From NASA Science News h/t to John-X
Spotless Sun: 2008 is the Blankest Year of the Space Age
Sept. 30, 2008: Astronomers who count sunspots have announced that 2008 is now the “blankest year” of the Space Age.
As of Sept. 27, 2008, the sun had been blank, i.e., had no visible sunspots, on 200 days of the year. To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go back to 1954, three years before the launch of Sputnik, when the sun was blank 241 times.
“Sunspot counts are at a 50-year low,” says solar physicist David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. “We’re experiencing a deep minimum of the solar cycle.”
Above: A histogram showing the blankest years of the last half-century. The vertical axis is a count of spotless days in each year. The bar for 2008, which was updated on Sept. 27th, is still growing. [Larger images: 50 years, 100 years]
A spotless day looks like this:
The image, taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on Sept. 27, 2008, shows a solar disk completely unmarked by sunspots. For comparison, a SOHO image taken seven years earlier on Sept. 27, 2001, is peppered with colossal sunspots, all crackling with solar flares: image. The difference is the phase of the 11-year solar cycle. 2001 was a year of solar maximum, with lots of sunspots, solar flares and geomagnetic storms. 2008 is at the cycle’s opposite extreme, solar minimum, a quiet time on the sun.
And it is a very quiet time. If solar activity continues as low as it has been, 2008 could rack up a whopping 290 spotless days by the end of December, making it a century-level year in terms of spotlessness.
Hathaway cautions that this development may sound more exciting than it actually is: “While the solar minimum of 2008 is shaping up to be the deepest of the Space Age, it is still unremarkable compared to the long and deep solar minima of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” Those earlier minima routinely racked up 200 to 300 spotless days per year.
Some solar physicists are welcoming the lull.
“This gives us a chance to study the sun without the complications of sunspots,” says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center. “Right now we have the best instrumentation in history looking at the sun. There is a whole fleet of spacecraft devoted to solar physics–SOHO, Hinode, ACE, STEREO and others. We’re bound to learn new things during this long solar minimum.”
As an example he offers helioseismology: “By monitoring the sun’s vibrating surface, helioseismologists can probe the stellar interior in much the same way geologists use earthquakes to probe inside Earth. With sunspots out of the way, we gain a better view of the sun’s subsurface winds and inner magnetic dynamo.””There is also the matter of solar irradiance,” adds Pesnell. “Researchers are now seeing the dimmest sun in their records. The change is small, just a fraction of a percent, but significant. Questions about effects on climate are natural if the sun continues to dim.”
Pesnell is NASA’s project scientist for the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a new spacecraft equipped to study both solar irradiance and helioseismic waves. Construction of SDO is complete, he says, and it has passed pre-launch vibration and thermal testing. “We are ready to launch! Solar minimum is a great time to go.”
Coinciding with the string of blank suns is a 50-year record low in solar wind pressure, a recent discovery of the Ulysses spacecraft. (See the Science@NASA story Solar Wind Loses Pressure.) The pressure drop began years before the current minimum, so it is unclear how the two phenomena are connected, if at all. This is another mystery for SDO and the others.
Who knew the blank sun could be so interesting?
J W (06:25:21) :
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/news/2008/090808a.html
PSD researcher Marty Hoerling gave an invited presentation entitled, “Climate Change in the Grain Belt,”
” Since there has not yet been any warming in this region, it is unclear what, if any, action should be taken. ”
Are you crazy?
The temperature has NOT changed since 1895 !
We must taken action IMMEDIATELY to prevent the imminent warming !
How many tiny Tims where there? A few, shouldn’t make a big difference during this transit…
I have a question.
If you scroll down on this page:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/11jul_solarcycleupdate.htm
There’s a graphic that shows the solar minimum of 1933 was
similar to that of 2008.
But the following year – 1934 – was the warmest year of the century.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/08/08/1998-no-longer-the-hottest-year-on-record-in-usa/
How come ?
