Below is a note forwarded to me by John Sumption from Jan Janssens. For those who do not know him, Jan runs a very comphrehensive solar tracking website here.
Jan included the caveat:
This topic’s sure to start another heated discussion on the solar blogs
So I’m happy to oblige by posting it here. Jansen makes some good points about the possible first month that cylce 24 spots exceed cycle 23 spots. But when you are in a deep minimum like this one, it is hard to pinpoint the transition, because next month may bring the reverse condition. He writes:
Prior to August 2008, only 3 SC24-sunspot groups appeared. This was in January, April and May. During these 3 months, SC23-activity was higher than SC24-activity. Based on the NOAA-numbering, there were respectively (SC23 to SC24) 2 to 1, 2 to 1, and 4 to 1 sunspotgroups visible.
In August, there were no sunspotgroups numbered by NOAA. However, on 21-22 August “something” was visible well enough to be seen by several observers and to prompt the SIDC to give a (preliminary) non-zero sunspotnumber for those days.
This group had a SC24-polarity but appeared on a moderate latitude of 15 degrees. Based on previous cycle transits, it is not unusual that some “early” new cycle groups appear this low. If one considers this as a sunspotgroup and belonging to SC24, then August was the month during which SC24-activity outnumbered SC23 activity.
However, if one adheres strictly to the NOAA-numbering, then September ***might*** be that month. I stress “might”, because -unless some group appears tomorrow or tuesday- the score will still be 1 to 1: On September 11th, NOAA did number an even tinier group than the August one, and it was a SC23 group (NOAA 1001). SC24-activity then wins on “points”, because the Wolfnumbers for 22-23 September produced by NOAA 1002 (SC24) were higher than the NOAA 1002 Wolfnumber.
Last but not least, I want to emphasize that SC24-activity will be considered higher than SC23’s when its smoothed group (or Wolf) number exceeds that of the old cycle. This might happen in the coming months (or whenever her Majesty the Sun feels up to it 😉
Neilo:
The mechanism for production of Be-10 is a nuclear collision between a high energy cosmic ray (actually almost always a proton but sometimes other heavier atomic nuclei, ray is an old misnomer) and an atmospheric nitrogen or oxygen nucleus. The nuclear reaction is called spallation. It literally knock the “you know what” out of the atmospheric atom and can result in Be-10 (with a half-life over 1 million years). Other shorter half-life products of spallation can occur but they usually are not usable as a proxy for solar activity because of their short half-lives.
The amount of Be-10 production is inversly proportional to the solar activity. That is because the sun is not the source of the cosmic rays. The cosmic rays come from outside the soalr system. When the sun is more active, the solar wind is stronger and “inflates” the Heliosphere and Heliosheath, reducing the amount of cosmic rays that reach the planets including Earth.
But isn’t the issue that the volume of GCRs varies over time depending on where we are in the galaxy (more GCR in the leading edge s of the spiral arms – of which there are 4 or 2 depending on who you listen too), where we are in the galactic plane (the solar system ‘dolphins’ through the galactic plane and GCR are concentrated in the center of the plane (we are entering the middle of the plane in 2012 as I understand it).
Given that and the variability of the strength of the heliosphere, doesn’t that make it a tad tricky to figure out what the level of BE10/C14 actually means?
Sorry…
I’m obsessing over the news today…
US stock markets closed at the top of the hour (16:00 EDT), but there was HUGE selling at the close, and the final prices are still not settled – can’t remember this happening for this long before.
Since the official close, the Dow is down another 130+ points, down to the lows of the day, new one-day point-drop record.
interesting times, interesting times, interesting times
John-X (12:10:27) :
I had the occasion to visit St. David, Wales, UK, for 15 days during the late 1970s. It rained, sleeted and snowed, after a beautiful sunrise, on the day we departed.
Fernando (12:44:16) :
Climate Science is not dysfunctional, only a few, but influencial, climate scientists have been proven to be purchaseable.
Bill Marsh (13:04:06) :
“But isn’t the issue that the volume of GCRs varies over time depending on where we are in the galaxy …”
Bill, the effects you are talking about operate on time scales (10’s of millions of years) that dwarf human evolution. There is no GCR event scheduled for 2012. The sun moves through interstellar space at a rate of about 4.2 AU per year relative to the stars in our suns neighborhood (20,000 m/s).
