From the “I hope to God they are flat wrong department”, here is the abstract of a short paper on recent solar trends by William Livingston and Matthew Penn of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson. It was sent to me by reader Mike Ward.
I previously highlighted a news story on this paper on May 21st, but didn’t have the actual paper until now. If anyone has an update to this paper, which uses data up to 2005, please use the comment form to advise.
Here is the complete paper, and below are some excerpts:
Abstract: We have observed spectroscopic changes in temperature sensitive molecular lines, in the magnetic splitting of an Fe I line, and in the continuum brightness of over 1000 sunspot umbrae from 1990-2005. All three measurements show consistent trends in which the darkest parts of the sunspot umbra have become warmer (45K per year) and their magnetic field strengths have decreased (77 Gauss per year), independently of the normal 11-year sunspot cycle. A linear extrapolation of these trends suggests that few sunspots will be visible after 2015.
Figure – 1. Sample sunspot spectra from the data set. The dashed line is from a sunspot observed in June 1991, and the solid line was observed in January 2002. These provide examples of the trends seen in the data, where the OH molecular lines decrease in strength over time, and the magnetic splitting of the Fe line decreases over time. A magnetic splitting pattern for the January 2002 Fe line of 2466 Gauss is shown, while the June 1991 spectrum shows splitting from a 3183 Gauss field
Figure 2. – The line depth of OH 1565.3 nm for individual spots. The upper trace is the smoothed sunspot number showing the past and current sunspot cycles; the OH line depth change seems to smoothly decrease independently of the sunspot cycle.
Figure 3. – A linear fit to observed magnetic fields extrapolated to the minimum value observed for umbral magnetic fields; below a field strength of 1500G as measured with the Fe I 1564.8nm line no photospheric darkening is observed.
Figure 4 – A linear fit to the observed umbral contrast values, extrapolated to show that by 2014 the average umbrae would have the same brightness as the quiet Sun.
They write: Sunspot umbral magnetic fields also show systematic temporal changes during the observing period as demonstrated by the sample spectra in Figure 1. The infrared Fe 1564.8 nm is a favorable field diagnostic since the line strength changes less than a factor of two between the photosphere and spot umbra and the magnetic Zeeman splitting is fully resolved for all sunspot umbrae. In a histogram plot of the distribution of the umbral magnetic fields that we observe, 1500 Gauss is the smallest value measured. Below this value photospheric magnetic fields do not produce perceptible darkening. Figure 3 presents the magnetic fields smoothed by a 12 point running mean from 1998 to 2005. The ordinate is chosen so that 1500 G is the minimum. A linear fit to the changing magnetic field produces a slope of 77 Gauss per year, and intercepts the abscissa at 2015. If the present trend continues, this date is when sunspots will disappear from the solar surface.
Let us all hope that they are wrong, for a solar epoch period like the Maunder Minimum inducing a Little Ice Age will be a worldwide catastrophe economically, socially, environmentally, and morally.
I’m still very much concerned about the apparent step change in 2005 to a lower plateau of the Geomagnetic Average Planetary (Ap) index, that I’ve plotted below. This 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”.
Am I allowed to say I don’t like those choices?
Not b/c I have a predilection toward screaming “global cooling is coming,” (I prefer to whisper it), but b/c I have to wonder whether the new research you cite is so certain. Esp. the day after Bruce West proclaims otherwise. As a layman I’m completely at a loss to know who’s right, but rather I see two extremes from two presumed experts.
Which leaves me with wanting a middle choice that’s missing in the choices above.
OK, let’s step back for a minute.
John over at skepticalscience.com runs a blog much like CA. He’s a climatologist, very patient, good chap. I asked him about solar influence.
His comment was essentially this (paraphrased from memory): If anything solar intensity has caused a -0.1 degrC masking of CO2 effects since the 1990’s.
Now understand, I’ve run with that one. Just shooting from the hip here, OK?
If TSI can fall so much in 15 years that we’re enjoying a -0.1 degrC offset, then I don’t see a big problem with D. Shindell’s study, even if his estimates were off on TSI reduction. Shindell modeled the LIA solely based on TSI, if I recall correctly.
