 23 and 7 years in figure 3. This is a very different phenomenon than a Schwabe cycle of 22-years. Now, you have not defined Schwabe cycle. I’ll define it as a cycle where the Hale polarity law remains valid throughout the cycle and where there is one reversal of polar fields near the middle of the cycle [and no comments about the polar fields fluctuating as they reverse, please – they do this in every cycle].
Leif Svalgaard (19:22:05) :
He disagrees with me on many things.
And he is not the only one….as outlined in the list of papers he refers to.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (04:19:47) :
He disagrees with me on many things.
And he is not the only one….as outlined in the list of papers he refers to.
Most of the papers are just general background and do not specifically say that there was no 11-year cycle.
And Usoskin [like you] misrepresents what the authors actually say.
For example, in referring to Miyahara:
“An analysis of this data (Miyahara et al., 2006a,b) reveals a similar pattern with the dominant 22-year cycle and suppressed 11-year cycle.”
If you actually read Miyahara’s paper [see her Figure 3 and 4] you will see that the strongest peak in the power spectrum is at 11 years, not 22, so no ‘dominant’ 22-year cycle.
Leif Svalgaard (07:06:42) :
Most of the papers are just general background and do not specifically say that there was no 11-year cycle.
The point is that the 22yr cycle exists (supported by many), whether its dominant or not is not important. I stated originally ” there does look to be some evidence” and that is was only proxy as in your case, so we can put it to bed by both agreeing the evidence is weak on both sides and needs to be tested by modern equipment. Whether you and me will be around to do that is doubtful as this phenomenon was not recorded during the Dalton, and is more likely to occur in far stronger grand minima where it is hit by successive “phase catastrophe” or dynamo “shutdowns” or whatever you want to call it. The Sporer and Maunder clearly show a triple hit, the Dalton was a single hit followed later by a very weak episode at SC12 (a not so grand minimum), the upcoming grand minimum looks to be a single hit only.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (17:20:22) :
The point is that the 22yr cycle exists (supported by many),
Your problem may be one of semantics. One of Usokin’s pet ideas is there is a relic solar magnetic field, left over from the birth of the Sun and not maintained by a dynamo and without field reversals. This was a possible idea back when we had the neutrino problem [because it might have distorted the solar interior and decreased the number of neutrinos generated] and before we had helioseismology [which does not show any distortions]. The relic field would modulate the normal 11-year dynamo driven cycle [the Schwabe cycle] in the sense that it would add to one polarity every other cycle when the two magnetic fields were aligned. This would be especially visible when the 11-year cycle was weak during grand minima. The result would be that every other 11-year cycle might be a bit larger. This would masquerade as a 22-year cycle [especially in the presence of noise]. The issue is best illustrated with a figure. http://www.leif.org/research/Synthetic-10-20-year-cycles.png where on the right I have an alternation of high and low 10-year cycles [thus no physical 20-year cycle] that we think reverse polarity every time without any catastrophe of any kind or shutdown of the dynamo. The power spectrum to the right shows the physical 10-year peak and ‘artificial’ 20-year [at frequency 0.10-0.05=0.05] and 6.7-year peaks [at frequency 0.10+0.05=0.15]. Compare this to Figure 3 in Miyahara’s paper.
This is what the data shows, so, again [and it is getting tedious] there is only an ‘eternal’ 11-year cycle that changes polarity every time. The data [Beer’s 10Be and Miyahara’s 14C] is the best we have and are fully consistent with the above. The dynamo does not shut down. It would not get started again if it did. Appeals to poor data and weak evidence won’t work.
Now, the neutrino problem has been solved [the neutrinos have mass and can change ‘kind’] so no relic field is needed and helioseismology shows that the interior is not distorted. Random asymmetries between cycles and between hemispheres do occur as the two dynamos [one in each hemisphere] operate somewhat independently. There are people that see an odd-even asymmetry between cycles with odd cycles being larger than even cycles. Such asymmetry will show as an artificial 22-year cycle [c.f. the plot i just referred to] with ‘dominant 22-year cycle and sub-dominant 11-year cycle’. There is no theoretical justification [nor observational evidence] for a shutdown of the dynamo. Lots of wishful thinking, though, by many people.
Anthony, it might be coincidence but satellite images of Arctic Ocean from 1979 to date on 31st DEc of each year show snow cover of the northern part of northern Hemisphere after the drop in Ap
Anthony,
you might want to look at http//www.john-daly.com/solar/solar.htm where there is a paper by Dr. Theodore Landscheidt. If you take Fig.3 and add info for cycles 22 & 23 to graph you get very interesting graph!!!
Take a look at inverse length of solar cycles correlated with temperature 1860-1980+ at this NOAA site:
http://www.oar.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/images/sunclimate_3a.gif