I missed this earlier this week from NASA, I got a bit distracted with other things.
Sixty two – that’s the new number from Hathaway on April 4th, have a look:
They write at NASA MSFC
Current prediction for the next sunspot cycle maximum gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 62 in July of 2013. We are currently over two years into Cycle 24. The predicted size would make this the smallest sunspot cycle in nearly 200 years.
It’s quite a climbdown for Dr. Hathaway from his earlier predictions. Let’s give him credit for not trying to “hide the decline”.
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Anthony,
Thanks for posting this. I’ve been checking it daily and the other ‘projections’ just
do not want to have anything to do with the data. Cheers.
NASA says “Predicting the behavior of a sunspot cycle is fairly reliable once the cycle is well underway (about 3 years after the minimum in sunspot number occurs ”
Predicting the sunspot cycle after it is completely over is even more reliable.
Perhaps in another 3 years NASA will be looking back one year and finally have a final “prediction”.
Interesting and useful and bears out what a lot of us have been saying.
However do bear in mind for ongoing cooling it is the odd cycles which count decisively. Even ones, eg SC24, which we are now in normally mean a cooler earth anyway. In odd ones Earth temp is best correlated with solar activity so a weak SC25 will be the ‘cooling clincher’. For such projections see slide 17 in the pdf in my submission to the UK Select committee enquiry into the extremely cold & snowy December 2010 crisis – short link- http://bit.ly/hEmBqG
Thanks, Piers Corbyn
I know Hathaway is trying to put on a good face and honor the observational data, but this succession of “adjusted forecasts” just makes me laugh.
“Predicting yesterday’s weather – – – tomorrow”
What is the opposite of “prescient”?
I think the previous number was too high, and I think this number is too low. But at least they have “bracketed” what I think it is likely to turn out to be.
I wonder on what basis Dr. Hathaway is making his predictions? Anyone know his methodology and why his predictions would be any better than a wild guess?
Note that Hathaway’s error band is so broad that any value between 30 and 90 would fit. He is almost certain to be correct on that.
pwl says:
April 9, 2011 at 6:41 pm
I wonder on what basis Dr. Hathaway is making his predictions? Anyone know his methodology and why his predictions would be any better than a wild guess?
Described here: http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/open?pubNo=lrsp-2010-1&page=articlesu14.html in section 7.
“It’s quite a climbdown for Dr. Hathaway from his earlier predictions. Let’s give him credit for not trying to ‘hide the decline’.”
Not exactly. He was just wrong, that’s all. It’s okay for scientists to be wrong. Really.
Jim Cole says: “…What is the opposite of ‘prescient’?”
Not postscient, that’s for sure.
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 9, 2011 at 6:59 pm
Note that Hathaway’s error band is so broad that any value between 30 and 90 would fit. He is almost certain to be correct on that.
He’s definately got the low end sandbagged:
Take the previous low swing and the latest high swing, carry on until 01/2017 and you have a smoothed value of 30 for the next 5.7 years.
Jim Cole says: “…What is the opposite of ‘prescient’?”
A tad late-scient
Piers_Corbyn says:
April 9, 2011 at 5:30 pm
Has the UK Select committee responded to your submission yet?
I’ll take a Hathaway prediction over a Hansen prediction any day of the week.
Piers_Corbyn says:
April 9, 2011 at 5:30 pm
For such projections see slide 17 in the pdf in my submission to the UK Select committee enquiry into the extremely cold & snowy December 2010 crisis
simce you don’t label things very weel, ir is hard to figure out which one you are referring to. My guess would be this plot: http://www.leif.org/research/Piers2011.png
If so, you are somewhat economical with the truth. The blue curve is not what you pretend it is: the Wolf number from 1821 [even though you also label that point as 1892]. Poor style.
According to spaceweather.com, the current sunspot number (not smoothed) for April 8 is 84. But they’re mostly itsy-bitsy sunspots.
