Sol and NOAA predictions have a gap.
Here are some other graphs. The Ap magnetic index is up at least, but radio flux lags just like the spot count.
Source: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/
Since NOAA uses this on every press release, I suppose I should put it here.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the oceans to surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.
h/t to WUWT reader Stephan who says in comments:
OT but D Archibald right on track for SSN 40. The rest as usual way off.
You need to post the numbers predicted from last year and the year beofre when these brainiacs were predicting a solar cycle to beat all other solar cycles, I guess we know how that worked out:
http://covertress.blogspot.com/2010/01/sunspot-cycle-24-prediction-update.html
Sorry, wrong link in above post. I meant to link this:
http://www.physorg.com/news86010302.html
How did that 150 sunspot # work out?
And that is with NOAA counting every single little speck they can find with the most powerful telescopes. To compare apples to apples in looking at historic sunspot numbers go to The Layman’s Sunspot Count
Is the relationship between sun spot number and radio flux really constant?
If we are lucky, cycle 24 max sunspot number will reach 50 !
Wait and see …
I don’t think they have ever claimed to have a good model for variations in the sun spot cycle.
“It turns out that none of our models were totally correct,” says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA’s lead representative on the panel. “The sun is behaving in an unexpected and very interesting way.”
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/29may_noaaprediction/
This is interesting too although not as current:
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100126/full/463414a.html
Has someone bothered to see how close the correlation is between the height of the Thermosphere and SSN, F10 and AP indices?—I would have posted this on the “Film at 11” but that appears to have decayed into a playground spat.
NOAA predictions since 2007 have been even further off the mark. NOAA and most forecasters totally blew the predictions of cycle 24. They simply keep updating their graph – and only keep a very few of past graphs online for public viewing. In 2007, NOAA predicted we would be at 60 to 105 average sunspots per day by now, July 2010. Instead we are at 15. NOAA does little more than move the whole red line graph to the right every few months. It would be a modest project for someone to overlay the previous predictions with the current one and the actuals. Here is the url for two of the older graphs.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/index.html
John Servais
Going back a bit further in time, this web page has NOAA’s April ’07 and May ’09 predictions. Interesting how the predictions keep shrinking to fit the data.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/index.html
Oh dear. Cycle 24 is not looking good for radio propagation. One can hope that things will begin to pick up soon.
It’s possible that we already reached the maximum of cycle 24. During the last solar minimum they were not seeing those microspots that are now being counted as cycle 24. Maybe there was a small or a series of small maxima but were not able to count the spots. Maybe a solar minimum is a series of small cycles. Let’s see if we will start to see a series of microspots in the southern hemisphere.
Now you did it. I expect to see about 10 sun spots tomorrow with a sun spot count of 100.
We could save a lot of money if we hired an octopus.
When the sun really is weak like in the graphs, can anybody tell me why it is warm like hell? http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
Also noted in passing, the GCR counts are still above the maximum of the last minimum sunspot cycle per http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/
I know a bunch of people (not us of course) laugh out loud at Archibald, but if this cycle comes in at 40-50, he’s going to make a whole bunch of people with letters at the end of their name (Ph.D) look like retards…
Mike says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:07 am
“I don’t think they have ever claimed to have a good model for variations in the sun spot cycle.
“It turns out that none of our models were totally correct,” says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center,”
Mike, the quote says none totally correct! That’s a pretty strong claim that they have very good models.
Anthony,
There is so much short term variation in the NOAA sunspot number vs time graph that you showed, that the NOAA/SWPC shown could still be right. We will see.
John
REPLY: Perhaps, but this gap between predictions and reality at NOAA has been going on about three years now. -Anthony
Somewhat OT depending on your take on Sun activity and weather: The Intelliweather map on the sidebar shows by colours the relative N. Am temp:
http://www.intelliweather.net/imagery/intelliweather/tempcity_nat_640x480.jpg
Note that Atlanta is a deep orange (hot) at 77F and Moosonee in Northern Ontario is cool at 72F WUWT?
Casper says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:05 am
Is the relationship between sun spot number and radio flux really constant?
It used to be, but is no longer:
http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Microwaves-at-23-24-Minimum.pdf
ShrNfr says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:32 am
Also noted in passing, the GCR counts are still above the maximum of the last minimum sunspot cycle per http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/
the flux is always higher for minima between odd and even cycles [23 to 24], than between even and odd cycles [22 to 23], so this has no particular significance.
Isn’t it time to update the goalpost animation again?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/ssn_predict_nasa.gif?w=512&h=384
Seems the forecast is drifting further and further away from reality.
Time to re-evaluate the detail of how the solar ‘dynamo’ operates and how external factors influence it. It is interesting that the N – S polar field is weak and, with few sun spots, so is the toroidal field. I wonder what external factors influence these solar mechanisms?
Meh, it’s the Cheshire Sun and we shall see what its grin means.
==================
The sun is obviously wrong, and needs to get with the program.
I believe Clilverd forecast a maximum SSN for SC 24 of 35. This was the lowest forecast I have seen.
Given the potential spanner in the works from L&P, shouldn’t we use F10.7 rather than SSN as a more accurate measure by which to compare predictions?
dang sun, and here I sit waiting for 10 meter to open…
I’d like to refer to my own website at http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/SC24.html for an extensive list of predictions for the SC24-maximum.
A small number of prediction-methods do forecast a very low maximum for the smoothed sunspotnumber (< 70), whereas a few other methods predict a maximum between 70-90 but with a larger error margin that also do not exclude a low maximum.
So no, in case we're really going to have a low maximum, not everybody will be "way off".
They (NASA) were all predicting a strong solar cycle 24 even though observation was showing something quite different. Is this because they were hoping for a strong cycle? I think so. This is not science, it is politics.
The Detroit Lions almost went to the Super Bowl last season. Well, that isn’t totally correct.
folke says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:31 am
When the sun really is weak like in the graphs, can anybody tell me why it is warm like hell? http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
__________________________________________
Yes
The sun adds energy to the oceans. The oceans act as a huge heat sink/capacitor and it takes a lot time for the energy absorbed during the very active solar cycles (21 & 22) to be discharged. Think hot water bottle. A recent article here at WUWT showed the solar temperature/ocean match was off by about one solar cycle or ten to eleven years.
The difference in Solar energy (insolation at 65° north latitude) between peak warmth and deepest cold was around 55Wm-2;The current value, being only 13Wm-2 above the value at the depth of the ice age, is almost all the way back to ‘cold conditions’; it may be that only stored ocean heat is keeping us out of an ice age (for now).
What no one ever bothers to tell people is:
“…Ice recession was well underway 16 ka ago, and most of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets had melted by 6 ka ago. Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ca 11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1-3° C above 20th century averages, enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic,…” Abstract/reference Quaternary Science Reviews 29 (2010) 1679-1715: G.H.Miller et al (23 authors)
Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic
“… Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial. Our findings support the Ruddiman hypothesis [Ruddiman, W., 2003. The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era began thousands of years ago. Climate Change 61, 261–293], which proposes that early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started.”
Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception
A recent article here at WUWT showed the solar temperature/ocean match was off by about one solar cycle or ten to eleven years.
Spencer: SST’s headed down – fast
Solar Cycle Linked to Global Climate, Drives Events Similar to El Niño, La Niña
There is also the fudging of the temperature record by NASA-GISS the temperature readings were adjusted six times after analysis in July 1999 indicated that the temperature anomaly for 1934 was nearly 60% higher than for 1998.
Isn’t s a bit disingenuous to compare the raw monthly data against a smoothed predicted curve? Looking at 06, for example, one sees swings of almost 40 sunspot numbers from month to month; assuming (the unlikely) occurrence of a significantly higher sunspot number later in the year, the smoothed actual may “catch up” to the smoothed predicted curve.
Can anyone recommend one or two good books on solar science for the interested layman (whether they be of the text-book variety or more along pop-science lines)? Thx.
The Sun puts out gobs and gobs and gobs of heat producing energy. The tiny bit of change that sunspots offer is just a fraction of change in that energy. Our puny little Earth is so overwhelmed by the Sun’s energy that we do not notice its changes, particularly at the equator. And finally, in terms of relative size, our Earth uses very, very little of the amount of energy the Sun puts out.
The heat we are experiencing has to do with the tail end of El Nino and a warm Atlantic, which are both naturally occurring oscillations unique to Earth. Even the fact that we are cold at the poles and warm in the middle has nothing to do with changes in the Sun. Our seasonal axial changes and just the position of the poles themselves relative to the Sun causes those changes.
It is the Earth itself that sets up the temperature/pressure gradient. The poles are colder so have a higher pressure system than the equatorial areas, which are warmer. This sets up the air flow from the poles to the equator (air wants to flow from high to low pressure areas). The Sun’s steady beam, interrupted by clouds, provides the steady energy needed to keep equatorial pressure low relative to the poles.
Much of the equatorial heat is absorbed by the oceans which, due to the Coriolis affect and trade winds, sends that heat towards the poles where it naturally cools on its way (within a fluctuating system of course). The heat that is not absorbed by the oceans simply follows along in various bands of wind currents that when arriving at the poles, also naturally cools. And so the system is a self-perpetuating flow of high to low pressure. The system is also leaky. So what heat is not used by the Earth can also escape back out to space. Again, our cloud system in the form of storm cells can suck some of that heat out where it dissipates into space.
Greenhouse gasses makes the Earth less leaky in terms of heat loss. The tiny bit of CO2 change we have experienced in the atmosphere, given that it occupies such a small fraction of our air, is in my opinion, similar to the Sun’s tiny change due to sunspots. I just don’t see how it can compare with the much larger affects of winds, oceans, and weather pattern variations.
ShrNfr says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:27 am
We could save a lot of money if we hired an octopus.
===================================
+1 Internets to you!
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:52 am (Edit)
ShrNfr says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:32 am
Also noted in passing, the GCR counts are still above the maximum of the last minimum sunspot cycle per http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/
the flux is always higher for minima between odd and even cycles [23 to 24], than between even and odd cycles [22 to 23], so this has no particular significance.
Have the latest obs been able to shed any light on which components of the solar radiation spectrum might account for that Leif? And why that wavelength is deficient in the odd to even cycle transitions?
In 60 years experience I have yet to come across anyone who can predict the shape, height and length of a new solar cycle with sufficient accuracy that would eliminate the discrepancies that we see in these graphs – I’ve come to the conclusion that it can’t be done! (Rather like trying to predict our global climate, isn’t it?!)
I know they have to justify their existence, but the more they hindcast the worse they look.
If you subscribe to their own theory “unprecedented”, then how in this world do they think they can predict the future by looking at the past.
They continue to do it, and continue to look stupid doing it.
DR:
Excellent analogy 🙂
But I thought…
“NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the oceans to surface of the sun….” ???
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Its still too early to predict, other than its coming in extremely long. We don’t really know what happened way back there in the past except by proxy.
The reason for all the heat and humidity imho, folke, is all the volcano eruptions in the last 3 years. http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/find_eruptions.cfm
The sulfur gasses have dissipated and dropped from the stratosphere. But the troposhere is very heavily loaded with steam and particulate particularly in the NH and from Eyjafjallajökull.
Something new…
NASA Science News for July 16, 2010
Representatives from more than 25 of the world’s most technologically-advanced nations have gathered in Germany today to hear about a problem that may be too big for any one country to handle alone: solar storms.
FULL STORY at
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/16jul_ilws/
You folks really like to ridicule science in general, don’t you? What exactly is there to be gained by mocking the entire scientific enterprise? Do you really want the U.S. to be dominated by the illiterate?
I truly don’t understand your apparent determination to tear down scientific literacy in the U.S. Do you want China, Japan, etc., to leave us in the dust?
MattN says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:33 am
I know a bunch of people (not us of course) laugh out loud at Archibald, but if this cycle comes in at 40-50, he’s going to make a whole bunch of people with letters at the end of their name (Ph.D) look like retards…
The criticism of David Archibald has nothing to do with his ‘prediction’ for solar cycle 24 (though you might like to make it appear so) but for his rather simplistic method for concluding that there will be a 2 deg decline in temperature over the next “few years”.
I havn’t rolled out this embarrassment in a while. Here’s what awful solar forecasting and sensational scientific press releases look like.
