After the August 21st sunspot debacle where SIDC reported a spot and initially NOAA didn’t, mostly due to the report from the Catania Observatory in Italy, we have another similar situation. On September 11th, a plage area developed. Here is the SOHO MDI for 1323UTC:
Find the sunspot in this image – Click for a larger image
Here is another from a couple hours later, 1622UTC :
Find the sunspot in this image – Click for a larger image
Note that in the large versions of both the above images, you’ll see a tiny black speck. That’s NOT the “sunspot” but burned out pixels on the SOHO CCD imager.
To help you locate the area of interest, here is the SOHO magnetogram for the period, as close as one is available to the above image time. It shows the disturbance with the classic N-S polarity of solar cycle 23 close to the equator:
Click for a larger image
The Catania Observatory in Italy included it on their daily sketch, as barely visible:
Click for a larger image
By contrast, the Mount Wilson Observatory in California did NOT show this on their daily drawing:
Click for larger image
The Catania photosphere image for that period did not show any disturbance:
Click for larger image
But the Catania chromosphere image did show the disturbance:
Click for a larger image
At the time our resident solar physicist Leif Svaalgard postulated and then retracted:
Leif Svalgaard (17:40:36)
Leif Svalgaard (07:06:37) :
BTW, right now Catania is seeing a pair of tiny spots at 7 degree North latitude (these are old cycle 23 spots): http://www.ct.astro.it/sun/draw.jpg
I don’t think NOAA will assign a region number to these spots unless the region grows in size.
Well, I guessed wrong:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/forecasts/SRS/0912SRS.txt:
I. Regions with Sunspots. Locations Valid at 11/2400Z
Nmbr Location Lo Area Z LL NN Mag Type
1001 N06E14 179 0020 Bxo 03 02 Beta
Please welcome cycle 23 region 11001.
And then a few minutes later went on to say:
Leif Svalgaard (18:35:44)
Leif Svalgaard (17:40:36) :
Please welcome cycle 23 region 11001.
REPLY: The MDI hardly shows it at all. – Anthony
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/l
I would say not at all, And Mt. Wilson neither:
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/intro.html
Kitt Peak NSO had it:
The region died sometime between 17h and 20h UT. One may wonder why this Tiny Tim was elevated to an ‘active region’. Perhaps NOAA is getting nervous now after all the brouhaha and don’t want to be accused of ‘missing’ spots…
Anyway, it is now gone.
And Robert Bateman added:
Robert Bateman (21:45:42)
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/latest/DSD.txt
NOAA gave it a go.
2008 09 11 67 12 20 1 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
So let’s recap:
We have a disturbance that shows up briefly, then disappears in a couple of hours, some observers call it a spot, others do not, or their time of observation (Mt. Wilson for example) was perhaps past the time of visible activity. The “spot” itself is even less pronounced than the sunspeck that was elevated to sunspot status on August 21st, yet NOAA assigns it a spot status this time, where on August 21st they did not, only doing so AFTER the SIDC came out with their monthly report on September 1st. See my report about that event here and the follow up email I got from SIDC when I questioned the issue.
Now 100 + years ago would we have recorded this as a spot? Doubtful. It is most pronounced on imagery from satellite or specialized telescopes. Would the old methods such as a dark filter or projection used 100 years ago have seen this? As I pointed out before, we now have a non-homogeneous sunspot record mixing old techniques and instrumentation with new and much more sensitive instrumentation, and more coverage. Yet even with this we have disagreement between observatory reports.
How long does a sunspeck (or sunspot) have to be present before it ranks as countable? What standards are in place to ensure that observers use the same type of equipment and techniques to count spots? Is there any such standard? From the perspective of the public and laymen at large, it seems that there’s some randomness to this science process.
In my opinion, science would be better served if these observational questions and the dataset inhomogeneity is addressed.
I’m sure Leif will have some commentary to add.
And as Robert Bateman writes in comments: So, we are still having these SC23 bubbles popping up. Why won’t this cycle give it up? The $64k question.
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Glenn (12:10:15) :
Solar activity is higher now than 1980-present, and had just came out of a quiet period 1790-1835:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dtx/images/zurich.gif
I think you have just missed the whole point of the recent sunspot debate, namely that the official sunspot series is seriously flawed. If you want to use a sunspot series with even lower solar activity back then, I can warmly recommend the Group Sunspot Number. This is the series preferred by Solanki, Usoskin, and Co. because it makes the present-day sunspot number even relatively higher. You can see the difference here http://www.leif.org/research/SSN%20Validation-Reconstruction%20(Cliver).pdf [page 3].
