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
This is one of those cases where it is what it is. But what it does draw into focus are the predictions made by various academics. I believe most of the predictions are more along the lines of the magnitude of the next cycle, not really the timing of it so much. But if cycle 14 turns out to be significantly different from what was forecast, it is going to raise questions about how well they really understand solar dynamics.
One thing that I have been particularly interested in was a statement Dr. Hathaway made about two years ago concerning a weakening of what he called a solar “magnetic conveyor belt” and predicted that solar cycle 25 would be the weakest in centuries.
I have heard no updates on the current state of this “conveyor belt” and I have written to Dr. Hathaway on the subject about a year ago but received no response, though I am unsure if he still reads that account (but it didn’t bounce).
The gist of the statement was that it seemed that magnetic activity was related to solar activity two cycles hence. But it certainly does seem to fit in with other data that appear to show a general quieting of solar activity.
George M (19:48:31) :
Well, I have a couple of questions and a comment plus question.
Over what range of wavelengths is TSI measured?
The ‘T’ means ‘Total’, so all wavelenghts.
If TSI is constant, how are coronal mass ejections and other events which shut down power lines and disrupt communications and other similar events accounted for?
TSI measures photons that reach us after 8 minutes at the speed of light [it is light, after all]. The CMEs [more generally – the solar wind] are particles that reach us after ~1 day or more. The total energy of these particles is very, very much smaller than that of TSI. That they can have any effect at all lies in the fact that the solar wind is magnetized and the interaction between the Earth’s magnetic field and the magnetic field of the solar wind results in a time-varying magnetic field near the Earth. When you have a changing magnetic field and a conductor [the ionosphere and higher atmosphere] you have a dynamo that produces currents by induction. These currents can run in millions of Amperes and the magnetic effects of those [varying] currents in turn induces currents in our transformers and power lines with attendant bad effects.
Leif wrote:
I’m a bit perplexed by this. Total TSI may be misleading. AFAICT the question needs to focus on which component spectra vary with sunspot activity, how much those vary, and their net effects.
One argument *for* AGW claims that TSI has decreased slightly since circa 1992, the equivalent of -0.1 degrees Celsius.
see:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/tsi_vs_temp.gif
http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
But what part of TSI has fallen? Or do we scratch this claim of decreased TSI?
Or would this implicate greater effects from facular UV, which may vary more with solar activity than total TSI? Is there data that tracks UV levels with sunspots & climate? Or are the UV data also subject to revision along these lines?
I keep thinking back to Drew Shindell’s 2001 study on the Little Ice Age. His focus was on the changes in facular UV having a net cooling effect from the loss of UV heating of the lower stratosphere, resulting in a cooler upper troposphere. So even if all net TSI doesn’t vary much, UV radiation still varies with sunspot faculae.
Seems to me this still leaves us with UV radiation & cosmic rays (not included in TSI) having an impact on climate. Even those studies critical of cosmic ray effects concede that there may be some effect, just not a dominant one.
But since both UV and cosmic ray radiation vary with overall solar activity, the climate may be more sensitive to them. Total net TSI doesn’t have to vary much for UV & cosmic rays to vary a great deal.
We’re itinerant & traveling, I’m typing this on a friend’s computer. I’d be very happy were someone to take the time & graph UV & cosmic ray levels against temperatures.
Paul Clark from WoodforTrees.org … could you add UV (c & b) & cosmic ray levels to your data sources?
There’s something I haven’t seen much discussion on and that is the effects of increased surface ozone coupled with the advent of stratospheric ozone loss. I don’t know what the state of the art is, but for instance: Since stratospheric ozone (SO) loss intensified since Pinatubo was there faster polar warming from increased UV coupled with greater surface ozone, especially in the Arctic during the ozone hole maxima in springtime?
The plots you show from ‘scepticalscience’ show nice ‘reconstructions’ of TSI before the measurements started in 1978 clearly matching the rise in temperature. I’ll argue here: http://www.leif.org/research/GC31B-0351-F2007.pdf that this rise did not happen and that TSI is effectively dead as a climate ‘regulator’. Similarly, as the UV-portion of TSI and cosmic rays and geomagnetic activity and the rest generally vary with TSI [or with that good proxy for TSI, the sunspot number], there is not much long-term variation there either. Since UV thus does not have any long-term drift, I wouldn’t worry about Ozone. It is instructive to remember that some of the earliest reconstructions of TSI [Hoyt&Schatten, Lean] that Shindell used in his study were constructed by the solar physicists explicitly to explain the LIA, in effect using climate as a proxy for solar activity.
