Guest post by David Archibald
George Orwell said,” He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” Some amongst us have used that as an instruction manual and have attempted to create confusion about the sunspot number record. We can sidestep all that by using the F10.7 flux which can’t be fiddled with and adjusted. The F10.7 instrument record goes back to 1948:
It has been previously derived that the break-over between sea level rising and falling is a sunspot number of 40: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/03/quantifying-sea-level-fall/ A sunspot number of 40 equates to a F10.7 flux of 100.
WUWT recently alerted us to the existence of Usoskin’s 2010 paper on solar activity during the Holocene, available here: A History of Solar Activity over Millennia
Usoskin’s paper contains a lot of useful information that allows us to backtest the relationship between solar activity and sea level. For example, consider that if the average sunspot number over the Holocene had been above or below 40 over the Holocene, then sea level would have risen or fallen over the Holocene according to my theory. His Figure 18 provides the answer:
Figure 18 shows that the average sunspot number over the Holocene was very near 40. We can also tie sea level events over the Holocene to the detail in Usoskin’s Figure 17:
The figure above is the last six thousand years of sunspot number. It is evident the average sunspot number was higher prior to 0 BC and lower since. Sea level therefore should have been higher prior to 0 BC and lower since. That is confirmed by a 2007 paper on Holocene sea level variability: http://www-public.jcu.edu.au/public/groups/everyone/documents/journal_article/jcuprd_054910.pdf
From the abstract,”the Holocene sea-level highstand of +1.0 – 1.5 m was reached ~ 7000 cal yr BP and fell to its present position after 2000 yr BP.” Low sunspot periods from Usoskin’s Figure 17 are evident in the sea level record. Further from that abstract,”During this ~ 5000 year period of high sea level, growth hiatuses in oyster beds and tubeworms and lower elevations of microatolls are interpreted to represent short-lived oscillations in sea-level of up to 1 m during two intervals, beginning c.4800 and 3000 cal yr BP. The rates of sea-level rise and fall (1-2 mm yr) during these centennial scale oscillations are comparable with current rates of sea-level rise.” On Usoskin’s Figure 17, the 4,800 BP date corresponds to the low sunspot period at 2,800 BC and the 3,000 BP date corresponds to the low sunspot period at 800 BC.
The Usoskin paper contains another instructive figure, his Figure 13 of an example of a reconstruction of the heliospheric magnetic field at Earth orbit for the last 600 years:
The benign period of the second half of the 20th Century is associated with a far more active Sun. The cold periods are associated with a heliospheric magnetic field of under 2 nT. How does that compare with the modern instrument record? The following figure shows that the recent range of the magnetic field equates to that of the first half of the 20th Century:
Now back to the F10.7 flux and sea level. Based on the length of Solar Cycle 24 derived from Altrock’s green corona emissions diagram and Livingston and Penn’s prediction of peak Solar Cycle 25 sunspot amplitude of 7, we can predict the general form of the F10.7 flux to 2040:
I have come to the conclusion that a F10.7 Flux of 100 is the breakover between heating and cooling on Earth. It explains most things to me. My best guess on that at this point is January 2015, following which, two decades of cooling will ensue.
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The irony in this prediction is should it come true you know the doomsday cultists will claim it as they predicted it and it proves global warming… because after all nature can only cool the planet and man can only warm it.
Was this written by Anthony Watts or David Archibald?
Just askin’ 🙂
REPLY: Archibald, somehow the author line didn’t show, will fix. -A
Amazing how many things can be wrong with such a short post [illustrates the danger of but a little knowledge]. We have already discussed that splicing the [wrong] group sunspot number onto to cosmic ray record creates the illusion of ‘greatest solar activity’ in many thousands of year. BTW the F10.7 value for SSN = 40 is 90, not 100 [this is a minor point]. The extrapolation of Altrock’s data to a solar cycle length of 17 years is to flimsy to take seriously. And the plot of the heliospheric magnetic field is based on flawed reconstruction of cosmic ray intensity from the 1930s and 1940s. Slide 10 of http://www.leif.org/research/Heliospheric%20Magnetic%20Field%201835-2010.pdf shows a correct reconstruction [on which there is now general agreement] of HMF.
