Above: step by step animation of solar cycle revisions since 2004
Michael Roynane writes:
On March 4, 2009 Dr. David Hathaway issued a new sunspot prediction for March 2009 which includes sunspot data through the end of February 2009. After no changes in the February 2009 prediction, solar maximum for Solar Cycle 24 was pushed back an additional three (3) months from 2012/10-2012/11 to 2013/01-2013/02. The predicted sunspot number at solar maximum was reduced from 104.9 to 104.0.
Cycle 24 Sunspot Number Prediction (February 2009)
Year Mon 95% 50% 5%
2012 07 128.0 104.0 80.0
2012 08 128.5 104.5 80.5
2012 09 128.8 104.8 80.8
2012 10 128.9 104.9 80.9
2012 11 128.9 104.9 80.9
2012 12 128.8 104.8 80.8
2013 01 128.5 104.5 80.5
2013 02 128.1 104.1 80.1
Cycle 24 Sunspot Number Prediction (March 2009)
Year Mon 95% 50% 5%
2012 10 126.9 102.9 78.9
2012 11 127.4 103.4 79.4
2012 12 127.8 103.8 79.8
2013 01 128.0 104.0 80.0
2013 02 128.0 104.0 80.0
2013 03 127.9 103.9 79.9
2013 04 127.7 103.7 79.7
2013 05 127.3 103.3 79.3
What is very strange about the revised March 2009 prediction is that the smoothed value for Solar Cycle 23 was also pushed forward by one (1) month with no change in the sunspot number at solar maximum.
Cycle 24 Sunspot Number Prediction (February 2009)
Year Mon 95% 50% 5%
2000 08 141.6 117.6 93.6
2000 09 142.0 118.0 94.0
2000 10 142.3 118.3 94.3
2000 11 142.4 118.4 94.4
2000 12 142.4 118.4 94.4
2001 01 142.2 118.2 94.2
2001 02 141.9 117.9 93.9
2001 03 141.5 117.5 93.5
Cycle 24 Sunspot Number Prediction (March 2009)
Year Mon 95% 50% 5%
2000 07 141.6 117.6 93.6
2000 08 142.1 118.1 94.1
2000 09 142.3 118.3 94.3
2000 10 142.4 118.4 94.4
2000 11 142.4 118.4 94.4
2000 12 142.2 118.2 94.2
2001 01 141.9 117.9 93.9
2001 02 141.5 117.5 93.5
I have no idea why this change was made but welcome input from the members. The new animation, with viewing instructions, can be found here.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SSN_Predict_NASA.gif
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/SSN_Predict_NASA.gif
With these changes by NASA, the variance with the high SWPC prediction remains significant. As the new SWPC numbers are now quite impossible, I expect to see more changes from both NASA and SWPC over the coming months. With each NASA revision the predictions more closely resemble those of Dr. Svalgaard who is on the low-end of the SWPC low prediction faction.
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From following this story for the past couple of years I have but one conclusion. The scientists are behaving like accountants, they have their head in the past as they back their butts into the future. Their prediction methods have declined down to just statistical in nature. We could hire a high school science class to count spots and spend the research money on how to get more oil out of our tire old oil fields.
This is no longer science based predicting …
In total, that’s a major revision. peak moving from about 2010 to about 2013+. And this may not be the last of it.
And this major change in solar activity will not have a substantial impact on climate?
The Gore effect not only dominates the weather – but the all powerful sun too!
It’s turning out to be one awfully big pile of doo doo these AGWers have stepped into.
An exciting time, to be sure, for solar scientists. Even if they’re wrong in their predictions, this will provide for valuable insights into solar activity. The good thing is that we probably won’t be taxed to ‘fix’ an imaginary problem on the sun.
The ramp-up of SC24 in their latest revision still looks awfully steep to me. It think the SC24 peak will be revised again to occur at 2014 or 2015 (if a peak occurs at al).
Kudos to Mr. Green above for his unique summary of the situation. But for a different slant, Santayana once wrote that the failure to remember the past condemned one to repeat it. Maybe Mr. Hathaway should start looking at his many failed predictions and come up with something better. In the case of Cycle #24, one needs to look even further back than the recent past, to 200-300 years ago. I hope that we don’t have to look further back than that.
Now Jack Green has had a light bulb of an idea. Wish I would have had a high school like that! (Maybe I could have stayed awake.) Reality is mankind deserves to be in this oil situation. If high school would have been what it should have been we would certainly not need oil at all by now or very little most things should be running on air. Or some form of air. The jetsons did not have to be fictional, it’s just that the greed of oil squashed reality! Or should I say what our futures could have been with the economy and the environment and now everyone expects superdollars to rescue everywhere and they have lost their cape!
Why does NASA keep trying to predict solar cycles as if their theories are laws?
Give it up already.
–Mike Ramsey
It seems there is a general prediction failure in many science fields. For me this is linked with the overwhelming use of computed models. Computational predictive models, however complex they may be, are prone to curve fitting issues.