[…] Spotless days: 400 and counting […]
TSI is effectively dead as a climate ‘regulator’
I’ve read most of your threads at Climate Audit and you have convinced me. Unfortunately, some people need to cling to TSI as the main climate driver as the alternative to CO2 and GHGs.
There are other alternatives to GHGs as climate drivers. I personally like things that affect phase changes of water, in particular change from gas to liquid (droplets).
To all you noted academics out there contributing to this discussion. Much appreciated by us novices.
Dr. Svalgaard,
Further up the page you say,
“…And one of the foremost experts in this field, Judith Lean, said in her latest report at the SORCE meeting in 2008 in discussing variations of TSI on various time scales that ‘5-minute oscillations vary 0.003%, 27-day rotation gives a variation of 0.2%, the 11-year solar cycle yields 0.1%, and longer-term variations are not yet detectable‘.”
Yet, when I look at current TSI, I see it is varying between 1360.75 and 1360.9 over the last three months (and obviously they must be giving us an adjusted value given the distance from the sun).
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/total_solar_irradiance_plots/sorce_tsi_plot.html
If TSI at max is 1366, aren’t we already off the max by .3 percent, more than 3 times the amount that Judith Lean states is the variance between max and min in the typical 11 year cycle? Or is this just an artifact due to different measurements of TSI from different satellites?
Obviously linear trends need to be looked at suspiciously, but if the current trend does continue because we are entering a time with a less active sun, we will approach 1358 watts per square meter in roughly 40-50 months. This would put us 8 watts lower than max, or .5 percent. Looks like cycle 24 and perhaps cycle 25 will answer all kinds of questions about the sun and its impact on the earth’s climate.
The NWS has stated that for most of Oregon we have had brief warm spells and extended periods of below normal temperatures this summer. There is a hot spell coming but it could be our last one. Night time temps have been way below last year. It’s like we can’t hold the heat in. The early morning temps have been especially chilly. Just a short walk up a mountain trail and night time temps are in the freezing range. These kinds of temps this early in the fall indicate that a very cold winter is coming. Tell me again that CO2 is causing global warming and I am going to puke.
Some scientist out there, possibly a young or new scientist, will look at previously rejected theories with fresh eyes and find something that was overlooked that will become the no-brainer of the century.
http://sidc.oma.be/sunspot-index-graphics/sidc_graphics.php
Whenever I look at the these graphics of the recorded sunspot cycles, I find a relationship between how long a cycle lasts and the resultant maximum of the next cycle. i.e. – the longer sc23 drags this out, the flatter and smaller the maximum of sc24. It doesn’t even matter if the outgoing cycle reaches zero or not, it just takes life away from the incoming cycle by hanging around.
The cycle before the onset of MMinimum and DMinimum follow this pattern.
One little area today fizzled rapidly in the far northern latitudes.
This is clearly eating away at SC24.
Kim Mackey (22:16:28) :
If TSI at max is 1366, aren’t we already off the max by .3 percent, more than 3 times the amount that Judith Lean states is the variance between max and min in the typical 11 year cycle? Or is this just an artifact due to different measurements of TSI from different satellites?
You are correct on the artifact. Here is a comparison of all the satellites:
http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant
The TSI from SORCE/TIM is for unknown reasons 4.5 W/m2 lower than the ACRIM and PMOD values, so when you have to adjust for that.
The downward trend has now stopped. TSI is rock steady at 1360.8 [with a small rotational signal up and down of +/-0.1]. TSI has been steady like this for almost a year now and there are no indications of further decrease. The PMOD values are still decreasing. but that is due to a slow drift of the instrument. You can see how the difference between PMOD and SORCE/TIM here: http://www.leif.org/research/DiffTSI(PMOD-SORCE).png is slowly decreasing with time, i.e. PMOD decreasing. This is an artifact, as the SORCE/TIM has excellent calibration against a number of non-varying stars.
Since the failure of SC24 to take hold, the Western US has been locked into a stagnant weather pattern of Low in the Pacific and High in the 4 corners.
