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.
There are 2 distinct spots, 5:30 pm PDT, and they are both elongated, forming a set of furrowed eyebrows. or an arc.
“Interesting that the Maunder, Dalton and this latest big pause are all 200 yrs apart.”
Actually the dalton, maunder, sporer and wolf are all 179 yrs apart and for very good reason. The oort min falls out of sync for the same reason. its all about neptune, uranus, and, Jupiter apposing saturn. very hard to argue against.
Still fairly small as sunspots go….
Tom,
If that is a joke, then I get it. If you’re serious, then I sincerely doubt you know much about CO2. Even in the amounts emitted by man, which are relatively little compared to Nature itself – and even in the combined (man and nature) effect CO2 is relatively weak. I’m all for regulations if it can be proven that such and such a gas has a damaging warming effect. But there are a lot of stronger industrial gases emitted that could be blamed. I think perfluorocarbons were among those, if I recall Anthony’s layout seemingly way back when of the relative strenght of GHGs. But C10F18 doesn’t quite roll of the tongue as well, nor do most people know what it is or what it is used for. CO2 is the equivalent of a straw man, or a scapegoat, or a whipping boy. It’s media friendly and easy to remember.
Most importantly, the most powerful GHG is water vapor. If the earlier article on the Arctic is correct, and if the planet is overall warming (surface station errors and other nonsense notwithstanding), then whatever mechanism is causing this (man-made or natural) needs to be pinpointed and explained sufficiently. If melting ice is putting more water vapor into the air (and that in itself is debatable as cold water is far from steam), then that would be important. But that would have to be shown to not be offset or to overpower agents that take water OUT of the atmosphere. Those infamous belching ‘smoke stacks’ like the cooling towers of nuclear reactors for example? Those big puffy masses coming out of them is steam. Of course, natural emissions of H2O by far outweigh anything man does, and that would quite spoil the AGW party.
Leif will surely tell us that a Maunder or Dalton minimum is not the end of the world by any stretch, so I guess this is nothing really significant. What is more important to my mind is why the Arctic is melting if it is not warming caused by CO2 emissions. Personally, I am leaning towards volcanic activity. Both the peninsula referenced in that article and the Arctic itself have significant volcanic activity, including underwater volcanic eruptions in the latter. Stronger and heavier winter storms would seem to be indicative of more moisture in the air, though one year hardly ‘proves’ anything. Plus we are just going into the Cool phase of the largest (and the shallowest too, I think) of all the Earth’s oceans. We shall see what effect that has on the ice and on global temperatures.
The GISS temp data I don’t trust as far as I can throw James Hansen. So if it is ‘global warming’ it needs to be demonstrated in some other way than through very questionable temperature derivations and their subsequent ‘adjustments’ and spurious claims of the power of carbon dioxied. Futhermore, as we have stated time and again, a modest warming would be a GOOD thing. And there is no known reason why the Earth should act like a nuclear reactor, the only process in the universe that is dominated by positive feedbacks. The ‘global warming’ contention may be correct, but it has not been demonstrated how or why. All questions must be thoroughly explored and answered. This is far from over.
Pamela, I am with you there; sunspots are merely a result of underlying Solar Physics. However, they are indicative of …? certainly activity, whatever that means.
Anthony,
I asked this of Leif once, but he seems not to know anyone of the sort. Do you think you could use your “connections” and snag us an “official expert” or two on oceanic circulation? I really feel that is a missing piece of the puzzle. As much insight as Leif gives us to the Sun, and as appreciative as people are of that, I feel it would have an equally positive reaction and contribution to have such an “expert.” Certainly one might be available to weigh in on things for your rather large audience here.
Reply: No, and here’s why. I’m getting DOZENS of requests now per day to “do something” for “somebody”. I can’t hardly keep up with the email I get from this blog, manage it, much less run the surfacestations project, run a business, be a dad and husband, and the dozens of other things I do.