To sum it up, take a briliant, heavy, complex, multi-variable model, and adjust it until it’s results fit exactly the past. Then it becomes useless for prediction.
The best it fits, the worst it is able to predict the future. This is a very common problem in finance, and often they have to give up the model and go back to simple statistics.
Sorry for the OT.
6 page article in the Age about an emergency summit in Copenhagen to emphasise that climate change is happening faster than predicted.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/climates-11th-hour-20090308-8sg9.html?page=1
From the article..
“UNSW Climate Change Research Centre co-director Matthew England, one of the summit’s key backers, says it is likely to find that the raw measures of climate change — global average air temperature, global sea-level rise and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations — are all happening at or above the worst-case IPCC scenario.”
To date I’ve seen only data which is falling short of the IPCC predictions. If anyone can show me where the data is which oversteps the IPCC I’d like to see it.
This might be a good one to pick apart on the blog Anthony?
juls (06:17:39) :
It seems there is a general prediction failure in many science fields. For me this is linked with the overwhelming use of computed models. Computational predictive models, however complex they may be, are prone to curve fitting issues.
Juls,
Good point. We know how well financial models have worked lately.
–Mike
Dear Anthony,
Up to the middle of last year it was gernerally accepted that there had been no warming since 1998 (some said early new millenium).
In 2007 The Hadley Cente when challenged by Prof Bob Carter admitted that there had been no warming for a few years, having previously derided and attacked him.
Not only that we understand that the Aqua Satellite found no hotspots over the Equator, which it should have done if the computer models were correct.
We now appear to be in the midst of warming hysteria again but the planet has been getting colder and the ice has returned to the Arctic .
Underpinning this is a change in the Sun cycle something that the AGW’s never mention., especially the UK Met Office who continue to get their long range forecasts incorrect, whilst the solar physicists invariably get them right.
Faced with all this one might have thought the AGW’s would at last be on the run and subject to scrutiny if not ridicule.
But no….quite the opposite.
Today Prince Charles has said we have 100 months to save the planet.
Hansen’s data gets more and more bizarre as do many other submissions where positivesa are hyped and negatives ignored.
One could call it fraudulent science.
Am I right to think the game is up and what is going on is one last desperate attempt to shut up the sceptics before the truth finally breaks out?
I am totally bemused as to why the media have not at least asked a few questions.
What is yout take on it all?
James,
Lela (06:09:18) :
“Now Jack Green has had a light bulb of an idea. Wish I would have had a high school like that! (Maybe I could have stayed awake.) Reality is mankind deserves to be in this oil situation. If high school would have been what it should have been we would certainly not need oil at all by now or very little most things should be running on air. Or some form of air. The jetsons did not have to be fictional, it’s just that the greed of oil squashed reality! Or should I say what our futures could have been with the economy and the environment and now everyone expects superdollars to rescue everywhere and they have lost their cape!”
Lela,
I don’t understand your remark.
Currently the whole world runs on air. Hot Air.
I see the latest sun speck has disappeared, barely any remants in the amgnetogram either. Well, that lasted all of a day. And it qwas cycle 23.
I think the mismatch between predictions and reality has to do with what our biased beliefs are and the degree to which we get excited over being the one, or one of the ones, to find some hidden “truth”. This leads us down the primrose path in many, if not indeed most, areas of our lives, even while swearing on a bible that we are not biased, we are objective. The way we think and deal with our families, careers, religion, belief and nonbelief, assumptions, stereotypes, and science are all affected by our biases. Even when the tide is turning to some other idea, we stay on ours, not wanting the journey to end without finding at least something.
It is an age old problem. Just because it does not look like a mythical idea (IE the goddess in the cave making the Sun rise), does not make it less biased. I believe that is where our current ideas of “It’s the Sun stupid” or “CO2 pollution is causing the planet to warm” come from. Those assumptions are made in much the same way subconsciously that the goddess in the cave assumptions were made, “This coincides with that, therefor this causes that”. All we have to do is find the secret mechanism so all efforts are concentrated on that search. Multiple theories around the secret are suggested and tested (or even said outright to be the cause and no further testing is needed) as to this secret-related drawing board mechanism or that one. The other thing about assumptions that have a “secret or tiny mechanism with a large affect” is that it is very glamorous work. A treasure hunt if you will. This desire to find some secret treasure could be what happened between the early part of this decade, when several scientists were studying oceanic oscillations (a big trigger with a big affect) with published work, and now, when CO2 is the more glamorous endeavor. The pearl of great price. The one lost lamb. The holy grail. Jesus’ cup. Who wants to find a rock on the beach that has been sitting in plain site forever, when you could be on the hunt for a magical mythical one.
