I decided to make an animated GIF of the latest cycle 24 sunspot, dubbed number 1002, which was literally a “flash in the pan”.
Credit: SOHO/MDI
One thing that has been common so far with all cycle 24 sunspots this year is that they have been small and very short lived. This one lived just slightly more than a whole day, a mere blip in solar time, where some sunspots will survive for a whole solar rotation (27 days) or more.
moptop (06:15:56) :
“Ten times as much. ” — Leif
Based on the GCHs. (Global Climate Hacks) A “hack” is a computer program written by somebody who doesn’t completely understand the problem space which that programmer keeps adjusting, still without understanding (taking hacks at), until he gets something that approximates the expected answer.
Just to clarify. The ‘ten times’ does not come out of any model, but on equating what comes in with what must go out. A 0.1% change in radiation equates to a 0.025% change in temperature, or 0.075 degrees. Since the observed change is perhaps 10 times as large, the change in input must also be ten times larger. That is where my number comes from.
I have never seen any ‘scientific finding that can be proven through rigorous logic’.
After reading lots of climate change stuff for a couple of years, I can only conclude that, if William of Ockham were alive to see this stuff, he would use his razor to slit his own throat in frustration.
Which is the accumulator that accumulates all those small TSI differences?
[…] Solar Activity Lowest in 100 Years. Sunspots still MIA. […]
Leif
“They compare the temperatures with Lean’s old TSI-reconstruction which not even Lean believes anymore. The reconstruction was made to match the Lockwood ‘doubling’ of the Sun’s magnetic field. Lockwood’s group now find that their old result was flawed and that there has been no ‘doubling in the last 100 years’”
Were these ‘new’ findings made before or after the two Scafetta and West papers?
#Anthony Watts
Is there an update available from the graph below ?
(I haven’t seen as many clouds as this year for decades…)
Leif Svalgaard:
“…A 0.1% change in radiation equates to a 0.025% change in temperature, or 0.075 degrees…”
here is a possible multiplier, with giant impact measured in W/m2.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/earth_albedo_bbso.png
from
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/10/17/earths-albedo-tells-a-interesting-story/
Tiny Tim, spotlet, sunspeck, sunprick, drop of tint on a football field of paint base.
All born to fade.
Not much more than a ‘bubble’ reaching the surface.
The size of the bubble is in observed proportion to the time to live.
They die quickly.
“here is a possible multiplier, with giant impact measured in W/m2.”
Another is the varying period of reduced input. The SO is the 800 pound gorilla, absorbing nearly half of the incident energy. Water’s emissivity is 60% that of the terrestrial earth, and it’s heat capacity 50% greater (if memory serves).
An extra year of minimum integrating the reduced input begins to tell, … oh, wait, has begun. Yeah, 0.1% sounds like a slam dunk, it’s just trite.
There are at least three levels on the earth which are capable of sustaining geomagnetism. The ionised upper atmosphere is one. The core and mantle is another. The third is the oceans and land surface, which consist of water and electrolytes, or soluble ions.
The assumption that the core of the earth is iron must be irrelevant. The temperature below the earth’s crust is above the Curie point of iron, the temperature that iron ceases to be ferromagnetic. It may be relevant that the core may be metallic (i.e. electrically conductive), or that the mantle, like the surface, contains a solution of ions, but the viscosity and inertia of such a subterranean composite structure are unlikely to show changes measured on annual scales. Millennial scales or aeons maybe.
I would suggest that the current decrease in geomagnetism is factored by the atmosphere and oceans, and the conductivity in the near surface soils and bedrock. And of course the changing amounts of polar ice.
Of course no-one has done the experiment with 1000 km lengths of 1cm thick silver cables shielded against electrical and magnetic influences on meridional and longitudinal vectors across land or ocean, monitoring the absolute surface electrical current variation over time. It could be done. Cheaper than NASA!
Then again, we haven’t done this with probes in the earth’s mantle or core, either, which are technically more problematic.
It’s a comfortable thought that there is a big lump of familiar iron at the centre of the earth, keeping our poles magnetically oriented, but an impossible thesis if the poles can reverse, as they apparently have, many times in the past. It would require a reversal of spin, not very likely IMO.
It would be rather disconcerting if we found out our core was actually that dense because it was a mixture of carbon, silicon, nickel, lead and iron and various isotopes of uranium in a well balanced nuclear reactor keeping things ticking over.
Of course we don’t know that. We can only guess that our core is the composition that our current paradigm accepts.
Whatever, the fact that there’s iron there has nothing to do with geomagnetism. It is all electromagnetism, and solenoids require no core to produce magnetic force.
So what would be required for a pole reversal? A shift of landmasses perhaps, blocking ocean currents, or a climate shift, sending ocean currents in different directions entraining the much more flexible ionospheric and thermospheric currents in counter directions from their previous paths.
A little like what we seem to be learning about heliomagnetism.
Chris Knight
an impossible thesis if the poles can reverse, as they apparently have, many times in the past. It would require a reversal of spin, not very likely IMO.
I’m not a geophysicist, but I’ll have a go at this anyway. The core would not have to stop and start up again in the opposite direction to reverse its spin, it would only have to tip over through 180 degrees. Or did I miss some deeper meaning in your statement?
