This is unusual. A live media teleconference on the sun. Even more unusual is this statement:
The sun’s current state could result in changing conditions in the solar system.
As you may recall, I posted an entry about the Ulysses mission back on June 16th and the findings of a lowered magnetic field in the sun, from the JPL press release then:
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.
We live in interesting times.
Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
MEDIA ADVISORY : M08-176
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/sep/HQ_M08176_Ulysses_teleconference.html
NASA To Discuss Conditions On And Surrounding The Sun
WASHINGTON — NASA will hold a media teleconference Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 12:30 p.m. EDT, to discuss data from the joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission that reveals the sun’s solar wind is at a 50-year low. The sun’s current state could result in changing conditions in the solar system.
Ulysses was the first mission to survey the space environment above and below the poles of the sun. The reams of data Ulysses returned have changed forever the way scientists view our star and its effects. The venerable spacecraft has lasted more than 17 years – almost four times its expected mission lifetime.
The panelists are:
— Ed Smith, NASA Ulysses project scientist and magnetic field instrument investigator, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
— Dave McComas, Ulysses solar wind instrument principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
— Karine Issautier, Ulysses radio wave lead investigator, Observatoire de Paris, Meudon, France
— Nancy Crooker, Research Professor, Boston University, Boston, Mass.
Reporters should call 866-617-1526 and use the pass code “sun” to participate in the teleconference. International media should call 1-210-795-0624.
To access visuals that will the accompany presentations, go to:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/ulysses-20080923.html
Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at:
– end –
h/t to John Sumpton
link to the images is here:
http://www1.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/ulysses-20080923.html
“Have you looked at the evidence that I have trotted out for this? And why not?”
Leif, I read your papers long before you began blogging. Your knowledge is beyond impressive (I particularly appreciate the history lessons).
Your ‘proof’ is not.
No visuals 🙁
I’m at work and don’t have Real Audio installed. What’s happening ?
Sun has no effect on climate, even now.-NASA
No position on “The Chilling Stars”- NASA panelists
Robert Wood (09:46:30) :
” I’m at work and don’t have Real Audio installed. What’s happening ? ”
Very Brief Presentation – just a few minutes for each of the four presenters
Graphics are very basic –
http://www1.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/ulysses-20080923.html
a few quotes:
we’re in “a very deep and prolonged minimum… lowest prolonged pressure [of the solar wind] we’ve ever seen…”
“…significant drop of 20% in electron density… 13% drop in electron temperature… the fast solar wind is cooler and less dense…”
latitude of recent coronal holes is unusual for solar minimum
“…we’re heading for a ‘dip’ in the Gleissberg Cycle… Maunder Minimum is not likely…” [Reason – there was a new sunspot yesterday??!!}
Q & A now underway…
1st question [from AP] included a question about climate… ‘no connection with 11 year cycle’ because that is too short to affect climate
another, more direct question about climate – answer: “that’s too speculative…” [essentially, “no comment”]
“Has anyone read “The Chilling Stars?”” – ‘Yes, I’ve read it’ “Any objection to it?”
[paraphrasing] – “No comment.”
It got interesting when Nancy Crooker mentioned the Maunder minimum but then knocked it on the head with pointing out the new sunspot.
They are far more happy about talking about space than Earth even though the blurb talks about “The sun’s current state could result in changing conditions in the solar system. ”
space solars pace rathet than planet obviously.
Have to say though that they are probably right in not over-egging the effects of a 22 year minima on earth climate.
Some of these journalists questions are rubbish.
Regards
Andy
Not much here for reporters…
Only the best science writers can put together a good story out of this stuff.
They said this is the lowest solar wind in “the space age.” That’s just the duration of direct measurements. Earlier solar wind has to be inferred from geomagnetic observations.
So the sun is back to where it was a hundred years ago – exactly what Leif Svalgaard has already observed.
The rest of the media will ignore this completely, or sensationalize a few “pull quotes.”
