Guest post by David Archibald
In a presentation dated 22nd September, 2009, Dr Svalgaard produced a graphic which can be interpreted to predict the timing of the Solar Cycle 24 maximum.
That presentation is available here: http://www.leif.org/research/Predicting%20the%20Solar%20Cycle.ppt
That graphic is reproduced with my annotation:
Dr Svalgaard annotated Altrock’s orgininal figure with the red and aqua arrows. What is significant is that the Solar Cycle 24 arrow is 15 years after the Solar Cycle 23 arrow. With the maximum of Solar Cycle 23 in March 2000, that line suggests that the Solar Cycle 24 maximum will be in 2015.
With the timing of the next maximum established, we can compare the progression of the current minimum with the minimum that saw the beginning of the Maunder Minimum. Makarov and Tlatov in 2000 included a figure from Kocharov 1995. That figure follows, with my annotation:
Tree rings from the Urals have more uses than just making hockey sticks. Due to the paucity of sunspots in the Maunder Minimum (1645 – 1710), C14 data provides the evidence for the presence of solar cycles and their length. According to Makarov and Tlatov, solar cycles averaged 20 years long in the Maunder. In Figure 2 above, solar minima are associated with higher C14 content and are on the top side of the graphic. I have marked the solar minima with vertical blue lines. The blue figures along the x axis are the length of the solar cycles from minimum to minimum in years.
To compare the start of the Maunder Minimum to our current day minimum, I have marked where the maximum of Solar Cycle 24 would be in 2015 as 15 years after the peak of the preceding cycle. There is also a parallel in the way that the C14 count (reflecting the neutron flux and in turn the GCR flux) is climbing above the peaks of previous minima, as it is today with the Oulu neutron count. Neutron count tends to peak a year after solar maximum, so a neutron peak in 2010 is consistent with solar minimum in 2009.
From Figure 2, it can be expected that in a repeat of the Maunder Minimum, the neutron flux will remain well above the levels reached in the minima of the second half of the 20th century.
The Maunder Minimum was not completely devoid of sunspots, as shown by the following graphic using data from SIDC:
Lastly, the Heliospheric Current Sheet has flattened, one of the conditions for the solar minimum:
A ramp up in Solar Cycle 24 activity might not be expected though until the downtrend line in tilt angle from the peak in 2000 is broken, and that might be a year away.
Summary
Activity and timing of the current minimum, as well as the timing of the Solar Cycle 24 maximum in 2015, is paralleling the start of the Maunder Minimum. There is no data to date which diverges from the pattern of the start of the Maunder Minimum.
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Nice work. Will this be submitted for publication?
Shall we start investing in Amsterdam ice skate shops?
2015, eh? As in, the year the L&P effect removes sunspots completly?
We live in interesting times.
mod… “Neutron count tends to peak a year after solar maximum” should read “minimun”?
Ric
“minimum”! Sorry, where are those glasses……!
If I read this correctly, this implies a solar cycle length of the order of 15 years.
David Archibald’s “Past and Future Climate” presentaions suggested that this cycle length would result in about a 2.5 degree C drop in average planetary temperatures. [well into Maunder Minimum range].
This could have unfortunate consequences if he is correct.
Great work – lots of implications here for humanity. Can we expect editorial opinion of this on the front pages of the media outlets around the world!
The problem is that we have so little experience watching the Sun (only several hundred years) that we can’t really say. While this might look a lot like Maunder, maybe the Maunder type minimum was a fluke and doesn’t happen often. Or maybe it happens more and more often and lasts longer and longer as you reach the end of the interglacial. Or maybe we are in for a type of minimum we have never seen before. We will just have to wait and see.
Trying to predict what the Sun is going to do seems less important to me than simply watching what it IS doing.
Interesting. Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems rather low in predictive power once we get beyond 2015.
If the temperatures drop, we’ll probably see a significant drop in CO2, after massaging by the IPCC, who will then claim they have solved the problem.
BTW, has anyone noticed the AMSR-E Ice extent is at the lowest level since the chart began? What’s going on here, especially if we’re headed into another Maunder minimum and temperatures have been dropping since 1998.
“What’s going on here, especially if we’re headed into another Maunder minimum and temperatures have been dropping since 1998.”
Could be changes in ocean currents, wind directions, just about anything.
We have only been watching the arctic with satellites since 79. We don’t really know what “normal” is yet.
I’m not a scientist but if there is a long term repeat of a maunder type event, is there any indication in proxy data that suggests that this is a tightly cyclical occurance? The presentation of the data just looks so creepily similar between the Maunder and present. In any event, I think we’re in for some cold decades to come. Brrrrrr!
As much fun as this sort of speculation is note the following from Dr. Svalgaard’s slide presentation (from slide#44): “We begin by illustrating the lack of our understanding.”
The quote is only about what is understood (or not) about the behavior of the Sun. Now to jump from there to what will happen to temperatures here on Earth is extrapolation beyond the data and our understanding. Or in web-speak a WAG.
Norm in Calgary (22:42:39) : ice extent
Someone has called this section of the chart “the knot” which I take to mean all the lines come close together at this time and the year-to-year differences are not of great importance. I try to not place much meaning on things like this when simply looking at data without having any notion of what is actually going on – in this case with winds, currents, sensor issues and whatever else I don’t know about (a lot).
“is there any indication in proxy data that suggests that this is a tightly cyclical occurance?”