Nov 12, 2003: “The Sun Goes Haywire – Solar maximum is years past, yet the sun has been remarkably active lately. Is the sunspot cycle broken?”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/12nov_haywire.htm
Oct 18, 2004: “Something strange happened on the sun last week: all the sunspots vanished. This is a sign, say scientists, that solar minimum is coming sooner than expected.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/18oct_solarminimum.htm
May 5, 2005: “Solar Myth – With solar minimum near, the sun continues to be surprisingly active.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/05may_solarmyth.htm
Sept 15, 2005: “Solar Minimum Explodes – Solar minimum is looking strangely like Solar Max.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/15sep_solarminexplodes.htm
Aug 15th, 2006: “Backward Sunspot – A strange little sunspot may herald the coming of one of the stormiest solar cycles in decades.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/15aug_backwards.htm
Dec 21, 2006 “Scientists Predict Big Solar Cycle – Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/21dec_cycle24.htm
Dec 14, 2007 “Is a New Solar Cycle Beginning? – The solar physics community is abuzz this week. ”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/14dec_excitement.htm
Jan 10, 2008: “Solar Cycle 24 – Hang on to your cell phone, a new solar cycle has just begun.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/10jan_solarcycle24.htm
March 28, 2008: “Old Solar Cycle Returns – Barely three months after forecasters announced the beginning of new Solar Cycle 24, old Solar Cycle 23 has returned.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/28mar_oldcycle.htm
July 11, 2008: “What’s Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing) – Stop the presses! The sun is behaving normally.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/11jul_solarcycleupdate.htm
Sept. 30, 2008: “Spotless Sun: Blankest Year of the Space Age
– Sunspot counts are at a 50-year low – We’re experiencing a deep minimum of the solar cycle.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/30sep_blankyear.htm
Nov. 7, 2008: The Sun Shows Signs of Life – I think solar minimum is behind us”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/07nov_signsoflife.htm
April 1, 2009: Deep Solar Minimum – We’re experiencing a very deep solar minimum – This is the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm
May 29, 2009: “If our prediction is correct, Solar Cycle 24 will have a peak sunspot number of 90, the lowest of any cycle since 1928 when Solar Cycle 16 peaked at 78,”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/29may_noaaprediction.htm
June 17, 2009: “Mystery of the Missing Sunspots, Solved? The sun is in the pits of a century-class solar minimum, and sunspots have been puzzlingly scarce for more than two years.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/17jun_jetstream.htm
September 3, 2009: “Are Sunspots Disappearing? – The sun is in the pits of the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. Weeks and sometimes whole months go by without even a single tiny sunspot. The quiet has dragged out for more than two years, prompting some observers to wonder, are sunspots disappearing?
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/03sep_sunspots.htm
September 29, 2009 “Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High – In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we’ve seen in the past 50 years,” says Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. “The increase is significant, and it could mean we need to re-think how much radiation shielding astronauts take with them on deep-space missions.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/29sep_cosmicrays.htm
We don’t understand how the sun works, we don’t understand how the clouds work, we barely understand how the oceans work and volcanic activity is a complete wild card. Our understanding of Earth’s climate system is rudimentary at best…
folke says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:31 am
When the sun really is weak like in the graphs, can anybody tell me why it is warm like hell? http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
I will take a stab at it…High pressure domes over heat islands and purposely poor thermometer sites.
Above every high tempurature record is a high pressure dome. Venus is hot because of high pressure not CO2. Death Valley is hotter than Mt Everest due to air pressure, distance from the sun be damned. Coastal areas are always warmer because they have more atmospheric pressure than anywhere else at any given time save transient low pressure systems.
The sun warms the planet and CO2 is an inert gas capable of nothing. This is why the sun burns your skin and heavy breathing is just alot of hot air.
Hope that helps!
This is an off topic comment, but I thought it might be of interest to WUWT readers.
I have been challenged to a wager by frequent commenter on my blog. Kevin O’Neill said in a comment…
“The North Pole has never been ice-free; not once in the history of the earth.
… and I can prove it. I’ll wager you $100 to be given to the other’s favorite charity. I suggest we use NSIDC’s 15% as the threshold for ice-free. Do you accept?”
.
I have accepted.
You can see the details at Kevin O’Neill, I accept your challenge
This wager has a tangential connection to WattsUpWithThat. In one of his many recent comments O’Neill said many harsh things about WUWT. You can see his comments concerning WUWT, written on July 10th at 7:19 am here…
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2010/07/03/entire-arctic-ocean-melted-as-early-as-august-8th-this-year/#comment-3617
And my reply, written in July 12th at 8:24 am here…
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2010/07/03/entire-arctic-ocean-melted-as-early-as-august-8th-this-year/#comment-3643
Best Regards
Tom Moriarty
ClimateSanity
REPLY: Thanks Tom, I note that some people criticize my choice of words/grammar there also, such as who -vs- whom. It might help them to walk a mile in my shoes, being hearing impaired most of my life, now 85% deaf. I’ve had a lot of difficulty with language, mispronouncing a lot of things, and not making proper word choices because of it at times. Sometimes I’d make pronunciation mistakes, huge ones on the air, but once people learned of my disability they stopped demanding I be fired. My boss didn’t care one whit for them anyway. The fact is, like with WUWT, I drew in viewers.
-Anthony
Hathaway and NOAA have absolutely failed in their predictions. They are now making adjustments to fit the real sun conditions. It’s pathetic. They should simply fess up and admit they haven’t the foggiest notion what’s happening to the sun. In not doing so they have become a laughing stock.
@Gary Young P.
>>Somewhat OT depending on your take on Sun activity and weather: The >>Intelliweather map on the sidebar shows by colours the relative N. Am temp:
>>http://www.intelliweather.net/imagery/intelliweather/tempcity_nat_640x480.jpg
>>Note that Atlanta is a deep orange (hot) at 77F and Moosonee in Northern >>Ontario is cool at 72F WUWT?
When I go to the link you posted, I see Atlanta at 88F and Moosenee at 72F …
Richard deSousa says:
July 16, 2010 at 10:03 am
They are just trying to survive, not to offend anybody by contesting the official paradigm of a universe only driven by gravity. (A “flintstones universe”). To know about real sun:
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=74fgmwne
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=74fgmwne
and:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/solar-sys
Anthony: this gap … has been going on for three years now.
To be fair, are the predictions really of the smoothed values? If so, and I think this likely, they can hardly be called far-off at this point. Look at Jan ’01 or ’04 and compare to the smoothed curve. It would be interesting to see how previous predictions stacked up.
Ulric Lyons says: July 15, 2010 at 5:12 pm
“According to Emmert and colleagues, low solar EUV accounts for about 30% of the collapse. Extra CO2 accounts for at least another 10%. That leaves as much as 60% unaccounted for.”
Solar wind velocity was very low through 2008/9 till this spring, total numbers of coronal holes per year were also down
I think the rest could be accounted for the decline in the Earth’s magnetic field, which has significant impact on the strength of thermosphere (most of it is the ionosphere).
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/IonSph.htm
The sun spot counts are a joke. Trying comparing Sun spots today with 1610-1950, can’t be done. Today we have scopes with 15 meg chips, above all clouds with 24 hour around the world surveillance. Satellites observing all the time. In the little Ice Age how many clear days in London did they have in a year. With the cold come clouds.
With a PhD you can be wrong all the time and make good living. Especially if you work for the government. Hathaway will have a nice government pension.
How many of you believe in the big bang?
It all started with a small spot, and someone added a drop of water, and poof the expanding universe. Makes sense to me.
I knew cycle 24 was going to be a bust. How? Timo Niroma. Here is his article that he published around 1998, I think. http://www.kolumbus.fi/tilmari/gleissb.htm
He has other good stuff on the web. He makes a prediction in 1998 and it come true. Hathaway makes a prediction ever month, and is wrong the next month.
Svensmark writes a book that explains, predictions that come true, and he is tried for climate crimes and convicted.
With the next little Ice Age on its way, have anyone of you though about what it means for farming in Canada. They have 12.5 million acres taken out of productions this year because of weather. Snow in Jasper Alberta the other day. This stuff is real serious.
Here is a photo I came across of the submarine 0-9 in Jan 1918 in Quincy Mass.
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0807003.jpg
Notice the Ice in Jan. I worked in Boston 1983-1996 and never saw Ice on the water.
I have a Hypothesis that I would like to throw out. I think that Prince Charles has his butler shave him everyday. I mean the guy can only talk about getting CO2 down to 280 ppm. He wants to save the planet. He could only think this, because he has someone shave his face. If he had to shave himself everyday, he would spend 10 minuets a day looking at his own face. With that, he would be on the news ever day trying to get 1st cousin marriages outlawed.
Richard deSousa says: July 16, 2010 at 10:03 am
“They should simply fess up and admit they haven’t the foggiest notion what’s happening to the sun.”
Hathaway did a reasonable job at this a few weeks ago on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128268488
“…I went out on a limb back in 2006 using a solar cycle prediction technique that relied on us being near sunspot cycle minimum. And I thought, well, the last few cycles were 10-year cycles. Chances are the next one will be a 10-year cycle. So I went out on a limb and made a prediction in 2006 that I have long since regretted, but it was a prediction there was going to be a big cycle coming up. I’ve now, at every opportunity, recant that prediction, but the ham radio operators, they’re saying you promised us.”
“I really do, as far as, you know, when you – in fact, there’s a great quote that, you know, prediction is difficult, especially about the future, that – and it is. When you’re really making a prediction about something that’s, you know, hasn’t happened yet and people are depending upon that prediction, yeah.”
I give credit to David Hathaway for gaining some humility and stating as such on NPR. Furthermore, the following is important information he communicated to the public:
“In fact, a number of my colleagues have suggested that perhaps, or certainly there’s the possibility that we are heading into another one of these long, grand minima like the Maunder Minimum. You know, the Maunder Minimum from the year 1645 to 1715, and it was 70 years, virtually, without sunspots. There were a few that started taking up near the end. But, basically, as far as sun spots, the sun stopped doing it for 70 years.”
Interviewer “FLATOW: Did it affect the Earth any way we could tell?”
“Yeah. It comes at the end of what is called the Little Ice Age for climate. And both that minimum and the minimum at the beginning of the 19th century correspond to cool times in Earth’s climate. It has led us to believe that the sun does – the solar variability, I should say, this, you know, coming and going of sunspot cycles – does influence climate to some extent. And the big question is to how big an extent. And there’s a wide range of feelings on what that is.”
Unfortunately, David’s humility and credibility evaporated immediately after that statement with the addition of this speculative and unsupported Warmist conjecture:
“The best analyses I’ve seen suggest that the sun’s still a minor player, that it’s really the anthropogenic forcing that’s overwhelming things now, and that even if the sun did go into one of these long, extended periods of no activity, it wouldn’t save us from global warming.”
Another awful prediction that Hathaway may be recanting in a few years…
I’ve been suprised that global temperatures (I trust UAH the most) rose so dramatically over the last year in a period where the sun was historically inactive on so many fronts. I suspected (from Svensmark’s Cosmoclimatology paper) this period at the most, cooler than average.
Any thinking as to why the El Nino persisted until recently? I know there are El Nino’s in cool periods. Fewer and less intense than during a warm oscillation.
Still, leaves me scratching my head a bit…
http://www.physorg.com/news86010302.html
Cross correlating sunspot number vs. IHV, they found that the IHV predicts the amplitude of the solar cycle 6-plus years in advance with a 94% correlation coefficient.
“We don’t know why this works,” says Hathaway. The underlying physics is a mystery. “But it does work.”
The Sun is making a monkey out of 90% of the science is settled man-made global warming scientific community. The Sun is our greatest weapon against politicized science sector.
It is time to change from belief to science:
http://www.holoscience.com
Or, in other words:
For what is a man what has he got
If not himself then he has not
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels
Those who kneel just repeat what the others say, what the “consensus” commands them to say.
“REPLY: Thanks Tom, I note that some people criticize my choice of words/grammar there also, such as who -vs- whom. It might help them to walk a mile in my shoes, being hearing impaired most of my life, now 85% deaf. I’ve had a lot of difficulty with language, mispronouncing a lot of things, and not making proper word choices because of it at times. Sometimes I’d make pronunciation mistakes, huge ones on the air, but once people learned of my disability they stopped demanding I be fired. My boss didn’t care one whit for them anyway. The fact is, like with WUWT, I drew in viewers.
-Anthony”
You don’t owe nobody no explanation. I have the benefit of all of my hearing, and sometimes my written word is loosely coherent. We are all volunteers here, juggling many responsibilities and without the benefit of editors. While the Warmist rabble nitpicks our grammar, we are winning the scientific debate…
Thank you for everything you are doing for humanity. As I said to you in April of ’09
“Solid website that is dedicated to the facts. When history books are written about the folly of human’s preparing for a period rapid and drastic warming, as we entered a period of (potentially rapid and drastic) cooling, they will reference WUWT as one of the primary factors in preventing the folly from going too far.
I dare say that the tide has begun to turn, and WUWT is one of the primary reasons for it. ”
Your response, though incorrect, shows you to be man of humility and character;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/30/april-another-record-month-at-wuwt/#comment-124607
Didn’t the Mayans like worship the sun? Is this the setup for the sun to do something big in 2012 or maybe do nothing at all and that in itself will have a large consequence? To be quite honest when the sun starts acting weird it worries me. Isn’t it NASA’s responsibility to do something to stop it before it wipes out civilization?
We could save a lot of money if we hired an octopus.
Now that is funny!
tallbloke says:
July 16, 2010 at 9:36 am
[Leif:] the flux is always higher for minima between odd and even cycles [23 to 24], than between even and odd cycles [22 to 23], so this has no particular significance.