The gist of Shindell’s study was more a case that regardless of TSI, if the middle troposphere cooled that much (he was solely modeling lower troposphere-heating UV from lack of faculae) that GMT fell -0.3 to -0.4 degrC, then any confluence of effects could cascade into a generally cooler globe. The most crucial part of Shindell’s study was to show that although the cooling was modest, the effect in continental interiors was profound b/c wintertime westerlies carrying warm ocean air were slowed considerably along with northward intermeridionals from the subtropics, etc.
Forgive me for WAGing, but here’s how I’d ballpark rank the components for modeling the deepest coolth of the LIA:
-0.2 degrC from TSI reduction
-0.05 degrC indirect ocean emissivity
-0.05 degrC cosmic ray increased cloud cover
—-
-0.3 degrC … which is Drew Shindell’s higher ballpark,
-0.4 degrC was his lower.
Yes, I know, it’s all off the back of a napkin!
leebert: Bruce West is talking about correlation with the climate, not about the Sun. He does not in any way counter the observations and inferences that the Sun has varied less. The ‘modern’ image of TSI [still controversial] is that TSI does not fall much under what it does at every minimum, that is: there is not long-term background change. If the magnetic regions did not not disappear during the Maunder Minimum, there would not have been a lack of faculae and therefore no cooling etc. And Shindell did not show that the climate behaved in a certain way on its own, he showed how the climate would react to a prescribed solar forcing. If that forcing didn’t happen, what was there to model? and this is the crux of the matter: if one assumes the ‘generally accepted’ rather large solar variability [the one designed to match the climate] then no wonder you recover a reasonable climate response. The issue I’m raising is: since there are indications [albeit not yet accepted or even known to all] that the forcing was less, can we at least not begin to think about how we would deal with that? be proactive? Instead, what I see is a ‘perverse’ reverse logic: since we need the Sun to vary to feel comfortable in our current paradigm [and few likes paradigms to be overthrown], then, by gully, it must vary, it has to, what else could it be? So we are neglecting the solar signs of less variation in favor of our prejudices about what must explain climate variation.
This is different from there being no magnetic field. The cosmic ray shielding would be a little bit less, but not much. So the changes introduced by a Maunder minimum [if the Livingston-Penn mechanism holds up] will be only slight. Leif Svalgaard
“Production calculations show that during the MM the mean global 10Be production was higher by 32% than at present due to lower solar activity.”
from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.org/8/2797/2008/acp-8-2797-2008.html
Leif,
Assuming that 10Be is produced by comic rays, wouldn’t you say that 32% is a significant modulation? What am I missing?
drat! sorry Leif, that first paragraph should have quotes.
B sub z floor was 4.6 nT, “now” 4.4 and headed lower. The ‘science’ is squishy?
poetSam: the paper also says: “It has to be kept in mind that the uncertainly of the solar forcing during the Maunder Minimum is large, as well as the climate response to the forcing. We are not able to validate the simulated temperature or precipitation rates during the Maunder Minimum, we can only compare them with other estimates.”
The point is that the model calculations were done with a large assumed TSI variation [1.5 W/m2] and that feeds into the part of the 10Be concentration that is due to climate variations rather than to solar variations. If you look at Figure 1 of the paper you will see that during the [supposedly] even deeper Spoerer minimum [1415-1535], the 10Be flux was within the error of the spread almost normal.
These things belong to an active research area and the jury is still out. What you are missing is that the uncertainty is very large and that “The 10Be concentrations measured in ice depend on the solar modulation of the production rate, the stratosphere-troposphere exchange (STE), the tropospheric transport and the precipitation rate at the measurement site. An important question is to what extent
the production changes of 10Be are masked by the meteorological conditions during periods of variable climate”.
It pays to read and study the paper carefully. The 32% you quote comes from this: “These modulation [M] values differ only slightly from values reconstructed by Usoskin et al. (2005). For the PresentDay run, monthly mean M values were used so that temporal changes in the production rate were taken into account by the model. During the MM a constant value of M=200MeV was assumed, which is an average for the whole period of MM (McCracken et al., 2004). This increases the production rate of cosmogenic radionuclides by 32% during the MM compared with PD.”
So, one has to go back to the McCracken paper to see where that value came from. It turns out that it, in turn, is based on assumptions about the calibration of the non-linear relationships governing the modulation. And so on. These things are difficult and we are still learning how to calibrate our proxies.
Gary: “headed lower”? You clairvoyant or something? be a bit more specific, please.
“It pays to read and study the paper carefully. ” Leif
Excellent point. Shame on me.
