The sun on 08/12/2008 just before midnight UTC – spotless
As many of you know, the sun has been very quiet, especially in the last month. In a NASA news release article titled What’s Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing) solar physicist David Hathaway goes on record as saying:
“It does seem like it’s taking a long time,” allows Hathaway, “but I think we’re just forgetting how long a solar minimum can last.”
No argument there. But it does seem to me that the purpose of Hathaway’s July 11th article was to smooth over the missed solar forecasts he’s made. Here is a comparison of early and more recent forecasts from Hathway:
Click for a larger image
He also seems intent on making sure that when compared to a grand minima, such as the Maunder Minimum, this current spotless spell is a mere blip.
The quiet of 2008 is not the second coming of the Maunder Minimum, believes Hathaway. “We have already observed a few sunspots from the next solar cycle,” he says. (See Solar Cycle 24 Begins.) “This suggests the solar cycle is progressing normally.”
What’s next? Hathaway anticipates more spotless days1, maybe even hundreds, followed by a return to Solar Max conditions in the years around 2012.
I would hope that Hathaway’s newest prediction, that this is “not the
second coming of the Maunder Minimum” or even a Dalton Minimum for that matter, holds true.
1Another way to examine the length and depth of a solar minimum is by counting spotless days. A “spotless day” is a day with no sunspots. Spotless days never happen during Solar Max but they are the “meat and potatoes” of solar minima.
Adding up every daily blank sun for the past three years, we find that the current solar minimum has had 362 spotless days (as of June 30, 2008).Compare that value to the total spotless days of the previous ten solar minima: 309, 273, 272, 227, 446, 269, 568, 534, ~1019 and ~931. The current count of 362 spotless days is not even close to the longest.
Though, Livingston and Penn seem to think we are entering into a grand minima via their recent paper.
As mentioned in “What’s next?”, we are now adding to the total of spotless days in this minima, and since the last update in that article, June 30th, 2008 where they mention this, we have added very few days with sunspots, perhaps 3 or 4.
Adding up every daily blank sun for the past three years, we find that the current solar minimum has had 362 spotless days (as of June 30, 2008).
So it would seem, that as of August 12th, 2008, we would likely have reached a total of 400 spotless days. The next milestone for recent solar minimas is 446 spotless days, not far off. It will be interesting to see where this current minima ends up.
h/t to Werner Weber
[…] only been a handful of days in the past two months where any sunspot activity has been observed and over 400 spotless days have been recorded in the current solar […]
And the last sunspot was an SC23. Area 1000 I believe they called it.
12 years long it is. Not the granddaddy, but a long one indeed.
What if SC24 has already begun, but it has so little impetus that it won’t be recognizable until 2-3 years down the road?
Chilling.
Leif,
Thanks!
And just to add to the fun…. have you seen this?
NEW CLIMATE RECORD SHOWS SOLAR-DRIVEN MEGA-DROUGHTS
http://news.research.ohiou.edu/news/index.php?item=503
There’s such a tempting – and seemingly more than anecdotal or coincidental history of solar influences on Earth’s climate – that I feel we should carefully frame the way long-term TSI is relegated as a lesser climate factor.
If TSI is less variable than previously believed, then the ramifications are manifold & seem to me as posing some fascinating quandaries. The mystery compounds, and if cosmic rays aren’t the answer (not to say they aren’t, b/c we agree the jury’s still out on GCR flux) then Earth’s climate is far more responsive to solar influnces than previously known, and by association, could also be more sensitive to other forcings.
However, this may not be the case, because TSI and greenhouse gases aren’t fungible. As I’ve pointed out before, TSI has slackened by the equivalent of -0.1 degrees Celsius since circa 1992 with a functional -0.065 degrees C/decade effect, while Earth’s albedo has been boosted by aerosols with a nearly -0.07 degrees C/decade effect (Ramanathan, Carmichael, 2008). The net effect is -0.135 degrC/decade effect, with a concurrently stable global temperature trend of slight cooling in the seas & air.
But the point in all this is that TSI’s direct effects are more or less linear, but CO2’s effect is not — it’s logarithmic. If GCR flux doesn’t prevail as a major player, a lesser role for TSI puts a new wrinkle in CO2’s logarithmic effect — perhaps more intense at lower concentrations, greater saturation at higher concentrations.
The upshot of this is that the sun & aerosols have offset (or masked) the effects of greenhouse gases by the same amount. If these two trends don’t abate & temperatures remain stable, I feel we might have a pretty solid indicator of total GHG effects at +0.135 degrC/decade – not a scary AGW result at all, in my mind. Unprecedented? Maybe…. Less than ideal? Perhaps. Dangerous? I don’t see it.