Have the latest obs been able to shed any light on which components of the solar radiation spectrum might account for that Leif? And why that wavelength is deficient in the odd to even cycle transitions?
Tallbloke: I doubt this has anything to do with the solar spectrum. Rather, it likely has to do with the relative north/south orientations of the sun’s and earth’s magnetic fields. Each sunspot cycle of ~11 years has an opposite magnetic field orientation from the previous cycle, so one is parallel to the earth’s and the next is “anti-parallel” — a full cycle is really ~22 years.
Some magnetic interactions depend on the parallelism or non-parallelism (your refrigerator magnet attaches to your frig identically with either the north or the south pole facing it); others depend on whether the fields are parallel or anti-parallel, as in the action of two refrigerator magnets with regard to each other.
The problem is we are calculating the observations wrong. We need to adjust the system so the data are more consistent with the model, .. as we know the models are correct.
You can bet, a paper will come out soon that shows this flaw, and the new proposed calculation that brings the data more in line with the model will be accepted in toto.
@tallbloke. Take the plot back as far as Oulu goes. Yes there is even/odd cycle there but there is much more that appears to make this particular cycle particular: http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startdate=1964/06/16&starttime=00:00&enddate=2010/07/16&endtime=18:09&resolution=Automatic%20choice&picture=on
All the comments about the Sun “having no influence” or “being a minor player” make me want to bite the side out of my coffee mug! Here in Auckland, its around 15C cooler than it will be in six months and you know why? Because we are recieving less solar energy now then we do in December! Don’t be telling me that changes in solar output don’t make no difference to the climate.
I think NOAA should immediately move their predicted SSN curve to the right about six months and hope nobody noticed :>)
Also, check this out:
http://leif.org/research/F107%20at%20Minima%201954%20and%202008.png
ShrNfr says:
July 16, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Call 911!. Solar magnetic fields, which shield us from GCR, for the Emergency Room:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PF.gif
John Finn says:
July 16, 2010 at 9:59 am
“[…]The criticism of David Archibald has nothing to do with his ‘prediction’ for solar cycle 24 (though you might like to make it appear so) but for his rather simplistic method for concluding that there will be a 2 deg decline in temperature over the next “few years”.”
NOAA and Joe Bastardi seem to agree with DA:
http://pgosselin.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/joe-bastardi-coming-cooling-will-be-coldest-since-early-90s/
tallbloke says:
July 16, 2010 at 9:36 am
“the flux is always higher for minima between odd and even cycles [23 to 24], than between even and odd cycles [22 to 23], so this has no particular significance.”
Have the latest obs been able to shed any light on which components of the solar radiation spectrum might account for that Leif?
Not due to any ‘radiation’, but to the polarity of the solar polar fields, which for one orientation screens the cosmic rays a wee bit more efficiently than for the opposite direction.
David says:
July 16, 2010 at 9:58 am
You folks really like to ridicule science in general, don’t you? What exactly is there to be gained by mocking the entire scientific enterprise? Do you really want the U.S. to be dominated by the illiterate?
The US is already. No need to go any farther than this blog. Just look at the post below:
Enneagram says:
July 16, 2010 at 10:28 am
To know about real sun:
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=74fgmwne
tom gall says:
July 16, 2010 at 10:47 am
Today we have scopes with 15 meg chips
We still use only small telescopes for sunspot counting.
Curt says:
July 16, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Rather, it likely has to do with the relative north/south orientations of the sun’s and earth’s magnetic fields.
First part is OK. Nothing to do with the Earth’s field.
ShrNfr says:
July 16, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Take the plot back as far as Oulu goes.
Oulu does not constant calibration over time. Most other stations give a different [and more correct] image, e.g. http://www.puk.ac.za/fakulteite/natuur/nm_data/data/nmd_e.html
Mike Campbell says:
July 16, 2010 at 9:28 am
Can anyone recommend one or two good books on solar science for the interested layman (whether they be of the text-book variety or more along pop-science lines)? Thx.
I have not seen any other response. Try The Sun Kings, by Stuart Clarke. Sorry, I am at the cottage, and do not have the ISBN.
I must say that whenver I get particularly discouraged about the horrible record of Artic Ice predictions by official establishment figures and institutions, well then I just turn to solar predictions and am reminded of just how much worse it could get. The solar guys and gals, as a group (no doubt there are honorable exceptions for moments here and there) have generally been quite astonishingly, consistently, and egregiously awful for what, 2.5 years now?
Cycle 24 sunspot numbers appear to be six months behind or 17 counts below prediction. This augers a lower peak or a longer stretchout or maybe both.
Well, okay, to be fair, I must admit no official government figure has predicted the imminent going out of the sun, as Serreze did with arctic ice. So score one for the solar crowd there. 🙂
Thanks for H/T…Looks like D Archibald will be right on the temps prediction too! (-2C over next few years would seem to me to be spot on). I reckon it has begun….
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
click on sea surface.
Also lets take note of R Spencer prediction that due to La Nina Satellite temps should be about to start dropping next 2-4 weeks
Re previous posting go to
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/ and then click on sea surface
Mike Campbell says: Can anyone recommend one or two good books on solar science for the interested layman (whether they be of the text-book variety or more along pop-science lines)? Thx.
Mike:
I recommend The Sun Kings:
http://www.amazon.com/Sun-Kings-Unexpected-Carrington-Astronomy/dp/0691141266/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1279313184&sr=1-1
It’s a history of early solar astronomy. Carrington and Maunder play central roles. You won’t learn much solar science, but it’s a great historical read.
Jim Cripwell says:
July 16, 2010 at 1:20 pm
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=74fgmwne
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=74fgmwne
Anthony says:
REPLY: Thanks Tom, I note that some people criticize my choice of words/grammar there also, such as who -vs- whom
=================================================
Anthony, if they are criticizing your fingers, it’s because they can’t find anything wrong with your brain. 😉
Well at least we’ve proven beyond any doubt that solar cycle models have little or no skill. Unfortunately it’ll take a lot longer to prove the same about the global climate models.
Interesting. I was just thinking whilst reading the replies that some of them are somewhat over the top.
We all know that models are conceptual representations of real entities, with the emphasis on conceptual. Why would you vilify scientists trying to establish what those concepts actually are? At the very least the lack of identity between the output of the model and the experimental data confirms the null hypothesis. So you’ve learnt something. Back to the drawing board you go….
I suppose the problem comes when you market your predictions as somehow indicative of your level of expertise or authority in any given area. The Met Office have found to their detriment that this can often come back to bite you in the arse.
You obviously have no clue what folks are talking about. We are not trying to “Tear down” any group, we are trying to get them to actually do science instead of pretending they are scientists when they are really making wild ass guesses and waving dead chickens over their head.
The “science” most of these organizations actually do is riddled with elementary errors and poor judgment, and a ridiculous over confidence in their abilities and a total disregard for good practice and recognition of the error limits inherent in the studies they are “attempting” to do.
It is the skeptics who are insisting on high quality science and the so called scientists who are for the most part acting like used car salesmen and over stating precision, drawing faulty associations and causal relationships when the data simply do not support such conclusions and in general doing work that would have gotten me an F in Mechanical Engineering school in 1967.
Just because people call them scientists or have fancy degrees does not in any way mean that they are scientists.
Science is a process with well know rules of how you perform research and if you disregard good practice and those basic rules of the scientific method you are not a scientist no matter what it says on your business card, or what degrees you hold.
Larry
Hey Leif, I have no idea what kind of ccd chip you have on your government grant solar observatory. I had to pay for my solar scope out of my own pocket. I never thought to ask the Gov if they would hold up the tax payers to pay me so go study my hobby.
I can tell from the resolution that they are more than ample for what they are doing.
And cost more than any scope at a star party that I have been to.
The point I made was that they are all at high elevations with 24 computer chips recording them.
The other fact you might want to answer, how did a high school educated boob like me out smart all the NASA solar boys. Maybe they should quit listening to Prince Charles for guidance. I think all you government grant scientist are thicker than thieves.
Do you think your NASA pal Hathaway, helped design that segmented exploding solid fuel booster they used on the space shuttle. Ever wonder why it was not made out of a solid casing like all other solid fuel rockets?
tom gall says:
July 16, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Hey Leif, I have no idea what kind of ccd chip you have on your government grant solar observatory.
4096×4096 pixels.
The other fact you might want to answer, how did a high school educated boob like me out smart all the NASA solar boys.
I don’t think you have, but let me tell you a little story:
A guy was sitting in a park eating apple seeds. Another guy walks up and asks “what are you eating?”, “Apple seeds, they will make you smarter”, “Really, can I buy some of yours?”, “they are $3 each”, “OK, let me have 10”, and the guy forks over the 30 bucks, get his apple seeds and eats them. After a few minutes, he says: “Hey, come to think about it, I could have bought a whole lot of apples for $30 and gotten many more apple seeds…” “See”, says the first guy “the seeds are already working”.
So, how many apple seeds did you buy?
I notice that there is a large contingent of troll type folk over here since Real Climate in one of their comments in a recent post suggested that they come over here to disrupt or somesuch. Sorry cant pinpoint as wasnt taking seriously at the time but should be easy find if you can stomach the trot.
“It turns out that none of our models were totally correct,” says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA’s lead representative on the panel. “The sun is behaving in an unexpected and very interesting way.”
OMFG for real! Not totally correct? Maybe just a little bit? No? Oh well.
David says:
July 16, 2010 at 9:58 am
You folks really like to ridicule science in general, don’t you? What exactly is there to be gained by mocking the entire scientific enterprise? Do you really want the U.S. to be dominated by the illiterate?
=============================================================
David, if we had listened to science, the coral reefs would be gone by now, New York would be under water, millions would have starved to death, the world population would be twice what it is right now, we would all be driving George Jetson cars with robots to wait on us, there would be no disease, and everyone would live to be over 100.
Mocking is one way of trying to keep them honest.
Do you really believe that we know enough about weather/climate to predict the future? So far they haven’t gotten it right yet.
NOAA isn’t behind just the Solar Cycle curve, they are also behind the climate curve.
In their climate case, they have too much CO2 on the brain.
But, as far as the Solar Cycle goes, they should have caught on at least a year ago.
They cannot bring themselves to lower their expectations, prior to falling ever further behind.
tom gall says:
July 16, 2010 at 3:24 pm
> Do you think your NASA pal Hathaway, helped design that segmented exploding solid fuel booster they used on the space shuttle. Ever wonder why it was not made out of a solid casing like all other solid fuel rockets?
How many solid fuel boosters as long or longer than the shuttle’s are there? IIRC, the SRB segments are designed to fit on to railway cars. How are the ones you’re thinking of transported?
I think if we got Phil Jones and Gavin Schmidt to collaborate on counting sunspot numbers perhaps we would see a return to higher solar activity. But I guess they’re too busy fudging the temperature data at the moment.
It must be a conspiracy
Leif
I have a high IQ that I got from my parents for free. I find can usually out smart a lot PhDs.
It happens to be one of my favorite subjects. IQ’s that is.
You want to defend the economics profession? They have lots of PhDs.
My real passion is investing money, want compare how I know when to go short and when to go long, and what to buy and sell. I play with my the money that I spent a life time earning in the private sector, and not money taken from tax payers at the point of a gun.
The only PhD that I know that know how markets work is Marc Farber. And he bets his own money.
Oh just so you know, I flunked 7th grade, but the teacher let me go on. I then flunked 8th math, then algebra 1, next biology and graduated 271 out of 273 in my high school class. Emmylou Harris was the class valedictorian. I then went out to make through 2 semesters before flunking out, in one of the easiest colleges to get into in America. Then went into the USN Polaris program and almost manage to flunk out of basic electronics. Then when the hard classes came, I found I could get B average with out opening a book. Fact is having a big number cruncher down, and 6000 people waiting for it to be fixed was something I enjoyed. Having a Cray divide unit spitting out garbage was a good way to see if you still had it. You loose IQ points as you age. And easy 20 buy the time you are in your 60’s.
Are you old like me?
Geez, Tom Gall, lighten up, man. IQ means nothing. It all depends on what you do with it.
re: “Sun Kings” book recommendation
Thanks Dan in Cali.
Rgds
Mike in Hali(fax)
And Jim, as well. Thx for the input.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 16, 2010 at 3:38 pm
tom gall says:
July 16, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Hey Leif, I have no idea what kind of ccd chip you have on your government grant solar observatory.
4096×4096 pixels.
Is it just me, or is that not SIXTEEN megapixels? What were you disagreeing with again Leif?
