Click for magnified view of the sun showing the most recent spot.
Sunspot 987, 988, and now newly emerging 989 are shown above.
With all being near the equator, they are still a cycle 23 spots. A cycle 24 spot would be at a much higher latitude.
The most recent magnetogram shows them to have the magnetic polarity of cycle 23 spots, in addition to being near the equator.
Cycle 24 remains late. There was one sunspot of high latitude and reversed magnetic polarity on January 4th, 2008, but none have been seen since:
Click for a larger image
UPDATE 2: The solar holographic image shows a potentially large spot on the far side of the sun, we’ll have to wait until it comes around to see what it is. The method is not always perfect.
Darker area is the far side of the sun.
Seismic waves propagating through the sun are used to image potential spots on the far side. Here is a description of how it is done.
UPDATE 3:
It looks as if the spot seen yesterday on the far side of the sun via the holographic technique has disappeared. As I said “The method is not always perfect.”
The two spots above are earthward, 987, and 988.
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Things are going to get disturbingly chilly over the next decade or so, but it will not trouble the global warmers much. Were Marxists upset because capitalism made the poor much richer, while socialism forced them into poverty and famine?
In all of academia, not just climate science, truth has become a crime, a thoughtcrime, deserving of punishment.
Climate science is just one part of a broader problem, the real problem being belief systems, memetic diseases, that spread by coercive means – climate science is just one part of political correctness, and political correctness is part of the same problem as Islam.
My formal education is in meteorology and my profession is Software Engineering. However, my love has always been astronomy and variable stars.
In the early 1970’s, a friend and were able to choose our field of study. I chose variable stars and he chose to study the Sun’s sunspot influence upon Earth’s weather. I “knew” that our Sun was not a variable star and just laughed at him and called him a fool.
Thirty five years later, I have learned that I was the fool. He was exploring a topic that nobody believed in, but had recognized a pattern in the data that that needed more study.
Once I realized how wrong I had been, the recognition that our Sun was a variable star was rather exciting to this astronomer. I began to study this subject more detail and obtain all the data which I could assimulate.
In my efforts to document our Sun’s variability, I stumbled upon Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre. What a wonderful breath of fresh air!
What physical processes are cause a star such as our Sun, to be variable in such an interesting way. And as an astronomer, this is a subject that needs much more detailed research.
Anthony, please keep up with this line of research. In many ways, you have been following along lines that were explored thirty five years ago.
I was the fool!
Satellite Makes First Ever Observation Of Regionally Elevated Carbon Dioxide From Manmade Emissions
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080318110330.htm
The Carbon Dioxide influence is so down in the noise, that scientists must work very hard to even detect it!
I was rather impressed with their research and can only applaud them for their outstanding efforts. That was not easy to do!
Clearly, this should be the Landscheidt minimum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Landscheidt
Some of his papers can be viewed here: http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/papers-by-dr-theodor-landscheidt
The Gore Minimum.
Definitely The Gore Minimum.
Btw, didn’t he invent the sunspots?
Anthony:
Thirty five years ago, this same kid (that I called a fool ) studied the effects of the City of Atlanta upon the local weather.
The TV meteorologist at WSB supported him and allowed him to ask for help on TV for volunteers with his project. He asked for people around the city of Atlanta to place coffee cans in their yards, and measure with a ruler the amount of rain after each storm. He got over 200 people around Atlanta to report their results.
After a few months, he was able to make contour plots around the city of Atlanta. There was a very obvious pattern of rainfall between the West side of the city and the East.
This High School student was able to demonstrate in a remarkable way, how a city can influence the local weather.
He taught me to be rather humble and follow the data, no matter where it may lead.
REPLY: GREAT STORY -Anthony
He got over 200 people around Atlanta to report their results.
Hint, hint, hint….
Anthony, we all know about the urban effect upon local weather, but to document it has always been difficult.
It is amazing how people will dedicate a little of their time, if it can be made simple and easy to do.
But, you already know that….
Absolutely 100% agree with Gore Minimum.
Eddy Minimum. He liked words.
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Is it just me or are the 3 spots we see on the sun right now already shrinking? To me, they look smaller than they did earlyer today.