REPLY: This is one of the places where a sunspot to climate link doesn’t correlate. It may be that there needs to be a prolonged period of solar inactivity, and that period didn’t meet the threshold. It may be that something else was happening then that we don’t have data on. We simply just don’t know much about the sun beyond sunspot data and basic irradiance measurements during that time.
“There’s a graphic that shows the solar minimum of 1933 was
similar to that of 2008.
But the following year – 1934 – was the warmest year of the century. ”
“It may be that something else was happening then that we don’t have data on.”
One signficant difference we do have documented: google PDO & AMO and look for links at NOAA.
These important oceanic oscillations went positive simultaneously at the beginning of the ’30s and bequeathed the warmest decade in recent centuries in both Hemispheres.
As D’Aleo has essayed, changes in solar insolation and these two oscillations, considered together, account for 80% or more of global temperature change under PCA, in that order of importance. Unfortunately, PCA has its limitations; ICA would be preferred but these two factors are clearly not independent.
“The cumulative spotless days are in excess of 400”
And should approach 600 before Rmax in 2013.
Anthony i’m wondering how far back into 2007 was the sun this blank? I mean did it start in nov or dec or jan of this year.Also what is considered small sunspots today back during the 1800’s would they have equipment that could see the speck we see today?
Stormy: Let me throw in my 2 cents worth on that. This is my opinion…no particular science behind it, other than my common sense. I wonder if this has been studied? Please anyone with information let me know.
Oceans take longer to heat up than land. So, what you might have is “heat storage”. (I suppose even land may store some heat) Apply less heat, and these “heat stores” continue to keep the planet warm. And like the reply says, the decrease in solar activity wasn’t long enough to make a difference.
I guess a simple way for me to say this is: heat an object, and let it start to cool. Heat it again with equal heat and time, eventually the object is pretty hot, and continues to radiate heat if you lessen the heat applied.
Like I said though, I’d like to know if there’s real data on this out there.
I just plugged in a rough plot for multidecadal cycles into excel, looking at the big six from 1900-date and 1948 to date, both separately and equally weighted (and, yes, I know they need to be weighted proportiobately, not equally).
The results are quite interesting.
I think I’ll email my preliminary results to the Rev . . .
Interesting that 1954 was a blank year. (It does plot as a minimum in Willie Soon’s “Maunder Minimum” book). There you will also see that the 1957/58 sunspot maximum; the IGY maximum, was the all time absolute sunspot maximum ever recorded (since 1610) at almost 200. The previous three cycles were about 150, 120, 80 going backwards, which explains why they thought 1957/8 might be interesting enough to plan the IGY for that time. Well that was the start of the modern global warming era and the Mauna Loa CO2 record.
The peaks have been in the 100-150 range ever since 57/8 during the warming period, but it looks like that age is now all over. We still have three months to go in 2008 so with 200 flat days under our belt, we probably will break the 1954 record of 241.
As for the comment above re the 1933 minimum, that falls between the 80 and 120 peak events mentioned above so the sun was definitely in some sort of cooking up phase, since the 4 peaks before that 80 count were all in the 60-100 range but averaging 80 back to the 1883 peak. So the sun was definitely in a change mode in 1933 so I wouldn’t be surprised by a 1934 all time high. It would be interesting to check records for 1934 to see if there were some unusual incidence of super lcean air, low volcano activity, anything that might inhibit cloud nucleation that year. That would be my guess as to what happened in 1934; unusuallty low cloud formation for as yet unknown reasons (by me anyway).
George
Stormy wrote:
“I have a question.
If you scroll down on this page:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/11jul_solarcycleupdate.htm
There’s a graphic that shows the solar minimum of 1933 was
similar to that of 2008.
But the following year – 1934 – was the warmest year of the century. ”
Yes, but 1934 was only ONE year that was warm; the other years in that period were “normal”.
“- IF – a substantial climate response due to solar effects is conclusively established, some of these “man-made global warming” fanatics will get to the STEAL phase and suddenly remember that the Sun-Climate relationship was their idea to begin with!”