[…] only been a handful of days in the past two months where any sunspot activity has been observed and over 400 spotless days have been recorded in the current solar […]
[…] only been a handful of days in the past two months where any sunspot activity has been observed and over 400 spotless days have been recorded in the current solar […]
[…] only been a handful of days in the past two months where any sunspot activity has been observed and over 400 spotless days have been recorded in the current solar cycle. As we reported last week, the Armagh observatory, which has been […]
[…] only been a handful of days in the past two months where any sunspot activity has been observed and over 400 spotless days have been recorded in the current solar […]
The global cooling isn’t on the nightly news, and the public is blissfully unaware of it.
They don’t even know what Solar Minima means, much less deep Solar Minima.
The Media pounds green to fight Global Warming, and the average Joe thinks it’s the latest cup of tea.
[…] only been a handful of days in the past two months where any sunspot activity has been observed and over 400 spotless days have been recorded in the current solar […]
Courtesy of Kuhnkat at Jennifer’s:
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/tsi_data/daily/SORCE_L3_TSI_DM_V0008_20030225_20080812.txt
Note TSI at earth distance. Including the albedo, UV associated with solar flaring, and solarwind/geomagnetic fluctuations the energy absorbed by the earth varies >10%.
I see a harmonic relationship between the 188 yr cycle and the oft out-of-sync 243 yr cycle that plays a big role in ending the minimum of note (like the oort, wolf, maunder, etc.).
astro-ph, 2006 June 27
LONG-TERM VARIABILITY IN THE LENGTH OF THE SOLAR CYCLE
The Minimum are triggered by very long SC’s as measured from minima to minima. They are ended in the relationship of where the Minimum started on the curves of the 243 yr cycle and whether the 188 yr cycle was rising or falling when the Minimum began. Another 1000 yrs of data would be helpful, but the relationships are harmonious and neat.
Looking at the sunspot cycle length for the triggers the lead to the Maunder and the Dalton Minimums, a preceeding minima to minima plus maxima to maxima of an average of 14 yrs or longer suffices to ‘pull the trigger’.
So, we would need SC24 to start at 2010.5 and maxima at 2014.3 to have a new Minimum of record firing mechanism, or any combination of SC24 start and SC24 maxima that leads to an average of 14 yrs from the SC23 start and SC23 maxima. i.e. – sc24 start of 2010 and sc24 maxima of 2015 would do.
[…] the truth is that we are NOT at a 100 year high (days w/o sunspots). Not even close. At wattsupwiththat: Adding up every daily blank sun for the past three years, we find that the current solar minimum […]
[…] It didn’t take long for nature to show the IPCC was wrong. Excuses were equally quick to appear. For example, they said it was El Nino but that turned out to be a non-event. Of course, the IPCC couldn’t get the right answer for the cooling trend because it was not programmed in the computer. While they include solar activity they only consider one aspect – the electromagnetic spectrum. Meanwhile they studiously avoided any discussion of the clear relationship between sunspot activity and temperature. They claimed there was no mechanism to explain the correlation so it could not be included, but that is incorrect. A very valid mechanism known as the Cosmic Theory (Svensmark and Calder, “The Chilling Stars”) has been in the literature with increasing detail since 1991. The date is important because IPCC claimed it was excluded because it was not published in time to meet their cut off date for consideration. Solar activity has declined since a peak at the end of the 20th century. There have been virtually no sunspots for over 400 days. […]
I just found out about a putative influence of Saturn and Jupiter on sunspots after seeing a reference to it the account of Velikovsky’s last of his numerous meetings with Einstein.
http://www.varchive.org/bdb/meeting.htm
(Velikovsky’s ideas for why the coupling exist aside, the relation does seem to exist, whatever the cause.)
Here are some links I’ve found pertinent to the Jupiter/Saturn/Solar interaction. I don’t know which, if any, are reliable, but they look like they might provide at least some useful information.
http://lep694.gsfc.nasa.gov/gunther/gunther/MikulaSS2006Article.pdf
http://www.john-daly.com/topevnts.htm
http://www.jupitersdance.com/
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1979stiw.conf..193M
http://www.predictweather.co.nz/assets/articles/article_resources.php?id=89
But my question is, IS ANYONE USING THIS INFORMATION TO PREDICT WHAT TO EXPECT FOR SS24? IF SO, WHERE CAN I FIND IT?