And it is about 10 degrees cooler here in far No. Ca. All the animals are coming out of the hills and looking for food, and it’s not even Sept. yet.
It will be a chilly winter, just like last winter.
somehow, the software louses up my link. I’ll try this way:
You can see how the difference between PMOD and SORCE/TIM : here is slowly decreasing with time. If this doesn’t work, you’ll have to copy/paste the complete URL yourself.
correction of typo: TSI is rock steady at 1360.9 +/-0.1 rotational signal. I estimate that when the rotational modulation finally stops, that TSI will sit at 1360.85 for a while before heading up again as SC24 takes off. This is, of course, pure speculation.
And here is a plot of SCORCE-TIM TSI since 2006. The green triangle marks the minimum value calculated from the quadratic fit [black curve]. Note how steady the curve is since the middle of 2007.
Dr Svalgaard has attempted to hammer flat the TSI, the aa Index and everything else that might show that the Sun is not the boring ball of his imagination. Try as he might, one thing that he can’t hammer flat is the Be 10 record which shows a good correlation with the temperature rise of the 20th century. The IMF and aa Index are now falling away to levels we haven’t seen for 50 years or more. The Sun had a burst of activity in the 20th century and is now having a well earned rest.
Our generation has known a warm, giving Sun, but the next will suffer a Sun that is less giving, and the Earth will be less fruitful.
Besides wavelet analysis, the other line of inquiry that will attract attention from here is the force that dare not speak its name. I am continuing to help in that field.
Confirmed: 100 straight days without a visible SC 24 sunspot. That is a new “record” for most consecutive days between SC 24 spots.
David Archibald (23:16:12) :
one thing that he can’t hammer flat is the Be 10 record which shows a good correlation with the temperature rise of the 20th century. The IMF and aa Index are now falling away to levels we haven’t seen for 50 years or more.
Actually they are back where they were 100 years ago, so the 10Be level [or rather the cosmic ray flux] should also have decreased over the last 50 years, to compensate for the increase during the first 50 years. Yet, the cosmic ray flux at each solar minimum has been rock steady ever since the measurements started in the 1950s as shown here. The slight difference between minima [“peaked” vs. “rounded”] is well-understood in terms of cosmic ray diffusion depending on the polarity of the solar general magnetic field]. It is evident that there has been no systematic change in the 10Be flux since 1950 and we don’t expect any in the years to come.
Pamela Gray (16:11:24) : For our Northern viewers, the degrees mentioned about a cold August in Australia are centigrade not fahrenheit! Also, I have lived in Brisbane for 30 years and have kept a daily diary in that time with temps in it. This August is the coldest on my record with everyday this month being ~2.5degrees (centigrade!) below the norm (which only goes back to Captain Cooks diary!)
for the sake of accuracy, the 10Be flux should have >i>increased over the first 50 and decreased over the last 50 years [I had it backwards, lured by David’s inaccurate statement that 10B shows good correlation with temperature – it is an anti-correlation – sloppiness is contagious 🙂 ]
gee: increased and 10Be, not 10B. Time to go to bed.
Matt Annecharico: “How far back does the sunspot data go? Can we look at a trend over say 50 years? A hundred?”
WFT has SIDC sunspot data back to 1750:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:132
Leibert: “…could you add UV (c & b) & cosmic ray levels to your data sources?”
Do you have a URL of a regularly updated data source? – I need monthly averaged data in some simple text format (and more free time ;-( )
[…] 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 […]
F Rasmin: One has only to observe conditions on the ground to see marked changes from a protracted and zeroed minima only 1 year + into it.
Cancel out the localized effect of High & Lows temp + pressure cells and we readily see & feel the effects of a Sun on extended Siesta.
I know it sounds too simple to be true, but there really is an observable end-result at the ground level…. terra firma.
Heck, even the public has noticed the strange effects, it’s that obvious.
As far as average joe knows, though, science hasn’t said anything about it, so it must be him.
Well, what about it? When is science going to tell the public?
Anybody?
I need some help with something – why do the sunspot numbers on solarcycle24.com disagree with the numbers we’re discussing?
When I look at days and days of a spotless sun in the SOHO archives and yet, when the chart (http://www.dxlc.com/solar/images/solar.gif) shows we had ten sports in mid July, I have to wonder what I’m missing.