In my post from yesterday, I highlighted a paragraph from a NASA press release which touched on one of the final findings of the soon to be ended Ulysses spacecraft mission to study the sun:
“Ulysses ends its career after revealing that the magnetic field emanating from the sun’s poles is much weaker than previously observed. This could mean the upcoming solar maximum period will be less intense than in recent history. “
A few months ago, I had plotted the Average Geomagnetic Planetary Index (Ap) which is a measure of the solar magnetic field strength but also daily index determined from running averages of eight Ap index values. Call it a common yardstick (or meterstick) for solar magnetic activity.
Click for a larger image
I had noted that there was a curious step function in 2005, almost as if something had “switched off”.
Today, since it is fathers day, and I get to do whatever I want, I chose to revisit this graph. Later I plan to take my children to launch model rockets, but for now, here are some interesting new things I’ve found.
First, I’ve updated the original Ap graph to June 2008 as you can see below.
Click for a larger image
Source data, NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/weekly/RecentIndices.txt
As you can see, the Ap Index has continued along at the low level (slightly above zero) that was established during the drop in October 2005. As of June 2008, we now have 32 months of the Ap hovering around a value just slightly above zero, with occasional blips of noise.
Since it is provided in the same dataset, I decided to also plot the smoothed Ap Index. I had noted to myself back in February that the smoothed Ap Index had dropped to minus 1.0. I figured it was just an artifact of the smoothing algorithm, but today that number remains there, and there doesn’t appear to be any change even though we’ve had a bit of noise in March that put the Ap Index back up to 10 for that month.
I also plotted my own 24 month smoothing window plot, shown in magenta.
Click for a larger image
I find it curious that the smoothed value provided by SWPC remains at -1. I figure if it is a software error, they would have noted and fixed it by now, and if they haven’t then perhaps they are standing by the number. Odd. One possibility may be that they are using a 12 month fixed window, instead of a moving window month to month. If so, then why show the -1.0 data values? Put nulls — in the dataset.
UPDATE: Astute reader Jorma Kaskiseiväs points out something I missed. The explanation is in the header for the dataset file, a short note: # Missing data: -1″. I was looking in the companion readme file for an explanation. Thanks for pointing this out. Surprising though that SWPC does not use a running average. Easy to do as I’ve shown.
While I was searching for something that could explain this, I came across this plot from NOAA’s NGDC which was used to illustrate solar storm frequency related to sunspots:
Click for original source image, a larger plot is here via FTP link.
But what I found was most interesting was the data file they provided, which had the number of days in a year where the Ap Index exceeded 40. You can view that data file yourself here via FTP link. The accompanying readme file for the data is also available here.
What is most striking is that since 1932, there have not been ANY years prior to 2007 that have zero data. The closest was 1996:
1996 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
———————————————————–
YEAR JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC TOTAL
———————————————————–
2005 3 0 2 1 3 2 2 2 3 0 0 0 18
2006 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 5
2007 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2008 0 0 0 0 0 0
Now we have almost two years.
Here is my plot of the above dataset:
Click for a larger image
I also decided to plot the 10.7 centimeter band solar radio flux, also a metric of solar activity. It is in the same SWPC dataset file as the Ap Index, in columns 8 and 9. Oddly the smoothed 10.7 CM flux value provided by SWPC also has dropped precipitously and stayed there. I also provided my own 24 month wind smoothed value which is plotted in magenta.
Click for a larger image
Like the smoothed Ap Index, it has also stayed that way a few months. NOTE: The data past Dec 2007 on the blue line from SWPC is not valid. The smoothed 24 month window is.
Either way it appears we continue to slide into a deeper than normal solar minima, one not seen in decades. Given the signs, I think we are about to embark upon a grand experiment, over which we have no control.
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Are those drops in the blue smoothing lines due to the fact that the smoothing window gets beyond the available data?
REPLY: That’s a possibility, but why would they advanc ethe window? One possibility may be that they are using a 12 month window, but instead of beign a moving window month to month, they step it by year?
It’s just plain odd that SWPC would do this. Maybe Leif Svaalgard will chime in and offer an explanation.
I think it was Einstein that said \”The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results.\”
Hi Anthony,
A suggestion for a blog post (and an invitation to any readers that would know where to look for the info).
