Click image for movie – note download is large 2.4MB
A guest post by Michael Ronayne
Note: Mike has created a movie (solar_cycle_23-24_sunspots.gif large (2.4MB) animated GIF) that shows how the cycle 23 forecast has progressed through time. Given that NASA’s David Hathaway recently commented on SpaceWeather that we are still seeing Cycle 23 spots, this seemed like a good time to post Mike’s effort.
The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) at http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ issues weekly reports on solar activity know as Preliminary Report and Forecast (PRF) of Solar Geophysical Data or “The Weekly”. Generally on the week following the end of the month a monthly summary is issued which includes graphics for the past month.
In the summary is the “ISES Solar Cycle Sunspot Number Progression” graphic which shows past, present and predicted average sunspot numbers by month. SWPC maintains a compressed archive of all weekly PRD reports in PDF format since 1996 which is available here.
Individual weekly reports for 2007 are available here and current reports for 2008 are available here .
The most current graphic is always here.
All of “The Weekly” reports were inspected to identify the monthly summaries and determine the quality of the “ISES Solar Cycle Sunspot Number Progression” graphic contained therein. It was determined that the graphs prior to April 30, 2003 were in a significantly different format, had quality control problems and skipped months, therefore only graphs from April 30, 2003 to present were used.
Using Adobe Acrobat Professional the “ISES Solar Cycle Sunspot Number Progression” graphics was extracted from each of “The Weekly” PDF reports as oversized TIFF graphics to preserve resolution. The standard publication size for the graphic was 720×550 pixels but the aspect ratio for some of the graphs was not preserved within the PDF document. When the oversized TIFF graphic were resized to 720×550 without preserving the aspect ratio within the PDF the original 720×550 graphic was recovered in all cases. The 720×550 TIFF graphic was then converted to a GIF graphic for use in the animation sequence.
While extracting the “ISES Solar Cycle Sunspot Number Progression” graphs it was found that January 31, 2008 monthly summary had not been generated, a fact which SWPC confirmed in response to an Email inquiry. The February 29, 2008 graphic was hand edited at the pixel level to recreate the missing month and is identified in the animation sequence “proxy200801.gif”. The remaining graphics are all identified by the PRF document number.
The Advanced GIF Animator program was used to create the animation sequence. With the exception of January 31, 2008 all of the frames are prefixed by PRF9999 when 9999 is the document number of the original PDF report from which the graphic was extracted.
When the animated frames were inspected in sequence it was found that there was a discontinuity between July 31, 2006 (PRF1510), August 31, 2004 (PRF1514) and the September 30, 2004 (PRF1520) frames. The causes of the discontinuities were:
- Data was retroactively changed on the August 31, 2004 frame.
- The August 31, 2004 data point was not plotted on the August 31, 2004 frame.
These three frames were not altered or correct in anyway and are displayed as published. This technique is very good at identifying data discontinuity problems.
Excluding the problems noted above the reconstructed graphic went very well and there was no discernible flicker between frames indicating that the PDF extraction process was near prefect. With the exception of the problem about August 31, 2004 and the missing monthly summary for January 31, 2008 the SWPC product has been amazingly consistent since April 30, 2003.
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Quote – Anna V :
It will also mean the flight from suburbia and isolated houses because of security reasons and heating reasons too. It is not by accident that villages came to be with people huddled together in small rooms.
The bird flu will love global cooling.
The rise to prominence and eventual decline and “mysterious” and complete disappearance of the Anasazi tribe in the American southwest, http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/northamerica/anasazi.html shows an almost perfect correlation with MWP as depicted in
Figure 4 of Archibald
http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/archibald2007.pdf
The rise stars about 490 A.D. and by 1350 A.D. they had completely disappeared. Quite a mystery.
P.S. apologies if I have not submitted the links properly
Regarding the previous comment, the point is warmer and wetter climate allowed the Anasazi to thrive but when the temperature and moisture levels declined into the LIA the Anasazi culture vanished.
Pam said,
Earlier this morning I was dismayed reading the following on “globalchange group”, a moderated discussion group with a predominantly academic bent on IPCC doctrine:
under the thread “Does Solar Variability affect Climate”, one conclusion was: “Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that
modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun’s
activity.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/7327393.stm
Looks like another denialist claim shot down with data.”
This prompted me to respond with the following (it will be interesting to see if this contribution is accepted):
“To describe the sun’s contribution to climate change since time immemorial as “a denialist’s claim shot down by data” is an absurd statement, not worthy of a supposedly august forum like this one. Quite apart from Singer’s publications and presentations, there is a huge body of literature, including peer-reviewed, on the correlation of the earth’s climate system with continuously changing solar parameters. Some of the entry portals have already been mentioned in this thread and a simple Internet search will lead you in the right direction.
Remember, CO2 is a trace gas crucial for photosynthesis (and green houses are known to produce excellent crops at elevated CO2 concentrations); 1934 is the well-documented warmest year of the past 150; there has been slight cooling since 1998 (more pronounced since 2004 – see new satellite data), and much more. And yes, as everybody can check (below) after surviving an exceptionally harsh winter: Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area is ahead substantially from a year ago and close to the mean from 1979 – 2000, whereas Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice is considerably above the same mean…
Example for North: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg – Southern and global data are also there.
As an aside: the colonization of Greenland by the Vikings and Alpine Glaciers that had receded much farther than currently are deniers’ illusions? as are the Little Ice Age and the year without summer (1816), since Mann’s careful and universally applicable data proved that these climate events could never have happened…?
Are you willing to take credit for the likely global cooling of the near future, together with Al Gore? The particulate load from new not-so-clean coal plants may soon be rivalling well-documented volcanic contributions to the mitigation of solar inputs…
All this does not mean that one should burn fossil fuels with unbridled abandon. But look at the emerging land use and food cost catastrophe built on an out-of-control biofuel craze! Isn’t it time to move toward a differentiated approach to natural resource usage and conservation, to strive toward living in harmony with the constantly changing metabolism of Earth? Isn’t it time to re-evaluate arrogant attitudes like “Save the Planet” and learn to understand what’s truly going on? Isn’t it time to step away from the polarizing debates between Hot Heads and to stop creating all that new Hot Air?
Is it not time to check the data a bit more carefully, including the often sloppy practices of measuring and recording terrestrial temperatures? Please study other relevant blogs (such as Climate Science, Watt’s up with that, ICECAP and others) with an objective mind before denouncing the solar information as denialist claptrap…
respectfully,
UL
(my credentials: independent oceanographer specializing in deep-sea imaging, holding a broad US Patent on aquatic habitat health using biomonitoring methods)”
Given statements such as “Looks like another denialist claim shot down with data”, it’s difficult to refrain from cynicism. I’ll try harder while elucidating certain experimental oceanographic approaches in my new blog – deepslope – coming soon to wordpress.com
I really appreciate the great work, Anthony!
ulrich
Anthony, just realized that I posted my lengthy contribution to the wrong thread – if you can accept it, could you please select a more appropriate spot?
thank you,
ulrich
REPLY: Unfortunately I am unable to move comments due to limits in the software, the on;y way they can show up on the right thread is for you to copy/paste and resubmit there.
I wonder if Mauan Loa’s lower CO2 levels could be the result of very little activity from the volcano.
Opps, my last should have been on Mauna Loa’s lower Co2 concentrations post.
I notice that the bottom has fallen out of the sunspot numbers according to the graph at NOAA. Any idea when they are going to polish up their crystal balls and issue another “prediction” or must I go down the street and see what Madame Sophia has to say?