Maybe there is some hope for SC24 ramping up this year yet. This appears to be the largest SC24 spot to date. Previous SC24 spots have faded quickly, we’ll see how long this one lasts.
UPDATE: 9/23 It is already fading fast, see this animation that I’ve produced.
In other news, Jan Jansens reports that SC23-24 continues to behave much more like cycles in the late 19th and early 20th century. See this:
Click for the ful sized image
There is also a weaker, but distinct, level of activity at 22 years, the double sunspot of Hale cycle. The last three Hale cycles have been stronger than earlier Hale cycles. There is some indication of a double Hale cycle (~44 years) and at the top of the graph, we’re in Gleissberg cycle territory.
Now, for an interesting observation and speculation, note that at present, which is at the right edge of the chart, from the 11 yr line to the top it is all blue. There is only one other place on the entire chart where we can draw a vertical line from the 11 yr line to the top without it crossing some portion of color other than blue. Can you find it? (It is right at the beginning of Solar Cycle 5, i.e. the Dalton Minimum). Are we watching the beginning of a new 200 year cycle like what began with the Dalton Minimum in the early 1800’s? Obviously, no one knows. But the current transition is certainly unusual, and invites comparison to past transitions.
SOHO image at 14-00 shows shrinking spots. Quoi?
Could the same thing be done with the ice core data? In this graph we can see up to the 200 years cycle. It would be interesting and worthy to correlate this (if correlation exists) with the ice core data and maybe if that correlates than we could also see the longer cycles. Also, those cycles, do they show the same cycles that was shown by the Russian mathematician back then (sorry I can’t recall his name)?
wow, happy equinox! what pictures!
Just found this excellent website by Per Strandberg which if you scroll down the page shows sunspot cycles quite beautifully – 22, 52, 88, 105, 212, and 420 year cycles. He also shows 300 years of comparing sunspots with the predictions from his model (excellent fit) and predicted spots for the next century.
Despite explanations being a little thin, this highly-relevant page is well worth a visit from readers here.
This diagram illustrates the periodicities, but also the vagouries.
Someone else used a “wavelet coherence” method on solar data: “Analysis of Solar Magnetic Activity with the Wavelet Coherence Method“. It sounds interesting, but it’s only a poster session with little info. They question whether Fourier frequency patterns are valid.
I’m curious as to the edge effects of this graph. Would it be possible to create a couple of graphs with the end point 2000 and another with 1980? It would give us an idea as to the amount of ‘distortion’ that can be introduced.
Basil : please.
Looking at your graph. I can see three signs.
resistance, capacitor and inductor.
This makes some sense?
Or just wrap it with the end connected to the beginning… no ends!
Anthony, please email me and I will send you an interesting graphic that is pertinent to this post.
Leif,
Do you happen to have a mainframe I can borrow? I might need that if I’m to do this with daily data. I just gave it a quick shot. First issue was the lack of missing data prior to 1849. And I couldn’t get all the data to import into Excel, where I need it to import it into PAST. I did get the data from 1849 into Excel, but PAST ran out of memory. I’ll try again later with a machine I have at home with 6 GB of RAM. One can hope that would be enough, but who knows?
Steve, Drew, Leif,
I just realized that this is NOT the smoothed SN, but the monthly SIDC number. So until I can change the annotations on the graphic, just realize that you have the monthly numbers here, not the SSN’s.
As for Leif’s adjusted SN’s, here’s what I just quickly came up with:
http://i36.tinypic.com/2gwfe2x.jpg
I can see the effect of Leif’s adjustment, but the basic patterns are still mostly the same.
Damek,
That’s a good suggestion, to see if Leif’s point about edge distortion has any merit. Actually, my response to Leif on that is that at the edge of the current graph, there’s no distortion, because there’s no (or little) transformation going on. It’s all (or mostly) blue at the edge.
I’ll see what I can come up with.
new from NOAA:
“New Region 1002 (N25W27) emerged on the disk as an eight-spot Dso Beta group with new Cycle 24 polarity.”
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/forecast.html
So, if I understand this correctly… The onset of SC 24 is near. SC23 was a little bit long, but as not really exceptional in the grand scheme of things right?