John, if the core tipped over through 180 degrees, don’t you think this would have some major implications in the spin of the planetary surface? What sort of energies can you imagine would have to be applied to tip over the core, without tipping over the rest of the planet?
Bill D. (09:26:04) :
“They compare the temperatures with Lean’s old TSI-reconstruction which not even Lean believes anymore. The reconstruction was made to match the Lockwood ‘doubling’ of the Sun’s magnetic field. Lockwood’s group now find that their old result was flawed and that there has been no ‘doubling in the last 100 years’”
Were these ‘new’ findings made before or after the two Scafetta and West papers?
After. The TSI referenced by S&W is the old one anyway. Even Hansen has a paper from 2007 [after some of the new stuff] that still references 10-year old obsolete TSI-series.
manfred & Gary:
Don’t forget that support for a solar influence is also strong support for AGW.
Chris Knight (13:49:20) :
I would suggest that the current decrease in geomagnetism is factored by the atmosphere and oceans, and the conductivity in the near surface soils and bedrock. And of course the changing amounts of polar ice.
There is no need for this extra hypothesis. The geomagnetic field is likw the solar field generated by a self-sustaining dynamo. These from time to time naturally reverse. One of the problems in dynamo theory is how to prevent them from reversing [as the Earth’ field hasn’t done in a long time, but is perhaps now ready to do]. P.S. No tipping of cores.
No Velikovsky, Leif?
Dee Norris (15:57:18) :
No Velikovsky?
I’m afraid he doesn’t make the cut, although he gets high marks for imagination and creativity.
I think it’s much more likely that the oceans would cause a climate shift rather than any other force (besides a collision with a large external body, or the Earth stoping spinning, or the moon suddenly disappearing), instead of the other way around (climate shift reversing ocean currents).
The sun is currently playing a game with us.
I’m a sunspot, Poof! You’re a pile of equations.
As stars progress through the Main Sequence, do they not cool?
@Robert Bateman:
If I remember my standard model correctly, main sequence stars warm and expand until late life, then become red giants and planetary nova before ending as white dwarfs and cold hunks of iron.
Sol is still warming.
I appreciated the intelligent discussion. A few years ago, I could image sunspots using the accidental pinhole camera effect of a hole in the side of our warehouse. I’m sure I couldn’t see this most recent one that way.
If the sun moved off the main sequence, then it would be about to undergo Red Giant Branch transformation. See any signs of the sun expanding? Warming? Contracting?
What then are the Minimums and why is the TSI down ever so slightly?
The models don’t seem to be able to predict them, which tells me that too much is taken for granted.
The total geologic timeline of Earth seems to indicate that is has been cooling, with a lot of burps along the way. Which brings up a strange relationship: If the sun is slowly getting hotter and expanding, where’s the point at which Earth then starts warming?
“Don’t forget that support for a solar influence is also strong support for AGW.”
Absurd, Sir. Yes we know you have some reasoning, like ‘sensitivity’, but like TSI invariance, it is guaranteed to be simplistic.
Does this make any sense?
By far the greatest amount of CO2 is released by the world’s oceans; they are also the largest absorbers. It should not be assumed that both sides of this process are always in equilibrium. The release of CO2 is not, but its absorption may be affected by the Sun.
Increased UV and gamma radiations are reaching the oceans’ surface during periods of high sunspot activity. There are also charged particles originating either from solar or galactic activity. All of these to a certain degree damage living cells. Clouds provide protection from UV rays; Van-Allen belt provides partial protection from charged particles and the atmosphere to some extent from gamma rays.
If solar activity is on increase (as it has been since 1860-s) then level of all 3 kinds of radiation would be on increase. Coincidently, the average strength of the Earth’s magnetic field has been decaying during same period by about 11% (61 to 54 micro Tesla), consequently protection of Van-Allen belt has also been reduced.
This increase of the harmful radiation is causing reduction of bio-mass of the oceans’ surface phytoplankton, which is by far the largest absorber of CO2 on the Earth’s surface. The damage is either through direct destruction of its cells or process of sterilization by irradiation. Result of this is a reduced uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere and rising in the ‘green-house’ effect. There are already quantifiable evaluations of reduction in the efficiency of phytoplankton. Reverse process takes place during significant reductions in the solar activity e.g. 1650-1710.
Gary Gulrud (06:15:58) :
“Don’t forget that support for a solar influence is also strong support for AGW.”
Absurd, Sir.
Exactly my point:
reductio ad absurdum is a process of refutation on grounds that absurd – and patently untenable consequences would ensue from accepting the item at issue.
Simon Radun (06:16:43) :
Increased UV and gamma radiations are reaching the oceans’ surface during periods of high sunspot activity.
Almost all of the UV and all of the X-ray [there is no gamma rays] radiation is not reaching the ocean surface, but is absorbed high in the stratosphere.
Simon Radun (09:42:36) :
work claiming that atmospheric gamma rays are produced from solar energetic particles and cosmic rays penetrating the atmosphere.
Yes, I should have been more precise there. These events are exceedingly rare [a few times for a few minutes during an 11-year cycle], so no significant flux.
About the UV: the Far Ultraviolet that varies significantly with the solar cycle does not penetrate. We do get some of the less energetic UV [just below the visible], but the flux of these vary oppositely to solar activity [i.e. goes up when solar activity goes down].