Interesting thoughts. This seems like a rehash of previous thoughts, with just a bit more information. This idea is what really tweaked my interest in looking more carefully at weather and climate and lead to my beginnings of skepticism of AGW. As others have said before, ‘it could get interesting’. Countries could be scrambling to deal with the repercussions. The need for more food and energy for heating would make the current effort to deal with the nice gentle warming look like child’s play.
Slide 10 showed the radial field [‘open flux’] of the HMF. The slide to compare with the one in the post is slide 4 of http://www.leif.org/research/Heliospheric%20Magnetic%20Field%201835-2010.pdf
An easily testable hypothesis. Too bad it will take 10 years to even start to have the data, but that’s the nature of the thing being tested.
“Livingston and Penn’s prediction of peak Solar Cycle 25 sunspot amplitude of 7, we can predict…”
Is there a zero missing off the end of this prediction?
REPLY: In this paper: http://www.probeinternational.org/Livingston-penn-2010.pdf,
Livingston and Penn provided the first hard estimate of Solar Cycle 25 amplitude based on a physical model. That estimate is 7, which would make it the smallest solar cycle for over 300 years.
-Anthony
I ask because there is one missing off the legend on the final figure in the article.
F10.7 flux
200-2040
I am a sceptic, but can someone explain to me how anyone knows how many sunspots there were 2000, or even 500 years ago?
Was someone counting them and making notes that are still available?
Todd says:
September 15, 2012 at 8:47 am
An easily testable hypothesis. Too bad it will take 10 years to even start to have the data, but that’s the nature of the thing being tested.
Since it fails for the past, the test has already been done.
The prediction may be right and it may not. We’ll see. Unfortunately, it seems we typically use some form of linear extrapolation. Linear approximations don’t handle chaotic systems very well, except perhaps for short periods of time. We see some regular cycles in solar behavior, however, the underlying drivers of the changes in these cycles may be chaotic, and hence, we don’t know which direction changes will go, or the magnitude of the cycles.
Based on the figures shown above, it seems reasonble that the Sun will continue to behave in more or less the same way for thousands of years into the future. However, we know Ice Age cycles exist, and inter-glacials are relatively short periods of high temperatures. When will the system tip back into the ice-growing phase? Do sunspots and the Sun’s magnetic field simply go into hibernation? Does that shutdown happen quickly?
I like predictions, but I won’t bet the farm on them. I think it makes more sense to know what the range of likely natural change may be and then be prepared to adapt to what comes. In our case, higher or lower temperatures, higher or lower sea levels.
Energy is always going to be the key to our future survival because the abundance of energy can make difficult tasks much easier to accomplish, and the lack of energy will make things we take for granted very difficult. We can use that gauge to predict the stability of the human population and our quality of life with more certainty that the sunspot number.
We can’t predict the political future, the impact propaganda may have, and the choices our fellow citizens will make. That’s why it is vital for political decisions to affect only subpopulations, since politics can be a very strong destabilizing force (when choices are made for the short-term benefit a few at the expense of the rest). If bad decisions are made on a world-wide scale, it would be disaster for mankind. Decisions made in the free market affect individuals and companies, and don’t threaten civilization. Never, ever allow one-world government until we have large populations living on other planets.
I fully support the assertion that sea level will fall if the sunspot cycle falls below 40. Based on observations both solar and earth based, however, it appears the solar magnetic cycle has been interrupted which is significantly different than a slow down in the solar magnetic cycle.