DirkH says:
July 16, 2010 at 1:13 pm
John Finn says:
July 16, 2010 at 9:59 am
NOAA and Joe Bastardi seem to agree with DA:
http://pgosselin.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/joe-bastardi-coming-cooling-will-be-coldest-since-early-90s/
Firstly, DA and Joe Bastardi are not talking about about the same thing. Joe is referring to a short term drop in temperatures
due to a shift in ENSO conditions (El Nino -> La Nina) . This may well cause worldwide temperatures to drop from their current highs by a few tenths of a degree. This is from your link:
The Pinatubo cooling in the early 1990s caused a drop in temperatures which was estimated to be ~0.5 deg C – but this was only for a few months. These sorts of fluctuations do happen. After the 1997/98 El Nino temperatures peaked and then dropped sharply in 1999 and 2000 (El Nino -> La Nina). Remember also that temperatures rose very sharply between 2008 and 2010 (La Nina -> El Nino)
David Archibald is talking about something entirely different. He is predicting a sustained long term (decadal) decline in temperatures. Furthermore, he is predicting temperatures that are 2 deg below what they are at present, so we can state with some confidence that NOAA and Joe Bastardi do not agree with David Archibald.
stephan says:
July 16, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Thanks for H/T…Looks like D Archibald will be right on the temps prediction too! (-2C over next few years would seem to me to be spot on). I reckon it has begun….
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
click on sea surface.
Also lets take note of R Spencer prediction that due to La Nina Satellite temps should be about to start dropping next 2-4 weeks
Indeed – and when La Nina is over temperatures will start to rise again. That is exactly what has happened over the past 30, 50 …100 years. However David Archibald is referring to a sustained decline in the background temperature level due to solar forcing. Roy Spencer and DA are not talking about the same thing.
NOAA hasn’t got a clue, which is the area in which bookies operate. Anybody want to bet that NOAA wrong here? Google”odds on weather conditions” Send me a taste.
rbateman says:
July 16, 2010 at 4:01 pm
NOAA isn’t behind just the Solar Cycle curve, they are also behind the climate curve.
In their climate case, they have too much CO2 on the brain.
It’s a small point but I’ve never quite understood why many readers of this blog think that AGW supporters would wish for recordings of high solar activity. I would have thought it would be quite the opposite. Surely if solar activity were low and temperatures remained high it would strengthen their case. If I were a die-hard AGWer I’d be only too keen to point out that there is low solar activity but no drop in temperatures. I’d be more than happy to play up the low solar activity predictions. If temperatures dropped – I’d have a bit of a wiggle room; if they didn’t drop – I’d claim game, set and match.
The Facts says:
July 16, 2010 at 10:47 am
Just
Your Hathaway quote is quite telling: “And I thought, well, the last few cycles were 10-year cycles. Chances are the next one will be a 10-year cycle.” It is worse than I thought. Hatthaway’s predictions should have been the divination of the gods, but the basis of his prediction was no more than “The trend is your friend.” This is slightly better than reading entrails.
When I started out in climate science in 2005, I said to Bob Foster, who had asked me a write a paper for E & E, that climate is not a random walk and that if we can predict solar activity, we can predict climate.
Clilverd 2005 did a good job predicting Solar Cycle 24 amplitude because he used a model for sunspot number using low-frequency solar oscillations, with periods 22, 53, 88, 106, 213, and 420 years modulating the 11 year Schwabe cycle. The model predicts a period of quiet solar activity lasting until approximately 2030 followed by a recovery during the middle of the century to more typical solar activity cycles with peak sunspot numbers around 120. His estimate for Solar Cycle 24 is 42 with an error range of 35.
That reminds us that the Sun has cycles. The last de Vries cycle event was the Dalton Minimum from 1798 – 1822. There is no reason to suggest that in this perfect world being despoiled by mankind’s CO2 that the Sun would stop having cycles. So predicting when the next cycle will hit is more difficult than finding the last cycle and counting forward from there. The de Vries cycle is a 210 year cycle (Clilverd used 213 years). 210 years after 1798 is 2008. The month of solar cycle 23/24 transition was December 2008. So the next de Vries cycle (let’s call it the Eddy Minimum) has arrived exactly on schedule. This should not be a surprise to anyone.
What is happening on the Sun now is phase destruction as the force that dare not speak its name has gone retrograde against the Sun’s flux momentum. The green corona brightness tells us that year of maximum for Solar Cycle 24 will be 2015. The Sun’s magnetic poles usually reverse at solar cycle maximum. I predict that there will be no reversal of the Sun’s magnetic poles at Solar Cycle 24 maximum.
John Finn says:
That last sentence makes no sense. If Joe B and NOAA are “talking about something entirely different” than Dr Archibald, it doesn’t automatically follow that they can not be in agreement on other time scales. If they’re in disagreement about something, it must be over the same thing, no?
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:52 am
Casper says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:05 am
Is the relationship between sun spot number and radio flux really constant?
It used to be, but is no longer:
You just gently tossed that out there . . . how significant is that?
Sean Peake says:
July 16, 2010 at 5:06 pm
> IQ means nothing. It all depends on what you do with it.
I like to compare IQ with MSG. By itself it’s useless, it just enhances the other aptitudes you’re lucky enough to have.
I respect Hathaway for the fact that he said he was wrong so I ain’t in for criticizing the man.. For all we know DA could be wrong too.. but so far he has outmatched all “them others” LOL. The sun and the data seem to be following his (DA) predictions. Leif is a wonder because I cannot come to grips with the fact he does not seem to think the Sun has any effect on Climate. (or do I stand to be corrected?). I doubt if anyone will ever find a parallel time correlation between weather and one solar activity (SSN, Flux, Geo etc..) God help us if one did.. we would have fried or frozen a long time ago. However I believe the whole sun “package” within time constraints does definitely control the earths climate. Its basic..if you put your hand out on a sunny day it heats up, if its cloudy it doesn’t LOL
David Archibald says:
July 16, 2010 at 6:21 pm
I predict that there will be no reversal of the Sun’s magnetic poles at Solar Cycle 24 maximum.
Prediction is about falsification. If what you predict based on your ‘theory’ turns out not the happen, we usually take that the mean that the theory is false. So, if there is a reversal, i means your ideas are false, right? If not, it was not really a prediction, but just speculation. Speculation can be false without invalidating your theory. So, what is it: prediction or speculation?
DRE says:
July 16, 2010 at 7:04 pm
You just gently tossed that out there . . . how significant is that?
We don’t know what it means or is of importance, but always when something does work as it did in the past, it may portend a change out of the ordinary, that should make us cautious.
Stephan says:
July 16, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Leif is a wonder because I cannot come to grips with the fact he does not seem to think the Sun has any effect on Climate. (or do I stand to be corrected?).
You stand to be corrected. The Sun does have effect on the climate, all of a tenth of a degree’s worth.
Yes David, but its not the SUN that’s going to make it cold, its going to be the volcanic activity.
latitude says:
July 16, 2010 at 3:43 pm
David says:
July 16, 2010 at 9:58 am
You folks really like to ridicule science in general, don’t you? What exactly is there to be gained by mocking the entire scientific enterprise? Do you really want the U.S. to be dominated by the illiterate?
=======================================================
Mocking is one way of trying to keep them honest.
This is a good point. Our political and judicial systems are set up to be adversarial. Two opposing points of view presented to the public to be adjudicated by the public. a jury or a judge. This adversarial ‘friction’ tends to produce the best result, at least all sides of a case are heard. Those of us lucky enough to live in a Democracy live with these conflicts daily and we balance out some sort of ‘truth’ from the teasing, mocking and, yes, ridicule.
Why should climate science be exempt?
I don’t think the word “prediction” means what these scientists think it means.
Leif, you noted:
To: “. . . any light on which components of the solar radiation spectrum might account for that Leif?”
If the minima between odd and even solar cycles are “always higher”, that is significant.
Your observation provides the possible physical causation to the finding by:
W.J.R. Alexander
Causal linkages between solar activity and climatic responses Water Resource and Flood Studies March 2006 , University of Pretoria, Dept. Civil & Biosystems Engineering
I recommend using Alexander’s double cycle analysis methodology with alternating positive and negative cycles to help expose impacts of solar cycles on climate.
John Finn says:
July 16, 2010 at 6:19 pm
You missed by a mile.
NOAA did not and does not get what the current solar cycle is doing.
NOAA, along with the MET Office, has 2 years worth of blown seasonal forecasts under their belts, and both have been sucked into the C02 warming scare.
But, today, like the last 2 years, they just keep on truckin’ with the hotter than ever forecasts, and when one happens to come along, it’s ‘See…we were right all along’.
As if that is going to gold-plate their credibility.
People, contrary to the opinion of some, have memories.
As for your assertion that skeptics think that AGW’er hope for a massive solar cycle, whatever for? Warmists don’t believe the Sun has any significant influence on the climate, direct or indirect.
Leif Svalgaard says: July 16, 2010 at 7:35 pm
“You stand to be corrected. The Sun does have effect on the climate, all of a tenth of a degree’s worth.”
That seems like a very absolute statement within a very uncertain field. Are you really that sure about the facts?
Ed Murphy says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Do you mean volcanoes will cool the climate, like this?
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/SSNvsVOL.JPG
John Finn says:
July 16, 2010 at 5:52 pm
so we can state with some confidence that NOAA and Joe Bastardi do not agree with David Archibald.
I wouldn’t be so sure. Joe Bastardi works off a triple crown of cooling.
1. Ocean cooling.
2. Volcanic activity.
3. Solar slowdown.
Joe uses my site and is a great supporter, he is following this cycle intently as it now starts to track lower than SC5.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 16, 2010 at 7:33 pm
David Archibald says:
July 16, 2010 at 6:21 pm
I predict that there will be no reversal of the Sun’s magnetic poles at Solar Cycle 24 maximum.
—————————
Prediction is about falsification. If what you predict based on your ‘theory’ turns out not the happen, we usually take that the mean that the theory is false. So, if there is a reversal, i means your ideas are false, right? If not, it was not really a prediction, but just speculation. Speculation can be false without invalidating your theory. So, what is it: prediction or speculation?
A poor “strawman” attempt Leif. We do not know what will happen if we get a grand minimum, we have never measured one before. I also think there might be a phase catastrophe in at least one of the poles, but this condition is not mandatory for the survival of the theory. Two low cycles are all we need to validate the theory to the next level.
Proxy records suggest at least one non reversing pole during past grand minima, its not a huge leap to make this prediction.
If you really had a high IQ and could “out smart” [sic] PHds, then you’d know that there is no apostrophe for the plural of IQ. And you’d know the difference between “loose” and “lose”.
I think those PHds just got tired of your rambling and let you win.
Sheesh!
In some places they did, in others they didn’t. Nothing uniformly global is occurring. You get some regional heating here, some regional cooling there, and some regional mostly stasis elsewhere.
David L. Hagen says:
July 16, 2010 at 9:18 pm
scientifically undeniable linkage
I don’t read stuff that claims to be undeniable.
Just The Facts says:
July 16, 2010 at 9:32 pm
That seems like a very absolute statement within a very uncertain field. Are you really that sure about the facts?
As sure as everybody else is when they claim there is a correlation between A and B. I can re-phrase my statement: “I expect on simple theoretical grounds that there should be about a 0.1K effect [actually a little bit less, but I don’t deal in hundredth of degrees], and 0.1K is widely claimed to the order of magnitude of the solar cycle effect, so I’ll happily go along with that”.
Geoff Sharp says:
July 16, 2010 at 10:18 pm
We do not know what will happen if we get a grand minimum
That makes it speculation and not prediction
Proxy records suggest at least one non reversing pole during past grand minima, its not a huge leap to make this prediction.
What record and which minimum? And it is not prediction, it is speculation.
Leif,
thank you for your presentation. I’m not a heliophysicist, but I’m keen on astronomy. You are right, something must have happened in 1981. I suppose that this change in the relationship has something to do with that phenomena which was reported by Livinston and Penn.
Something here’s not clear to me: the graphical data is labelled as ‘prediction’, but the comments all imply it’s a projection. Which is it?
My sunspot dartboard 🙂 says SC24 peaks in 2014-2015 at about 50.
13-year cycle at least.
Dave McK (July 16, 2010 at 10:57 am)
Thanks for the link Dave.
I thought that this was a good example of relying on experts and authority.
David Hathaway/Robert Wilson of the Marshall Space Flight Center SC24 prediction in 2006
Guys: That dartboard is on the other wall. 🙂
rbateman says:
July 16, 2010 at 9:28 pm
John Finn says:
July 16, 2010 at 6:19 pm
You missed by a mile.
I didn’t miss anything I just made a comment.
As for your assertion that skeptics think that AGW’er hope for a massive solar cycle, whatever for? Warmists don’t believe the Sun has any significant influence on the climate, direct or indirect.
Another myth. I think you’ll find that they attribute solar activity as one of the main reasons for the early 20th century warming. Do let me know if you need help finding a reference for this. There is also this 2001 paper by Shindell, D.T., G.A. Schmidt, M.E. Mann, D. Rind, and A. Waple (recognise any of those names) entitled “Solar forcing of regional climate change during the Maunder Minimum” which examines the response to solar irradiance changes between the late 17th century Maunder Minimum and the late 18th century. See
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2001/Shindell_etal_1.html
The AGWers do not deny a solar influence and never have done. They do, however, claim (with some justification) that there has been no long term trend in activity over the past ~50 years. It is this fact which leads them to conclude that most of the warming since ~1975 is ghg-induced.