No Grand Solar minimum is coming, no Dalton or Maunder Minimum, no Little Ice Age, etc. All of this talk about the sun doing something special this time which will cool the Earth off so dramatically that the Global Warmists will have to change their minds, is likely not going to happen, and most likely the Climate will stay pretty much the way it has always been, correct?
johnnyb (15:48:08) Nobody, not even Leif, knows. But then, neither the Dalton nor Maunder Minimums, nor the Little Ice Age were really exceptional in the grand scheme of things, either. This particular cycle transition has not been ‘really exceptional’ but it has been different than the last half dozen or so. Number of spotless days, and numbers of spotless days in a row, and length of spotless runs have all been more for this cycle than recent ones. The ramp-up to Cycle 24 is slower than usual, too. This long after the first spot of a new cycle usually has a lot more activity. Leif might be able to tell us better what this might say about Cycle 25.
But you could be correct. Also, don’t forget the 20-30 years of cooling we might expect from the PDO in its cooling phase.
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You’re right, Damek. Appending red-top data would show if a later red period would spill over the current blue top. Also, variations of the graph but ending at the start of the last several cycles may reveal whether this graph tends to show blue all the way to the top at this point of a cycle.
Johnnyb (15:48:08) :
“…something special this time which will cool the Earth off so dramatically that the Global Warmists will have to change their minds, is likely not going to happen, and most likely the Climate will stay pretty much the way it has always been, correct?”
Global Warmists? I think they’re now called Climate Change-ists
or something.
The cooling trend of the past ten years, and the unusually cold winter of 2008-2009 we’re going to have, are the irrefutable result of _Climate_Change.
Please use the correct terminology.
@John-x
I don’t care what they want to call it, they still have to prove it is anthropogenic in origin.
All changes in climate are caused by Climate Change.
SINCE the industrial revolution, that is.
Prior to the industrial revolution, changes in climate were NOT caused by Climate Change.
@john-x
The correct terminology is “Global Warming” since that is the unproven hypothesis for the current climate variability caused by anthropogenic released CO2.
“Climate Change” in a nonsense word and is equivalent to “Appitite Change,” since people are always eating and getting hungry again.
In other words, the term “Climate Change” is an admission that the “Global Warming” hypothesis has not matched the actual conditions of the Earth in recent years.
I look at Basil’s graph and see 2 dozen smokestacks with CO2 billowing out.
Always refer to the scam artists as global warmers; hold their arse to the flame of history.
Basil, I did a lot of work in sound reconstruction for VOIP telephones. What to do when a packet is lost?
I found the two best were: 1) play the last packet backwards; b) repeat the last packet. Either way, the spectral characteristics were preserved. Either of these two strategies are best for the edge problem. As time continues, we can compare each approach with actuality, and adjust accordingly.
Steve Huntwork,
In th ’90s, I was working with some folks from what is now “Environment Canada”. They were all agog of “climate change” as they saw it as the gravy train.
How right they were….
….hey, from the horse’s mouth.
But they knew that that the scare had tobe in for the scam to work. They knew they had to prove AGW. It was never overtly expressed; just talk of UN and “cliamte change” being the next BIG THING. But, they knew. This fraudulant scam must be ended.
I generally think it is good to see a Cycle 24 spot because the Sun was looking a little too quiet.
With 6.6 billion people, we cannot afford to have a Maunder-type Minimum right now because food production has barely kept up with population growth over the past two years as a result of the slight decline in temperatures and another 1.0C decline would be a very big problem.
While we are all thinking that a quiet Sun will finally quiet the warmers, I am not worried that they will eventually be right. They are wrong about the how much temperatures will increase as a result of GHGs and this will be proven in time. We don’t need more food riots to prove it sooner.
I am more inclined to look at Leif’s data which takes into account measures other than sunspot numbers. I think understanding the mechanisms of the Sun will lead to much better predictions of its behavioral cycles. Sunspots by themselves just don’t seem to do it for me. Which is why I am so interested in the Sun even though it has fewer zits than granny.