As many readers know, I follow the Average Magnetic Planetary Index (Ap) fairly closely as it is a proxy indicator of the magnetic activity of our sun. Here is the latest Ap Graph:
I’ve pointed out several times the incident of the abrupt and sustained lowering of the Ap Index which occurred in October 2005.
click for a larger image
David Archibald thinks it may not yet have hit bottom. Here is his most recent take on it.
The low in the Ap Index has come up to a year after the month of solar cycle minimum, as shown in the graph above of 37 month windows of the Ap Index aligned on the month of solar minimum. For the Solar Cycle 23 to 24 transition, the month of minimum is assumed to be Ocotber 2008. The minimum of the Ap Index can be a year later than the month of solar cycle minimum, and the period of weakness can last eighteen months after solar cycle minimum.
The graph also shows how weak this minimum is relative to all the minima since the Ap Index started being measured in 1932. For the last year, the Ap Index has been plotting along parallel to the Solar Cycles 16 – 17 minimum, but about four points weaker. Assuming that it has a character similar to the 16 – 17 minimum, then the month of minimum for the Ap Index is likely to be October 2009 with a value of 3.
The shape of the Ap Index minima is similar to, but inverted, the peaks in neutron flux, which are usually one year after the month of solar minimum.
David Archibald
January 2009
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does / has our star ever ‘switch[ed]’ poles, as our planet has ? I don’t have a good feeling for/about our planets inhabitants if this event were to occur.
in any case, tend to agree, those just born and living long enough may be in for a gradual surprise.
I double post this from solar ramp 24, didn’t see this post before.
In the earlier discussion on the solar ramp 24 i gathered that the best what can be done is reconstitute about 10000 years of solar activity.
Forgot the exact age of the sun, but say it’s 4x 10e9 years.
That makes for an observed period of 0.0000025% of the total.
I have a hard time keeping track of my pocketchange but even i can see that’s pretty flimsy to build whatever kind of prognosis/theory on even taking into account what is assumed about the general dynamics of a star’s life.
We have geomagnetic “fossil” records for magnetic flipping of the poles, but obviously there’s no similar record for solar flipping.
Then I was being generous in assigning the first good sunspot of SC24 to be Sept 22, 2008. I had SC 24 ramp from late Sept. 2009 to late May, 2010.
That’s a deep hole to climb out of, no matter which indicator one is using.
http://www.nwra-az.com/spawx/ssne-cycle23.html
NWRA’s effective Sunspot SC23 graph also showing a deep hole dug by the tardy SC24.
Um… I thought that “flipping” of the sun’s magnetic field was part of the regular solar cycle? That is, it happens about once every 22 years.
Please correct me if I’m wrong about that.
Is the ap index still dropping like this ‘a bad thing’, a ‘really bad thing’ or a ‘gee, intersting…’ thing? Just eyeballing the graph and with the statement that it’s a proxy for solar output, I feel like buying some longjohns…
Then there is this head scratcher:
Well I’ll be. James Lovelock, the greens green and creator of Gaia mythology, agrees that carbon trading is a waste of time! I’ve softened a couple of his words a bit (my edits are in [square brackets] in the quote) to save the moderator a ‘snip’…
From:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921.500-one-last-chance-to-save-mankind.html
Not a hope in [heck]. Most of the “green” stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It’s not going to do a [darn] thing about climate change, but it’ll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It’s absolutely unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt – that’s an awful lot of countryside.
NOAA & GISS:
And finally, I’ve done a first pass through the NOAA data and the GISS code. I’m still figuring out what it all means (table of variables with description? You’ve got to be dreaming. Comments? OK, how about one cryptic one per program?) At this point though, my ‘first blush’ is that NOAA has the false precision problem. They hand over ‘monthly mean’ data in 1/100 degree C precision. I don’t see how that is even remotely possible.
It also looks (per the terse readme) like GISS uses the UHI unadjusted NOAA data set rather than the adjusted one (though it is a manual download – easy ftp! – so anyone could use any dataset at the time of running the code. In the ‘readme’ the GHCN and HCN station description files have the .Z ending confounded. The readme for one said to use it (when it was missing) the other said not (when it was there). Hope this isn’t a trend.
Finally, it looks like all GISS does is glue together the HCN, GHCN, and antarctic data (plus some small bits) with some removal of dups and ‘preening’ then does the magic UHI homogenization dance, and some final formatting/cleaning. So that would lead me to believe that a simple cross check dataset can be made by taking the NOAA UHI adjusted data directly and doing station to station comparison graphs.
