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
If the science is never settled, Leif, than what’s stopping you from looking at what’s happening all around you?
Do we even agree that the minima is real, or is this going by the way of analysis paralysis?
We’ve had two minima of note since modern Astronomy got it’s feet wet.
Both got cold, one got really cold.
Does it really matter if the sunspots are merely invisible if the end result is still the same thing, i.e. – drastically reduced growing seasons?
Who cares why at this point? We are either in a minima or we are not.
It’s either going to get progressively colder or it’s not.
Call it.
We can wait another lifetime for the how & why and all the grand models.
Just call it like you see it.
Hi Leif,
thanks for your contribution making this one of the most informative and well argued threads on the blog, and Brendan H – a couple of those folk medicines would be welcome to help clear the cobwebs away!
By the way, what ever happened to Gaia?
What ever happened to Gaia?
Can it be she’s not?
Or did she leave the kitchen
when it got too hot?
I never believed in Gaia,
but she kept the pagans quite.
Now a little change in temp,
and they start to riot.
drat! “quite” = “quiet”.
I’ll call it like I see it, and be damned! It has been cold in Sydney this winter. Two weeks ago we had what was initially reported as snow on the North Shore of the Sydney metropolitan area (Roseville, Lindfield high ridges) in the early morning that melted by about 10am as the sun came up. This hasn’t happened for a while. But lo and behold by evening news time this was being reported as ‘soft hail’ by the Bureau of Metereology. In my wild erratic fancy my mind imagined BoM bureacrats rushing out to Roseville on a moment’s notice that morning to apply who-knows-what techniques to establish that this was soft hail and not snow in the half hour before it melted. Anyway, in the end the media (and the ABC in particular) were able to present a message that did not assist in ‘spreading doubt about global warming’ as Jennifer Mahorasy had been accused of doing on the ABC the evening before. As the American Psychological Association has concluded, such negative messages can prevent people understanding the truth of global warming. The Ministry of Truth would be proud. Anyway, it is still cold here. As an old lag this feels about as cold as the mid 80’s. But what would I know..
Leif,
“so I plead clueless as to what TSI and CO2 have to do with each other. ”
Never said they had anything to do with each other.
What I was objecting to was your earlier claim that since TSI alone couldn’t be the cause, it must be CO2.
Actually two noisy signals make coupling easier, not impossible.
Jared,
You have to remember that for Leif, anything less than a perfect match is sufficient to disqualify a relationship.
Unless you are talking about temperature and CO2.
Leif,
Could Sunspot variations and global temperature variations be caused by the same forces – thus, giving a false impression that Sunspots are related to GT?
I have read that Sunspots are caused by changes in the Sun’s orbit around the Solar System center of mass. These center of mass changes are due to the constant, cyclic repositioning of the planets’ masses. It is hypothesized that the tidal and acceleration forces on the Sun cause internal changes that lead to cyclic sunspots. It would seem a lot of energy is transferred (or at least changed from potential to kinetic) by moving the Solar System center of mass.
Could similar tidal and acceleration forces be acting on the Earth as the Solar System center of mass cyclically varies? At a minimum, there would be cyclic accelerations to the Earth. Could these accelerations/forces impart enough energy to the Earth (say by deforming the crust or causing ocean tides) to create temperature variations in the land and sea? Or, could they change underground magma flows?
In brief, one could hypothesize that the cyclic changes in the Solar System center of gravity that causes sunspots could also interact with Earth causing a type of “geothermal energy” that affects Earth GT. These would be synchronized with sunspots — thus giving the illusion that they were somehow caused by sunspots (or Solar mechanisms related to sunspots) — where, in fact, it would be the same “third party” mechanism causing both sunspots and changes in GT.
Has someone specifically disproved this particular hypothesis?
I’m gonna assume that other people saw this posted at junkscience.com.
It’s in a letter sent to the Belfast Times
Lazlo (04:48:57): “In my wild erratic fancy…”
Just so long as you keep seeing the vision splendid, of the sunlit…, Lazlo
LEIF
Hopefully this chart reproduces better. The table shows that during each month this year, as the number of major solar wind ram pressure spikes [5 nPa and higher] changes, so does the CRUTEM3 global monthly land temperature anomaly. I noted [in the brackets] the total number of monthly hours that the solar spike was 5 Npa or more [using hourly average plots]. I also noted the number of hours that the wind was from the ‘south’ or negative angle in the last column. What I found, as MAKAROVA found, is that major solar wind dynamic pressure spikes if from the ‘south’ bring the magnetopause closer to earth and this seems to raise Stratosphere temperatures. I am seeing a temperature spikes in the troposphere as well. The AUGUST 8, 9 2008 solar wind spike well illustrates this. The warming first started at the stratosphere level and then spread to the troposphere. I am currently doing this analysis on a daily basis noting the temperature changes at various elevations up to 17 km with each major solar wind dynamic pressure spike[ over 5nPa] . A similar pattern is emerging from this daily study and the impact is even clearer. Strong La Nina and El Nino conditions seem to modify the results .When the wind angle is from ‘north’ or[+], the temperature impact is much less and even nil. The direction sometime is changing so rapidly, that it is hard to measure which governs
2008 # OF
MONTH SPIKES [HRS] TEMP ANOMALY HOURS SOUTH
JAN 2[15] 0 .24 6
FEB 3 [11] 0.336 5
MAR 4 [26] 0 .902 17
APRIL 4 [12] 0.328 6
MAY 2 [4] 0 .282 1
JUNE 3 [17] 0.432 10
JULY 2 [8] NA. NA
MarkW (05:06:05) :
“so I plead clueless as to what TSI and CO2 have to do with each other. ”
Never said they had anything to do with each other.
What I was objecting to was your earlier claim that since TSI alone couldn’t be the cause, it must be CO2.