Dave says:
July 17, 2010 at 12:59 am
The first 2 ISES graphs are projection corrections that keep getting undercut by the absolute track of the data, with a high degree of consistency.
What the projectors cannot seem to grasp is that the cycle is being eroded as it develops.
First, they have the flux rate of attack overestimated.
Second, they fail to take into account that the SSN is lagging the flux as a separate development, so the SSN graph is a compound misprojection.
It’s not like the L&P progression is a big secret.
Good grief.
John Finn says:
July 17, 2010 at 1:53 am (Edit)
The AGWers do not deny a solar influence and never have done. They do, however, claim (with some justification) that there has been no long term trend in activity over the past ~50 years.
As the last couple of solar threads showed, the solar influence turns up in temp records decade later, so if we look at the trend of the sunspot number 1940-1990 compared to the long term average of ~40:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1940/to:1990/trend
There’s your global warming.
Robert Bateman, please explain the eruptions part of your excellent looking graph to us, bud.
. . It now becomes obvious that the floods were not caused by Pacific sea surface temperatures (La Niña), but that the floods and La Niña were both caused by regular, and therefore predictable, changes in solar magnetic activity.
Sounds like the biggest poo ever, magnetics make it rain… naw
Volcano eruptions make it rain, and large, lengthy eruptions make it rain a lot for a long time !
. . It now becomes obvious that the floods were not caused by Pacific sea surface temperatures (La Niña), but that the floods and La Niña were both caused by regular, and therefore predictable, changes in solar magnetic activity.
Whoa ! What the heck is wrong with me ?
We are perched on a crust separated from a big metal ball by a thin outer mantle area next to the crust that is the only thing that resembles the expanding magma that we see at eruptions.
So magnetics likely cause the eruptions. The big ball contracts after solar max, but the outer most outer mantle expands… Poof !
Then re-poof ! when the ball begins to expand again. All this is ever so slight but a big result in earthquakes and volcanism.
“stephan says:
July 16, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Thanks for H/T…Looks like D Archibald will be right on the temps prediction too! (-2C over next few years would seem to me to be spot on). I reckon it has begun…”
2 years ago I would have agreed with you, but now I tend to agree with the opinion that DA is not really credible.
Interesting new article here:
A PUZZLING COLLAPSE OF THE EARTH’S UPPER ATMOSPHERE
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/15jul_thermosphere/
IMO SC 24 will have sunspot maximum in the 70s with the tiny tims counted (universally accepted count), which would likely translate to a max in the 50s with the layman’s count.
Flux is very interesting to watch right now, especially this graph http://www.leif.org/research/F107%20at%20Minima%201954%20and%202008.png
It can be seen that F10.7 has fallen back to near minimum levels!
tallbloke says:
July 17, 2010 at 2:19 am
As the last couple of solar threads showed, the solar influence turns up in temp records decade later, …
Really. Some of the more recent solar threads included David Archibald’s ‘correlations’ between solar cycle length and temperature. The conclusion from these being that temperature responds to cycle length over the period of the following cycle. Admittedly it isn’t altogether clear that this is the conclusion because David keeps showing the Butler & Johnson Armagh plot which plots the 11 year means centred on the solar cycle max and min. However, either way, a temperature response is expected well within a decade.
Isn’t it also claimed that the cold during the Dalton and Maunder minimum periods was due to the weak solar cycles at that time.
so if we look at the trend of the sunspot number 1940-1990 compared to the long term average of ~40:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1940/to:1990/trend
There’s your global warming.
Are you saying that the warming which began in ~1975 was caused by a series of solar cycles which began in ~1940, i.e. there is ~35 year lag. Why didn’t the warming which was ongoing in 1940 continue?
I can certainly see the attraction of all these solar cycle theories. They can be – well – recycled. If the predicted temperature response fails in one theory – you can just pick another one with a longer lag time. Obviously you need to ignore that the whole basis for the orignal prediction was wrong but – not to worry – we simply move on.
David wrote:
“I truly don’t understand your apparent determination to tear down scientific literacy in the U.S. Do you want China, Japan, etc., to leave us in the dust?”
If the US (and other western countries) continue to use bad science (cherry picking data, manipulating the data they can’t cherry pick to their way, relying on model predictions that contradict real life observations, discarding past science just because it doesn’t fit their views and whitewashed investigations into [mal] practise) to furthurtheir political agendes then the above countries and Russia will be doing just that, all on it own!!
Patrick.
Eddy Minimum
And the grinning Cheshire Sun
Both went out to play.
===========
Geoff Sharp says:
July 16, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Geoff,
As Leif suggested, can you please indicate what is the record that you suggest shows the non-reversing (solar) pole? Also, if you know of any papers on non-reversing (solar) pole studies can you cite them. Thank you. You threw something new into the comment stream, so naturally I am curious and skeptical at the same time.
John
Casper says:
July 17, 2010 at 12:29 am
I suppose that this change in the relationship has something to do with that phenomena which was reported by Livinston and Penn.
We think so, yes.
I am surprised that someone has not already tossed in a suggestion of an earth magnetic pole reversal now that the solar pole reversal is on the table.
I am back in my Adirondack chair in the Adirondack mtns again on my blackberry 🙂
John
Ref – David says:
July 16, 2010 at 9:58 am
“You folks really like to ridicule science in general, don’t you? What exactly is there to be gained by mocking the entire scientific enterprise? Do you really want the U.S. to be dominated by the illiterate? I truly don’t understand your apparent determination to tear down scientific literacy in the U.S. Do you want China, Japan, etc., to leave us in the dust?”
_____________________
I, for one, (and I doubt I’m alone) feel the ridicule of science -in general- is justified. The first defenders of science should be the scientists themselves, but where are they, the masses of PhD’s clamoring to defend their trade from Fat Albert & Co.; from the socialists who want to redistribute the world’s wealth so as to ‘level the playing field’; from the anarchists who want to ‘Stop Everything’ and ‘start all over again’, and maybe get it right after the chaos dies down in a few hundred years; from the Madoff’s who want to make a killing off ‘CO2 Credits’ (whatever they are); from the politicians who just want to stay in power and ‘help’ us all into poverty and chaos and to ‘burn baby burn’ this huge house of cards we call civilization into a pile of beautiful dust? No! I think they deserve everything we’re throwing at them; and so much more.
For some strange scarey reason I get the impression that –thanks to the AFL-CIO and the NEA, et al– we are the ‘GM’ of the world in primary education and already breathing mega-tons of dust. Our Soviet-style education is a cancer. It breeds failure and ignorance. It needs to go private. Close all the public K-12 schools. Give the parents the money and let them pick the school. ASAP!!
PS: I tend to boil on so called “American Un-Education” and “Fear in Science”. Let me count to ten, 1, 2, 3,….
Just curious, but why is it that the peak of cycle 24 appears to be much lower is this graph, http://www.solarcycle24.com/index2.htm , than in the one used at the start of this blog entry?
Is there a series of quiet updates to the cycle max prediction taking place by Dr Hathaway/NASA that is not getting the front page treatment?
Leif Svalgaard says: July 16, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Speculation can be false without invalidating your theory.
This time I agree.
Here I make a speculative prediction that during the next 100 years month of June’s CETs will not rise more than 0.02 degree C, whatever the sunspots do in the meantime.
Q. Why?
A: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-Jun.htm
Because we’re dealing with so many unknowns, forecasting is an absolute mug’s game at present.
John Whitman says: July 17, 2010 at 5:16 am
I am surprised that someone has not already tossed in a suggestion of an earth magnetic pole reversal now that the solar pole reversal is on the table.
Hi John
The Earth’s field is still too strong for an imminent reversal.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/VADM.htm
Ed Murphy says:
July 17, 2010 at 2:32 am
Robert Bateman, please explain the eruptions part of your excellent looking graph to us, bud.
Why, certainly.
By going to the site http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/largeeruptions.cfm
and plotting the volcanoes per year, the 1st one being a black dot, and any subsequent being blue dots, red triangles or a yellow dot. Each dot is raised or lowered according to intensity (VEI index).
It needs updating, and revising, as I did it about a year ago.
It does show that volcanoes can occur at any time, and do at the cat 4 VEI level, but there is an unmistakable tendency to have more volcanoes at (or near) solar minimum. There are also mutiple volcanoes at/near solar max.
There is room for further investigation & clarification.
John Whitman says:
July 17, 2010 at 4:56 am
Geoff,
As Leif suggested, can you please indicate what is the record that you suggest shows the non-reversing (solar) pole? Also, if you know of any papers on non-reversing (solar) pole studies can you cite them. Thank you. You threw something new into the comment stream, so naturally I am curious and skeptical at the same time.
Here is a few to look at, I know there is more, perhaps Leif has some on file.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AdSpR..40.1917C
http://www.landscheidt.info/images/usoskin_maunder_nos.pdf
http://www.landscheidt.info/images/Miyahara_AG06.pdf
http://www.landscheidt.info/images/maunder_c14.pdf
Leif Svalgaard says: July 17, 2010 at 12:16 am
“As sure as everybody else is when they claim there is a correlation between A and B. I can re-phrase my statement: “I expect on simple theoretical grounds that there should be about a 0.1K effect [actually a little bit less, but I don’t deal in hundredth of degrees], and 0.1K is widely claimed to the order of magnitude of the solar cycle effect, so I’ll happily go along with that”.”
I like the addition of qualifiers, i.e. “I expect” “theoretical grounds” and “should”, as it is important that we do not overstate our degree of certainty. TSI aside, it is within the realm of possibility that the sun has other influences on Earth’s climate. For example, the interaction of the magnetic fields of the Sun and Earth, and the potential that this interaction influences volcanic activity, seems to merit further investigation.
Geoff Sharp says:
July 17, 2010 at 10:29 am
Here is a few to look at, I know there is more, perhaps Leif has some on file.
Those do not claim there were no reversals and show no data in support. One speculates that there were no reversal in one hemisphere and the last one explicitly says: “the Sun had retained the polarity reversal through the prolonged sunspot minimum period.”
So it looks like your references were based on wishful thinking.
Leif:
Do you have a latest L&P update?
Someone mentioned how this graph has changed over time.
I went to the wayback machine, and found that there was very little archived there.
This is usually because someone asks for the archive to be removed … wonder if that is the case here.
Anyway, there was enough there to be interesting:
http://vogon.net/graph.jpg
This graph uses one from 30/6/08 as the base and I overlayed it with the current graph (6/2010). I changed the color of the current graph to green to separate it from the older graph.
The graphs are drawn differently, so getting an overlay is not easy without more work that I wanted to do, but its good enough for government work 🙂
The original graph seems to show the original prediction, along with the (then) current prediction. As mentioned elsewhere above, they do seem to be sliding the lower prediction along, hoping that it will eventually fit.
Just The Facts says:
July 17, 2010 at 11:00 am
I like the addition of qualifiers, i.e. “I expect” “theoretical grounds” and “should”,
“should” should perhaps better have been “must”, as the 0.1K change must happen given the change in input, unless it is drowned in the noise.
For example, the interaction of the magnetic fields of the Sun and Earth, and the potential that this interaction influences volcanic activity, seems to merit further investigation.
Since the energy in the magnetic fields is many orders of magnitude smaller, it seems highly unlikely that there is any effect from that interaction. If anything, one could entertain an effect in the opposite direction, at least as far as the Earth’s magnetic field is concerned.
rbateman says:
July 17, 2010 at 11:11 am
Leif: Do you have a latest L&P update?
The latest is always plotted on my website at http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn.png
PJP says:
July 17, 2010 at 11:16 am
they do seem to be sliding the lower prediction along
I think this is ordinary [and correct] practice. The weather service also [as they should] updates the weekly forecast every day taking into account the latest data.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 17, 2010 at 11:19 am
What I was thinking of doing was calculating the SSN for June by using L&P to reverse the loss.
i.e.- what would the SSN for June, 2010 be if the L&P had not been in effect, and does that account for the observed discrepancies?
Leif Svalgaard says: July 17, 2010 at 11:19 am
“The latest is always plotted on my website at http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn.png”
FYI, this version appears to be out of date:
http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn%20B.png
Hi Leif,
Please take a look at this curve: http://i26.tinypic.com/33n97rq.jpg. Now, imagine that this square wave is the 100 000 – year temperature pattern of ice ages which is caused by the Milankovitch cycles.
Questions:
* Is it likely that the temperature should be completely constant in between two ice ages as given is this curve? (This is the AGW version…)
* Or would it be more reasonable to expect considerable temperature variations at many frequencies? (Years, decades, centuries and millennia…)
Please consider the frequency spectrum of the many Milankovitch cycles, ocean cycles and the time it takes to increase the temperature of the oceans (from bottom to top) a couple of degrees.
