As I mentioned a few days ago, there was a panel that NASA convened to look at solar cycle 23/24 predictions.
From this story on space.com where they talk about the opposing views solar scientists have for cycle 24 they offer some opinions. NOAA Space Environment Center scientist Douglas Biesecker, who chaired the panel, said in a statement:
[…] despite the panel’s division on the Sun cycle’s intensity, all members have a high confidence that the season will begin in March 2008
Well, obviously March 2008 isn’t happening:
Current sun: blank
So now there’s a new set of numerical predictive numbers issued by NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. You can see the March 2008 updated prediction page here:
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml
There is a lot of discussion there on how the numbers are derived, but plainly absent from the discussion is the real meat of the issue. The goalposts for the start of Cycle 24 have now been moved to May 2008. In addition to the discussion of the “hows” on that page, he also produced a set of numerical data for the prediction curves which you can see here: http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict.txt
I’ve plotted the data for you below.
Click for a larger image
Notice how cycle 23 gets longer and longer, with a sharp upturn for cycle 24 starting in late 2008 and early 2009. Hathaway still believes cycle 24 will be slightly more in amplitude than cycle 23, while others think it will be lower.
I’m no solar physicist, but based on what I’ve seen, I’m betting the goalposts will be moved again in May, pointing to a start in August or September 2008. This would be more in line with the latest numbers predicted by the Space Environment Center (SEC):
We’ll see what happens. I’m still very much concerned about the apparent step change in 2005 to a lower plateau of the Geomagnetic Average Planetary (Ap) index. Which is something that does not appear in the previous cycle:
click for a larger image
What is most interesting about the Geomagnetic Average Planetary Index graph above is what happened around October 2005. Notice the sharp drop in the magnetic index and the continuance at low levels, almost as if something “switched off”.
UPDATE – Joe D’Aleo of ICECAP writes in with this:
This site http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/SC24.html catalogs the many forecasts of the next cycle with links where available. The majority of these forecasts (23 of the 33) forecast a quieter cycle 24 than 23.
The Clilverd forecast http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/SC24Clilverd.pdf is the lowest (peak SSN 42).
Dikpati http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2004/sunspot.shtml the highest (peak SSN 169). Hathaway of NASA was second highest (peak SSN 160) though he projected that cycle 25 could be quietest in centuries due to dramatic slowing of the conveyor belt of hot plasma http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10may_longrange.htm
If we go to May or later before the solar min is reached, cycle 23 will be the longest cycle since the late 1800s.
Are there any reasonable predictions on what global/local temperatures and rainfall will look like if we enter another solar minimum like Maunder or Dalton? Will CO2 contribution to warming change in a cooler world?
If you’re an investor, where do you put your money on bets that we are entering a cooler phase based on solar activity?
No fair. They promised me I could start worrying earnest in mid-March and now they’re pulling the opld bait-and-switch. I object. I must insist upon the promised Dalton discount.
The Gliessberg Cycles are what interests the Russian solar scientists. Essientially, we are at the tail end of a positive cycle. The last negative cycle contained The Sporer Minimum, Maunder Minimum, and Dalton Minimum. The last negative cycle ended somewhere between 1820 and 1840. Each cycle lasts between 150 and 200 years.
Awaiting the end to arrive
Downfall planet earth
Beneath a dying sun
Landscheidt’s science was looking for cosmic order and how it impacts Earth. His science of the sun was a significant ‘piece’ of that. His ‘Golden Mean’ work was based on something timeless, orderly, and beautiful. He kept an open mind, let his intuition lead, and followed up with facts. hmmm sounds like Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Einstein…let’s throw in Garrett Lisi for the heck of it. (Personally, I’m a Pauli junkie.)
These were/are all very spiritual men. All believing in cosmic order. Religion had little to do with their work other than attack and censorship of it.
An astrological chart isn’t something that should cause an immediate mental wall to go up. It’s just an ancient tool for time tracking…and it worked. And it worked so well, it was used for a really long time. It gives a really good topocentric view in which you might see patterns that have more impact than looking at the same data always in data or heliocentric form.
Look wider and keep an open mind.
…and if you plug the dates of the last few really big geomagnetic storms in to a natal chart and with their birth location being where they had the most impact…you just might start seeing a pattern you didn’t expect … or maybe don’t really want to see.
April 2011 is looking intense…no?
New to this site – but want to make a post. Take a look at the following link:
http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf
If this is correct – we are probably headed into a long solar minimum to rival the Dalton or perhaps the Maunder minimums.
I sure would like to see daily and monthly temperature spanning 6 months before and 6 months after the geomagnetic field from the sun “switched off”.
Nobody replied anything to David’s message above: Let’s suppose something like a Dalton Minimum happens. What does it mean for global temperatures/rainfall/demographics?
I’m not interested in apocalyptic scenarios but some reasonable outcomes.
Which world regions would be best to live?
Also, I find it very odd that nobody has taken up the remarkable March 23-April 3 sunspot explosions and what it may imply for sun cycle 24.
Andrew,
It would mean a reduction in agriculture. How large a reduction is not clear. We have different agriculture methods now than they did several hundred years ago. Crops would still be produced they will just cost more because there would be less of them. There are other effects, colder winters, more snow in North America, and better weather (for humans) in the southern U.S. during the summer. If we were to have several cycles in a row then other things would happen, but lets no go there now.
If the human caused global warming crowd are correct about human emmisions then perhaps they will cancel each other out for a while.
Jeff
quote: Andrew (21:57:32) :
Nobody replied anything to David’s message above: Let’s suppose something like a Dalton Minimum happens. What does it mean for global temperatures/rainfall/demographics?
I’m not interested in apocalyptic scenarios but some reasonable outcomes.
Which world regions would be best to live?
Also, I find it very odd that nobody has taken up the remarkable March 23-April 3 sunspot explosions and what it may imply for sun cycle 24.
[…] to see if Hathaway follows with a new prediction in the wake of the IPS announcement, there already has been one change in Hathaway’s prediction this year, so it would not be surprising to see […]
Hathaway seems to have thought that cycle 24 was starting in August 2006.
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn9778-first-sunspot-of-next-solar-cycle-glimpsed.html
Maybe he should STOP predicting for now and wait and see like the rest of us.
[…] isn’t the first time NASA has moved the goalpost. Back in March I did a story on NASA moving the goal post then, and since then they’ve moved the cycle ahead twice, once in April and again now in […]
[…] isn’t the first time NASA has moved the goalpost. Back in March I did a story on NASA moving the goal post then, and since then they’ve moved the cycle ahead twice, once in April and again now in […]