Revising the Sunspot Number

The so called modern maximum disappears…right. So the solar guys have clearly learned some important lessons from the Warmists. When the ‘facts’ don’t suit, simply re-write them!

So counting sunspots isn’t like counting eggs? Ie: 1, 2, 3, 4…..?
Is there some new math involved? Is there a hockey stick involved? Or what?

Will the raw data collected during the past 400 years also disappear? I hope not, for science’s sake. Today’s ‘homogenising’ and ‘correcting’ of the raw data could be tomorrow’s mistake which would require re-analysing the raw data again, and again……..
The raw data must remain untouched, no matter how, why and by whom it is interpreted.

In conversations with Leif Svalgaard in past threads he appeared to take the view that his ‘flattening’ of the solar activity record supported his belief that the sun was NOT responsible for climate variability. He insisted that climate variability was simply an internal system phenomenon.
I pointed out that, despite all that flattening, the basic pattern of rises and falls remained intact so that if there were an amplification mechanism internal to the Earth system even those smaller variations could, over time, result in changes in the accumulation of solar energy within the Earth system.
He appeared to not accept the logic of that but now we have multiple papers arriving that do indeed point to suitable amplification mechanisms.
Leif could still argue that those amplified responses are an internal system process but I would say that the sun does nonetheless appear to be the ultimate cause by changing atmospheric chemistry above the tropopause so as to alter global cloudiness and thereby change the proportion of solar irradiation that is able to enter the oceans to fuel the climate system.
If I have interpreted Leif’s past comments incorrectly then no doubt he will correct me in this thread.

As pointed out at The Hockey Schtick:
Excerpts from pages 71-72:
“Still, although the levels of activity were not exceptional except maybe for cycle 19, the particularly long sequence of strong cycles in the late 20th remains a noteworthy episode. Indeed, the 400-year sunspot record and one of its by products, the number of spotless days, show that such a tight sequence of 5 strong cycles over 6 successive cycles (from 17 to 22, except 20), which we can call the “Modern Maximum”, is still unique over at least the last four centuries. Given the inertia of natural systems exposed to the solar influences, like the Earth atmosphere-ocean system, this cycle clustering could still induce a peak in the external responses to solar activity, like the Earth climate. However, we conclude that the imprint of this Modern Maximum (e.g. Earth climate forcing) would essentially result from time-integration effects (system inertia) [i.e. the sunspot time-integral], since exceptionally high amplitudes of the solar magnetic cycle cannot be invoked anymore. In this suggested revision, the estimated or modelled amplitude of the effects, including the response of the Earth environment, can be quite different, necessarily smaller, and should thus be re-assessed.
The recalibrated series may thus indicate that a Grand Maximum needs to be redefined as a tight repetition/clustering of strong cycles over several decades, without requiring exceptionally high amplitudes for those cycles compared to other periods.”
and Bob Weber pointed out:
“from 1808-1908: 4,735 sunspots; and from 1908-2008: 6,197 sunspots – a 31% increase in solar activity in the last 100 years compared to the previous 100 year period (not including SC24).”
To my mind that leaves the Modern Maximum intact albeit redefined.
TSI may not vary much but other solar effects do vary more significantly and do seem to change global atmospheric circulation resulting in cloudiness changes that do cause warming and cooling.

Leif said:
“The main problem with this is that you [and others] have not come up with a plausible physical theory [or mechanism] for how this can happen”
There are a number of plausible physical theories under investigation.
There is one which I favour because it fits with the widest variety of real world observations.
Changes in jet stream behaviour are the ‘canary in the coalmine’ because you cannot have latitudinal shifting of jets and climate zones without also changing the gradient of tropopause height between equator and poles.
Changes in the balance of ozone creation / destruction differently above equator and poles would do that just fine and we know that ozone amounts respond to changes in wavelengths and particles from the sun.

For those who have difficulty accepting the corrected results of Dr Svalgaard and his colleagues I recommend reading the full paper.
URL: http://www.leif.org/research/Revisiting-the-Sunspot-Number.pdf
There is not much new in the paper and no surprises for anyone who has been following this work. Just hard slogging through mountains of hand recorded data entry accumulated for lifetimes of solar observers.
This new revision reconciles different methods of defining what constitutes a recording unit and reconciling observations done with telescopes of different resolving power.
The authors point out that past five or six cycles have been strong enough to have an impact on climate during the latter half of the 20th century, We may expect to see soon a recalculation of the cumulative sunspot count and graph that will show the difference between the old cumulative count and the new cumulative count.
In my opinion, we can still expect the cumulative data to be correlated with warming during the 20th century.

Heh, hundreds of hand waves prove you right; it only takes one hand wave to prove you wrong.
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‘The changes will affect long-term climate and other dependent scientific studies.’
Would that be by ‘lucky’ chance by a change that favours ‘the cause ‘ we needlessly ask
Like lots of measurements from way back the idea that they equal valid has to ones done now are pure fantasy , its worth remembering there was time when there was no sun spots counted because no one had a idea there was sun spots in the first place, and yet they existed.