The Zero Sunspot Days for May just got added to the graph over at the Solar24 site.
http://www.solarcycle24.com/graphs/sunspotgraph.gif
They continue to go up (i.e. fewer sunspots).
I would bet my life savings that quantum mechanics can predict the wavelength of a particular atomic transition, but not many I know would do that on predicting the occurrence of a solar flare on the basis of the positions of the planets.
Why do you feel you need to use a straw man argument, Leif?
Strangely enough, any blog discussion of solar activity eventually ends up with astrology being promoted.
What I find strange is that you even bring up astrology, when no one else has. Why?
Your complete rejection of Landscheidt would seem to have an irrational basis.
After reading most of these comments, I don’t see how the so called expert climate modelers can have anything but garbage in and garbage out of their programs that is driving another mania that will eventually be an epilogue to Charles Mackay’s ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds’
Bruce: I fail to see how that was a straw man argument. My point was a comparison between solid physics and something ‘beyond argument’. No straws there. My rejection of Landscheidt is based on five arguments:
1: the energy involved in planetary influences are not sufficient to have any measurable effect on the Sun. The tides raised by Jupiter are 1/25 of an inch high acting on millions of Texas-sized plasma blobs moving up and down at 5000 miles an hours covering the whole surface of the Sun.
2: the predicted times of maxima and minima do not match the observed closely enough to be useful although they should be perfectly calculable.
3: there are sunspot cycles on many other stars that as far as we know don’t have Jupiter-size planets. The intensity of the activity depends on the age of the star.
4: no explanation is given how the mechanism works and why the magnetic polarities change the way they do.
5: there are other [better] theories based on solid physics that explain the solar cycle in some detail. They are not perfect and are still being worked on, but they are physically viable and if we use the planetary influences then we also have to explain how these first cancel out the solar dynamo and then add their own effect to make it look like the cycle is controlled by the planets.
You may argue that the planetary effects are not driving the cycle, but only add a tiny modulation to a cycle controlled by the solar dynamo, but then the predictive power of the planetary influence is not needed as the dynamo is working regardless. Many other variations are possible, but I feel that Landscheidt would take exception to having his theory removed as the primary driver.
I do not think that my arguments above constitute an irrational basis. You are invited to show where the irrationality lies. The arguments might be in error [happens often in science – falsifiability being a prerequisite for scientific theory], but do seem to me to be the product of a rational mind. I would certainly have thought so, had they come from you or anybody else.
Leif, tallbloke aa stroller here. This is a much more detailed rebuttal of Landscheidt and his ‘barycentric nonsense’ than you gave me on CA, and so I am able to respond to your 5 points in more detail:
1) Landscheidt doesn’t base his theory on planetary tidal action. He proposes that the planets gravitationally induced movement of the sun around the basycentre of the solar system produce “not insubstantial” changes in angular velocity, and that these are translated to an up to 5% change in the velocity of the equatorial solar spin rate, and that this has been observed. Here are the maths and citations.
“The contribution of the orbital momentum to the total angular momentum
is not negligible. The maximum value reaches 25% of the Sun’s spin
momentum. In addition, there is strong variation. The orbital
angular momentum varies from 0.1 x 10^47 to 4.3 x 10^47 g cm2 s1 or
reversely, which is more than a forty-fold increase or decrease. If
there were transfer of angular momentum from the Sun’s orbit to the
spin on its axis, this could make a difference of more than 5% in
its equatorial rotational velocity (Blizard, 1982). Such
acceleration or deceleration has been actually observed
(Landscheidt, 1976). This seems to be indicative of a case of
spin-orbit coupling of the spinning Sun and the Sun revolving about
the center of mass involving transfer of angular momentum
(Landscheidt, 1986b, 1988). Coupling could result from the Sun’s
motion through its own ejected plasma. The low corona can act as a
brake on the Sun’s surface (Dicke, 1964).”:
2) Landscheidt uses a method involving the golden section as a general cosmological constant for his theory, possibly because it holds generally and is further projectable than chaotic planetary motion. This leads to imprecision, but improves general long range applicability. Nonetheless, the short range forecasting is still as good or better than anything I’ve seen from the other theories. Using his theory he successfully predicted:
” …the end of the Sahelian drought three years before the event, the last four extrema in global temperature anomalies, the maximum in the Palmer drought index for U.S.A. around 1999, extreme river Po discharges around the beginning of 2001, and the last three El Niños as well as the course of the last La Niña (Landscheidt, 1983-2002).