I can’t be every person’s go-to guy on climate issues, I do the best I can, I choose what I can do and write about carefully, I’m sorry. If anyone has a contact feel free to invite. -Anthony
Depends on how the carpenter measures: Center to Center or the width of the non-minimal spacing.
nobwainer (17:44:32) :
“Interesting that the Maunder, Dalton and this latest big pause are all 200 yrs apart.”
Actually the dalton, maunder, sporer and wolf are all 179 yrs apart and for very good reason. The oort min falls out of sync for the same reason. its all about neptune, uranus, and, Jupiter apposing saturn. very hard to argue against.
Indeed, puny and hard to see, haven’t seen a good one in years.
The first one was distinctly dark this morning, before the sun set there were two equally faint & fuzzy arcs. Odds are they will be difficult for me to spot tomorrow.
MattN (18:01:10) :
Still fairly small as sunspots go….
The arc and the fading act reminds me of a bubble of tint in paint hitting the surface, expanding and blending into the background. Makes me think about why these things keep coming up at the low ebb of Planetary A index and Solar Wind Velocity.
Most intriguing this behavior.
Any takers on sunspot behavior?
Looking at solarcycle24.com’s picture, the 2008/09/23 00:00 version looks like the sunspot has shrunk somewhat and has changed configuration. It is now a “u” instead of an “n” shape. — John M Reynolds
Bobby L:
I thought it was a Rorschach inkblot test.
Maybe I should have added a smilely 🙂
Anthony,
Sorry! It’s easy to forget that. I’ll look on my own or if any others want to help that might be good too. Thanks for the excellent site and all your hard work.
I’ll see if I can dig up one.
Robert…
check out how the carpenter measures here:
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2007/05/sunssbam1620to2180.gif
as you can see we are in EXACTLY the same spot as the previous minimums.
the mind boggles as to why….but there is definitely a pattern.
@John-X,
Good one! 🙂 I actually had someone correct me for real on that once, something about how CO2 simply causes havoc, so it could warm here but cool over there, ja, ja, Chaos, I say!!
@Tom in Texas, what scared me is you can see the little lines of CO2 being squirted down into the blue ocean below. Scary! 🙂
@others: Please don’t read so defensively that you miss the humor when it shows up. Those little gems that lighten things up are part of what makes this blog a fun read.
I’m glad it wasn’t the U first, then the N…
Basil,
I was struck by how much your wavelet analysis looks like the kind of results that I am getting by playing with the idea of the area under curve of the sunspot graph. (I’ve tried it with the TSI Graph too with much the same results). I have also related these areas to the Hadcrut temperatures with tantilizing results. (Beats the crap out of the CO2 > temp relation). Also, the AUC certainly indicates that the 20th century was more active that the 18th or 19th. I would like your feedback on what I have done – could send you my Excel data. If interested could you get my e-mail address from Anthony? For example here hare the areas for the 23 cycles.
1 10494
2 11808
3 11672
4 14838
5 7938
6 7427
7 10030
8 12717
9 13382
10 11895
11 12349
12 9623
13 10185
14 8968
15 9823
16 9691
17 11812
18 11900
19 13657
20 11592
21 12814
22 12342
23 11757
@Pamela Gray
“I am more inclined to look at Leif’s data which takes into account measures other than sunspot numbers.”
Lief has EARNED my respected the hard way. I tend to listen to what he has to say and grant his research with a higher weight.
However, Basil has almost as much respect as Lief, and if these two can work together, then their debates will result in an advancement of our scientific knowledge.
Both of them simply want to understand what is happening, and that is the true definition of a scientist.
There certainly is a pattern there, and so is the cold that showed up 2 cycles later.
nobwainer (19:51:24) :
Robert…
check out how the carpenter measures here:
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2007/05/sunssbam1620to2180.gif
as you can see we are in EXACTLY the same spot as the previous minimums.
the mind boggles as to why….but there is definitely a pattern.
While it is nice that we finally have a decent cycle 24 spot cluster, I don’t think anything definitive can be said yet about minimums, size of 24 max, etc.
My question is, what about LIvingston? Has he measured the umbral magnetic field of the spots in this cluster? (or is he measuring something else?)
If he has, are we still following the trend toward no spots by 2015?