. The sun (and local neighborhood of stars) rotate about the galactic center at orbital speed of about 45 AU per year (220,000 m/s).
To put that in perspective, the distance to the nearest star (Proxima-Centauri) is 4.22 light-years or 270,000 AU.
Dead pixels or new sunspecks (pore-ettes) ?
At first I was pretty sure I was looking at nothing, then I saw the official NOAA bulletin
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/forecast.html
and the usual phrase, “The visible disk was spotless,” was omitted – typical practice when there’s something there, but too small to be “officially noticed.”
Anybody else see anything?
REPLY: Yes, see my latest post. Thanks for the tip. -Anthony
Hello Anthony. Is this the awaited paper from the AIRS TEAM? ‘Satellite remote sounding of mid-tropospheric CO2’, published 9 September 2008 at
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl0817/2008GL035022/
REPLY: Yes it is. This was on my list of things to check this week, thanks for the tip! I’ll write it up sas soon as I can read it. In the meantime, feel free to post more comments on it in this thread.
First sentence:
” Human activity has increased the concentration of the earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide, which plays a direct role in contributing to global warming.”
REPLY: See the new post I’ve made on this for discussion on the main page – Anthony
Nobwainer
Pretty interesting. With Saturn in opposition, move ahead or behind in time a few days or weeks and see what the inner planets look like along with Pluto. The Maunder seems to have a good line up of most of them. And there may be a tightening in the others when considering all of them. Maybe you have already tried that, I don’t know. But the outer seem the most important, with the inner helping out. 1789, even though Neptune is out, Pluto is in. 1970 just not quite there, but maybe just enough to cause trouble.
Bed-time reading.
Global Deception: The Exaggeration of the Global Warming Threat
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Reference_Docs/PMichaels_Jun98.pdf
Ed Scott,
That was a great read! Thanks for posting it.
Today we tend to forget the Senate’s 95 – 0 vote against Kyoto [from the link]:
Also, a very interesting chart was the one comparing land surface station temperatures with satellite and radiosonde balloon data. The last two show cooling, while the [UHI-corrupted] surface station data shows warming [this paper was submitted a decade ago, in 1998].
You’re right, Ed, it was good bed-time reading!
Brian D (16:21:59) :
Nobwainer
“Pretty interesting. With Saturn in opposition, move ahead or behind in time a few days or weeks and see what the inner planets look like along with Pluto……”
Hi Brian, agree with your perception. To my mind the crucial players seem to be Neptune & Uranus, they taking 174 yrs to catch up to each other then the quicker moving Jupiter and Saturn do their thing to slow things down as regards the Sun.
Its certainly a pattern that is worth a look and has meant a solar minimum everytime this happens for the last 700+ yrs…and we are in the exact same spot right now.
Harthaway and Lief are watching the dynamo and the polar fields for short term predictions that agree with this pattern….i wonder what their theories “on what causes” the change in dynamo output over the centuries is?
http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/gasgiants.pdf
Bill Marsh (13:04:06) :
“But isn’t the issue that the volume of GCRs varies over time depending on where we are in the galaxy (more GCR in the leading edge s of the spiral arms – of which there are 4 or 2 depending on who you listen too), where we are in the galactic plane (the solar system ‘dolphins’ through the galactic plane and GCR are concentrated in the center of the plane (we are entering the middle of the plane in 2012 as I understand it).”
Bill…was wondering if you have any links on this one, it looks a very interesting area to research.
Smokey. It was bizarre of Hitler to actually declare war on the USA – a mistake in magnitude to his turn to the Russians when the blitz on Britain came to an end. Had he not declared war (and had he persuaded Japan to hold off) then it’s debatable whether or not the US would have entered WWII ever at all! Public opinion in the US was firmly against it.