The Little Ice Age was, as far as I know, the coldest period of this interglacial since the Younger Dryas, about 12,000 years ago. Climate seems to have been fairly stable until about 2000 years ago and it looks like we might be in a general cooling trend since. If it is cyclical, which it might be, it seems like it might be a rather new cycle as so far I have not read anything to indicate cool periods of the extent of the LIA. Now whether or not the Maunder is a cause of the LIA is an issue of some debate as the timing overlaps but isn’t exact between the two events. The LIA lasted through several solar grand minima, not just the one. While most put the start of the LIA in the 15th century, I would not argue with someone who says it really started in the 14th century.
Excelent with a strong theory that makes predictions in such a near time that most now living scientists can check it. (or so we hope)
Dr Svalgaard risks falsification already 2015, if he is wrong. The late Karl R. Popper would have liked it.
We need more data access.
Not only about the sun and and Global Weather and Climate data but also about volcanic activity.
It is nice to have sea surface temperature data for a certain moment in time in a certain grid, but that temperature data becomes more prominent if we also have real time information about the wind, the cloud cover, air pressure, precipitation, cosmic ray flux and solar radiation, the moment the temperature measurement was taken.
The Little Ice Age coincided with a chain of volcanic eruption events that influenced Global Temperatures.
Real time data about volcanic emissions, even today, is insufficient and incomplete.
especially in those area’s that host the world’s biggest volcano’s.
If we want to move forward we really need to sync more parameters so we have the opportunity to observe the “total” picture.
http://volcanism.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/siusgs-weekly-volcanic-activity-report-4-10-november-2009/
So D Archibald was right after all…..
Norm I think the ice data since Oct 1 is unreliable.. check dmi ice. The AMSR jaxa graph looks quite similar after smoothing.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php note disclaimer
\
“Due to repeting data fall-out since 1st of October, the sea ice extent calculation can be unreliable. We are working on solving the problem!”
L&P = Livingston & Penn
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/65
OT
“UK government plans to make carbon emission cuts of 80% by 2050 are physically impossible to achieve, according to a new analysis.
According to the analysis, even if the UK managed to cut the demand for energy by 50%, it would still require an extra 16 nuclear power stations and 27,000 wind turbines by 2030 to be sure of hitting the target. ”
Institution of Mechanical Engineers
Dr Tim Fox is head of environment and climate change at the Institution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/science/nature/8358077.stm
In this instance, it’s called a “SWAG” — a *Scientific* WAG…
Lets hope the sun gets back into gear soon, with the current world recession the last thing we need is a drop of 2-3 degrees in temperature.
Although there are obvious similarities between today’s Solar activity and the start of the Maunder Minimum, until we know the causal mechanism(s) behind what we observe and can measure their progress, predicting future activity is just guesswork. The sun is a messy place and perhaps more lateral thinking needs to be done by scientists to understand what’s going on. As with Earth’s climate, our understanding of fundamental Solar processes is still in it’s infancy.
Norm in Calgary (22:42:39) :
BTW, has anyone noticed the AMSR-E Ice extent is at the lowest level since the chart began? What’s going on here, especially if we’re headed into another Maunder minimum and temperatures have been dropping since 1998.
I have been following it.
It must be winds piling up the ice and thus reducing the extent.
I do not think there is much meaning at these temperatures at this time of the year where all curves follow each other except how much compactification is induced by winds. Extent is I think how much is covered by at least 15% ice. That leaves a lot of space for compacting it and measuring a lower extent.
“BTW, has anyone noticed the AMSR-E Ice extent is at the lowest level since the chart began?”
DMI’s Arctic ice extent page shows similar lows, but also warns that the recent data are contaminated: “Due to repeting data fall-out since 1st of October, the sea ice extent calculation can be unreliable. We are working on solving the problem!”
Scroll down to below the chart.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
“According to Makarov and Tlatov, solar cycles averaged 20 years long in the Maunder.”
This may not be entirely accurate interpretation and can’t be considered as reliable pointer to future. Number of sources suggest that SC during Maunder were not of exceptional duration.
Heliospheric modulation of cosmic rays and solar activity during the Maunder minimum Author USOSKIN Ilya G. et al.
“In the present paper we compare the variations of cosmic ray intensity with solar and auroral activity during the Maunder minimum (1645-1715) when the Sun was extremely quiet. We use the newly presented group sunspot number series as a measure of early solar activity and the radiocarbon data as a proxy of cosmic ray intensity. We find that both cosmic ray intensity follows the dominant 22-year cyclicity with sunspot activity during the Maunder minimum. Moreover, the strict antiphase between the 22-year variation of cosmic ray intensity and sunspot activity suggests that the 22-year variation in cosmic ray intensity can be explained by the diffusion-dominated terms of cosmic ray modulation without significant drift effects.” http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1124791
Variation of the cosmic ray intensity during the Maunder Minimum deduced from carbon-14
29th International Cosmic Ray Conference Pune (2005) Presenter: K. Masuda
“We investigate the features of the eleven-year and the twenty-two year variation of the carbon-14 content. The carbon-14 records show remarkable twenty-two year structure which may be due to cyclic magnetic reversal of the Sun. The variation of carbon-14 content suggests that the polarity of the Sun was negative when the Maunder Minimum occurred. It is evident from the carbon-14 records in Figure 2 that the GCRs had retained cyclic variation through the Maunder Minimum with almost constant amplitude, even though such significant variation is not seen in the sunspot record.”
http://dpnc.unige.ch/ams/ICRC-05/PAPERS/SH34/jap-masuda-K-abs1-sh34-oral.pdf
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/1600-1700.gif