Nancy Crooker provided [unintentionally] a couple for the sensationalizers – ‘we’re heading toward a dip in the Gleissberg cycle…” and “…we’re definitely on the downslope” [of the long term cycle]
Here’s the presser.. Worth noting, lots of discussion of GCR and no mention of the GCR climate link…
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/sep/HQ_08241_Ulysses.html
Asked about the timing and magnitude of the next Solar Max
“…nobody knows…”
“…we’ll just have to wait and see”
David Hathaway’s gotta feel a little dissed by his fellow NASA employees.
we’re in “a very deep and prolonged minimum… lowest prolonged pressure [of the solar wind] we’ve ever seen…”- NASA panelists
What’s Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing) – David Hathaway
[…] Now this may or may not have anything to do with sunspots and/or potential changes in temperature on earth, but is interesting nonetheless that the sun seems to be going through a cyclical down period. And in my comfortable status as arm-chair physicist without any of the rigors of peer review, it appears to me that less active sun = lower solar radiation on earth = colder, ceteris paribus. More here. […]
I heard someone [I believe it was Richard Marsden the mission manager] say in response to a question about climate,
“the temperature’s going to stay up because of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere”
Seth Borenstein premised his question with something along the lines of “since Sol has moved into minima but temperatures are still warm, does this shut the skeptics up?”
Someone needs to send Seth the UAH/RSS data for the last 20 months.
John, they didn’t say they didn’t know the timing and magnitude of the next solar max they said they didn’t know whether the very low values at the moment would mean that the next max would be also out of the ordinary and be very large.
You need to have a link between very low minima and very large maxima to be able to do that and as this is the first really studied minima it is not therefore surprising they don’t have so therefore don’t know.
Scientists are damned if they are alarmists so as to get funding and now when they don’t be alarmist ( either way) they are damned again. They obviously missed a trick as they said the replacement probe was not up the pecking order in funding.
Regards
Andy
I have a report on the press conference here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/23/nasas-press-conference-on-the-state-of-the-sun/
I see my NASA source got it right again with his comment that the replacement probe was not going to happen.
Got this link from CA
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMR9MQ4KKF_index_0.html
If the heliosphere shrinks too much, or, is far reduced in effectiveness, Earth may become a nasty place. We are star stuff. Time to go home?
Gary Gulrud (09:36:57) :
Your ‘proof’ is not.
Scientists have the same problem when they serve as reviewers of othe people’s papers. There are several rules to follow. The cardinal rule is that it is not allowed to say “I disagree” or “you have not shown what you claim”. The reviewer has to be specific: What point [page and line number !] is being objected to? What specifically is the objection? etc, etc. This allows the author to rebut or elaborate on the specific points. Then the reviewer gets to rebut the rebuttal and the cycle continues until the editor steps in and makes a decision based on the exchanges or selects a new set of referees, and so on.
So this is what you have to do. Anything else has no value.
Leif,
What does this do to your IHV index results concerning inferred solar activity?
“We also show that the Ah index correlates extremely well with the Ap index, better than the aa index and much better than the recently proposed, not-K based Inter-Hour Variability (IHV) index. Accordingly, the global Ah index offers the most reliable extension of the Ap index by roughly 30 years, and is recommended to be used in centennial studies of geomagnetic activity instead of the aa or IHV indices. Also, the local Ah indices can be used to extend the local K/ak indices to the centennial time scales.”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VHB-4RR8YYM-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f2cc0bc798ef0e4cfe0e4b1e7a946c4e
Glenn (17:08:33) :
What does this do to your IHV index results concerning inferred solar activity?