Perhaps you can offer examples of a better track record from other theories predictive capability?
3) Please give us the details. Fascinating!However, this doesn’t falsify Landscheit’s theory, which rests on barycentric motion which could arise from causes other than jupiter sized planets.
4) See above for the primary mechanism. The reversing polarity may be accounted for in the approx 20year cycle of jupiter-saturn-heliocentric conjunction and opposition. It will be interesting to analyse the phase shifting effects on frequency of reverse polarity spots which buck the cycle.
5) Lets see how much [better] these other theories fare over the forthcoming months and decades. Landscheidt predicted in 1999 that:
“The extrapolation of the observed pattern points to sunspot maxima around 2000.6 and 2011.8. If a further connection with long-range variations in sunspot intensity proves reliable, four to five weak sunspot cycles (R < 80) are to be expected after cycle 23 with medium strength (R ~ 100).”
So far, he seems to be doing better with this 19 year old prediction than NASA’s Prof. Hathaway is with his prediction that is being continually adjusted even after cycvle 24 has already shown it’s first spots! Didn’t half the panel you sit on predict an Rmax of over 150 for cycle 24?
Long live falsifiable content and scientists with the confidence to nail their reputations to the predictive capability of their theories as firmly as Theodor Landscheidt did.
Having read a bit more of the preceding comments, I can see that my response to your point number 4 above may sound a bit too “astrological” for some. It is worth noting that although Jupiter may only raise a 1/25″ tide on the sun, it’s gravitational effect is to move the sun up to two entire sun diameters over a period of 20 years or so, and that the combined gravitational effect of jupiter and saturn when they are close together and opposite each other either side of the sun substantially alters the path of the sun in terms of it’s motion about the centre of mass of the solar system.
These are real motions of extremely big objects actually happening in our solar system, not some arcane glyphs on a circular diagram being pored over by a tabloid sideshow columnist. It does a disservice to scientists involved in celestial mechanics to conflate these very different activities.
My apologies to Dr Watts if he feels this and my preceding post are irrelevant or unwarranted.
Lief:
You are one patient astrophysicist!
OK. Just for my sake, b/c I’m sure there are bigger & better “skeptics” than I to tangle with (so I’m rather grateful to get to argue with you!) but here’s my disconnect:
The sun has dimmed somewhat since about 1990.
-0.1 degrC drop has been ascribed to this decrease in luminance.
It is purported to mask that much extra warming.
I’m quite OK with all those statements (I’m a fence sitter…). I’ve been informed of this by other scientists. This is completely independent of Schwabbe Cycles, the LIA, the Maunder, etc.
That’s a big topic in of itself (and not to beat a dead horse).
On the one hand we have:
1. Low SSN observed by Galileo (correlated w/ plage/faculae numbers)
vs.
2. Normal magnetic proxies (Be10?)
Are the proxy data so far superior to Galileo’s telescopy?
It’s my understanding that the Medieval Warm Period coincided w/ high solar output and appears so, based on proxy data (Be10, C14 – Jirikowic, Damon, 9/1993). Are you saying that the Maunder proxies didn’t change much from then?
What about Galileo?
Could it be that magnetic indices aren’t representative of longer-term changes relevant to Earth’s climate?
TSI has purportedly dropped by 0.33 W/m-2 (-0.1 degrC) in the past 18 years. Has that been reflected in magnetic indices?
What I take from your statement is that we have some possibilities to chose from, the first of which you already stated before, that climate is:
1) Hypersensitive to solar variability
2) Partially sensitive within certain ranges
3) Insensitive
This may be a false dilemma. What’s “hypersensitive?” A very modest change in GMT? The system may work based upon functional limit stops, that inhere stepped equilibria from various forcing agents.
Drew Shindell modeled according to just a few parameters, but particularly his expected climate sensitivity to solar forcing (UV heating of the troposphere). He set the sensitivity lower, so he modeled a bigger drop in TSI. A higher sensitivity would require a smaller drop in TSI. I think we actually agree here.
If I take your meaning then, Shindell’s model is predicated upon sensitivity in general – w/out it the model doesn’t work b/c it’s based upon an external forcing agent (the sun).