You keep saying that. Please show me [dig it up if you have to] where I ever claimed that. Do you really think that CO2 caused the MWP or that lack of CO2 caused the LIA? If not, how can you ever believe that I would think so? Even if you did [do?] hold such a silly belief, does that give you the right to ‘object’? No, all you can do is ‘argue’ your case, not ‘object’ to someone having a different belief [especially if he does not].
Allen (06:03:20) :
[…] I have read that Sunspots are caused by changes in the Sun’s orbit around the Solar System center of mass. […] Has someone specifically disproved this particular hypothesis?
There is no need to disprove this because the neither the Sun, nor the Earth feel any forces associated with their orbits, they are both in free fall, just like an astronaut on a spacewalk or an [unfortunate] man in an elevator where the cable is broken. No astronomer or physicist is working on disproving the hypothesis, just like nobody is working on proving that the planets are being pushed around in their orbits by angels.
Robert Bateman (00:43:34) :
If the science is never settled, Leif, than what’s stopping you from looking at what’s happening all around you?
For the record, I believe the climate undergoes swings: MWP, LIA, modern warming, possible cooling coming. I do not believe these swings are caused by the Sun. Or rather, I believe that the scientific case has not been made that they are. This means in my book that they could have been caused by the Sun, just that we have no evidence that they are, or, rather, that the ‘evidence’ presented is too weak to convince me. You may be convinced, that is your problem.
matt v. (07:26:29) :
Six cases do not make good statistics. There is solar wind data back to 1963, so do the analysis for the full dataset.
Pofarmer (07:24:10) :
Based on the past Armagh measurements, this suggests that over the next two decades, global temperatures may fall by about 2 degrees C.
In the past 200 years global temperatures have not varied by 2 degrees, so why should they now? The variation has been less than 1 degree. I assume we are not talking about individual years but some kind of smoothed variation [“over the next two decades”]. Individual years can vary a lot more in either direction.
Profarmer- “However, temperatures have already fallen by about 0.5 degrees C over the past 12 months and, if this is only the start of it, it would be a serious concern.”
Where was the figure of 0.5 degrees Centigrade plucked from? Is it a global or a local termperature. If it is a global mean then it is plainly false, unless you know different! If based on local temperatures it’s called weather.
“Cycle 23, which hasn’t finished yet, looks like it will be long (at least 12 to 13 years) and cycle 24, which has still to start, looks like it will be exceptionally weak.”
Again misleading and innacurate, all the indications are that Cycle 24 will be very active followed by a quiet Cycle 25, I don’t know if that will happen but this is the accepted probability. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10may_longrange.htm
It’s this kind of regurgitated nonsense presented as a fact that is driving the whole global warming argument into a farcical sideshow. So Profarmer, do you actually think what you’ve posted is accurate and helpful to the discussion?
Mary Hinge (08:30:08) :
[…]all the indications are that Cycle 24 will be very active followed by a quiet Cycle 25, I don’t know if that will happen but this is the accepted probability
No, Mary, there are good indications that SC24 will be very weak. E.g. see http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%2024%20Smallest%20100%20years.pdf and http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%2024%20Predictions%20SHINE%202006.pdf . Even the official solar cycle 24 prediction panel is split between a high cycle and a low cycle, e.g. http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/index.html . I’m a member of the panel, and the support for a strong SC24 is dwindling.
RE: “The oaks are now dropping hollow acorns, or acorns devoid of the nut case altogether. The short-season tomatoes ripened but are tart. We barely made it with the long-season tomatoes last year, the nights just won’t stay much above 50 degrees.”
Acorn crop on the coast live oaks in my locale is one of the lightest I’ve ever seen. My brother’s tomato plants were very late to produce, and now, the crop is very limited. In July, we experienced lows in the upper 40s, a first in my lifetime in the climate zones I’ve spent my 4 plus decade life in (Sunset Western Gardening Guide’s Zones 15, 16, 17 and 24). Systemically, nearly all deciduous trees have begun to turn, no matter what their location, no matter how much moisture they have.
Where was the figure of 0.5 degrees Centigrade plucked from? Is it a global or a local termperature. If it is a global mean then it is plainly false, unless you know different! If based on local temperatures it’s called weather.
Bring it back to Feb. 2007 and it has probably been somewhat over 0.5°C. Globally. That’s according to the big four (NASA, NOAA, UAH, and RSS).
There was a La Nina (now over) and the PDO, on schedule, has shifted to a (probably multidecadal) cool phase. The AO, and NAO may be following suit. Both of these shifts to cool seem quite premature judging by the 20th century record.
We do not know if this is “just the beginning”, but if the ocean cooling continues, it would not appear unlikely.
This is quite apart from the solar issue, which NASA has shown quite unable to forecast. I would say we really don’t know what’s going on with the sun; we’ll just have to wait and see.
Sorry: By “big four” I mean NASA, HadCRUT, UAH, RSS.
(NOAA is the basis for the NASA measurements.)
If we want to be anecdotal, NYC had a mild winter and is having a mild summer.
Leif:
#B^1
Evan Jones (10:12:21) :
#B^1
at least you didn’t say !@ur momisugly#$%^ 🙂
“The number of interstellar dust grains increased from four per day, per meter in 1997 to 12 per day in 2000, Landgraf said. The results were announced earlier this month. He expects the rate to stay constant until 2005, and then increase by another factor of 3 prior to 2013.”
from:
http://www.space.com/scienceastron/dust_storm_030814.html
It’s getting dusty in the solar system according to this article and it is linked to the sunspot cycle.
Pam, this could have an effect on household dust, too.
Evan,
# = hair?
B = eyes?
^ = nose?
1 = mouth with cigarette?
REPLY: Keep it up…and I’ll turn the smileys back on – Anthony