Alert reader Andrew writes:
“I was just looking at the SOHO images and is it just me or does it look like there’s a sunspot developing in the lower left quadrant? If so, would this still be a cycle 23 spot given its low latitude?”
It appears that a new spot is indeed emerging, and unless I’m dyslexic about the polarity it looks as if this is the first cycle 24 spot in the southern hemisphere.
Compare it to the last cycle 24 spot, in the northern hemisphere:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/04/13/second-cycle-24-spot-a-tiny-tim-spot/
Note the when crossing to the southern hemisphere, magnetic polarity reverses and you cross the equator and this spot is reversed from the polarity of the last cycle 24 spot in the northern hemisphere.
Michelson Doppler Image (MDI):
Magnetogram:
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OK kids, can we moderate the doom & gloom about the sun? The Little Ice Age took a while to really set in, first with the Sporer Minimum, then the Maunder, and the Earth eased back out of it after the Dalton. It takes a few half-amplitude solar cycles before cumulative effects would really show, just as other studies show longer-term 20th century trends in solar luminance correlate most with historical temperatures. The Earth’s sensitivity to solar flux appears to include a lag of about 5 – 8 years.
Anyone know how much average solar luminance decreased since 1990? Apparently this slight 17-year decline is seen as responsible for a “mere” -0.1 degrC change, or about 0.06 degrC per decade. Understood this is only in the context of steady, full-amplitude solar cycles of the 20th century, meaning periodic minima wouldn’t pull the average down as much.
Longer minima, in a lower-frequency & half-amplitude multi-cycle trend, on the other hand, would a more-significant cumulative effect, proportionately. There must be some data and formulas for this. I would expect a multiple of the -0.06 C/decade.
Shindell at NASA/GISS modeled this back in 2001 and found the Maunder would cause far-more colder continental winters.
The bottom line was that the diminished solar luminance slowed interzonal convection and increased La Nina frequency & a generally lowered heat budget which lead to weaker continent-warming ocean-borne weather fronts in wintertime. While the cooling was modest, the effects in continental
interiors were profound. Likewise SC Asia has a historical record of famine corresponding with declines in solar luminance.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/shindell_06/
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20011206/
“…They determined that a dimmer Sun reduced the model’s westerly
winds, cooling the continents during wintertime. Shindell’s model
shows large regional climate changes, unlike other climate models that
show relatively small temperature changes on an overall global scale.
Other models did not assess regional changes.”
Shindell’s study found a 0.3-0.4C GST change, which might be about right, compared to this -0.06 current changee. I suspect Shindell’s study, were it run again, would show a lower GST outcome, taking cosmic rays and ocean effects into account. The upshot would be either to make the continental temperature model outcome more consistent, colder, or both.
This model was run in 2001, so it probably didn’t include cosmic ray influences on cloud cover, ocean-air coupling, PDO, AMO, NAO, AO or bigger La Nina effects.
Even skeptics of cosmic ray influence admit CRF can account for as much as 25 percent differential in cloud cover between 20th century solar min & max. A 25 percent differential is not enough to do it all, but it’s a nice nudge either way.
I think it can be reasonably assumed that SC#25 will be a half-amplitude dud, and I think it’s fair to guess likewise SC#26. Solar activity changes of this magnitude evolve over the course of several decades, so this evolving downtrend may be with us for a good while.
But for the time being my guess is the sun’s dimming marks the onset of a moderate Dalton- or Sporer-like grand minimum. That seems to me more probable than a deep-chill Maunder.
This model was run in 2001, so it probably didn’t include cosmic ray influences on cloud cover,
The next questions. Has cloud cover started to increase? If so, what type?
If we are facing another minimum, I vote to name it “The Gore Minumum”.
Hey Old Construction Worker, I’m a middle-aged mechanic.
I used to completely be a complete believer in dangerous CO2-driven global warming after I saw shrunken glaciers in the Rockies in the 1980’s. Then I found out soot has been melting them, the Arctic & Kilimanjaro & started to wonder what was up. Then I saw Gore’s movie & realized we were being stampeded.
I think we need to send Al Gore on the mitigation mission to steer Apophis after it passes by in 2013. Doesn’t matter if Apophis will miss or not in 2039, we need Al Gore to be selected in consideration of his humanitarian heroism:
“Houston. We have a problem. The return booster won’t fire.”
“Roger that Apophis Base. We have studied the problem and we’ve determined that the booster is actually full of copies of AIT.”
“Sorry Houston. Could you repeat that last transmission?”
[silence]
“Apophis Base to Houston command, do you copy?”
[silence]
etc…
We’ll all remember him as a hero.