But then we have the ongoing solar dimming of -0.1 degrC cited by other scientists. They say it’s masking GHG effects, etc. Works for me (I come into this with few prejudices on that regard — I believe CO2 causes warming but I’ve yet to see convincing evidence that it’s dangerous)
So what further magnitude reduction in TSI are we going to see on an ongoing basis, regardless of straight SSN? Colleagues in your field are saying their magnetic indices are very low, unprecedented. This as compared to your statement that 19th & 20th Century data (proxies) have been consistently higher.
We’ve already experienced a -0.1 degrC solar down-forcing since the early 1990’s, seemingly regardless of overall SSN (or SSNe?). Were we to compound that trend against both regular & long-term variations in solar output, the effect could cancel out or be larger. In our current situation I would expect a larger downtrend.
Again, the system may work based upon functional limit stops, that inhere stepped equilibria from various forcing agents. Clouds may be a huge modulator that is of yet to be understood.
In our current situation, if the extant solar un-forcing of -0.1 degrC and other natural variations (Pielke argues this is a misnomer) are enough to “mask” the CO2 signal, and they are minor masking agents, then we have a lower climate sensitivity to CO2 (as well as the sun).
And the Maunder’s possible effect in the LIA? We can’t observe the more-natural world of the 17th C.. There may have been manifold effects. Or the solar signal might’ve been more dominant back then as a forcing agent relative to other agents. In a pristine system it could be the sun’s minor changes in TSI could flip a limit-stop switch & drop the system into a different stepped equilibrium, just as the Medieval Max has been ascribed to solar input.
Our contemporary situation may be different due to GHG, marginalizing solar variation, where other factors are dominant & solar sensitivity is backgrounded. So we might enjoy a modest solar offset against GHG and never come near a LIA (I’m not claiming a LIA, never have) b/c we’re too far off from the nodal stepped equilibrium shift point that’d permit such a cascade.
So which was dominant there? The Earth system or the sun? Or is this a chicken and egg problem, that the system & the sun are linked that disentangling them it moot? IOW with such a prime input like the sun, distinctions become artificial, it’s a network of various subsystems that have their own sensitivities to perturbations & do unexpected things when parameters hit limit-stops and a new function-state kicks over.
OTOH, -0.4 degrC doesn’t sound like much to me, but we’d have to see a full -1.1 degrC temperature change to even get to the antecedent GMT of the 16th C. And even if 20th C. temperatures were 70% due to the sun, there’s 40 yr of ocean emissivity that’d have to happen first, etc.
Leif Svalgaard (22:12:03) :
“Bruce: I fail to see how that was a straw man argument. ”
Your challenge was “suppose the were no Maunder or Spoerer Minima, would you still ascribe the LIA to the Sun?”
My answer is “Of course not.” However, my expectation is that if there were no Maunder minimum there would have been no Little Ice Age. In your first phrase you change the theory, in your second phrase you put us on the spot to explain something that might not have happened. It’s not one of your better arguments.
A few random comments from not reading the rest of the posts closely enough:
Sure, the tidal (or solar acceleration) effects due to Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, etc (I think that’s the order I once computed a couple decades ago) are miniscule. However, they may be the biggest external forces upon the Sun. Do they have an effect? I have no idea. In http://personal.inet.fi/tiede/tilmari/sunspots.html Timo Niroma presents a statistical case in support of the “Jupiter Effect”, but it’s a bit distressing what he does to the data to get there. The jury isn’t out – it’s not even empaneled. If the statistics permit accurate forecasts they will encourage the theorists to theorize. Good enough for now.
The very best thing about the recent changes in the Sun’s behavior is that we finally have a good chance to sort out the relative effects of Greenhouse gases,
Solar TSI/UV/GCR, and maybe study some effects we’ve never seen before like sunspot fading.
There’s so much work to do, it’s a pity that so much research money has been directed to GHG research. With CERN’s CLOUD experiment getting going and the recent cooling despite increasing GHG, I see a bright future for research. Well, assuming the politicians don’t screw it up.
I fail to see how that was a straw man argument. My point was a comparison between solid physics and something ‘beyond argument’. Really, Leif, now you are simply being disingenuous. He apparently was able to predict solar flare activity based on cycles of solar activity 90% of the time. That is pretty remarkable accuracy, and useful in weather predictions, etc., but in any case you are comparing apples to rutabagas. I see you also conveniently ignored your bringing up of astrology, which has absolutely nothing to do with Landscheidt’s solar cycle theory, and you know it.