Invariant
rbateman says:
July 17, 2010 at 11:52 am
Leif Svalgaard says:
What I was thinking of doing was calculating the SSN for June by using L&P to reverse the loss.
i.e.- what would the SSN for June, 2010 be if the L&P had not been in effect, and does that account for the observed discrepancies?
One way would be to use F10.7.
This is what I get (year, month, Rz obs, Rz from F10.7):
2008 1 3.3 12.1
2008 2 2.1 8.7
2008 3 9.3 12.4
2008 4 2.9 10.2
2008 5 3.2 8.4
2008 6 3.4 6.8
2008 7 0.8 6.4
2008 8 0.5 6.6
2008 9 1.1 7.3
2008 10 2.9 8.1
2008 11 4.1 7.5
2008 12 0.8 8.0
2009 1 1.3 7.3
2009 2 1.4 7.7
2009 3 0.7 8.0
2009 4 0.8 9.9
2009 5 2.9 13.2
2009 6 2.9 13.3
2009 7 3.2 11.4
2009 8 0 8.9
2009 9 4.3 12.7
2009 10 4.8 14.6
2009 11 4.1 15.7
2009 12 10.8 20.1
2010 1 13.1 25.9
2010 2 18.6 30.4
2010 3 15.4 24.7
2010 4 7.9 21.7
2010 5 8.8 20.2
2010 6 13.5 18.9
2010 7 11.9 24.5
Just The Facts says:
July 17, 2010 at 12:22 pm
FYI, this version appears to be out of date:
http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn%20B.png
It is now included in:
http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn.png”
Invariant says:
July 17, 2010 at 12:26 pm
* Or would it be more reasonable to expect considerable temperature variations at many frequencies? (Years, decades, centuries and millennia…)
would be my choice
Leif Svalgaard
What do you think about this hypothesis?
“Mechanisms to explain the Sun-volcano link probably involve induced changes in the basic state of the atmosphere. Solar flares are believed to cause changes in atmospheric circulation patterns that abruptly alter the Earth’s spin. The resulting jolt probably triggers small earthquakes which may temporarily relieve some of the stress in volcanic magma chambers, thereby weakening, postponing, or even aborting imminent large eruptions. In addition, decreased atmospheric precipitation around the years of solar maximum may cause a relative deficit of phreatomagmatic eruptions at those times.”
http://blog.chess.com/Rickj/volcanoesearthquakesmagnetic-fields-and-climatric-impacts
Just The Facts says:
July 17, 2010 at 12:57 pm
What do you think about this hypothesis?
Not much…
“Solar flares are believed to cause changes in atmospheric circulation patterns that abruptly alter the Earth’s spin.
I don’t believe that
decreased atmospheric precipitation around the years of solar maximum
I don’t think any such connection has been demonstrated
Leif Svalgaard says: July 17, 2010 at 12:34 pm
It is now included in:
http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn.png”
I know, but it doesn’t make sense to keep an out of date version on your site, it should be kept current or deleted.
Just The Facts says:
July 17, 2010 at 1:22 pm
it should be kept current or deleted.
it is
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 17, 2010 at 11:28 am
I think this is ordinary [and correct] practice. The weather service also [as they should] updates the weekly forecast every day taking into account the latest data.
Well, to begin with, they obviously didn’t. They slid the curve downwards to meet reality.
By sliding it to the right, they are saying that they expect the cycle to be longer than the normal 11 years. I would really like to know where they get the evidence for that.
Its MUCH more likely that there will just be a much reduced cycle peak.
PJP says:
July 17, 2010 at 2:16 pm
They slid the curve downwards to meet reality.
Just like the weather service does to update the weekly forecast to meet reality. Same thing.
By sliding it to the right, they are saying that they expect the cycle to be longer than the normal 11 years. I would really like to know where they get the evidence for that.
Smaller cycles are usually longer, that’s why.
As long as the solar polar field strength does not flip to positive territory, we will predict that current solar minimal behavior trends will continue? And we never get a peak in SC24?
The question is how long we will observe the curve crossing the zero axis? Needs 70 years to complete it like the period of the Maunder Minimum?
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Polar.gif
rbateman says:
July 17, 2010 at 11:11 am
Leif:
Do you have a latest L&P update?
You can trust this one:
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Polar.gif
Peter Pan says:
July 17, 2010 at 3:44 pm
As long as the solar polar field strength does not flip to positive territory, we will predict that current solar minimal behavior trends will continue? And we never get a peak in SC24?
It is the peak in SC24 that causes the polar fields to reverse. The new activity we are seeing has already eaten away about 25% of the polar fields. At this rate, they will reverse in 4 years time.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 17, 2010 at 3:55 pm
It is the peak in SC24 that causes the polar fields to reverse. The new activity we are seeing has already eaten away about 25% of the polar fields. At this rate, they will reverse in 4 years time.
======================================================
The newest activity means later than June 22?
Is that reversed sunspot contributed somehow?
Peter
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 17, 2010 at 3:55 pm
The new activity we are seeing has already eaten away about 25% of the polar fields. At this rate, they will reverse in 4 years time.
I should be more specific: the decrease will accelerate and comparing with previous cycles one can ask: when 25% has been eaten away, hoe long to reversal? that’s were the four years come in, but it is only a rough estimate.
Peter Pan says:
July 17, 2010 at 4:22 pm
The newest activity means later than June 22?
Since 2007. See response upthread.
Is that reversed sunspot contributed somehow?
No, that’s a drop in the bucket.
@Just The Facts says
‘What do you think about this hypothesis?’
Shouldn’t you actually make or state an actual hypothesis before you ask someone what they think about it?
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 17, 2010 at 11:09 am
Here is a few to look at, I know there is more, perhaps Leif has some on file.
———————————————————-
Those do not claim there were no reversals and show no data in support. One speculates that there were no reversal in one hemisphere and the last one explicitly says: “the Sun had retained the polarity reversal through the prolonged sunspot minimum period.”
So it looks like your references were based on wishful thinking.
There goes that other universe thing. Plus cherry picking a statement out of context is not a good look.
“The situation may have been extreme in the Maunder Minimum where the northern hemisphere most probably did not have polar reversals during several cycles, while the southern hemisphere may have had some”
One paper cited isotope evidence for this occurrence for other grand minimia also.
I am not going to do the usual pointless back and forth on this one. People can read the links and make up their own minds.
Geoff Sharp says:
July 17, 2010 at 6:50 pm
“The situation may have been extreme in the Maunder Minimum”
As I said: speculation only. And as one of them said: “the Sun had retained the polarity reversal through the prolonged sunspot minimum period.”
Peter Pan says:
July 17, 2010 at 3:48 pm
That graph has nothing to do with L&P. See
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/02/livingston-and-penn-paper-sunspots-may-vanish-by-2015/
Geoff Sharp says:
July 17, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Plus cherry picking a statement out of context is not a good look.
It is not cherry picked out of context, it is their conclusion:
“3. Conclusions
In both of the carbon-14 records for the Maunder and the Spoerer minima, twenty-two year structure is detected. It suggests that the Sun had retained the polarity reversal through the prolonged sunspot minimum period. By analyzing the detailed variation of the twenty-two year cycle, it may be possible to determine the polarity of the Sun in the past when the observational records are no longer available.”
But, as you say, the readers can see that for themselves, without your distortions.
Ric Werme says:
July 17, 2010 at 7:11 pm
Peter Pan says:
July 17, 2010 at 3:48 pm
rbateman says:
July 17, 2010 at 11:11 am
Leif:
Do you have a latest L&P update?
You can trust this one:
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Polar.gif
That graph has nothing to do with L&P. See
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/02/livingston-and-penn-paper-sunspots-may-vanish-by-2015/
========================================================
Since there were so few sunspots but spec, I guess L&P had a difficult time to do their work, it is a complete new situation that there are no enough samples to satisfy accuracy statistically.
Counting on SSN nowadays,on the other side, become so controversial because the authentic readings and definitions are debatable and sometimes too artificial.
But the sunspots indeed is a magnetic phenomena of the sun activity. Its cycle length, polarity and intensity are correlated and proportional to the observed individual sunspot magnetic field strength, and more general, to the total solar polar field strength.
As L&P method goes on to 2015 that can not measure anything since sunspots magnetic intensity drops below 1500 Gauss, then what? Do nothing.
But the solar polar field strength readings at that time still can tell us things:
Since we can tell the solar polar field strength curve crossing the X axis at cycle of 22 years, currently we may see way beyond 22 years with much low magnetic strength (as low as 0.5 Guess at peak instead of 2 Guess).
It indicates solar activity is getting low, and the cycle is getting longer, it may hint the minimum coming. L&P method can get same conclusion.
Leif said the current cross through the X axis maybe 4 years later, that is telling us the cycle would be 30 years long (assume the shape of the curve should be symmetrical) instead of average 22 years, this is a significant elongation of sunspots cycle. Such long cycle definitly will affect climate.
Robinson says:
July 16, 2010 at 3:17 pm
I truly don’t understand your apparent determination to tear down scientific literacy in the U.S.
Interesting. I was just thinking whilst reading the replies that some of them are somewhat over the top.
We all know that models are conceptual representations of real entities, with the emphasis on conceptual. Why would you vilify scientists trying to establish what those concepts actually are?
______________________________________________________________
If scientist are doing what they are supposed to be doing; developing “conceptual representations” then testing them against reality and chucking the ideas that do not work, I doubt anyone really has a problem. I for one honor Hathaway because he owns up to the fact his predictions were wrong and hopefully is learns something new.
Hathaway’s problem is NASA also has those who are not decent scientists but are instead political advocates. This has tarnished NASA’s reputation and Hathaway gets a bit of collateral damage as a result.
1DandyTroll says: July 17, 2010 at 6:25 pm
“Shouldn’t you actually make or state an actual hypothesis before you ask someone what they think about it?”
No, we are in the exploratory stages of this process, Leif is a great filter, so when I come across someone else’s hypothesis, i.e. “a tentative assumption made in order to draw out and test its logical or empirical consequence”:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypothesis
which I can’t readily refute, the most expedient path forward is to toss it to Leif and let him take care of it. The reason that it is important that Leif be careful with his words, is that on many matters, I, and many others, consider his opinion to be fact.
Peter Pan says:
July 17, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Leif said the current cross through the X axis maybe 4 years later, that is telling us the cycle would be 30 years long (assume the shape of the curve should be symmetrical) instead of average 22 years
From 1990 to 2014 is 24 years, not 30…
Just The Facts says:
July 17, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Leif be careful with his words, is that on many matters, I, and many others, consider his opinion to be fact.
Fact, as far as I know [there is always that implicit qualification].
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 17, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Geoff Sharp says:
July 17, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Plus cherry picking a statement out of context is not a good look.
It is not cherry picked out of context, it is their conclusion:
“3. Conclusions
In both of the carbon-14 records for the Maunder and the Spoerer minima, twenty-two year structure is detected. It suggests that the Sun had retained the polarity reversal through the prolonged sunspot minimum period. By analyzing the detailed variation of the twenty-two year cycle, it may be possible to determine the polarity of the Sun in the past when the observational records are no longer available.”
But, as you say, the readers can see that for themselves, without your distortions.
Some of the links I presented (at 4am) I may have misinterpreted their use of the term “22 year periodicity” The first link is probably the only one of relevance. There are conflicting proxy reports on this issue.
These links deal directly with non reversing poles:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1999ESASP.448..117M
http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jaa/21/193-196.pdf
It’s early days but the southern hemisphere is showing a reluctance for pole reversal according to the WSO. Are you ruling out the possibility of one or both failing to reverse polarity during SC24 and if there is a failure, how will this affect your views on the Babcock-Leighton theory?
Geoff Sharp says:
July 17, 2010 at 10:39 pm
It’s early days but the southern hemisphere is showing a reluctance for pole reversal according to the WSO. Are you ruling out the possibility of one or both failing to reverse polarity during SC24 and if there is a failure, how will this affect your views on the Babcock-Leighton theory?
The polar reversal is a direct consequence of B-L. In fact was what got Babcock onto the idea in the first place. What happens is that the follower spot polarity moves to the poles and first ‘eats’ the existing field there, then adds its own reversed flux. If there are not enough spots [more precisely: no active regions] in a given hemisphere there will be no polar field reversal in that hemisphere, but there could be one in the other hemisphere, provided there are enough active regions. Then the sun could end up with the poles having the same polarity [this, BTW, has happened for a few years at some of the recent maxima]. If the poles do not reverse, their flux slowly decays and the cycle basically dies [probably not to be resumed]. This would also mean that solar cycle modulation of cosmic rays would cease. Since we know, that the modulation was as vigorous during Grand Minima as now, the cycle didn’t die and the poles must have reversed. That leaves the question why there were no spots to be seen. The simplest explanation for this would be L&P. Granted that we still need an explanation for L&P, I consider that a separate problem, possibly linked to changes in temperature profile. This is still to be worked out.
Since most of the activity during SC24 has been in the north, it is no wonder that the south polar fields have not decreased as much as the the north [if at all]. The essential point is that activity and polar fields are linked in the B-L paradigm, which is why we think we can use the polar fields as a predictor of activity.