If I understand the fundamental mechanism (what is causing what is observed) and its effects on the planet we are going to experience a Heinrich event. There will (if my understanding of the fundamental mechanism is correct) be a significant increase in volcanic eruptions, a significant increase in earthquakes, a drop in sea level, a gradual though significant cooling of the planet, until the solar magnetic cycle restarts. The last Heinrich event was the Younger Dryas abrupt cooling event.
http://geochemistry.usask.ca/bill/courses/International%20Field%20Studies/Sea%20level.pdf
“… the pre-Last Glacial Maximum (pre-LGM) is characterized by substantial fluctuations in sea level of 10 to 15 m about every 6000 years. The timing of these rapid change events during oxygen isotope stage 3 (OIS-3) apparently coincides with Heinrich ice-rafting events recorded in North Atlantic sediments (61), which suggest that they reflect major ice discharges from continent-based or shelf grounded ice sheets (62). Of note is that sea level falls during this period occur in similarly short time intervals and the ice accumulation also appears to have been a rapid process (39).
Lightning Alaska’s Redoubt Volcano
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/photogalleries/volcano-lightning-pictures/
April 14, 2009–Lightning, which often accompanies large eruptions, illuminates a giant ash cloud from Alaska’s Redoubt Volcano, southwest of Anchorage, in a March 28 picture by an amateur astronomer. (See daytime pictures of the Redoubt Volcano eruption.)
“We don’t always get lightning [when a volcano erupts],” said Steve McNutt, research professor of volcano seismology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who was involved in the project. “And that’s one of the things we’re trying to figure out.”
Volcanic eruptions and solar activity” by Richard Stothers
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1989JGR….9417371S
The historical record of large volcanic eruptions from 1500 to 1980 is subjected to detailed time series analysis. In two weak but probably statistically significant periodicities of about 11 and 80 yr, the frequency of volcanic eruptions increases (decreases) slightly around the times of solar minimum (maximum). Time series analysis of the volcanogenic acidities in a deep ice core from Greenland reveals several very long periods ranging from about 80 to about 350 yr which are similar to the very slow solar cycles previously detected in auroral and C-14 records. Solar flares may cause changes in atmospheric circulation patterns that abruptly alter the earth’s spin. The resulting jolt probably triggers small earthquakes which affect volcanism. (My comment. This mechanism guess is not correct.)
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/17/6341.full#otherarticles
Analyzing data from our optical dust logger, we find that volcanic ash layers from the Siple Dome (Antarctica) borehole are simultaneous (with >99% rejection of the null hypothesis) with the onset of millennium-timescale cooling recorded at Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2; Greenland). These data are the best evidence yet for a causal connection between volcanism and millennial climate change and lead to possibilities of a direct causal relationship. Evidence has been accumulating for decades that volcanic eruptions can perturb climate and possibly affect it on long timescales and that volcanism may respond to climate change. If rapid climate change can induce volcanism, this result could be further evidence of a southern-lead North–South climate asynchrony. Alternatively, a volcanic-forcing viewpoint is of particular interest because of the high correlation and relative timing of the events, and it may involve a scenario in which volcanic ash and sulfate abruptly increase the soluble iron in large surface areas of the nutrient-limited Southern Ocean, stimulate growth of phytoplankton, which enhance volcanic effects on planetary albedo and the global carbon cycle, and trigger northern millennial cooling. Large global temperature swings could be limited by feedback within the volcano–climate system. (William, the authors of this paper are confusing the dog with the tail.)
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 15, 2012 at 8:34 am
Slide
104 of http://www.leif.org/research/Heliospheric%20Magnetic%20Field%201835-2010.pdf shows a correct reconstruction [on which there is now general agreement] of HMF.Nice consensus you’ve got coming together there Leif.
Funny how they never show up to speak for themselves.
Maybe because we’d see the bruises. 🙂
“Livingston and Penn provided the first hard estimate of Solar Cycle 25 amplitude based on a physical model. That estimate is 7, which would make it the smallest solar cycle for over 300 years.”
Thanks Anthony. Looking at the figure, I wonder if the typo is L&P’s. It looks more like 17 than 7.
Hoser says:
September 15, 2012 at 8:59 am
However, we know Ice Age cycles exist, and inter-glacials are relatively short periods of high temperatures. When will the system tip back into the ice-growing phase? Do sunspots and the Sun’s magnetic field simply go into hibernation? Does that shutdown happen quickly?