The deliberate attempt to discredit Landscheidt based on false and baseless analogies, and ascribing something (astrology) which you know has nothing whatsoever to do with his theory on sun cycles is irrational in nature, and based on fear. Fear of what, I couldn’t say exactly.
Your “objections” to his theory seem to be based on a relatively minor component (as well as a deliberate misunderstanding) of it; that of the sun’s irregular motion about the barycenter of the planetary system, which you call “planetary effects”.
Is cause and effect backward in this conception. Can the solar dynamo regularize the orbits, explaining the correlation?
====================
Lief:
Do you have a public-available, up-to-date source for cosmic ray measures? I can’t find one. Current and archived temps, cloud cover, density, cloud layers, top pressure, and ozone measures are all available to us. CO2 is available (no brainer on that one). I can’t find a data table or graph on cosmic ray data that is up-to-date, as in last 20 years or so, including today.
Hi Dr Svalgaard,
I’ll have to bring this to a close… thanks for all the patience in helping my understanding of TSI.
If you’d like to check in on the net heating effect of tropospheric brown clouds worldwide & soot deposition in the Arctic, my website might be of interest: http://www.scientificblogging.com/blog/258
Again, Lief, thanks & best regards, — leebert
====
Also … I posted this on the other thread … if you’d like to share your thoughts on this, feel free. If I’m reading this correctly W. Schmutz indicates that 50% of total climate response is in the troposphere.
http://i27.tinypic.com/5nkp4o.jpg
From Prof. Dr. Werner K. Schmutz, Director PMOD/WRC
Fractions of solar irradiance variations due to solar surface magnetism (lower limit estimates):
Solar rotation time scale: > 90%
Activity cycle time scale: > 90%
Secular (centuries) time scale: ?
Status: magnetic evolution can be modeled (contribution of other sources is unknown)
UV modeling
fair progress – not yet solved
UV influence on climate
ozone reaction understood
tropospheric climate response only about 50% of the estimated solar influence
Also:
Schmutz’ potential total forcing for solar.
http://i29.tinypic.com/hx44ci.jpg
Note the effects of surface ozone, it’s almost equal to methane — makes me wonder about hybrid & elec. vehicles. This is however IPCC 2001, so the black carbon is too low (and perhaps aerosols are biased as having a net cooling effect and has since been revised upward as both warming & cooling).
[…] Update: Livingston and Penn paper: “Sunspots may vanish by 2015″. […]
Bruce Cobb:
I don’t think Lief is being disingenuous. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Landscheidt’s theories are premised on the idea that the planets are tugging on the sun sufficiently that there’ll be an effect. Lief’s point is that the tidal forces of the planets are so minor that you’d have a greater gravitational effect on me than Jupiter would. Inverse square & all that rot.
I don’t know the theories, but I’ve read enough to know there are other theories that account for solar wobble & latitudinal band synchrony. It could be Landscheidt’s theory is predictive but for the wrong reasons, that it’s an artifact of the long-term cycles built into the solar system as a result of the sun’s internal dynamics.
Think about it this way, if the sun has its own unique dynamics of wobble and gravity waves, it would, over the course of so many billions of years, have aligned the planets accordingly. Chicken and egg. Just like the solar system, the sun is not a monolithic beast, it more like a network of layers with various weird dynamics. The star Betelgeuse, a vast red giant, is a big blobby mess of huge globules all holding together (before the thing blows its top).
So it could be that Landscheidt’s theory is predictive b/c the sun itself is the real locus of those perdiodicities and perturbations, and has functionally set up the solar system to reflect them.
That’s just a WAG, of course, but it’d lend toward a more agnostic look at both Landscheidt and other theories.
Think about this, just in general, applicable to science in general as well as Landscheidt. Isaac Newton developed a wonderful system of celestial mechanics that helped overturn the very predictive, but quite wrong Ptolemaic system. The Ptolemaic system was essentially a statistical one & propped up using epicycles, etc. Copernicus, Galileo & then Newton’s celestial mechanics challenged the Ptolemaic system until it was ash-canned. But think about this one: Newton, in his efforts to make his nascent system work, resorted to using epicycles, the very artifice that belied the weaknesses of the Ptolemaic system.