Leif Svalgaard (12:39:47) :
The formula says nothing about the effect of greenhouse gases [mainly Water Vapor], so assumes that the amount of greenhouse gases has not changed
To clarify, I mean, of course, the amount of change due to… or if you prefer, the effect of. the formulat assumes that that change is small. If you, Glenn, want to argue that I should take into effect the warming effect of man-made emissions, then that will have to be added to the 0.02 degree change caused by TSI. I’ll let you add what you think is appropriate and tell us the result.
grrr, I’m hit by this all the time. Try again:
see the difference here
[page 3].
“Glenn, try to get off the stifling fixation on what you wrongly acsribe to people, especially me, and start the learning process, as I suggested.”
I suggest you do the same. You’ve repeatedly claimed what my intentions are, yet I haven’t made any such claims to beliefs, and in fact do not. The scientific record is literally swamped with references to such things as the MWP, LIA, a cold Sporer Minimum and other subjects you deny, that provide the basis of my understanding and opinion. Solar eclipse??? Perhaps you are slipping.
I also do not happen to accept that the sunspot record is “seriously flawed”. Reconstructions of past cycles match early recorded cycles pretty well, and one or two specks counted will not matter much. If there is any hard evidence of the past recording being sporatic or incomplete, you should provide it.
grrr, I’m hit by this all the time. Try again:
see the difference here
[page 3].
Sheesh, Leif, even your own “adjusted” graph shows that the period of 1960-2000 was more intense than that of 1840-1880.
But now I see why you compared 1980-present to 1840-1880. 30 year span compared to 40 year span with one more cycle in the earlier range. Good tactic.
Glenn (11:55:46) :
“Unfortunately, the [now unsupported] MM and LIA link has caught the public’s eye [and yours, it seems] and like a zombie cannot be beaten down and put to rest.”
And absolutely tons of scientific articles, official agency reports, college syllabus, Wiki…
Especially the IPCC reports, I presume.
“Especially the IPCC reports, I presume.”
Science does not operate on presumptions.
Glenn (13:03:58) :
The scientific record is literally swamped with references to such things as the MWP, LIA, cold Sporer Minimum and other subjects you deny, that provide the basis of my understanding and opinion.
For the umpteenth time: the MWP and the LIA are real. they are there, no doubt. The Spoerer Minimum temperature is discussed in the ‘Sunspec’ thread, so I’ll keep it there. Perhaps only show this temperature anomaly reconstruction: http://www.climateaudit.org/wp-images/brif2034.gif
Compare the SM with the MWP that shows similar warming.
It is from http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3608
I also do not happen to accept that the sunspot record is “seriously flawed”. Reconstructions of past cycles match early recorded cycles pretty well, and one or two specks counted will not matter much. If there is any hard evidence of the past recording being sporatic or incomplete, you should provide it.
And this is the crux of the matter. I have repeatedly provided such evidence, but you have evidently not studied it sufficiently, if at all. The way to deal with this is to treat it as a scientific peer-review. The process works like this: the reviewer goes through the paper and for every point where he thinks that the argument is weak or the data non-convincing he/she notes why he thinks so and asks for clarification or elaboration. That he/she merely disagrees is not a valid objection. Then the author responds to each point and the referee evaluates if the response addresses his/hers concerns.
And you have completely missed the whole point of this thread and several others, by talking about ‘past recording being sporatic or incomplete’. For the umpteenth time, again, the recordings are what they are and are the best we have, but they are not calibrated correctly to be comparable to the modern records, or conversely, the modern recordings are too high. We are not talking about the old observers ‘missing’ spots, but about how we compare their records with ours.
Glenn (13:29:12) :
“Especially the IPCC reports, I presume.”
Science does not operate on presumptions.
Your reading and selection of reports are not science, so this remark does not apply.
Glenn (13:13:10) :
Sheesh, Leif, even your own “adjusted” graph shows that the period of 1960-2000 was more intense than that of 1840-1880.
But now I see why you compared 1980-present to 1840-1880. 30 year span compared to 40 year span with one more cycle in the earlier range. Good tactic.