Glaciations are due to changing orbital elements [and axial tilt] of the Earth [cause by gravitational perturbations mainly by Jupiter] and have nothing to do with the Sun and its activity.
Or maybe the y axis ‘number’ (dimensionless?) is non-linear as it relates to SSN?
Don’t you think that the theory of Livingston & Penn should be verified with the data from the past ? Because 7 SSN is very very low.
To Davis Archibald: David, we are about to issue a new paper: “Five forcing
mechanisms govern 10,000 years of climate change”. These forcings are all
macro-forcings, whereas the Sun’s output variation is only a micro-forcing…..
We have a pre-announcement of the paper available with details on the subject,
I would send it knowing to where….
JS
William says:
September 15, 2012 at 9:00 am
I fully support the assertion that sea level will fall if the sunspot cycle falls below 40. Based on observations both solar and earth based, however, it appears the solar magnetic cycle has been interrupted which is significantly different than a slow down in the solar magnetic cycle.
Explain what you mean by the magic word ‘interrupted’.
To make this work we need to get more solar energy into the oceans when the sun is active and less solar energy into the oceans when the sun is inactive.
More solar energy getting in causes thermal expansion, sea level rises and, yes, more outgassing of CO2 from the sunnier oceanic regions beneath expanded subtropical high pressure cells.
That requires albedo changes via cloudiness variations because the raw TSI changes are insufficient.
Which all links back to the various papers that suggest a top down solar effect on the global air circulation so as to cause global cloudiness variations by expanding or contracting the polar vortices.
Relatively straight zonal jetstreams when the polar vortices are contracted (positive AO and AAO) gives less clouds globally than bendy meridional jetstreams waving about latitudinally when the polar vortices are expanded (negative AO and AAO).
A lot of observed phenomena fit into such a scenario very neatly.
0 BC? So the seas stopped rising when Jesus appeared, and again when Obama appeared. 🙂
How is it that the sunspot number is given for a period of thousands of years? I thought it had only been measured for a couple of hundred years.
REPLY: Proxy reconstruction using C14/Be10 isotopes – Anthony
The Usoskin paper contains another instructive figure, his Figure 13 of an example of a reconstruction of the heliospheric magnetic field at Earth orbit for the last 600 years:
McCracken did good work, his data is not questioned, it is just that data values are not primarily determined by the HMF, but number of other factors, among which local precipitations and the Icelandic and Kamchatka volcanic gasses are possibly major factors. I wouldn’t consider that figure particularly instructive or useful; here are some further aspects not considered elsewhere:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET&10Be.htm
However all this is academic unless a solid link between the solar activity and one of the 3-4 critical climatic factors is firmly established as valid at least during the instrumental period.
(William, the authors of this paper are confusing the dog with the tail.)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I presume this last sentence is a mod comment that hasn’t been identified as such?
The latest NASA solar cycle 24 ‘prediction’ has now been added to the list of predictions versus date predicted:
01/2004- min 1/07, 160 pk
01/2005- min 1/07, 145 pk 2010
01/2006- min 1/07, 145 pk, 2010
01/2007- min 6/07, 145 pk, 2010
03/2008- min 6/08, 130 pk, 2011.5
01/2009- min 1/09, 105 pk, 2012
04/2009- min 4/09, 104 pk, 2013
05/2009- min 5/09, 90 pk, 2013.5
11/2009- min 5/09, <50 pk, 20??
04/2010- min 12/08, 70 pk, 2013.5
06/2010- min 12/08, 65 pk, 2013.5
10/2010- min 12/08, 64 pk, 2013.5
12/2010- min 12/08, 64 pk, 2013.5
04/2011- min 12/08, 62 pk, 2013.5
12/2011- min 12/08, 99 pk, 2013.2
03/2012- min 12/08, 59 pk, 2013.2
05/2012- min 12/08, 60 pk, 2013.2
06/2012- min 05/08, 60 pk, 2013.4
08/2012- min 05/08, 60 pk, 2013.4
09/2012- min 05/08, 76 pk, 2013.9
The science is settled…