California has been a long proponent of the ‘if you legislate it the market will build’ school of thought. I am not that familiar with the different initiatives but I do seem to recall that California is frequently forced to back pedal because, in the end, the required technology did not magically appear (e.g. practical electric cars).
California’s experience probably has a lot of lessons for those people pushing cap and trade and carbon taxes. I would not assume that it is all bad – the successes would be interesting as well but I am willing to bet that the successes occurred only when a viable technology existed but just needed time to be deployed. Does anyone know of a successful previously unknown technology that was developed in response to these kinds of mandates?
I found it interesting that you mentioned that here have not been ANY years prior to 2007 that have zero data. The closest was 1996, because at my location 1996 was the last year we’ve had temperatures this cold and actually 2008 has been slightly colder.
Plus 1996 was also the last year that Fargo, ND had a top 10 coldest year on record (including the 1880s data set with questionable measuring techniques) and this year so far is easily within reach of that unless we have a huge turnaround this later this summer into the autumn season.
Anyway, good read. I may try to incorporate this into the daily column we do for our local paper.
Raven:
The prototype for the “if you legislate it they will build it” school of lawmaking was the original US Clean Air Act. No one knew how cars could meet those emissions standards, but then Ford scientists developed the catalytic converter, and Ford did not enforce its patent rights.
Unfortunately, this lucky success led legislators to believe this was an easily repeatable event.
This is indeed getting curiouser and curiouser….
While I prefer science to politics (I’ll take the scientific method over any other, thank you) humans have always been political as well as and curious and inquisitive beings.
That said I can be as political as the next guy and, to be honest, I hope that these indicators of a possible downturn in the energy output of the sun are true. AGW, in my humble opinion, has too long been little more than inflated hysterics and hype. Frankly, I am fed up with this nonsense. A good cool spell would be a welcome event and demonstrate what I suspect to be the single most important parameter in long term global temperature trends — the sun.
If only another mini ice-age would —
1) Cool off the IPCC.
2) Give some pause to the the AGW scientists, bureaucrats, and politicians who suck up all the funding and stifle, defund, intimidate, and marginalize scientists who do not tow the AGW line.
3) Shut up the insufferable Al Gore for a decade or two.
Anthony:
I come close by calculating an average of the preceding and following 6 month (including the center month) but can’t quite get the same value. Maybe its weighted by the number of days. OTOH, could be a different algorithm, like a Gaussian kernel. But it’s quite likely the Smoothed Ap value is in the center of whatever is used for smoothing.
In any case, -1 means NA so if you’re using R (or S), you can say data$Ap[data$Ap==-1] = NA. When plotted the NA’s are dropped.
A tad off topic, but the NCDC temp data for May has been released. NCDC says the Mar/Apr/May time period is the seventh hottest on record. Isn’t the divergence between NCDC/GISS and satellite RSS/UAH becoming a tad ludicrous? NCDC needs to make that bold leap into the 21st century as far as temp measurements are concerned.
It says so in the RecentIndices.txt header:
# Missing data: -1
REPLY: Ah, my bad. Thanks for pointing it out. I missed that altogether, I looked in the readme file for an explanation and found none.
Anthony wrote: “Today, since it is fathers day, and I get to do whatever I want, I chose to revisit this graph. Later I plan to take my children to launch model rockets, but for now, here are some interesting new things I’ve found.”
They still allow you to do that out there in La La Land? Do you have to purchase carbon credits first?
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
Bill: Are you certain about the NCDC “7th hottest spring” data? I just checked the NCDC “climate at a glance” page, and the plot for spring 2008 shows that most of the US was average or colder for the season, only 3-4 states warmer than avg (Texas and a couple of northeastern states).
It will be interesting to see , if , despite this lower solar activity, global temperatures rise, what will be the next sceptical theory that totally ignores 6.5 billion people (and rising) responsible for pumping 50 thousand tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every minute, every day and every year.
Why do your Ap graphs not show any change in 1998 when global temperatures spiked? Is this an acceptance that earthly factors (i.e. El Nino) were far more influential?
And why is the American media refusing to put two and two together over global warming and the increased levels of global flooding as predicted by climate change models?
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/12/102024/948/
I am thinking of Voyager (I and II, not Star Trek II).
