“According to our measurements, sunspots seem to form only if the magnetic field is stronger than about 1500 gauss,” says Livingston. “If the current trend continues, we’ll hit that threshold in the near future, and solar magnetic fields would become too weak to form sunspots.”

My previous post…
“The article says “Sunspot magnetic fields are dropping by about 50 gauss per year,” says Penn. “If we extrapolate this trend into the future, sunspots could completely vanish around the year 2015.”

According to the graph, by 2015, mag fields will be only 1800 gauss. Is that the point at which sunspots vanish? I think someone drew a conclusion from the chart without realizing that the y axis ranged from 1800 to 3200 gauss.”

I agree that the papers and [are] more cautious and balanced than a scan reading inferred and my vective may have been better aimed elsewhere. However, I stand by my point regarding trying to fit ‘trend’ lines to potentially small data sets. I guess I am becoming skeptical of smoothing and trend analysis in general – I wonder why…

That’s certainly a fair criticism, and I think everyone involved would love to have a longer data set. There’s a tacit assumption (expectation!) that whatever is going on has happened many times before with likely little harm. If it’s what’s behind the Dalton and Maunder Minima, and it will be impossible to prove, then great. Of course, it would mean at best trading one question for another (what caused the magnetic field strength to decline?)

The straight line approximation cannot hold for the indefinite future, of course. If it is part of 100 year cycle, then the slope will have to go back up sometime. The definitive paper will have to wait for two or three full cycles or for a convincing theoretical solution, but that’s longer than I care to wait!

The part of the Solar Activity that is part of the daily surface heating should be instantaneous. It’s just moderated by the residual, much as a summer day following a cooling trend doesn’t make it as high in temp as a previous hot day.
It would be one heck of a rude awakening if, one day, we learned that the present 0.1drop in TSI isn’t all that there is.

I enjoy Nasif’f posts and hope he can contain his fiery Latin temperament so we can continue to have the benefit of his information and insight.

I agree with you, I just linked that article because it was the first of its kind on spaceweather in a while.
I can’t say I agree with most of the article’s points because there surely is some sort of lag, ie this solar minimum won’t come through in the climate for a few years, (it cannot be instantaneous).

“James F. Evans (23:38:47) :
“This is the reason for the well-known ‘flat’ temperature trend of recent years.”

Well, at least she’s willing to own up to that.”

The climate computer models which assumed CO2 to be the main driver did not predict this as it was not allowed , therefore the initial IPCC hypothesis is invalidated.

Well, I see it on the nightly weather reports…

Bugger it, Sunday morning and half asleep, try “boat” instead :o)

This is brand new science. Livingston and Penn are the first to report this phenomemon and are quick to say they don’t know how things will turn out.

I did, however I will admit probably with not quite so much focus as needed the first time.

The trend appears to be a straight line, so that what they fit it to. What would you have used?
The analysis of direct data is over 17 years, on a system that has been oscillating for many orders of magnitude more than that – I would be very reticent about [a] trying to fit a straight line to any natural system and [b] attempting any kind of trend analysis on such a small set of data.

Really, that was the major nub of my earlier ‘rant’.

Please, go bang your head
Already done :o)

– several of rest of us who have been following this find this to be the most fascinating thing we have read in this blog, some to the point of checking with Leif after each sunspeck with “Did Livingston measure it?” “Is it still on the trend line?”
Each to their own and whatever floats-your-boar is fine by me. Personally, I think monitoring each and every development is a futile exercise as we have no idea how long any cycle might be (better to accumulate then look back). However, that’s just my view and I fully understand when something new tickles the fancy it can be fascinating to follow.

I’m more patient than that, perhaps if you read both of the papers you would understand that you could learn a little patience yourself

I will freely admit I was in somewhat of a rush in my previous posting, mea-culpa; patience is something I normally have in abundance (with three kids 17, 13 and 5, you have to have it).

I agree that the papers and more cautious and balanced than a scan reading inferred and my vective may have been better aimed elsewhere. However, I stand by my point regarding trying to fit ‘trend’ lines to potentially small data sets. I guess I am becoming skeptical of smoothing and trend analysis in general – I wonder why…

Cheers

Mark

Well, at least she’s willing to own up to that.

“The warmest year on record, 1998, coincides with the ‘super-El Nino’ of 1997-98,” points out Lean. “The ESNO is capable of producing significant spikes in the temperature record.” Solar minimum has the opposite effect: “A 0.1% decrease in the sun’s irradiance has counteracted some of the warming action of greenhouse gases from 2002 – 2008,” she notes. “This is the reason for the well-known ‘flat’ temperature trend of recent years.”

That’s because you need your CO2D2 decoder ring to decipher the encryption AlGorRhythm. It will lead you on a quest similar to National Treasure and DaVince Code. First stop is the Fortress of Solitude somewhere in Antarctica.

DaveE.

If one assumes that man caused the globe to warm significantly, and that assumption that the trace gas C02 trumps H20 as a heat trap is correct.
Which really leaves the Sun out of it, as less solar activity also corresponds with increased GCR’s which Svensmark’s experiment shows cause aerosols and H20 clouds to form increasingly. So, increased GCR’s should lead to increased efficiency of trapped heat to offset decreased solar irradience due to lower solar activity, and the reasoning goes into a tailspin.
Now you are down to a trace gas doing much the same thing, but not affected by solar activity and nothing to account for global temps falling.
With all the claims of ocean temps rising, polar caps melting, glaciers retreating and now Global Templs falling due to Deep Solar Minimum/decreased solar irradience offsets, it leads me to conclude that AGW at present is a scatterbrained hodgepodge of theory, hype, drum beating and tax schemes.
Time to lose the frantic dashing about to one alarm after another scenarios and knuckle down to a real story:
Deep Solar Minimum. That is what is happening right here, right now, on our doorsteps. Let’s deal with it, and get some focus.
When we have made our preparations for the coming cool-down, and we get our senses back, then we can revisit the AGW theory, and see what we have learned about how it stands with other forces, and should we need to do something about it, we’ll figure out what that is. It certainly should not be G&H Tax & Spill markets.

I am just trying to figure out what Dr. Svalgaard is saying. My point is that the solar cycle (A) may both cause sun spots (B) and Aurora (C).

A may lead to B
A may lead to C

However, there is no direct connection between B and C. Sometimes the van der Pol oscillations inside the sun may lead to B, sometimes they may lead to C and sometimes they may lead to both B and C. Is this your opinion Dr. Svalgaard?

I have absolutely no reason to speculate, but based on my very limited understanding of the solar cycle I would guess that there is a link between the Aurora, the sunspots and, for example, the Arctic surface temperature:

http://climate4you.com/Polar%20temperatures.htm#NH%2070-90%20TempSince1900

We see that the previous temperature drop coincidences with the weak solar cycles 14 and 15. This is of course unscientific speculation only.