I don’t do tactic. But I’ll be happy to lop of the first of the earlier cycles to make both periods the same length. Or to add a cycle to the modern span. If I do, here are the average corrected sunspot numbers for each span:
3 early cycles 63.8 3 modern cycles 68.5, difference 7%
4 early cycles 62.1 4 modern cycles 65.5, difference 5%
Of course, the numbers to not match exactly, but are within a few percent of each other [average 6%], so are very comparable. We can translate that difference into a TSI difference. It comes to 4/100 = 0.04 W/m2, as the TSI change from solar min to max for cycles with a sunspot number of 150 has been 1.5 W/m2, so one W/m2 per 100 spots. The 0.04 W/m2 results in a temperature increase of 0.002 degrees.
“Your reading and selection of reports are not science, so this remark does not apply.”
And your’s are and do? Give it a rest, Leif. My statement would apply even if I were a screaming baboon. This awful logic you practice makes you look bad.
Glenn (13:13:10) :
Sheesh, Leif, even your own “adjusted” graph shows that the period of 1960-2000 was more intense than that of 1840-1880.
But now I see why you compared 1980-present to 1840-1880. 30 year span compared to 40 year span with one more cycle in the earlier range.
Grrrr, I was even misled by your sloppiness or worse [tactic?]. I should have known better and checked. The two periods both had three cycles in them, that was how I chose them in the first place, trying to make them as comparable as possible. So, no extra cycle. In the end, as my later post showed, it doesn’t make any difference. If uses the absolute worst case [for me], namely the Group Sunspot Number, the early interval had GSN = 42.5, and the modern had GSN = 68.0. The difference, 15.5 spots, translates into 0.16 W/m2 of TSI resulting in 0.008 degrees. This is the temperature increase considering solar activity just as extra heat. I think most people realize that that won’t do, hence the scramble for other mechanisms: UV on ozone, cosmic rays, magnetic ‘energy’, you name it. There is no shortage of mechanisms, maybe they all work together. But such plethora does not convince me, perhaps you. Your problem or joy, as the case may be, then.
Glenn (14:22:08) :
And your’s are and do?
What you said was:
Sunspots increased significantly from 1930 to 1960, dropped till 1975, rose till 1990 then levelled off to the present. Take a hint.
My answer was that “Science does not operate on hints”.
Nothing about what me or what I do. So ??
This awful logic you practice makes you look bad
So be it. I can only do what I do.
‘Solar activity 1840-1880 was no different from what is has been 1980-present’
Um, no, the period BEFORE that, 1790-1835, that is where the hard winters were. The Dalton, and that is where I believe we are currently headed. Observant people in everyday walks of life have seen the changes, and they want to know why.
Fair enough: So do I, and I dig.
As for my digging around for images of 2008 sunspots: All I can find so far for 01/07 to 01/08 is some H-alpha plages. For 04/13 to 04/15 same thing. For 06/18 to 06/20 I find a valid spot lasting 3 days from UCCLE. For 07/18 to 07/21 from Catania I find a pixel that moves way too fast in HAlpha. For 9/11 all sources I find no visible sunpot, and some fishy HAlpha.
If anybody has some image sources other than Catania, Calgoora and UCCLE, please post it, I’ll continue digging.
So far, I haven’t found any SC24 spots in the visible. Nada. Are there any for dates/sources outside of the 3 observatories I listed and 01/08 and 04/14?
Robert Bateman (15:07:22) :
Um, no, the period BEFORE that, 1790-1835, that is where the hard winters were. The Dalton, and that is where I believe we are currently headed.
And yet you were referring to:
People have forgotten the very hard & bitter winters that existed from the time of Lewis & Clark Exp. through the 1840’s.
But ok, in this game everybody seems to thrive on being just a little bit off here and there if it fits better 🙂
There were also at that time significant volcanic activity: 1809 (see Dai JGR 96, 1991), 1814 (Mayon), and 1815 (Tambora), resulting in significant cooling. As I said before, wanting to ascribe all change to just one cause is folly.
On top of that [which I also touched upon earlier] our knowledge of the sunspot number during the Dalton minimum is very shake. We could be off by a factor two [either way].
Leif, you claim “The two periods both had three cycles in them”, and call me sloppy?? Your ranges were 1840-1880 and 1980-present. Here’s your source:
http://www.leif.org/research/SSN%20Validation-Reconstruction%20(Cliver).pdf
There are two graphs, the first starting with 1830, the second further down the page starts at 1840 but not plotted till 1841 or 1842.
