Mike Ronanye writes:
SWPC has just made a change in their solar cycle predictions in the middle of the month without any preannouncement. Both Sunspot and F10.7cm predictions were altered significantly.
See the following links:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/
The off-cycle update is in this week’s PDF report which contains the altered graphics:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/weekly/pdf/prf1747.pdf
You can see the last monthly summary here which I have been complaining reporting about, here:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/weekly/pdf/prf1745.pdf
This should have been the January 2009 summary but SWPC recycled the December 2008 summary.
I looked for but was unable to find any press releases. Please search for any additional information and post it here. If you downloaded any SWPC data or graphics hold on to it. I will be updating my SWPC Sunspot animation.
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I wonder why do these people get paid for?
No one has been able to be right with their predictions so far.
That means none of us have any idea of what’s really going on with the sun.
I was one (of probably many) that emailed them on Feb. 18th asking why the graph had not been updated yet. I received the following reply the same day:
They could have at least moved it far enough ahead to make it believable.
Do they really expect the Sun to do a 60 degree turn and head up?
That’s just the SSN graph.
There is also the Flux graph which today still looks as bad as it did before they changed it too. In fact, the ISES Radio Flux F10.7 graph looks like a car running a red light hits a suburban in the intersection.
Sooner or later they will need to change the shape of those predicted curves, not just the position.
I’ve been waiting for the SWPC to weigh-in, before the actual observations wedged themselves completely under their hockey-stick projections.
Interesting that when they did finally make an adjustment, it was small and made without comment in the dark of night, so to speak. Hmmm.
In any case, it is likely too little too late, and they’re just going to have to do it again next month.
For example, Sunspot 1013 (first SC24 spot in over a month) appears to be “struggling to stay visible” (not sure how that works, physically, but it sure sounds heroic) after barely 24 hours in the limelight
see http://solarcycle24.com/
Via La Minima de Gore.
You should go back a couple years and show the original ISES prediction for this cycle just for effect.
One more small thing: I have always been confused about historical sunspot counts relative to modern sunspot counts.
On the current heliograph at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/512/
for example, one would be hard-pressed to pick-out a sunspot withthe naked eye.
Is there any protocol for comparing very old sunspot observations with modern ones, for example, is anyone out there using identical equipment to what was available in say the 1800s in an attempt to correlate the observations?
It strikes me that this last sunspot (1013), for example, may not have risen to the level of “spot” in say 1850.
Just curious.
I’m not suprised by this at all.Thats the wat it is with the global warming crowd.If you don’t get the results you need just change the rules or goal post.Everything is caused by global warming or so we are told.BIGGEST LIE THE MEDIA AND CURRENT GOVERMENT HAS EVER TOLD.This is nothing more than goverment control.
How many times have the predictions been changed for solar cycle 24? Too me this is just another example of the problems with making predictions about things we don’t understand and haven’t been observing long enough to even make an educated guess.
An analogy would be like attempting to predict the final score of a basketball game by watching the tip off (too many variables and too small of a data sample).
They are following the Mayan calendar!!
Looks like they didn’t bother doing anything but move the curves in time. No change in amplitude or length or shape, just changed the start date. Oddly, it looks like they changed the start date (trough) to about October last year and we’re already lagging by a few months. Expect another nonupdate shift this spring.
In an earlier thread, Leif suggested that the 23-24 minimum was about ~6 months ago. If so, would that make SC 23 about 12.4 years, or the longest since SC 9?
I wouldn’t call it a prediction anymore, rather scenarios, unless they have made a breakthrough and are able to predict solarcycles that looks like SC23 and SC24.
Obviosuly we are not able to predict the suns behaviour with very high precission when it does not follow normal patterns.
The in the following updated post I quantified exactly what changes were made by SWPC:
SWPC Moves The Goalpost
http://solarcycle24com.proboards106.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=482&page=1#12318
It’s not impossible for sunspot averages to suddenly ‘take off’ as the curve seems to indicate. November / December 1768 saw a sudden increase from 5.7 a month to nearly 20 if observatory records are comparing like with like. Then again, we could be in for a sunspot low run like 1807 to 1813, where monthly averages were almost a total blank for several years.
Source data: http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/ssl/pad/solar/greenwch/spot_num.txt
“SWPC Moves The Goalpost”
I believe the ‘physicist’ in Solar Physicist is an honorific, more dignified than the descriptive ‘wonk’.
The peak appears about the same, just a little later, and a steeper angle. Is this just hope or do they just not want to see what Lief and other see?
Not sure what the pay packet looks like for the prediction job in NASA ?
But, it would seem to be a great job. You can spend all day fishing and relaxing, then once a month move the prediction graph to reflect what was observed.
Where can I apply ?
Both SWPC predictions have solar cycle 24 ramping up immediately, when their model for the ramp up of solar cycle 24 has already been falsified many times over. These people are NOT scientists. They refuse to incorporate new information.
Note that their predictions are not based on any kind of physical model. (I wrote about this last april.) It is a purely statistical extrapolation, but they are not extrapolating from past anomalous behavior. They are looking at the typical solar cycle. The correct extrapolation at this point is from past anomalous behavior, but Hathaway et. al. refuse to do it.
There is at least a chance that we are entering a grand minimum. That chance ought to be included in SWPC’s range of predictions but if Hathaway mentions grand minima he would have to talk about the likely implications, which would destroy his AGW agenda. Imagine the government’s top solar scientist describing to the press the historical correlation between grand minima and plunging global temperatures:
Instead the question is:
Does Dr. Hathaway have an answer?
Hank, They did change the shape of the curves, they had to: The new curve starts lower but the peak is at the same place! What they need to do is move the peak down somewhat.
Seems that a solar minimum is harder to guess than a solar maximum. What’s the relation bwtween maximum and minimum? Maybe that could help.
Dr Svalgaard will be so relieved. For years he has been saying that TSI variations through the solar cycle aren’t enough to explain climate change, and that therefore there is no point in looking at an invariate Sun. Well, Nir Shaviv has done the work and I quote “We find that the total radiative forcing associated with solar cycles variations is about 5 to 7 times larger than just those associated with the TSI variations, thus implying the necessary existence of an amplification mechanism, although without pointing to which one.” This is the link: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007JA012989.shtml
It’s better to say “I don’t know” than it is to continually prove it.
What i love about all this is that those of us who are not in favour of turning the global economy upsidedown to reduce carbon emissions need DO nothing. The facts will speak for themselves over the next decade or so. It will (in my opinion) become blatently obvious that the world is not warming (whatever the figures as produced by Hansen say) becasue the ice will not have melted, the sea will not have risen, the world will not have ended.
Similarly the sunspot count will continue on its merry way, and if, as is possible, we are entering a grand solar minimum, that will become obvious fairly rapidly too.
As the likelihood of the world actually doing anything serious about AGW in the next decade is virtually zero, due to a) the emerging nations wanting to have nothing to do with it all, and b) the economic crisis currently taking up all politician’s attention, we just need to sit back and wait. AGW will be exposed as a massive fraud within 10 years. We can see the shrillness of the claims for AGW rising now; think how they will be when facts that everyone can see are going against them!
too bad these scientists didn’t have their pensions linked to the accuracy of their forecasts. The way it is now, they can flog what ever agenda they feel is right and suffer no consequences.
They clearly are not objective. Promoting fear, hiding anything that puts their cherished AGW theory into question isn’t science, it is propaganda.