I still believe Hathaway is a smart and competent guy who labors under the direction, further up the line, of some world-class knuckleheads. I distinctly remember him being quoted as quite alarmed that “the great solar conveyor belt”, as he described it, had essentially ground to a halt at the beginning of the currently underway cycle. A month later he was carrying his bosses’ water with assurances that “everything on the sun is normal; nothing out of the ordinary going on here”.
littlepeaks says:
April 9, 2011 at 9:14 pm
According to spaceweather.com, the current sunspot number (not smoothed) for April 8 is 84. But they’re mostly itsy-bitsy sunspots.
Unfortunately there are several sunspot series out there. The once on spaceweather.com is the NOAA number. You have to multiply that by about 0.65 to get the International [official] Sunspot Number, so 84*0.65=55 would be the official SSN, which is what Hathaway is predicting.
Claude Harvey says:
April 9, 2011 at 9:20 pm
I still believe Hathaway is a smart and competent guy who labors under the direction, further up the line, of some world-class knuckleheads.
I know him well, he is smart and competent. But I don’t think his prediction is dictated from above. His prediction is based in a published and well-known formula that takes the actual data so far as input, and cannot be monkeyed with.
Re:Leif Svalgaard says:
April 9, 2011 at 9:42 pm
“His prediction is based in a published and well-known formula that takes the actual data so far as input, and cannot be monkeyed with.”
I have no reason to doubt your assessment concerning “the formula”. I continue to find the 180 degree turn of Hathaway’s public pronouncements early in the current solar cycle very odd. In a short period of time, he went from publicly declaring that something very much out of the ordinary was taking place on the sun to declaring the cycle was perfectly ordinary. At the time, I guessed that someone was leaning on the man. As it has turned out, the current cycle has been anything but business as usual and, it appears to me, has repeatedly defied predictions of the formula.
In any event, I’m pleased to hear knowledgeable confirmation of my “smart and competent” guesstimate.
To me 55 is quite a lot different from 62…
Piers_Corbyn says:
April 9, 2011 at 5:30 pm
Interesting and useful and bears out what a lot of us have been saying…..
However do bear in mind for ongoing cooling it is the odd cycles which count decisively. Even ones, eg SC24, which we are now in normally mean a cooler earth anyway. In odd ones Earth temp is best correlated with solar activity so a weak SC25 will be the ‘cooling clincher’.
Just remember no matter how vocal the static, observational evidence always trumps theory!
Query re slide 17 vertical axis, I realise the Wolf curves are qualitative in nature, but do you have any feel for the magnitude of tropospheric temperature reduction we may be in for?
At least with predictions for solar cycles we don’t have to wait 20, 50, or 100 years to find out the scientists and their computer models are wrong. The irony of course isn’t that David Hathaway was wrong, but rather that he was completely and utterly wrong – in 2006 the prediction was that SS24 would be the most intense of the last 400 years and now it’s one of the least intense in the last 200 years.
Time to develop some better computer models!
The grand old duke of Huntsville, Alabama
He marched them up to the top of the hill (the highest ever),
And he marched them down again (the lowest in 200 years).
And when they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only halfway up
They were neither up nor down.
but up in the mountains of Montenegro, the rebel isn’t budging
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC7.htm
Dr. Hathaway’s earlier prediction was contradicted by observations, so he changed his prediction. This is “science”. If he had applied “Mike’s ‘Nature’ [clever technique]” to hide the divergence between his prediction and observed data, this would not have been “science”. Thanks for the illustration of the difference, Dr. Hathaway!
Best,
Frank
Hathaway’s uncertainty margin for the predicted maximum is 26.
This far in the solar cycle, there exist other statistical methods with somewhat smaller uncertainty margins. See http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Engzonnecyclus.html#Bendel
The v20-method predicts a maximum of 78+/-20.
One should also take into consideration the rather large uncertainty in the timing of the predicted maximum (using Waldmeier’s rule, at least 16 monts). See my 05 March 11-comments on my main page.