I take SCR, for Solar Climate Response (John-X appears to have coined the acronym), and AGW to be essentially incomparable, are not in reciprocal relation, with the volcanic wildcard equinanimous.
Isn’t it obvious that global warming is causing the reduction in sun spots?
“this minimum is on track to have about 1,000 spotless days,”
Oh dear, I’m barely half brave. Low testosterone.
“re the 1933 minimum, that falls between the 80 and 120 peak events mentioned above so the sun was definitely in some sort of cooking up phase,”
Good point. Flaring, for example, often peaks on the run up to or down from Rmax. Equating sunspots with activity is simplistic.
Gary Gulrud (10:49:39) :
Flaring, for example, often peaks on the run up to or down from Rmax. Equating sunspots with activity is simplistic.
Equating flaring with activity is equally [or more] simplistic.
Leif,
I was hoping to clarify one minor point. You mention numerous times that the sun is “interesting” right now. If, instead of current activity, the sun’s physical observables were all right on the mean values for the past few centuries, would you still find the sun “interesting”?
🙂
Gary Gulrud (10:34:24) :
” I take SCR, for Solar Climate Response (John-X appears to have coined the acronym) ”
I believe you’re thinking of SGC – Solar Global Cooling.
That is purely a Svalgaardism.
I’m not to the “S” phase of IRACS, just the “C.”
EDT (11:57:58) :
You mention numerous times that the sun is “interesting” right now. If, instead of current activity, the sun’s physical observables were all right on the mean values for the past few centuries, would you still find the sun “interesting”?
The Sun is ‘interesting’ for this reason:
With modern instruments we have been able to measure many solar quantities with great precision and establish relationships between them. We do not know how well those relationships hold under low activity conditions. If the sun continues at a low point for a while, we can calibrate those relationships. That is of great interest. From a strictly scientific point of view another Maunder minimum would be ideal.
Mary Hinge,
I didn’t say the ice age was coming in the immediate future honey. There will be one, and another and another etc. we just don’t know when and it probably won’t be sudden, but incremental. Oh, and I was in the 21st Century before it got here babe.
Looking at that , and bering in mind I reckon at least 60 years is required for a change in energy input to result in an ocean temp input, you can envision the solar cycles as pulses of additional energy being pumped into the Earth, particularly the oceans. A succession of large solar cycles will increase thye tmeperatuure and a succesion odf small solar cycles will result in a decrease.
There will not be a short term correlation.
Actuator Dahling,
Most of the evidence shows that many climate changes come on and end very rapidly. By rapidly I mean 10-100 years.
The younger Dryas event had a 10 year swing period at both ends when temps changed by 10-15 degrees C in just ten years. In effect, Scotland and Ireland became unihabitable in a decade!
“The Younger Dryas saw a rapid return to glacial conditions in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere between 12,900–11,500 years before present (BP)[5] in sharp contrast to the warming of the preceding interstadial deglaciation. The transitions each occurred over a period of a decade or so.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
There is lots of evidence that many of the other transitions occurred rapidly as well.
Darn fingers don’t type proper. Sorry for the typos
I have a Question for you all. The last mini Ice age along with no sun spots also had increased volcanic activity. Could a lowered magnetic field form the sun be the cause of increased volcanic activity here on earth?
Don
Clearly, what we need is a SunSpot Bailout Plan. Just as banks are too frightened to lend each other money, and this shows up in the LIBOR, Sunspots are just too frightened to appearm, and this shows up in the Solar Wind crunch.
This is a clarion call for Earthlings to put aside their petty politicking and Do Something. Anything. I’m sure that if we all looked under our mattresses, we could come up with a few Starter Sunspecks. Or at least some dust bunnies.
Suggestions, true scientists?
“Scotland and Ireland became unihabitable in a decade!”
Have you been to either lately? Same then as now, I’m afraid!
…Just joking boys and girls!