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 😉
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Leif Svalgaard (20:58:34) :
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…”
So does that mean that you do agree that there is a correlation in low sunspot numbers and the positions of the planets in the years quoted?
nobwainer (21:32:23) :
“So should the climate also be the same, then? since ‘everybody’ knows that there is such strong correlation…”
So does that mean that you do agree that there is a correlation in low sunspot numbers and the positions of the planets in the years quoted?
No, of course not. >b>If there is such a strong correlation between solar activity and the climate as ‘everybody’ claims, and if solar activity is caused by the planets, then the climate should repeat every 178 years. Right? and does it?
Leif Svalgaard (22:14:30) :
So does that mean that you do agree that there is a correlation in low sunspot numbers and the positions of the planets in the years quoted?
“No, of course not. >b>If there is such a strong correlation between solar activity and the climate as ‘everybody’ claims, and if solar activity is caused by the planets, then the climate should repeat every 178 years. Right? and does it?”
Well Leif if the proxy records are correct, 178 yrs ago we had the Dalton minimum, 178 before that we had the Maunder, 178yrs before that the Spore, then another 178yrs we have the Wolf.
And guess what…on each occasion we have Neptune and Uranus coming together.
Check out my amateur report on it here.
http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/gasgiants.pdf
Leif…. I also think you are arguing the link between sunspot counts and climate.
I am purely arguing how the planets effect the sunspot count….which some say has an effect on climate.
nobwainer (22:45:06) :
So, if 2008 is the start of the new (Eddy?) minimum, 1830 would be the start of Dalton, 1652 the start of Maunder, 1474 the start of Sporer, and 1296 the start of Wolf.
From Wikipedia (sorry, but it was handy), 1790 was the start of Dalton, 1645 the start of Maunder, 1420 was the start of Sporer, 1280 was the start of Wolf.
Differences betwen the pairs are 40, 7, 54, and 16. While 7 is pretty good, note that the length of the Maunder minimum was so different from the rest it’s hard to describe it as similar to the others, let alone a repeat. 40 and 54 year offsets are horrid – several Schwabe cycles and a large percentage of 178.
nobwainer (23:06:29) :
I also think you are arguing the link between sunspot counts and climate.
No, I do not think there are any links, planets, sunspots, climate.
Just trying to establish that if there you believe in a planet-sunspot link and if you believe there is a sunspot-climate link, it follows that there should be a planet-climate link, and then asking if you subscribed to that last link.
Ric…the start and end times of the minimums can vary depending where you look, the important thing to realize is that each 178 cycle has Neptune and Uranus coming together at 174yrs and Jupiter and Saturn plus the others are coming around in a slightly diff configuration. So on some minimums the process starts early as Neptune and Uranus come together and others times middle or late(ish)….its not about start times down to the exact year. The fact of the matter is Neptune and Uranus have come together for every minimum except the Oort which goes out of sync along with the medieval warm period. Use this tool to follow the progress of the major 4 planets.
http://math-ed.com/Resources/GIS/Geometry_In_Space/java1/Temp/TLVisPOrbit.html
Leif Svalgaard (06:34:25) :
nobwainer (23:06:29) :
I also think you are arguing the link between sunspot counts and climate.
“No, I do not think there are any links, planets, sunspots, climate.”
So we will just sweep it away with a simple statement….forget about the climate link if that troubles you. There is no proof that the planets can effect the Sun and we also don’t know how plasma is effected by gravity. Perhaps we should look for the causes while accepting there is a correlation of Neptune and Uranus coming together during the past 4 minimums….and perhaps this might help us to predict the next minimum which is more than science can offer presently.
nobwainer (15:43:59) :
> Use this tool to follow the progress of the major 4 planets.
> http://math-ed.com/Resources/GIS/Geometry_In_Space/java1/Temp/TLVisPOrbit.html
No thanks, I’m a software engineer and I hate the user interface on it. There ought to be things to let you adjust the time forward or backward by a user-defined amount (like 178 years). Also buttons for jumping 10 steps at a time. (Maybe user selectable, 10, 12, 24, 30, 365.2422/12, etc all have their uses.
Have you checked its accuracy? I was hoping Jean Meeus would, but haven’t seen him report back. I figure something unpolished like that may need some polish in its orbital computation too.
Ric…some people are hard to please. Its not hard to use a calculator. The information is there and easy to see, but you can only lead a horse to water I guess.
I have spoken with Jean thru this blog, for some reason this tool doesn’t work on his pc, but i gave him a few dates that he checked and it all seemed to line up as i was seeing it.
Ric…you might also hate this one…the interface is even more difficult but does serve as a cross check http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar
nobwainer (23:37:05) :
Yeah, that one certainly seems more designed to watch planetismals than planets.
Robert Vanderbei at Princeton has done a lot of neat stuff with N-body simulations. While he does have a solar system simulator, it’s more of an afterthought and instance of a highly configurable simulator than astronomical tool. Check out http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/astro/galaxy/nBody.html some day when you have time to play.
Only if you have a lot of time should you venture to his home page at http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb . Old fogeys like me who drooled over the Questar ads in Scientific American or Sky and Telescope and anyone who dismisses 3.5″ telescopes as inadequate for real observing will be amazed at http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/images/Questar/
It’s good to hear the math behind http://math-ed.com/Resources/GIS/Geometry_In_Space/java1/Temp/TLVisPOrbit.html is valid. Knowing the results are accurate makes it a lot more usable.
“Differences betwen the pairs are 40, 7, 54, and 16. While 7 is pretty good, … 40 and 54 year offsets are horrid”
While I’m not an apologist for them but the general idea of ‘cyclomainia’ is that the Jose cycle perturbs the electromagnahelic cycle via a teleconnection. Some versions include magnetic interactions with the planets possessing significant fields.
As Leif has ably argued, no physical cause has been identified and all the usual suspects eliminated.
Demanding that the Hale cycle and the Jose cycle march in lockstep, however, is a ‘strawman’ which is why Fourier analysis is used in their studies.
I don’t know where Leif finds the patience and energy to respond to all the questions, but I thank him for the info and the skepticism. Throughout history people have looked for causes from “outer space” when they should have been looking closer to home. Some of this sounds too much like astrology to me. Good thing there hasn’t been a comet recently. If it’s any consolation for the people who think it’s the sun, the Milankovitch cycles don’t provide enough insolation variation to explain ice ages either without some additional unknown factors.