However, would the war have ended differently if the US had never entered? Ooh that’s difficult. Russia would have held out for a long time and depleted Germany’s capacity. Although we Brits would have held our own, it’s difficult to imagine that Germany would not have built up a bombing force to level the country. Then again, we had ingenuity on our side, and a dogged determination that Churchill exemplified. We are best when our backs are against the wall. Of course, the largest variable in all this is development of the nuclear bomb. If Germany had got it first then we would of had to surrender. But if we got it first then the war would have been over. But the war would have cost so much that it would of been a pyrrhic victory.
What if????
Cheers.
Steve B,
It’s always fun to speculate on “what if,” isn’t it? I guess we’ll never know. But you are right about Japan. And with Japan attacking us, the attitude here was that we had our hands full with that situation alone. Had Hitler not foolishly declared war on the U.S. just 4 days later, it is doubtful that we would have decided to take on a massive second front. What for? Dec. 11, 1941 was Hitler’s biggest mistake.
The U.S. entry into the European war gave the Russians [and the British] a tremendous morale boost. Churchill stated at the time that at that point that the war was won [although he acknowledged hard slogging ahead]. Without Hitler’s forcing the U.S. into the war, Russia probably would have eventually lost, Lend-Lease or not. But Germany just did not have the resources or manpower to prosecute a war against England, Russia – and the U.S., too.
It’s 2 a.m. here [couldn’t sleep], so I’ll end this idle speculation with a recommendation: The Winds of War, by Herman Wouk. He did 14 years of historical fact-checking, plus it’s a very interesting story in its own right. I’m on my fourth reading. Highly recommended, and you can probably find a paperback copy on Amazon for a dollar or less. People [here, at least, in 2008] just don’t generally understand the situation and attitudes immediately preceding Dec. 7, 1941. The Selective Service Act [the military draft] passed by exactly one vote; Americans were strongly isolationist, and had no interest in getting involved in European problems. Hitler changed that forever.
Regards,
~ Smokey
[PS: sorry about the O/T pixels, Anthony. I’ll have to make another donation to this site to atone.]
Ric Werme,
I was not soliciting Joe himself but ICECAP in general, and anyway my solicitation requested suggestions of the person of interest was not an expert in that field or just was too busy. This may be a fruitless search as the climate debate must keep researchers pretty busy. I did e-mail Dr. Broecker at Columbia as well. I have not heard back from either Dr. Gray or Dr. Broecker yet at all. Josh Marshall I have not contacted, but it was he that was suggested not Mr. Lindzen. I just thought it might be a good thing that he knew Mr. Lindzen and might be familiar with his latest treatise. Thus he would have a good approximation of how the people on this blog feel about how climate science is used.
Anyway, perhaps Dr. Klotzbach spoiled me. I may be waiting a while on these gentlemen to get back to me. And on the whole they may be too busy to bother with a site like this. No offense intended, but it really amazes me that Leif himself makes as many appearances around here as he does. Eh, it’s all a mystery right now.
I just have too say that I love this website.
Long may it prosper, and thanks to everyone for their comments both pro and anti AGW, etc…
I think that we just need to remember and celebrate that we actually have freedom to public discuss all the things that are discussed on this website.
Note that this freedom is core to nearly everyone’s values who posts on this website.
It’s a privledge to be a “fly on the wall” to witness and learn from you all – even and especially from those I disagree with.
Cheers G
Graeme –
I happily, whole-heartedly ‘second’ your sentiments about WUWT.
“Harthaway and Lief ”
Hearthaway and Leaf? No, that’s not it either, crum.
I like the fourmilab orrey for playing with the planets. I believe the best results in high global temp followed by solar somnolence involve the preceding (to apposition) run of Saturn up to the distal pair with Jove closing rapidly. If either of the great planets run ahead in passing the outer pair it’s a ho-hum outcome.
Look at the run up to the MWP, and the Maunder and compare with 1982 and 1992, 1998, 2003 and today.
nobwainer et al.:
There are two ‘planetary’ influences theories 1) the ‘barycenter’ and 2) the ‘tidal’ theories. The Sun [and the planets] is in free fall in their orbits and feels no forces [like the astronaut in orbit around the Earth or a man in an elevator with a snapped cable]. The barycenter is a fictive point whose position depends on what you consider to be part of the solar system. The Sun is not being ‘jerked around’ by the planets. The tidal forces are much too small to have any effect [Jupiter creates a tide 1/50 of an inch high, and Venus creates almost as high a tide, the other planets including Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune create way smaller tides].
