Animation courtesy Michael Ronayne. Click for larger, slower speed animation
NASA’s David Hathaway just recently updated his solar cycle prediction and has pushed cycle 24 into the future a little more once again. Though to read his latest update on 10/03/08 at his prediction page here, you wouldn’t know it, because the page is mostly tech speak and reviews of semi relevant papers.
However, there is one graphic, the familar one above, that has been updated and tells the story best. Michael Ronayne was kind enough to provide an animation (above) that shows the march of time as far as solar cycle 24 predictions go. With the latest update (static image here) the startup of solar cycle 24 has been pushed into 2009.
This isn’t the first time NASA has moved the goalpost. Back in March I did a story on NASA moving the goal post then, and since then they’ve moved the cycle ahead twice, once in April and again now in October.
NASA isn’t the only one having to update predictions, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) has also had to make several adjustments to their graphic:
Animation courtesy Michael Ronayne. Click for larger animation
And there is more change in the current thinking on sunspots. As Michael Ronayne writes:
After ignoring sunspots for two and a half years the New York Times finally ran a story and BLOG posting on the current state of the Sun.
Sunspots Are Fewest Since 1954, but Significance Is Unclear
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/science/space/03sun.html
Climate and the Spotless Sun
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/climate-and-the-spotless-sun/
Details of the recent NASA reports on Ulysses and the Spotless Sun were minimal and the Times failed to mention NASA’s report that the Sun was dimming. The Times reporter speculated on possible connections between solar activity and Earth climate but such speculation was of concern to some Times readers who made their views know in the Dot Earth BLOG. Perhaps the Times should avoid controversial phrases such as “Little Ice Age” in the future. I decided to make a post on the Dot Earth BLOG about some of the graphic records I have been collecting of past SWPC and NASA sunspots predictions. Apparently my input was not fit to print because the moderator did not allow it to be posted to Dot Earth. Attached is the text of my submission to the New York Times. I thought the posting was quite balanced and am not sure what warranted it being rejected.
As you review the SWPC and NASA predictions, note that the outer envelope for the onset of Solar Cycle 24 for the SWPC Low Prediction (http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/ssn_predict.gif) is January 2009, while the NASA prediction has been moved out to July 2009. Watch the two animations carefully and note where the changes were made in the NASA predictions.
I am writing a segment on Sunspot Predictions which will be posted in Wikipedia, at the following URL, when it is done:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot
It will be interesting to see when solar minimum actually occurs. I suspect that we will be in for a long wait. I will keep the above animations current as SWPC and NASA post their monthly updates.
Lots of scrambling going on to get in tune with the sun these days.
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We are venturing into the unknown as far as our knowledge of the sun’s effect on our climate. Perhaps this is another lesson on how consensus about how sunspots don’t affect our climate will be finally demolished. Just as consensus was wrong about plate tectonics, ulcers, bacteria, etc.
“Click for larger, slower speed animation” — clicking does nothing. I don’t see a hyperlink around that first image.
Incidentally, apparently when the Sun is active the magnetic fields are large enough to measurably raise/wrinkle part of the surface.
The new “predictions” about the start of SC24 certainly aren’t predictions in the scientific sense.
If you have a model for solar cycles, you make a prediction about the next cycle and see what happens.
If the data does not match your prediction, you say your model is wrong and you go back to the drawing board. You don’t simply move your prediction forward 6 months.
FYI, UAH data for Sept is out: 2008 9 0.161
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2
John M Reynolds
http://noolmusic.com/youtube_videos/happy_days_are_here_again_get_happy_-_audra_mcdonald.php
NASA’s singing it!
Just around the next bend … !
Just the usual adjustment of NASA’s computer models to comport with Nature. The real-life story of the computer model trio: Finagle, Bugerre and Diddle.
The computer modelers continually get Ego on their face.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
BernardP (07:14:35) :
“Maybe they would gain more credibility by applying their craft to something more reliable, like…hum…the stock market.”
During the 60 Minutes segment on the market crisis, mention was made of the hiring of engineers and physicists to analyze and model market activity. The weakness in the resulting models was the inability to model human nature.
Computer modelers have a real problem with Nature.
Oh, and the DECADAL TREND has been dropping slightly.
June = 0.131
August = 0.129
September = 0.128
I did not store the data before June, so this is all I have for UAH data.
John M Reynolds
Robert Bateman (08:16:41) :
With apologies to Leon Pober and Don Ho.
Tiny Bubbles (slightly modified)
Tiny bubbles (tiny bubbles)
In the Sun (in the Sun)
Make me happy (make me happy)
Make me feel fine (make me feel fine)
Tiny bubbles (tiny bubbles)
Make me warm all over
With a feeling that I’m gonna
Love you till the end of time
So here’s to the golden moon
And here’s to the silver sea
And mostly here’s a toast
To you and me
So here’s to the ginger lei
I give to you today
And here’s a kiss
That will not fade away
Katherine (08:11:17) :
Wouldn’t the changing barycenter of the solar system induce something akin to tides in the sun?