From the GISS Readme:
GISS Temperature Analysis
=========================
Sources
——-
GHCN = Global Historical Climate Network (NOAA)
USHCN = US Historical Climate Network (NOAA)
SCAR = Scientific Committee on Arctic Research
Basic data set: GHCN – ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2
v2.mean.Z (data file)
v2.temperature.inv.Z (station information file)
For US: USHCN – ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn
hcn_doe_mean_data.Z
station_inventory
For Antarctica: SCAR – http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/READER/surface/stationpt.html
so a simple ftp window on the data location, in your browser, and you can get the UHI adjusted data (though the fahr implies F) and compare to GISS to see what he’s doing. Or just use the same dataset, he uses, not UHI adjusted by anyone…
From the HCN Readme:
urban_max_fahr.Z Urban Heat Adjusted Maximum Monthly Temperature
urban_calc_mean_fahr.Z Urban Heat Adjusted Mean Monthly Temperature
(Calculated from urban.max.Z and urban.min.Z) urban_mean_fahr.Z Urban Heat Adjusted Mean Monthly Temperature
urban_min_fahr.Z Urban Heat Adjusted Minimum Monthly Temperature
For some unknown reason, GISS break the processing down into steps 0,1,2,3,4-5. The start and end are FORTRAN, but step 1 is python (with some C bits to compile and install on your machine). Go figure… The good news is that the PApars.f chunk in Step2 that does the pasteurizing process is the one bit of code that does have decent comments in it.
The code is not particularly complex. It has oodles of undocumented variables and many scratch files, especially between steps, so decoding it will take a bit of work. My estimate is that the code could be shrunk by about 60% with no loss of function.
The first thing that came to my mind after reading this article was the points mentioned above, a ‘Solar Flip’. Is it possible that this could be a precursor to an ‘Earth Magnetic Flip’ and is so how could you test this. I am no solar scientist so I hope Leif can give some pointers here.
In nearly 12 months we hit the spot where the solar system exerts its maximum disturbing influence on angular momentum on the Sun, its a strange situation. Normally it would be expecting a very low angular momentum count, but there are 2 planets ganging up on Saturn that have other ideas…and it happens on a regular basis on avg every 172 yrs, we have records showing this for at least 6000 years. This also lines up with grand minima nearly every time for the same period.
Here’s a graph showing that disturbance….follow the green arrow at 2010.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2008/12/sunssbam1620to2180gs1.jpg
Sdk/Dave K:-)
I am no solar scientist either, but the magnetic field reverses every 11± year Schwabe cycle & flips back again after the 22± year Hale cycle. I am sure the likes of Lief Svalgaard can direct you to good sites that give the basics in lay terms.
However, that is an interesting point, do the flips back & forth in the sun have at some stage for whatever reason, affect the Earth’s magnetic flip, I seem to recall that this occurs every few hundred thousand years or so, again better brains than mine can advise of this phenomenon!
I read an article by geologist Texan Gregory Benson a few years ago explaining all the likely causes of Climate Change, hot or cold, without any need for CO2 involvement, including some very interesting data on Solar variations. Well worth a good read for lots of interesting background info for anyone interested in further informal study!
Sorry that should have read ‘Texan Geologist’ not the way it was typed.
The observed Ap continued to fall in November and December 2008 as predicted from the above, and this correlates with the previous posted article concerning cosmic rays. More than a coincidence that the globe is cooling? Svensmark’s theory should be on the front pages as the first real theory on climate change — instead of this CO2 political science theory.
This is a great information and discussion site, love it and thanks to all. I have studied chemistry and planetary science for many years, and have “followed” the CO2 climate change hype (Yes, and all of the other doomsayer tersm in the past) since the late 60’s. The CO2 frocing does not add up, and only that from humans over ~150 years, ~100ppm CO2.
Sea ice growing in the actic, Labrador in particular, sea ice shrinking in the antarctic. Errrmm….
Interglacial periods are warmer, Al “I invented the internet” Gore.
From real data, not IPCC speak, better get nitting, it’ll be cold “soon”!
Since Lief has not shown up yet. The solar magnetic field flips regularly every 7.5 to 15 years. The last time the Earth’s field flipped was about 800 Kyears ago. The state of the Sun and its magnetic field is interesting, but not alarming. It may lead to a grand minimum, but the change in Total Solar Irradiance is small so don’t count on a solar driven little ice age.
Re http://www.nwra-az.com/spawx/ssne-cycle23.html posted above: what could a negative sunspot number possibly mean (with reference to the “light” line)?
sdk (00:10:53) :
The poles flip every solar cycle, so you’ve lived through several already.
—-
Just so save Leif the time – that October 2005 drop is no big deal and similar events have happened frequently in the past. OTOH, I have no idea why that happens. It looks interesting, it might be interesting, so I figure that’s why Anthony points it out every time there’s a reason to show the Ap plot.
nobwainer (5:00:07)
“In nearly 12 months we hit the spot where the solar system exerts its maximum disturbing influence…”
When will this influence become apparent? Instantly? What is your vision of the process taking place on/in he sun that generates sun spots? Are there no time lags involved?