Just checked out the last 22.5 hours of history. Spot 989 is definatly shrinking. Not sure about the other 2
Svalgaard likes Eddy Minimum, too. I think solar physicists generally would agree with him, so if it develops, consider it named.
We could call the recent warming peak the Gore Maximum. I like that. It would memorialize him as a fool, and serve forever as a cautionary tale to scientists, who apparently repetitively need the lesson.
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Or the patent official around the turn of the 20th century who said there was nothing left to invent.
Alarmist Sunspot activity article…
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-04/st_spaceweather
I expect that CO2 levels will be dropping very soon as the ocean will likely be in it’s absorption phase for the next 10-20 years. An interesting study done on Mars suggested that as the polar regions warmed, the ice-bound CO2 was released into the lower stratum of the planet, thus contributing (they said) to the warming-cooling cycle pattern evidenced by landmark boarder changes. Once the poles cooled again, CO2 became bound once again in the ice. Of course, the scientists used this conclusion to show that CO2 warms planetary bodies, thus would account for global warming here on earth. This is an excellent case of flying the plane in the fog by looking out the window instead of flying by the dials. Atmospheric CO2 on Mars is part of the cycle there as told by these scientists. But the “fog” prevented these same scientist from seeing the cycle we have here on earth as well.
Hmm. I wonder. From what I know, the ocean variation is only around 10 ppm. per 1 degree celsius delta. Measurable, but not a whole lot.
Correct me if I’m wrong, someone.
OTOH, once CO2 levels stop increasing, the persistence/sink lag will catch up with it and it will stop accumulating @ur momisugly c. 3ppm/year.
What i think is that what little effect CO2 has is quickly swamped by negative feedback, resulting in homeostasis.
Evan: I agree – Lovelock’s idea of planetary homeostasis had a huge effect on me as a young Green way back when. What I can’t work out is why he’s abandoned this in favour of runaway positive feedback when the geological record and the very fact of our existence confirms it.
I have just been reading a paper by Gerald E. Marsh that is an excellent critique of the recent IPCC (2001) report “Climate Change 2001…”. Towards the end of the paper, he demonstrates the possibility that the ocean’s ability to cycle CO2 (absorb vs repel) has been underestimated. There are many other parts of the paper that are very interesting, including the millenial cycles (yes, cycles) demonstrating leaf stomata numbers during times of high atmospheric CO2 (at times 20% higher back then than it currently is). He also notes that temperature change during these high levels of CO2 (which according to the boob tube will be 6 degrees warmer and will kills all living things plus God) did not change that much and completely fly against the change in temperatures predicted by our current models.
Thank You for the images-but I still don’t get it. I can’t ‘see’ the differience between these sunspots-I thought the polarity should be revered and that I should see new cycle sun spots with the white part (North) on the right of the image as opposed to the white part (N.) on the left hand side of the image. Or am I completely off base and the only diff is the lattitude? P.S. I LOVE your site and visit it every day!
A late season Arctic storm is affecting the Pac NW and is toying with NoCal. It’s really quite impressive. The precip is not concentrated, but is widespread. There are places incredibly close to the coast with Snow Advisories, Heavy Snow Warnings and the like. It’s like January. Who would have ever thought we’d be sitting here in 2008 discussing about something like this, way back when the AGW hype first started getting going (and, I sheepishly admit, I was still an arch warmer.) “It will happen in 1997.” Yeah, right.
It seems Hathaway has chimed in on these new cycle 23 spots. Interesting that he seems to be waffling.
http://www.physorg.com/news125930707.html
Oops, I meant 3 BTMC (Bil. Tons Metric Carbon), not 3ppm. The atmosphere contains c. 750 BMTC total.
Eddy Minimum would get my vote. JAE ddy made significant contributions to climate research by looking at both solar physics and history together.
re: the “shadow” of a possible cycle 24 sunspot on the other side of the sun. Right place. Timing is right. Magnitude may be small or diminishing very fast. Might not last long enough for us to see it or even be given a number (like the one in 2006?). May be something else. These kinds of sightings are confirmed or disregarded about 7 days from initial signature when that area of the sun faces our satellites. When was it picked up? Is its disappearance maybe related to the areas of the backside of the sun that our instruments can’t see?