Headline at the BBC web site:
“March Arctic ice nears record 2003”
OK Just kidding 🙂
Big Mc (06:08:23) wrote : Maybe Mr. Hathaway should start looking at his many failed predictions and come up with something better. In the case of Cycle #24, one needs to look even further back than the recent past, to 200-300 years ago. I hope that we don’t have to look further back than that.
My feelings precisely, without mentioning the Minima Whose Names We Dare Not Speak. I can envision getting through a Dalton-like minimum without too much, as economists say, “dislocation”. but another Maunder might be tough with the current world population and our current relatively Just-In-Time food stocks.
Come to think of it, if we aren’t going to call this one the GORE MINIMUM (can’t see why not, but the name seems to lack traction) perhaps we could call it the Voldemort (“flight of death”) Minimum. Just a thought. At least the kids (mostly oblivious to the latinate translation) would like it.
Right now I have to send a Note Of Disabuse to Tad Cook, who does the American Radio Relay League (ARRL; ham radio) “propagation newsletter” form Seattle. As y’all may be aware, higher frequency (shorter than about 80 meters wavelength) radio propagation gets much better with an ionized troposphere, which requires SUNSPOTS. No sunspots, very disappointed Hams (I haven’t been on the radio in two years).
Tad from Seattle is a bit of an AGWer, so he is SHOCKED SHOCKED that radio propagation has sucked for so long, and there appears to be a bit of an “unscheduled solar event” happening. You nght even say that he’s a bit of a DENIER. Ha!
I figure it’s our job to get to them one at a time, starting with the smart ones.
james griffin (07:02:44) said :
Today Prince Charles has said we have 100 months to save the planet.
Am I right to think the game is up and what is going on is one last desperate attempt to shut up the sceptics before the truth finally breaks out?
I am totally bemused as to why the media have not at least asked a few questions.
What is your take on it all? James
Great points James
(a) Re: My Remaining 100 Months, Well now I really AM afraid. I guess I need to be calling some folks, Gotta make a list. Good thing I had that Last Will and Testament done last year. Too bad nobody will be around to execute it. [BTW, haven’t the people of Britain just about had enough with these dottering dim-witted in-bred Germans (I refer to the House of Hannover, er, Windsor)? Where’s Guy Fawkes when you need him? To The Moderators; these are NOT ad hominim attacks unless there’s actual proof that the Royals are indeed sentient. If so, show me ]
(b) Yes exactly where ARE the mainstream media? Aren’t they supposed to be rooting around causing trouble with the established orthodoxy? Apparently AGW is now actually MORE powerful than the Roman Catholic Church; the former is never challenged in the mainstream press, the later is attacked incessantly.
Please can we call what is happening on the Sun what they are they are…..Sun specks!!. They appear to have no influence on the Earth in anyway as if……They aren’t even there. This has been going on for months now.
I think we need a better definition of what a sunspot is vs. a speck, and again I doubt in the past they could have seen 1014 as a spot. It’s becoming a joke.
To Pamela Gray; nice thinking on the Holy Grail instinct in human existence. From literature, try reading (and I mean word-for-word) The Wasteland by TS Eliot, THEN The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald. If you read carefully enough, you’ll be shocked.
Can’t speak for anyone else here, but my interest in this topic is exactly the OPPOSITE of finding the Holy Grail, or the Unified Field Theory, or any other overarching theory, scientific or religious or even “substance-induced” (thank you Sweat Lodge People).
I just want these people to leave me alone. Period.
Pierre Gosselin (05:57:21) :
Every delay means it will be even more interesting to watch the sunspots (maybe) fade from view by 2015 per Livingston/Penn. We may already be a point where it would be nice to have a steady supply of spots to monitor.
I tend to defer to Leif on that one. The PDO seems to be doing pretty well on its own.
A year ago I was waiting until solar minimum before spending much time on CC issues. I wanted to see how long SC23 was going to be in hopes that would suggest solar-related cooling. Then at a gathering where I had suggested we try to get Joe D’Aleo to talk, he pointed out that SC23 was already a long cycle and that the PDO had flipped negative.
Good thing I didn’t decide to wait longer, I would’ve missed a lot of neat stuff!
Pamela Gray
Ever programmed? Hang on to those beliefs too long and you will never find the bug. On the other hand hold on to untested beliefs and you will never write a program that works. Seems like Hathaway is clinging to his beliefs, the untested ones.
Vinny (07:58:37) said :
I think we need a better definition of what a sunspot is vs. a speck, and again I doubt in the past they could have seen 1014 as a spot. It’s becoming a joke.
I agree. What exactly IS the definition of a SUNSPOT, that is, for the historical record? Would 1014 have been a SPOT in 1800? 1850? 1900? 1950? Heck, I’ve had dinner parties that lasted longer than 1014. (you know, the ones where at NOON the next day you count the wine bottles and divide by the number of people, but then some folks left early so they only count as half a person?)
Anthony? Leif? Sunspot Boys?
Why bother? There is a lady down on the corner that will deal some cards and tell you the same thing, for a lot less money.