Mike

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I wonder how long they will let the that “jump” up from today’s actual measurement to today’s supposed prediction point to remain: You’d figure that that they would be embarrassed by a an impossible one week “spike” in the sun’s activity, and have at least smoothed the curve to fit realty.

Sure: Reality doesn’t fit their smoothly-fitted “curves” – but aren’t they honest enough to admit that and adjust the “predicted” future activity curves, and not rely on “reality” suddenly jumping upwards by 20% overnight?

http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2009/14may09/Thierry-Legault2.jpg?PHPSESSID=mg1eir6dqqatv1oqd0sh2r8fu5

Nahhhhh…

Richard deSousa (18:34:52) :
I think history will view us as the Catastrophic Age…. everything bad that can happen to humans are happening in this period of history. The future will look back and laugh at us.

Back about the turn of the First Millennium, AD, it was widely feared, or anticipated (at least in Christendom), that the world would come to an end.

Then, that was more or less true at the end of the Second Millennium, AD, too.

/Mr Lynn

Mr Lynn (16:51:17) :
Um. . . Does anybody know “why the normal solar cycle is eleven years”?

It isn’t. It has varied between ~7 and ~14 years if I am not mistaken. It is the average that is just over 11 years, and I am not sure if there many average cycle lengths have been observed
http://web.dmi.dk/fsweb/solarterrestrial/sunclimate/SCL.txt

But I agree it would be nice to have theory explaining why the average is ~11 years and not 42 or whatever.

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The resonant solar tide producing planetary conjunctions produce conjunctions at 1.6 year intervals, which straddle many sunspot number peaks. Other intervals are 8.8 years, 10.4 years, and 12 years.

Anthony: My offer still stands to send you a pictorial exposition of how this works. If you think your readers might be interested, please contact me by email so I can send a potential posting to you.
Leif: My apologies for the typo with your name. It was not intentional, I assure you.

“I think history will view us as the Catastrophic Age…. everything bad that can happen to humans are happening in this period of history. The future will look back and laugh at us.”

Yes. Recently Dr. Michio Kaku, a respected physicist, warned that in spite of the solar quiet – we should all be prepared for a “solar tsunami.” Inevitable. The psychology of catastrophizers is to manipulate behavior through fear. It also heaps attention on the catastrophizer – gratification for a savior complex.

http://tinyurl.com/p3axv3

We are in the process of bringing about the end of the Catastrophic Age by shining the light of truth on the subject. The people, slowly are awakening to the fact that there is no fire breathing dragon at the edge of town. This however, does not remove the real need for a cogent domestic energy policy.

It isn’t. It has varied between ~7 and ~14 years if I am not mistaken. It is the average that is just over 11 years, and I am not sure if there many average cycle lengths have been observed
http://web.dmi.dk/fsweb/solarterrestrial/sunclimate/SCL.txt

But I agree it would be nice to have theory explaining why the average is ~11 years and not 42 or whatever.

curious how they “called” the minimum for Dec, when we’re still seeing double digit stretches with no sunspots at all…in May.

Leif may have a point that the F10.7 flux turned upwards around that time
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png

But if we have newfound knowledge that the “classic” correlation betwen sunspot numbers and the F10.7 is changing (“value correlation”), then perhaps there is also a change in the “time correlation” ?

Gerry (20:08:25) :
Jim Cripwell (17:19:06) :
I thought that the 11 years had something to do with the orbit of Jupiter.
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I believe it does.

Astronomers have found some ’sun-like’ stars. These also show a star cycle like the Sun. It seems that periods are close to the solar peiod (11 years), so you would assume that they have Jupiters too?
Current understanding is that the length of the solar cycle is determined by the speed of the meridional circulation, which in turn probably has its course in a small temperature difference between equator and poles, and thus be a property of this kind of star at this point in its life.
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Thank you, Lief. Since the Jupiter-inner-planet conjunctions occur because of resonances between the orbits of these planets, and since we now know of quite a few stars with Jupiter-size planets, it would not surprise me if some of these stars also had planets with similar resonant orbits.

As for the speed of the meridional circulation and latitudinal temperature differences being important factors, I do not disagree with that. If this is generally believed to be the predominant mechanism determining solar cycle lengths, I would have liked to have heard a comment to that effect in the teleconference when the question of cycle length causation was raised. A very brief summary of how measurements of the meridional circulation speed and latitudinal temperature differences are being used by the prediction panel would have been appropriate too.

Astronomers have found some ’sun-like’ stars. These also show a star cycle like the Sun. It seems that periods are close to the solar peiod (11 years), so you would assume that they have Jupiters too?
Current understanding is that the length of the solar cycle is determined by the speed of the meridional circulation, which in turn probably has its course in a small temperature difference between equator and poles, and thus be a property of this kind of star at this point in its life.

Actually, a severe enough solar storm could knock out the power grid and take a couple years to be fully repaired and restore power everywhere. Imagine no electricity for a year. Thats a valid threat to prepare for IMHO.

Then again, it is possible that there is some additional data that might be added to the above graph that would let me produce a much more accurate model. Please send cheque for further model updates… Oh, and the world might come to an end and the sun explode if we ignore this and don’t get a more accurate model, so send the cheque really really soon!

(I don’t see much difference between my satire and the actual published stuff… Do I have a future in Real Science ™? I can even shout POPPER POPPER!!! repeatedly at anyone who does not agree with me… )

Seriously, though, it does look like the sun is going sleepy-by (I’d guess for about 20 years, given past patterns and the present status) and yet the Real Scientists ™ are loath to recognize this, instead doing incremental revisionism trailing reality by about 4 to 6 months. Heck, I can do that… In fact, I could issue changes daily in lock step with observations… being unencumbered by the notions of preexisting broken theories. At least they could take the existing diminishing trend and put their model in sync with it, then they would only be wrong once when reality inflected to a new trend…

I think it’s worse than that. I think the rest of the world is looking and laughing at Americans now!

I thought that the 11 years had something to do with the orbit of Jupiter.
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I believe it does. Specifically, with the solar tide producing conjunctions of Jupiter and the inner planets. Even NASA has looked at this:
http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/2007/TM-2007-214817.pdf

Attn Anthony: I have worked up a little Powerpoint presentation showing the specific phasing of each of the 27 such conjunctions from 1894 to 2007. I’d be happy to send it to you for your inspection and possible posting if you are interested.

IS there anyway to tell if the ’specks’ could be seen with the instrumentation available for sunspot observations 100s of years ago? And why isn’t that important?

Like with the ‘tiny tims’, I for one think it is polluting what little data we have if we do not have instrumentation that sees things as they were, going along for the ride. It makes the spliced data sets discontinuous and not very useful. What would be wrong with two sets of observations at the same time?