Dynamo theory predicts stochastic variations in solar cycle sizes. One of the problems is to prevent such variations from ‘overwhelming’ the cycle. Unless there is a ‘relic’ magnetic field deep within the Sun [very little or no evidence for that – although many claims, just as with so much in this area] there is no clock that that can pace the cycle. And if there are longer period ‘cycles’ they have run about 100 years lately, not 176 or whatever that slippery number is.
We have discussed all this many times before, so search back though old postings, if you want to see some of that.
As an example of the pseudo-science the ‘planetary’ theories lead to, I offer this peer-reviewed one:
New Astronomy, Volume 14, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 25-30
doi:10.1016/j.newast.2008.04.005
Long-term predictive assessments of solar and geomagnetic activities made on the basis of the close similarity between the solar inertial motions in the intervals 1840–1905 and 1980–2045
I. Charvátová
Abstract
The solar inertial motions (orbits) (SIMs) in the years 1840–1905 and 1980–2045 are of a disordered type and they are nearly identical. This fact was used for assessing predictive capabilities for the sizes of three future sunspot cycles and for the time variation of the geomagnetic aa-index up to 2045. The author found that the variations in sunspot numbers in the interval 1840–1867 and in the interval 1980–2007 are similar, especially after 1850 (1990). The differences may be ascribed to the lower quality of the sunspot data before 1850. A similarity between the variations in geomagnetic aa-index in the intervals 1844–1867 and 1984–2007 is also found. Moreover, the aa-index in these intervals have the same best fit lines (the polynomials of the fourth order) with close positions of the extrema. The extrema of the best fit line for the aa-index in the interval 1906–1928 which corresponds to the first half of the ordered, trefoil interval of the SIM have the opposite positions to them. The correlation coefficient between the aa-indices in the interval 1844–1866 and in the interval 1984–2006 is 0.61. In contrast, the correlation coefficient between the aa-indices in the interval 1844–1866 and in the interval 1906–1928 is −0.43. Cautious predictions have been made: the author believes that the cycles 24–26 will be a repeat of cycles 11–13, i.e. they could have heights around 140 (100), 65 and 85, they will have lengths of 11.7, 10.7 and 12.1 years. The maxima of the cycles should occur in 2010, 2023 and 2033, the minima in 2007, 2018, 2029 and 2041. Up to 2045, the aa-index could repeat its values for the interval 1868–1905. The results indicate that solar and geomagnetic activities are non random processes. If these predictions may come true, then further evidence of the primary role of the SIM in solar variability is established.
——
If the Sun is the primary and dominant driver of climate, then one would also expect the climate during 1840–1905 and 1980–2045 to be similar as sunspots and geomagnetic activity repeat, unless AGW makes the difference 🙂 Of course, there are also the usual weasel words [‘could’, ‘may’, …] giving the author a way out, if needed.
The mind boggles at the nonsense…
Charvátová gets it all wrong…very unimpressive. If he went back further before 1830 as well as 1650, 1470, 1290 he would have picked up the same planetary pattern …..which looks the same today.
NASA has a paper by Ching-Chey Hung “Apparent Relations Between Solar Activity and Solar Tides Caused by the Planets” http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/2007/TM-2007-214817.pdf
There has to be an external influence to the solar cycles, just a matter of finding it i think.
Leif Svalgaard (14:00:04)
The mind boggles at the nonsense…
Where’s an expert on barycenter monopoles when you need one?
Gary Gulrud (11:39:53) :
“Harthaway and Lief ”
Hearthaway and Leaf? No, that’s not it either, crum.
I will try harder in the future Gary 🙂
nobwainer (17:02:39) :
Charvátová gets it all wrong…very unimpressive. If she went back further before 1830 as well as 1650, 1470, 1290 she would have picked up the same planetary pattern …..which looks the same today.
So should the climate also be the same, then? since ‘everybody’ knows that there is such strong correlation…
There has to be an external influence to the solar cycles
Why does there have to be an external influence? This sounds like wishful thinking to me, or a priory constraining the science.