The first graph at 1840 starts on the downslope of cycle 8, and 1880 is the start of cycle 12. The range 1840-1880 includes either 3 or 4 cyles, depending on how you want to look at it.
But the 1980-present (let alone that range is 12 years less than 1840-1880) starts close to the downslope of cycle 21, and “current” is cycle 23, which represents either 2 or 3 cycles, however you want to look at it.
I look at both the same, 1840-1880 encompasses 3 1/2 cycles, and 1980-present at 2 1/2 cycles. They are not both “the same” in that “both had 3 cycles in them”.
As to the intensities, just a straightedge on the peaks show that cycles 21 and 22 were higher than 8, 9, 10 or 11. Cycle 23 peaks higher than 10 and the same as 9. Cycle 20 peaks higher than 10. I’d say do the math, but there is no need to, is there.
The second lower sunspot graph (no labels, so who knows what it means) as I
said earlier, starts out at a different time, but is essentially in the same fix. The peaks average higher for the later range of 3 cycles than for the earlier range of 3 cycles.
Keep always in mind that 1980 is near the peak of one of your 3 “the same number of cycles” cycles, and the 1840-1880 period covers more than 3 full cycles.
[snip] Leif, were I to publish an article like this, I’d at least make the two graphs the same scale, and clearly label them for what they represent, or at least represent them by “figure” number so they could be referenced elsewhere.
People have forgotten the very hard & bitter winters that existed from the time of Lewis & Clark Exp. through the 1840’s
Lewis & Clark = 1804. There are few records from 1800-1840, but they all indicate hard winters. And 3 volcanoes should not be expected to last the next 30 years, though they certainly would have contributed.
Thank God we have Hurricane warnings that work to save lives.
I certainly hope this all gets sorted out in time to better prepare the public for what lies ahead, otherwise we are no better off than when Modern Science began 400 yrs ago.
Glenn (15:49:11) :
I guess sloppiness is contagious :-). Better to deal in cycles then. Cycles 9-11 vs. cycles 21-23. Then we find for the years covered by those sets of cycles are:
9-11: avg(SSN) = 62.1
21-23: avg(SSN) = 68.5
or for 10-11 and 22-23:
10-11: avg(SSN) = 66.4
22-23: avg(SSN) = 62.9
leading to the same conclusion as before.
Or as I said in my presentation at AGU:
“There is no real difference between the corrected Group sunspot numbers and Zürich sunspot numbers. Both are plotted, but the curves fall on top of another. It is of interest to note that (corrected) cycles 11 and 10 were as active as the most recent cycles 22 and 23. We thus see no evidence in the sunspot number of a secular increase in solar activity over the last ~165 years.
http://www.leif.org/research/SH13A-1109-F2007.pdf
Leif, were I to publish an article like this, I’d at least make the two graphs the same scale, and clearly label them for what they represent, or at least represent them by “figure” number so they could be referenced elsewhere.
Of course, this is normal practice that everybody follows. The figures are from an oral presentation and is meant to be discussed as they are shown. In such cases there is no doubt what is been shown [as it is explained directly] and too much labeling and text are actually discouraged as cluttering the graph [we don’t want people to read, but to listen]. So, slightly different rules apply.
Leif tries to justify proceeding on the basis of a counterfactual assumption (AGW) on the grounds that it was the assumption of his questioner, and he was just projecting the assumption to its logical conclusion: that that even if a quiet sun brings solar cooling, we had still better do something about CO2, or face a “double whammy” when solar activity revives. His words:
What simple English did I miss? You never said that this was Stuart Clark’s assumption, and reading his article, it seems quite clear that it is NOT his assumption. Throughout the article he asks various scientists to give their assessment of solar vs. greenhouse effects.
Even if this journalist did somehow pin you to the assumption of AGW (just how does he do that?) it would still be nonsensical to adhere to that assumption in the face of obvious counter-evidence.
You deny that if our quiet sun is accompanied by cooling that it proves anything:
Indeed, I should have been clearer. One data point is not proof. The many thousands of years of close correlation between solar activity and global temperature, on the other hand, has ALREADY proven that solar activity is the primary driver of global temperature. Many thousands of years of close correlation CANNOT be coincidence. The relationship HAS to be causal, and causality can only go one way, since global temperature cannot possibly be driving solar activity.