Nothing, as Mursula’s method is deeply flawed. He does not use our IHV index values to compare but tries to calculate his own IHV values [one of the beauties of IHV is that everyone can compute it – but it must be done following our recipe]. The issue is that one should use nightside values only to avoid leakage into the result of the ‘regular’ diurnal variation. Mursula thinks that a better way is to subtract the monthly average diurnal variation instead. This is wrong, because the daily variation itself varies from day to day. The flaw is described in sections A1, A4.1, and A5.1 in our paper on IHV http://www.leif.org/research/2007JA012437.pdf
The last section also explains why the high-latitude stations used by Mursula give the wrong result [two reasons: 1. IHV must not be derived form stations above 55 degree latitude, because different physics apply to high and low-latitude stations (oranges and apples}, and 2. The 55 degree latitude refers to ‘geomagnetic ;atitude’ defined using the magnetic pole rather than the geographic pole. And the magnetic pole moves around so a stations latitude [and therefore its sensitivity to IHV] changes with time {clearly seen in figure A6].
It is quite normal that other scientists try their own variation of a breakthrough result [see if they can share the glory a bit]. It is also quite normal that in their rush they get it wrong. This is not a big problem because such [often flawed] ‘me too’ papers are quickly forgotten.
The way forward for you is to fully embrace the breakthrough we have achieved and realize that in one stroke we have quadrupled the length of the solar wind record. When something like this happens, one is able to weed out speculations that were based on too few data [a handful of cycles rather than the 16 cycles our record covers].
Ric Werme (21:58:57) :
Lessee, what took you a few minutes thumbing through a book would require me to rummage through NASA’s web site and others to refresh my memory about which probes carried electric field sensors and what their results were. You protest me dismissing how puny moons like Deimos and Phobos could hold a charge (and deliver it) to blast a structure many times larger than they are, yet you dismiss that argument with “ignore it and take a look at other aspects of this theory.”
If I do that and point out potential problems, I think you’ll just move on to the next chapter.
BTW, a corona discharge in the electric sense stems from an electric field just below the strength where an arc occurs. (Well, the most impressive discharges fit that. They usually follow up with an arc which is more impressive, but less interesting. One of my fellow EEs worked on some electrostatic precipitation stuff and had a 100 KV power supply. We also built a 5 foot tall Tesla coil per the instructions in a Popular Electronics article we had both saved from out high school years. Great toy.)
However, as Leif points out, that’s not the only definition for coronas. AFAIK, they all deal with plasmas and there are lots of ways to knock electrons off of atoms. UV, charged particles, strong magnetic fields, all stuff that the Sun does well.
In an exchange with Leif, you said:
If you understand the boundaries science places around what you can do, then you gain 1) an understanding of what likely has no chance of working (e.g. lightning creating 3000 Km canyons) and 2) a better chance of finding weak areas in conventional understanding that open doors to new wonders.
That’s what got us from the four elements of fire, water, earth, and wind (is that right?) to the 90+ naturally occurring elements, to the quarks that make up nucleons.
Have you ever looked at the early works of Pablo Picasso? It wasn’t until he mastered conventional art and learning how to see and compose that he branched into the disassembled and reassembled pieces of subjects in his later art. What he learned first lived on and held together his forays into very novel “experiments.”
One of the best ways to make progress is to learn two fields. That way you can bring aspects of one to the other. Mathematicians often seem to bring new possibilities, such as computational chemistry, computed tomography, and debunking hockey sticks come to mind.
“The way forward for you is to fully embrace”
Nah, I’m not an AGWer. And I see no “breakthrough”, only a bunch of
arguers about something that can’t be tested or disproved. In some
cases you can certainly “have it your own way”, but many many different
observations tell a different tale. You are doing the speculation here. You’ve no more data than you had ten years ago, Leif, you’re just manipulating it.
Face it, you are paddling upstream by fighting the fact that solar activity and
temperature has been seen and shown to have a strong correlation in the past. And even those in your field have recognized that fact, and the fact that solar activity has increased in the last century along with temperature.
[REPLY – Now, now, be nice. The M word has a different context for us secular dudes than it does to scientists and should be avoided face-to-face. – Evan]