Thee apparently are cominginto contact with the hekliosheath. If the Sun is so much weaker magnetically, then we have been lucky for the spacecraft to have been launched at such a time, otherwise tyhe heliosheath would still be far away.
There are lots of reasons for floods. Heavy snow melt, fronts colliding, jet stream sags into hotter areas of the US, 100 year floods not allowed to seep into flood plains so the rivers crest into towns instead, towns expanding since 100 years ago and now when it floods it floods basements instead of wet lands, etc. We also get daily coverage, minute by minute, 24 hours a day, news. Any time there is a flood, it makes it into our living rooms. 100 years ago, we just moved to higher ground till the flood ended. Now we look for signs from God that our mother caused it. The Missoula Floods were caused by ice jams breaking, then building, then breaking, again and again as the Earth cycled through warming and cooling. Now those were FLOODS!!!! Can you imagine what people would be saying today if we had a flood like that? There would likely be a laundry list of all the things that caused that ice to build up, damn up the water, then break free.
Dennis,
Anyone with a shred of meterological training knows that this year’s severe weather and attendent flooding in North America is caused by the La Nina event of the last year. Also, climate models do not project anything, but people infer things from them. The current run of global cooling was predicted by any climate models in the recent past.
As I behold the dying sun, with brightened eyes.
It’s light will then/soon dis/appear? from/in the land of death.
The frozen land of death.
Of death.
The winter, the darkness, the kingdom of all the night.
Of all the night.
I can hear the sun’s breathing, the dying sun,
Behold the last of him, it will faint to grey.
To grey.
To grey.
The wings of winter, will rise as it dies.
The crystal ground will ask the sun to die.
Die!
As the sun die
Die!
The winter, the darkness, the kingdom of all the night.
Of all the night.
Behold the dying sun.
Dennis,
Ah, so now the flooding in the Midwest is due to global warming. But we must also remember that droughts, blizzards, hurricanes, tornados, ice melt, ice increase, and any other number of weather events are directly attributable to global warming.
Here’s the simple 2+2 you are missing: global temperatures aren’t rising, and they haven’t for a decade. Why has this Nina dropped temperatures just as low as the La Nina in 1999, even though that one was just as strong? Shouldn’t the underlying global warming have made temperatures a bit warmer this time around?
Dennis, ah honesty at last. It’s those pesky other humans. Which ones do you suggest should die.
Evan,
Your poetry is fine
though it don’t seem to rhyme.
If I thought you not a him
I would guess
Ursela K. LeGuin
I have a link, on my other computer unfortunately, showing global flood frequency over the last 30 years.
It shows a slight increasing trend caused by more minor floods (probably a reporting frequency over that time.
More importantly, it shows a clear downward trend in major floods over the period.
Here it is,
http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Efloods/archiveatlas/severitygraph.htm
“I think we are about to embark upon a grand experiment, over which we have no control.”
Its a well known Chinese Curse to live in interesting times. Well, here we are again.
As some has pointed out, the various ‘-1’s simply mean ‘missing data’. For the smoothed values it simply means no smoothing was done because there was no data. Cycle 23 is low, but not anomalously so: Cycle 13 [some 107 years ago] was very similar. It simply means that we are returning to the quiet solar conditions we have observed about every 100 years, and cycle 24 will probably be lower than 23, just as 14 was lower than 13, although we don’t know why there should be such a ~100 year cycle. Because of the measured weaker polar fields, the prediction of a low cycle 24 is not simply an extrapolation, but a real prediction based on [albeit poorly understood] physical theory. Cycle 24 will be a test of that theory. Should cycle 24 turn out to be large [or even average], the theory is clearly wrong and we [Schatten and I] are back to square one. Luckily, there are other theories [e.g. Dikpati et al’s] that can take over so we are not completely in the dark.
Should cycle 24 turn out to be large [or even average], the theory is clearly wrong and we [Schatten and I] are back to square one. Luckily, there are other theories [e.g. Dikpati et al’s] that can take over so we are not completely in the dark.
Spoken like a true scientist. Others who shall not be named should hang their heads in shame.
Just for grins I went back and looked at the SOHO “movies” of solar activity from September and October to see if I could notice any visual changes about the time the data had that step-change. I didn’t see anything, though, except there seemed to be a lot more and larger CMEs in September than October.
SOHO movies from September and October of 2005, that is.