So you were accepting a counterfactual assumption to begin with (your own, not Clark’s), and you say you will continue to adhere to it even if current experience also shows solar activity to be a powerful driver of global temperature (the effects of which have been misattributed to CO2 by the IPCC).
How does that make you anything but an AGW propagandist? The excuse of trying to blame Clark for the AGW assumption is particularly lame given the context: that the explicit subject of your sentence is POLICY PRESCRIPTION, suggesting that we need to “do something” about CO2 even if get even more evidence that temperature changes are actually being driven by the sun. You even go so far as to suggest that things will be even worse for global warming, which would come back “with a vengance.”
I notice in Clark’s article that Solanki is also not very well informed about more than solar science:
No, it does not have to be the result of greenhouse gases. It seems to be the result of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Svensmark has it nailed. His graphic near the end of my post here.
Robert Bateman (16:14:24) :
People have forgotten the very hard & bitter winters that existed from the time of Lewis & Clark Exp. through the 1840’s
Lewis & Clark = 1804.
So you corrected your typo. I should have caught that too. My bad.
There are few records from 1800-1840, but they all indicate hard winters.
And I guess that a hard winter is more worthy of a report than a normal or even mild winter. Disasters tend to get peoples’ attention more.
If the Sun is the culprit then one would expect the effect on temperature to be global. The Central England Temperature series [which matches quite well similar series from Europe] goes back to 1659. You can see it here http://www.leif.org/research/CET2.png . The temperature there was not particularly low in the early 1800s [except for a few years around the volcanic eruptions 1809-1815]. Here http://www.leif.org/research/CETandCO2.pdf you can see the four clear increases in the CET record in more detail. Also plotted is the logarithm of the CO2 concentration which is supposed to be a measure of the greenhouse effect from CO2. As you can see only in the last of the four panels [recent data] do the two curves track. Before that they don’t, clearly showing that the CO2 link is dubious. But that is another story. I’m only concerned with the Sun here, and only mentioned CO2 because the curve is on the graph and I want to preempt any discussion of AGW.
A number of things come to my addled mind:
1. As this sun speck was only really visible in the magnetogram, it appears that sunspots are created by the magnetic anomoly, as these anomolies precede the visual sunspot.
2. Are we now going to measure sunspots with magnetic images? This makes the sunspot record discontinuous. To be valid, we must employ a standard for sunspots that is equivalent to the method of recording sunspots over the historical record. Calibration, guys!
3. Is there not some time duration required to count as a sunspot, such as a solar rotation, or two observations within a 48 hour period?
4. Aren’t these people really clutching at straws? And it was a cycle 23 speck to boot. Ha!
5. Following on from (2) above: If we calibrated our observations with those from the 17th and 18th century (a not impossible task) then we could make a guesstimate (engineering term for SWAG) of the unseen sun-specks during that period.
Alec Rawls (16:56:07) :
You never said that this was Stuart Clark’s assumption
I think that I just said it, no?. How could you otherwise deny it?
and reading his article, it seems quite clear that it is NOT his assumption
Well, I was there and know what he said and what he meant. We talked on the phone for two hours. Is it my fault that either he didn’t make that clear in his article or [more likely] that you can’t see it?
But, I can see with the heavy investment in your opinion why it is hard for you to budge, so I don’t expect you to. Just wanted to clear things up.
Hysteresis points, Leif. Where one continent or portion of a continent sees no change, others are not so lucky. The reports of cooling and phenomena on the ground come from Western US and Australia. If it goes far enough, the rest will follow in lockstep. We just don’t have a very firm grip on where we are in relation to the past.
But I do agree that AGW is not a lone consequence nor a superior driver of Earths’s climate, but simply another factor in a sea of factors. Given the right set of circumstances, it too passes it’s hysteresis point and adds insult to injury. i.e. – AGW may be real but doesn’t act in a linear fashion, and neither would named Maximums or Minimums.
If someday we can get beyond this “my forcing is better than your forcing” stuff, we might just find ourselves in a position to predict when one condition has reached it’s activation point and now stands above the rest.
For that reason, I continue to dig away looking for the data that proves which sunspots/sunspecks are real and which are low signal to noise artifacts.
Stuff happens.