Since it seems likely that sc24 spots will now outnumber sc23 spots for September, will this month be considered the minimum? Or do we need a 3month running average where sc24 outnumbers sc23?
Johnnyb (15:48:08) :
You and others are pinning far too many hopes on one little sunspot group. Do keep in mind that the transition to SC24 doesn’t occur until the SC24 spots outnumber the SC23 spots in the 12 month smooth sunspot number. So even if this will be the transition, we have 6 months left before the official pronouncement. Meanwhile, the spot may not survive the night and we’ll be right back to a blank sun and uncertainty of what the next sunspeck might be.
Getting back to Basil’s graphic, I’m really impressed with the symmetry and periodicity in the data, especially how things like carrots, err, cycles 20, 21, and 22 join up much like the first three complete cycles on the left just before the Dalton Minimum. Bother occurred during a busy period in the 88 year period at the top of the graphic.
I did do a little reading about these, and got the sense that some of shapes fall out of how the convolutions with wavelets at not quite the right period interact, especially things like the tilting and hence some of the symmetry, but that may just help call attention to the interesting aspects.
I’m not sure how wide a Morlet wavelet is over time, but the edge distortion is probably limited to 1/2 or a bit less of the period, so the top power of 2 or so may have some problems, but the rest may be have very little distortion. That certainly is born out by the visible periodicity.
Very cool stuff.
Anthony . Reference the query by Bobby Lane(18:25:48) and your quite reasonable answer. Perhaps you could comply under a condition that all of the requesters are prepared to dig into their own pockets to assist you in renumeration for extra staff? I would be prepared to offer coin if you can come up with a reasonable fee (A fee that will probably only be able to be stated with any accuracy if you had the extra staff to calculate same!).
REPLY: Thank you for the suggestion, but I’d prefer to remain a journalist and scientist, rather than be a shopkeeper. Fees make me think of the DMV – Anthony
[…] Watts up with that? […]
Bobby Lane – “Even in the amounts emitted by man, which are relatively little compared to Nature itself – and even in the combined (man and nature) effect CO2 is relatively weak.” This is a bad argument. Nature releases much more CO2 than we do, though it also takes it all back so nature’s co2 usage is in a rather perfect equilibrium. Humans are then adding to that CO2 input, without then using it ourselves. Your point essentially argues that the modern increase in CO2 is not anthropogenic. This is a very hard case to make.
You also write – “Personally, I am leaning towards volcanic activity. Both the peninsula referenced in that article and the Arctic itself have significant volcanic activity, including underwater volcanic eruptions in the latter.” Arctic warming has followed the very same trend as global temperatures (stable from 1978 to 1995), step change from 1995 to 2001, and stabilization after that point. This seems to imply that something global is responsible for Arctic warming, for it caries the same warming signature as the rest of the globe does. So this rules out any regional activity. Perhaps Erl Happ’s theory that warming at high latitudes is just the product of tropical warming/cooling events moving toward the poles.
I agree with you conclusions about attributing climate change to humans, but I thought there were some details that needed to be clarified.
Unprecedented SC24 sunspot.
Clearly the largets SC24 spot in a milinnia.
If it continue to grow at this rate there will be over 1000 spots in less than 5 years.
Clearly a sign of MMS. (Mad Man Sunspots)
We must take action NOW!
Even if the periodicity of 179 years existed, it could have nothing to do with planets. The mean motions of the planets on their orbits around the Sun, in degrees per day, are
Jupiter 0.083091189
Saturn 0.033459654
Uranus 0.011730787
Neptune 0.005981826
Now calculate by yourselves. The heliocentric conjunctions of Uranus with Neptune (‘heliocentric’ means ‘as seen from the Sun’) occur at mean intervals of 171.4 years, NOT 179 years. The last three took place in 1650, 1821, and 1993.
Even if you consider the period of 171.4 years instead of 179, you get nothing. After 171.4 years (more exactly, 62620 days), Neptune moves 375 degrees in its orbit, that is 1 turn plus 15 degrees, Uranus makes 2 turns plus 15 degrees, but Saturn does 6 turns minus 65 degrees.