I’m impressed by the fact that even the short term variation is smoother. It really looks quiet compared to the rest of the record. It’s too bad we don’t have more time in the record. I think Leif and others may be right about cycle 24 being very weak.
Off topic. Real climate just stated that models predicted Antarctic warming all along. They already knew, those guys are so smart. In February 08 they said the same thing about cooling in the antarctic.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/real-climate-doubletalk-blog-food/
Hey, look at the bright side!
Regardless of the current trend, and, regardless of how long the current (solar) depression lasts, at least the API – (and unlike the DOW) – can never go negative!
Heck, the sunspot number is already 0.0 That can’t get any lower either.
Dear E.M. Smith:
Thank you for doing this important work! I would like to be able to e-mail you questions about your progress and findings for the book I’m researching on the climate wars. The safest way for me to get you my e-mail address would be if you could leave a comment (“Hello” would be enough) on my weather and climate blog (http://www.talkingabouttheweather.com). Thank you for your consideration!
Glacier Slowdown in Greenland: How Inconvenient
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/01/23/glacier-slowdown-in-greenland-how-inconvenient/
Maybe Gore will go back and remove the 12 pages worth of picture and maps from his book showing what high profile places of the world will look like with a 20-foot sea level rise (“The site of the World Trade Center Memorial would be underwater”). But then again, probably not—after all the point is not to be truthful in the sense of reflecting a likely possibility, but to scare you into a particular course of action.
When my late Mother passed,we had a beautiful funeral in LaGrande,Oregon.The Organist at her Church, is a well known Warmist.It was October of ’05.We were walking
across the parking lot,on a golden fall day.She said:”Sure is warm anymore!” I said,
dang near on the day the Ap dropped,”Yeah but,this is a cycle,I think the Solar cycle is
going to quiet down.”-this after reading that paper on the slowing solar conveyor-She
looked at me like-HERETIC!-and said:”You haven’t read Algore’s book!” I-“No, only excerpts”-then she stormed away,saying”-#%$&- Republicans!”-oh I’m not a Republican BTW…
Then she hit me for $75 bucks for her Organ wizardry…
All this talk about the sun controlling Earth’s climate, you realize you are inflating it’s ego. Who would believe you that the sun, the solar system and maybe the universe is in charge of Earth’s climate, when we all know it’s all the animals on the planet exhaling. You should be ashamed of getting the sun all pumped. Who knows what the sun might do next, to just drive the point home.
And isn’t that the real problem science should be dealing in? FACTS …
E.M.Smith — Why not propose an open source rewrite of the data reduction program? There must be enough programming types here to do that, in short order. And why not use PYTHON or BASIC, something almost everyone can read? I have often wondered why not just do this in the open for ourselves. Hey, someone could write a book documenting the process and code — LOL.
It may lead to a grand minimum, but the change in Total Solar Irradiance is small so don’t count on a solar driven little ice age.
uhm….regardless the cause, there is significant historical evidence that grand minima DO result in a cooler earth.
Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v3.pdf
The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 degree C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.
————————————————————-
SUMMARY: Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics
http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/Falsification_of_the_Atmospheric_CO2_Greenhouse_Effects.pdf
Among climatologists, in particular those affiliated with the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), there is a “scientific consensus” that the relevant climate mechanism is an atmospheric greenhouse effect, a mechanism heavily reliant on the presumption that radiative heat transfer dominates over other forms of heat transfer such as thermal conductivity, convection, condensation, et cetera. Supposedly to make things more precise, the IPCC Introduced the notion of radiative forcing, tied to an assumption of radiative equilibrium.
“…applying cavity radiation formulas to the atmosphere is sheer nonsense.”
“CO2’s influence on the Earth’s climate is definitively immeasurable.”
““Hence, the computer simulations of global climatology are not based on physical laws. The same holds for the speculations about the influence of carbon dioxide.”
“The natural greenhouse effect is a myth, not a physical reality. The CO2-greenhouse effect, however, is a manufactured mirage. Horrific visions of a rising sea level, melting pole caps and spreading deserts in North America and Europe are fictitious consequences of a fictitious physical mechanism which cannot be seen even in computer climate models. More and more, the main tactic of CO2-greenhouse gas defenders seems to be to hide behind a mountain of pseudo-explanations that are unrelated to an academic education or even to physics training. The points discussed here were to answer whether the supposed atmospheric effect in question has a physical basis. It does not. In summary, no atmospheric greenhouse effect, nor in particular a CO2-greenhouse effect, is permissible in theoretical physics and engineering thermodynamics. It is therefore illegitimate to use this fictitious phenomenon to extrapolate predictions as consulting solutions for economics and intergovernmental policy.”
my vote would be to use C, and a procedural approach ! the results would be quite readable and maintainable, if coded from pseudo code viewed that way.