Scientific ego drove Newton to try to cram in an admitted artifice that made his system more predictive. Einstein fumbled on something similar, a universal constant that, so it turns out, was predictive after all but he removed it b/c at the time it made his models disagree with conventional thinking.
If this cooling trend holds, will Al (I am not crazy!) Gore have to return the Nobel Prize?
L.S.: For a deterministic answer use div, grad, & curl too; least squares will never do.
Anthony
I was looking up your resources and found the TSI graph of Lean 2000.
This graph seems to be outdated and replaced by very different graphs by Wang 2005 and Leif 2007. Could you and Lief comment on why these graphs are so different and why the different results?
Bruce: Theodor Landscheidt is on Wikipedia’s list of astrologers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astrologers
Same Wikipedia has this comment: “astrology is the use of celestial placements in order to explain past and present events and predict the future”. Prediction of flares and their influence on the weather would seem to fit that bill. On the other hand, the Moon does cause tides and yet is not astrology. The difference is one of size. If you claim an effect that arises from forces so weak they cannot be measured, then you are back to astrology.
“He [T.L.] apparently was able to predict solar flare activity based on cycles of solar activity 90% of the time”. apparently? He either was or he wasn’t. Or do you mean that he only ‘appeared’ to predict something and really didn’t? Maybe this can be resolved with a reference [and not to just another assertion] to the actual prediction of the appearance thereof.
The Sun does not feel any forces [except negligible tidal forces] while in motion about the barycenter, just like an astronaut in orbit about the Earth does not feel any forces. And it is hard to get an effect out of no force.
Your use of words is mildly offensive [disingenuous, baseless, false, fear, irrational, deliberate, etc] and is marring an otherwise hitherto refreshingly civil discourse. Maybe you’ll be so kind to join most of the other posters in trying to keep it that way…
Pamela:
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/
tallbloke:
The various motions around the barycenter do not result in net forces and the gravitational forces are precisely balanced by centrifugal forces. This is easiest seen for the case of two stars with equal masses in large circular orbits. The barycenter is exactly halfway between the stars [and thus far outside the stellar bodies]. Both stars will continue to circle forever and any ‘inhabitants’ could not measure any forces due to their motion around the barycenter. Because of this, the other arguments are moot. T.L. in 1999 predicting solar maximum in 2000.6 was just doing what every other predictor was doing and does not make T.L. stand out as any different or superior. Adding the average cycle length of 11.2 years to get the next maximum in 2011.8 does not seem to constitute strong support for his unique ideas. Since solar minimum is already very late and the next cycle is likely to be weak [long rise time], there is no way the next maximum could be as early as 2011.8, so T.L. is already wrong on that. Much more likely is a maximum in the 2013 time frame.
leebert:
“sun has dimmed since 1990 to now” and this has caused a drop of 0.1 C is misleading because it dimmed to 1997 then increased again at the next maximum and finally dimmed until now, the net drop is much less than 0.1 C.
Galileo actually saw many spots. The MM started ~years later.
kim: no.
Gary:
but if I use vid, darg, and lruc I come to the opposite result. You leave me in the dust, Sir, I have no idea what you are talking about, but shall not infringe on your right to such utterances.
All:
for explanation of the T.L. see: http://www.viewzone.com/endtime.html
and for cyclomania: http://personal.inet.fi/tiede/tilmari/sunspot2.html
Now, please spare us all for further humorous assaults of this nature.
Hemst101:
Reconstructions of TSI before 1978 rely on two primary methods:
1) assuming that the variation of TSI seen today depends on the sunspot number to same way as in the past, so the sunspot number [SSN] becomes a primary input: as SSN goes, so goes TSI, so we rely on knowing the SSN accurately in the past
2) assuming [bolstered by ad-hoc model calculations] that the interplanetary magnetic field [IMF] is derived from a general background solar field and that an apparent increase of the IMF from 1900 to 1960 is causing a linear increase of TSI over that interval.
The are indications that the SSN is too small before 1947 and that the purported increase of the IMF didn’t happen, therefore the corresponding increases in TSI didn’t happen either. But all this is still an active research are and the dust has not settled yet.
There are undoubtedly things I have not a answered, but it is time to close this, lest it ends up with being another CA-thread of 3,000 posts. [We are still going around in circles over there]
A good subject for a new thread is “The evolution of purported TSI with time”