SC24 will be an important test of all this.
Leif Svalgaard says: July 17, 2010 at 10:37 pm Just The Facts says:
“Fact, as far as I know [there is always that implicit qualification].”
I like the qualification, had Hathaway qualified his predictions, particularly by pointing out his assumptions, discussing countervailing opinions and highlighting the range of credible predictions, he would not find himself in his current unenviable position. Recanting predictions that were stated with confidence and certainty is not good for one’s credibility.
Just The Facts says:
July 17, 2010 at 11:56 pm
had Hathaway qualified his predictions, particularly by pointing out his assumptions, discussing countervailing opinions and highlighting the range of credible predictions, he would not find himself in his current unenviable position. Recanting predictions that were stated with confidence and certainty is not good for one’s credibility.
I’ll have to disagree. Hathaway had made everything clear. The method was well-known. Where he went wrong was in identifying which peak would be the predictor. This was clear to all of us [for some a bit belated]. His credibility has not suffered [IMHO]. Now, NASA went beyond Hathaway and hyped the high as a breakthrough, and deservedly suffered loss of credibility.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 17, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Geoff Sharp says:
July 17, 2010 at 10:39 pm
It’s early days but the southern hemisphere is showing a reluctance for pole reversal according to the WSO. Are you ruling out the possibility of one or both failing to reverse polarity during SC24 and if there is a failure, how will this affect your views on the Babcock-Leighton theory?
—————————————————–
The polar reversal is a direct consequence of B-L. In fact was what got Babcock onto the idea in the first place. What happens is that the follower spot polarity moves to the poles and first ‘eats’ the existing field there, then adds its own reversed flux. If there are not enough spots [more precisely: no active regions] in a given hemisphere there will be no polar field reversal in that hemisphere, but there could be one in the other hemisphere, provided there are enough active regions. Then the sun could end up with the poles having the same polarity [this, BTW, has happened for a few years at some of the recent maxima].
So it can happen..but there are consequences to the theory.
If the poles do not reverse, their flux slowly decays and the cycle basically dies [probably not to be resumed]. This would also mean that solar cycle modulation of cosmic rays would cease.
That is an assumption based on the unproven theory? One hemisphere is still functioning perhaps. Isotope records for grand minima are low, as would be expected.
Since we know, that the modulation was as vigorous during Grand Minima as now, the cycle didn’t die and the poles must have reversed.
What is important, modulation or intensity? I am not convinced by your references in this area.
That leaves the question why there were no spots to be seen. The simplest explanation for this would be L&P. Granted that we still need an explanation for L&P, I consider that a separate problem, possibly linked to changes in temperature profile. This is still to be worked out.
It may be too simple, and without any basis and also predicated on weak data. I am still surprised you are backing this one.
Since most of the activity during SC24 has been in the north, it is no wonder that the south polar fields have not decreased as much as the the north [if at all]. The essential point is that activity and polar fields are linked in the B-L paradigm, which is why we think we can use the polar fields as a predictor of activity.
SC24 will be an important test of all this.
Or could the cart be following the horse ?…. all will be revealed soon, but I noticed you did not rule out the possible pole reversal violation.
As L&P method goes on to 2015 that can not measure anything since sunspots magnetic intensity drops below 1500 Gauss, then what? Do nothing.
Sunspots are NOT the only visible phenomenon on the Sun.
I refer you to this image: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html
What else do you see?
Geoff Sharp says:
July 18, 2010 at 1:15 am
So it can happen..but there are consequences to the theory.
What consequences?
“This would also mean that solar cycle modulation of cosmic rays would cease.”
That is an assumption based on the unproven theory? One hemisphere is still functioning perhaps. Isotope records for grand minima are low, as would be expected.
The solar cycle modulation is well-understood.
What is important, modulation or intensity? I am not convinced by your references in this area.
Modulation is important. Intensity is contaminated by climate effects influencing the deposition.
It may be too simple, and without any basis and also predicated on weak data. I am still surprised you are backing this one.
L&P is backed by the changing F10.7-SSN relationship. And a simple explanation is usually preferred.
Or could the cart be following the horse ?…. all will be revealed soon, but I noticed you did not rule out the possible pole reversal violation.
I rule it out because it is not observed. I explored the consequences of no reversals and showed that they would lead to effects that we do not see.
rbateman says:
July 18, 2010 at 7:31 am
As L&P method goes on to 2015 that can not measure anything since sunspots magnetic intensity drops below 1500 Gauss, then what? Do nothing.
Sunspots are NOT the only visible phenomenon on the Sun.
I refer you to this image: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html
What else do you see?
==================================================
I totally agree that the sunspots are not the only parameter to study the activity of the sun.
But what we need is digitized quantitative description of this activity.
Leif Svalgaard says: July 18, 2010 at 12:07 am
“I’ll have to disagree. Hathaway had made everything clear. The method was well-known. Where he went wrong was in identifying which peak would be the predictor. This was clear to all of us [for some a bit belated]. His credibility has not suffered [IMHO]. Now, NASA went beyond Hathaway and hyped the high as a breakthrough, and deservedly suffered loss of credibility.”
I think that this may be the perception gap between what someone in the field sees versus what the rest of us saw. For example, in the July 11, 2008 NASA press release titled “What’s Wrong with the Sun?”;
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/11jul_solarcycleupdate/
the press release begins with;
“Stop the presses! The sun is behaving normally.
So says NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. “There have been some reports lately that Solar Minimum is lasting longer than it should. That’s not true. The ongoing lull in sunspot number is well within historic norms for the solar cycle.” ”
Now one could argue that it was NASA press release author, Dr. Tony Phillips, who is responsible for writing the misleading and unscientific statement, “Stop the presses! The sun is behaving normally.” but David Hathway offered the supporting quote and allowed for this misleading statement to be attributed to him.
In terms of credibility, in his NPR interview;
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128268488
David states that;”The ham radio operators like a big cycle. In fact, they’re really upset with me that – well, because I went out on a limb back in 2006 using a solar cycle prediction technique that relied on us being near sunspot cycle minimum.” And I thought, well, the last few cycles were 10-year cycles. Chances are the next one will be a 10-year cycle. So I went out on a limb and made a prediction in 2006 that I have long since regretted, but it was a prediction there was going to be a big cycle coming up. I’ve now, at every opportunity, recant that prediction, but the ham radio operators, they’re saying you promised us.”
In addition, David notes that, “I actually had a guy who got upset when I didn’t put out my sunspot number stuff on a daily basis, because he was using it to predict the stock market. And he kept coming to me for couple years, and I haven’t heard from him in a long time. So I don’t think it worked.”… “But like I said, he stopped calling me, so I’m assuming that he realized this didn’t work. I lost a bunch of money on this guy.”
The second quote is more opaque, but both quotes seem to be indicative of a loss of credibility. In the July 11, 2008 press release, as well as many of the others I highlighted above;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/16/noaa-behind-the-curve/#comment-432000
David Hathaway failed to qualify his predictions, particularly by pointing out his assumptions, discussing countervailing opinions and highlighting the range of credible predictions. He might have done this with his peers, but he didn’t do so in his primary communication conduit to the rest of us, i.e. NASA press releases.
Peter Pan says:
July 18, 2010 at 8:02 am
….
> I totally agree that the sunspots are not the only parameter to study the activity of the sun.
Note that we can also visualize the magnetic fields on the sun, and those will remain after sun spots fade from view. See http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_mag/1024/latest.html
> But what we need is digitized quantitative description of this activity.
That’s one reason Leif has been encouraging using the 10.7 cm flux data instead of (well, in addition to) counting spots. We don’t have centuries worth of data, of course, but at least we have some data.
Recently there was a link (perhaps on this blog, perhaps not) that explained in detail the addition and deletion of thermometers in Bolivia and the effect of those changes. Would someone be so kind as to post a copy of that link
could you get any more petty?
REPLY: could you get any more drive by cowardly?
Ric Werme says:
July 18, 2010 at 1:35 pm
> But what we need is digitized quantitative description of this activity.
That’s one reason Leif has been encouraging using the 10.7 cm flux data instead of (well, in addition to) counting spots. We don’t have centuries worth of data, of course, but at least we have some data.
============================================================
I agree that 10.7 cm flux is a good index for the sun activity, but I favor the the solar polar field strength, because the 10.7cm flux is a scalar number and the solar polar field strength is a vector number.
Sunspots’ number, size and latitude are important factors for us to understand sun activity, 10.7cm flux may not represent those characters very well; the solar polar field strength, on the other side, can tell us about the strength and the direction (i.e. it shows us the polarity reverse) of the sun activity.
John Murphy says:
July 18, 2010 at 4:50 pm
It was here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/south-america-hockey-in-the-jungle/
About your excellent graph, Robert, I feel there’s a whole lot more that needs to be looked at to get a true grasp of what’s going on.
If it were possible to enter in the numbers of eruptions and total VEI volume for the years then we might have a better measure, because several VEI 3 above normal add up changing the picture. There are a lot of eruptions with question marks behind them, unsure of the volume.
How anybody can make any sort of climate change claims without an accurate and reliable monitoring of volcano eruption particulate volumes and gasses is simply amazing to me. The observation of volcanoes is very poor exactly where some of the most active ones are.
Maybe space and science .net will produce something solid, but I doubt it would be undisputed.
http://www.spaceandscience.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ssrcresearchreport1-2010.doc
This right here is about the only thing on the planet that I fear. Basically you plow right into it without knowing for sure you plowed right into it for some years to come.
Bipolar correlation of volcanism with millennial climate change — PNAS
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/17/6341.full
It reminds me of dinosaurs running and managing to escape the asteroid blast only to suffer a horrible death from the Deccan Traps. Watch the skies and the Sun and perish in some god awful eruptions that sneak up on you.
This also has me in a puzzle about the Smithsonian.
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/find_eruptions.cfm
Redoubt – United States 2009 Mar 15 2009 – Jul 1 ± 30 days VEI-3
VEI-3 ??? It was a VEI-4 until just very recently. I’ve not been able to find a good answer to this yet. I’ve asked Erik Klemetti to ask Sally Kuhn Sennert of the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program about it.
The son of a gun initially blew to 12 1/2 miles and then followed with something like 15 more and a dozen of these eruptions went 11 miles plus altitude. They aren’t even sure just how long it erupted. One person said its because historically its always been a VEI-3 !!?
From what I’ve seen of other specific volcano eruptions that occur over and over throughout history, some years ‘ARE’ larger than others.
I wonder, have the Libertards pressured someone to change it? Easy to do, I’d imagine, its such a sloppy system.
Stephan says:
Leif is a wonder because I cannot come to grips with the fact he does not seem to think the Sun has any effect on Climate.
I agree. His understanding of the sun and space weather is excellent. That someone can have delved such cutting deep insight and knowledge on something, and yet hasn’t taken a stance on a problem of simplest correlation – the SSN chart and the Earth climate record, despite the big row over it, and despite his interest in it, is beyound any idealogical scientific rationale.
There has to be another reason.
I think it’s a strategic abstain, which protects his income. Leif must have seen many aquaintances in the biz take a loud stance against AGW, and he’s seen them lose their jobs.
I haven’t seen leif rebut any of the simple correlations between solar magnetic activity and climate – the 70s cooling period vs weak solar cycle 20, the little ice age and the corrisponding low SSN at the time, the 20th century warming and the correlating higher SSN. Then there’s the berylium 10 record proxy for vs pre-little ice age climate, and many other proxys. With all, – no comment from leif.
Added to that, you’ve got the celebs on this site like Anthony abstaining from asking Leif to do a presentation ( even just a concise post ) on why he thinks the climate history vs SSN ( and proxys ) correlation isn’t sufficient as evidence for a causal link.
Leif accepting 0.1C due to TSI variation is a complete abstain from the real issue. But that’s all his boss will let him get away with!
meemoe_uk says:
July 19, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Added to that, you’ve got the celebs on this site like Anthony abstaining from asking Leif to do a presentation ( even just a concise post ) on why he thinks the climate history vs SSN ( and proxys ) correlation isn’t sufficient as evidence for a causal link.
I have done that several times. Most recently here: http://www.leif.org/research/Does%20The%20Sun%20Vary%20Enough.pdf
Leif accepting 0.1C due to TSI variation is a complete abstain from the real issue. But that’s all his boss will let him get away with!
I don’t have a boss!
It looks like the reversed polarity spot has reappeared, only this time with a 3-layer sandwich of polarities.
White leads Black leads White (so far).
It wouldn’t surprise me.
rbateman says:
July 19, 2010 at 5:07 pm
It looks like the reversed polarity spot has reappeared, only this time with a 3-layer sandwich of polarities.
There are at least two groups, so no reversal. See: http://sdowww.lmsal.com/sdomedia/SunInTime/2010/07/20/f_HMImag_171.jpg
Also very near the limb there can be ‘pseudo’-reversals because we are seeing horizontal fields.
SDO is not doing a very good job of matching the cadence of Magnetogram to Continuum, but I do see 2 groups.
The Northern one looks Beta and normal for polarity.
The Southern (returning) looks sandwiched still, with a facular area out front where the main spot should be.
That one looks Alpha….so far.
My money is on it staying that way until it vaporizes.
rbateman says:
July 19, 2010 at 5:07 pm
It looks like the reversed polarity spot has reappeared, only this time with a 3-layer sandwich of polarities.
White leads Black leads White (so far).
It wouldn’t surprise me.
I think old 1084 is still coming Robert, the longitude of 1089 is 203, 1084 was 145.
Thanks Leif, had a read of your presentation.
– you make the case that TSI is not the cause of Earth climate change, fine.
– How did steinhilber recontruct TSI? I thought Be10 and C14 were products of cosmic rays, which are modulated by magnetism, not TSI.
“14C Age Differences Partly Due to Solar Activity” should be “Due to Solar Magnetic Activity “
You’ve superimposed the SSN chart with the C14 chart.
– The amount of attention to measures other than TSI is not satisfactory! Slide 12 says AA-index and method is wrong. But there is a correlation between AA and SSN. So you imply there would be an even better correlation if the AA method was corrected, so more attention to the AA index. But no, you ignore it for the rest of presentation?
– You say SSN records are probably wrong. You don’t mention that there is a corelation between SSN and climate. We are again left guessing whether you mean SSN-climate correlation is a fluke or if a corrected SSN would give an even better correlation.
Your presentation evidences what I was saying. You seem to be avoiding the point of interest – magnetic aspects due to the sun both corelate with Earth climate and ( unlike TSI variation) haven’t been shown to be incapable of causing substancial change in Earth climate. And it concentrated on something that is not of central interest in the current debate – TSI variation.
Talking to AGW kids on web forums, if ever solar variation as the cause of climate change is mentioned, they come out with the TSI +-0.1% not enough to cause climate change meme. It’s like they live in an alternate reality where magnets were never discovered, or if they do exist, any magnetic effects can disregarded and not properly investigated due to some eerie mysterious reason just outside the realms of rationalism, which never needs to be explicitely stated. Why is Leif signed up to this group?
meemoe_uk says:
July 20, 2010 at 2:39 am
– How did steinhilber recontruct TSI? I thought Be10 and C14 were products of cosmic rays, which are modulated by magnetism, not TSI.
All solar variations are related [e.g. TSI, SSN, Aa, cosmic rays, etc]and you can generally reconstruct one from another. Steinhilber uses 10Be as the basis for his reconstruction of TSI. The emphasis is on TSI rather than on magnetism, because there is a million times more energy in TSI than in the solar wind.
“14C Age Differences Partly Due to Solar Activity” should be “Due to Solar Magnetic Activity “
No, the differences are mostly due to changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. Only a tiny part is due to the Sun.
You don’t mention that there is a corelation between SSN and climate.
I show explicitly that there is no such correlation. See slide 20. SSN, TSI, Aa are all mutually correlated so are interchangeable.
And it concentrated on something that is not of central interest in the current debate – TSI variation.
It is concentrating on where the energy is. And the corrected data show even less correlation. The rise [green arrow] shown in slide 12 did not happen. Rather there was a cyclic variation, rising until mid-century and now falling back to levels around 1900. The climate has not shown any such cycle [is not now the same as in 1900].
Talking to AGW kids on web forums, if ever solar variation as the cause of climate change is mentioned
The AGW people need solar variation to account for climate change before CO2.
Leif,
I show explicitly that there is no such correlation. See slide 20. SSN, TSI, Aa are all mutually correlated so are interchangeable.
Well I don’t agree. I see a lull in sunspots in the LIA, another lul corrisponding to the 70s cooling period ( SC20 ), and around 5 years ago I heard the solar-climate theorists predicting another cooling period now, corrisponding to a new lul in sunspots. And that’s exactly whats happened, unusual sunspots lul, suddenly 2 unusally cold winters for me, and the news reports, such as those from this site, say cold winters all over the globe, also my summers aren’t as warm as they were 10 years ago. That’s evidence enough for me for now, but a 3rd consecutive cold winter would convince me even more.
Your argument ‘SSN is not causally linked to Earth-climate because SSN variation is corelated with TSI variation and TSI variation cannot explain climate via direct incident energy ‘, is no more valid than ‘ Man giving signal by waving hand every time just prior to building demolition cannot be causally linked to building demolition because not enough energy in man’s hand to demolish building ‘.
There’s other ways besides less incident solar energy to cool Earth’s climate.
Look for a different mechanism.
Like the cosmic ray cloud seeding theorys we are all interested in at the moment.
I assume you think SSN is low at the monent. I don’t know if you agree that the winters have gotten cooler the last couple of years. You agree LIA had weaker SSN than 20th century? You agree SC20 had less sunspots than adjacent SCs and coincided with 70s cooling period?
I don’t understand why you seem to be using your expertise only to rebut climate models. Why aren’t you concurrently guiding us on the most feasible ways in which the significant climate variation over last few hundred years could be controled by the sun etc?
meemoe_uk says:
July 20, 2010 at 9:00 am
“I show explicitly that there is no such correlation. See slide 20.”
Well I don’t agree.
There are standard statistical ways of settling this independently of someone’s eyeballing, and they show that there is no correlation. This does not mean that you cannot find the occasional wiggles that line up, but for the correlation to hold up, almost every wiggle must match, and most do not.
Like the cosmic ray cloud seeding theorys we are all interested in at the moment.
That theory has already been disproved: cosmic rays [because of solar magnetic field] are now what they were around 1900, and the climate is not [2010 being the hottest year on record, so far].
Leif,
> cosmic rays [because of solar magnetic field] are now what they were around 1900, and the climate is not [2010 being the hottest year on record, so far].
Aren’t you going to allow some time for the climate to adjust? 1900 followed on from a cool century. 2010 follows a warm century.
Also,
> [2010 being the hottest year on record, so far]
Where do you get that from? UAH?
Your page 2 is relavent. At the heart of the climate debate there’s a big ambiguity, does it matter where the heat is? Does a global 14km above the surface count? What use is that if the surface temp drops 5C? Or the oceans? If the oceans warm while the land cools, who is right?
I don’t know for you, but for me it the land temps, globally. This is the most useful measure for the world economy, but also the most useful in terms of the climate record context.
All the old climate records are around the land.
If the cold conditions of the LIA return to europe, and simular cooler weather returns to other land masses, but the UAH graph goes up 3 degrees, I consider that to be a win for the people predicting cooling.
And since the weather here has been cooling while UAH goes up, what I’m sayng is relavent today. Even if UAH is objectively correct.
meemoe_uk says:
July 20, 2010 at 11:14 am
Aren’t you going to allow some time for the climate to adjust? 1900 followed on from a cool century. 2010 follows a warm century.
Solar activity [and cosmic rays] in the 19th century was not much different from that of the 20th. See slides 13 & 14. How long do you think the climate needs to adjust? I have seen numbers like 7 years.
[2010 being the hottest year on record, so far]
Where do you get that from? UAH?
WUWT, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/13/calculating-global-temperature/ that shows the decade 2000-2009 as the warmest ever, and 2010 so far seems to be warmer.
I consider that to be a win for the people predicting cooling.
How cool is it in New York?
Climate is not about a couple of winters, or some specific location.
Leif Svalgaard
How cool is it in New York?
———-
It’s called summer. It’s 92 today and, by the way, that’s 14 degrees lower than the Central Park high of July 6, 1936. NYC also broke 100 degrees four times in 1966: June 27: 101, July 2: 100, July 3: 103 and July 13: 101.
Sean Peake says:
July 20, 2010 at 12:19 pm
“How cool is it in New York?”
It’s called summer.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-19/new-york-city-is-on-track-to-post-hottest-july-on-record-as-heat-continues.html
Leif Svalgaard:
Sean Peake says:
July 20, 2010 at 12:19 pm
“How cool is it in New York?”
It’s called summer.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-19/new-york-city-is-on-track-to-post-hottest-july-on-record-as-heat-continues.html
==========
From Brian K Sullivan, the journalist who wrote that article, responding to my comment (“I recommend you check the weather records and NASA’s sat. report before relying on NOAA’s word”), he wrote: “The highest recorded temperature in Central Park was 106 on July 9, 1936. If you have other information please send a link.”
I replied: ” It’s interesting that you mention the record in 1936. Seems that most of the records for high temps occurred then.” His response:
“Meteorologists and climatologists tell me that the 1930s was a special decade that a lot of people are still trying to figure out. Weather-wise a lot of unusual things happened then. As for the link you sent me, I am not sure how accurate it is or where it measures the top NYC temperature from — it could be one of the airports, etc. According to the NAtional Weather Service temperatures in NYC broke 100 four times in 1966. June 27: 101, July 2: 100, July 3: 103 and July 13: 101. The temperature on the graph in that link you sent me is the highs and lows for each day. In my story from yesterday, I used the average temperature for the day/month and not the highs and lows, which is why it is a little lower.. “
Sean Peake says:
July 20, 2010 at 12:47 pm
“Meteorologists and climatologists tell me that the 1930s was a special decade that a lot of people are still trying to figure out
And?
Solar activity was not particularly high in the 1930s.
Leif Svalgaard :
And?
Solar activity was not particularly high in the 1930s.
======
Exactly. And… ?
Salmon Fishing records provide quite a bit of information related to oceanic conditions in the 30’s. In fact there are a lot of records that can serve as proxies for oceanic conditions. There are also maritime direct observations of SST’s. For an informative walk through the temperatures at the turn of the last century both 30 years before and 30 years after, will educate the researcher on the strong connections between weird weather (cold or hot) and oceanic conditions. The correlation is apparent. The Sun simply provided its steady beam. The Earth made hay with it.
oops. Bad grammar. Hung sentence. Scratch “For” and instead start the sentence with “An informative walk through the temperatures at the turn of the last century both 30…”
Sean Peake says:
July 20, 2010 at 1:20 pm
“Solar activity was not particularly high in the 1930s.”
Exactly. And… ?
I thought the issue was that high solar activity means hot climate, but I could be mistaken [although I’m being lectured on this constantly 🙂 ]. But with a [possible variable, as needed] delay between solar activity and climate, anything is possible.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 20, 2010 at 1:37 pm
I thought the issue was that high solar activity means hot climate
The issue is that climactic records sort nicely with solar cycle length.
The Weather and Climate are being monkeyed with, but enough records escaped the clutches of the rewriters.
Hottest ever is a political sword of Damocoles being used for mal-purposes.
What we need is the best estimate of the coming Solar Cycle length.
Leif,
Where do you get that from? UAH?
WUWT, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/13/calculating-global-temperature/ that shows the decade 2000-2009 as the warmest ever, and 2010 so far seems to be warmer.
I wonder if that’s the most contradicting part of WUWT or it’s me missing something. This site is always exposing the bias in networks such as GISS, and yet, what does WUWT condone and use as a temperture measure? GISS!?
In fact, in your WUWT link, GISTEMP gives the lowest measure of temp used.
Anthony thinks there’s only just enough AC vents blasting hot air at the sensors to warrent using them?
Crazy.
rbateman says:
July 20, 2010 at 4:16 pm
The issue is that climactic records sort nicely with solar cycle length.
No, Robert, as has been shown many times on this blog. E.g. here http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%20Length%20Temperature%20Correlation.pdf
meemoe_uk says:
July 20, 2010 at 4:41 pm
or it’s me missing something.
Satellite measurements also show warming:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/02/june-2010-temperature-cooling-a-bit-as-el-nino-fades/
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 20, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Most definitely not like that, in one great big bowl of soup.
Climate sorts regional, not global, according to Solar Cycle Length.
As for how many differect locales make up a distinct region, that is the subject of how many datasets exist of a sufficient length to make the sort.
I know the global bowl didn’t give the answer that was hoped for.
Leif,
Satellite measurements also show warming:
That’s not what I meant when I said I might be missing something. I meant I don’t know how Anthony can find fatal flaws in an instrument but then use it anyway. You know about flaws in instruments, you mentioned SOHO on page 9. But not bothered about AC vents?
As for satellite measures, this is where it conspiracy theory comes in handy. If we know we are dealing with people with a power fastidious enough to get so many sensors located next to air vents, wide enough to do this in many parts of the world, repressing enough to stop the scientists who work with the sensors to meaningfully protest, is able to flood the mass media with AGW, can safeguard it’s people from expose ( climate gate ), can get AGW into the national education curiculums, and has demostrated they have many other fradualent methods at hand, then it’s a not much of a step to suspect they can bump up the satellite readings at will.
It’s possible that most of the world warms while europe cools in a LIA climate system. Aside from that, I’m suspicious of satelitte readings until they conform with what I’m experiencing.
meemoe_uk says:
July 21, 2010 at 4:02 am
I don’t know how Anthony can find fatal flaws in an instrument but then use it anyway.
That is for Anthony to explain.