No, the barycenter as such would not create tides, but the planets individually. Jupiter creates a tide 0.5 millimeter high [that’s 1/50 of an inch]. the next largest tide is due to Venus at 0.45 mm, and the other planets much smaller.
kim (07:38:33) :
Intuitively, it is tough to see that the barycenter moving doesn’t effect the sun.
Maybe that is why so many people are attracted to that idea: they conflate barycenter movement with tidal effects. Tidal effects are there but minute beyond belief.
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UAH this year is looking quite similar to the last minimum in 1996.
Leif,
I know that you said Lean’s TSI data is (I’m paraphrasing) out of date. Some question for you.
How were the TSI levels determined before we started measuring it? And what new proxy or method is being used that shows that the TSI only varies by about 1w/m2?
Mark
@ur momisugly Dee Norris
At least be content you can even mention Landscheidt’s name here. In ‘another’ blog es ist verboten.
[…] Original post: Comment on NASA moves the goalposts on Solar Cycle 24 again by … […]
Have you/anyone the Solar data from 1986 for cycles 21 to 22?
Fairbanks coldest in 16 years…
http://www.weather.gov/view/prodsByState.php?state=ak&prodtype=public
I’m in the process of working on an alaysis to help shed light on the interaction between sunspot counts and solar cycle lengths with changes in temperature anomalies. I’ll let everyone know when I have it done. I’m getting close.
In the meantime, UAH released the September anomaly – a bit higher this time around. My monthly comments/analysis are posted:
http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/october-2008-update-on-global-temperature-uah/
And RSS just updated their site for Sept: 0.211
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly_time_series/rss_monthly_msu_amsu_channel_tlt_anomalies_land_and_ocean_v03_1.txt
John M Reynolds
How have the planet induced tides been calculated?
Pierre Gosselin (10:55:36) :
” Fairbanks coldest in 16 years…
http://www.weather.gov/view/prodsByState.php?state=ak&prodtype=public
In Colorado (east of the Rockies) looks like a good snow Friday & Saturday.
While not at all unusual for this time of year, we always HATE snow this time of year, because it’s still warm enough that the snow is wet and HEAVY…
and there are still leaves on most of the trees
I call these early to mid-October snows “Branch Breakers”
This IPCC graph has some names. Search for those and the trail should lead toward their work and more recent work.
Looks like GISS model solar forcing isn’t trying to forecast solar behavior. Their diagram shows cycle data ending around 2000, so they might not have run models using the data from recent months.
Predictions/projections can keep being adjusted; at some point, someone’s going to have to admit that, despite all the increased understanding we now have of the sun’s workings, we just don’t know enough. If the ideas put forth by Livingston/Penn bear up, we may have to take a serious look at the assumptions that have gone into these predictions. That and make sure we have some good warm winter clothing.
Mark (09:55:34) :
How were the TSI levels determined before we started measuring it? And what new proxy or method is being used that shows that the TSI only varies by about 1w/m2?
This is a BIG topic. I’ll try. Back when Jack Eddy in the 1970s drew attention to the Maunder Minimum [MM] he also noted that it coincided with the Little Ice Age [LIA]. Abbot at the Smithsonian Institution had tried to measure the ‘solar constant’ [what we today call the TSI] during the first 50 years of the 20th century. He thought to have found that there was a solar cycle variation of TSI of 1-2 %. If during MM there were no spots that would mean that TSI would be 0.75% lower [half of the 1-2%]. Equating what goes in with what goes out, one can calculate that that would decrease the temperature by 0.75/4%=0.2%. Since the temperature of the Earth is 290K, the drop would be 0.2% of 290K=0.6K which seemed about right, so everything made sense.
When we began to measure TSI by satellite we found that the solar cycle variation was ten times smaller than what Abbot had thought. This, of course, also meant that the temperature drop would only be a tenth as well, i.e. 0.06K, much too small. Thus arose the notion that to account for the LIA there had to be a ‘background’ component of TSI that had varied such as to make up for the missing variation of the sunspot-related part. So people put that into their TSI-reconstructions. Lean in her 2000 paper assumed a background that was computed from a 15-year running average of the sunspot number. Her calibration of this came from a study of ‘sun-like’ stars that seemed to show that a third of all such stars were in a MM [because they did not vary] while the rest showed a clear 7-15 year cycle [depending on the star]. Extrapolating their activity difference between ‘normal’ and MM type activity she could estimate the difference there ought to be between MM and normal times. In addition, her case was strengthened by the confirmation by Lockwood et al. in 1999 of a claim I had made twenty years earlier that the Sun’s magnetic field had more than doubled during most of the 20th century. That doubling would also provide an increasing ‘background’ TSI.
During 2000-2008 further studies showed that the ‘sun-like’ stars were not really that. Most were more evolved than the Sun and one could really not extrapolate their activity to the sun with any confidence. The study by Lockwood et al. that showed a doubling of the sun’s ‘open magnetic flux’ was also in trouble, because I showed that the geomagnetic data used were incorrectly calibrated [so I was wrong too back in 1978] and re-analysis of the data by several groups including myself and Lockwood’s group showed that the was no doubling, that the Sun’s magnetic field now is just what it were 107 years ago. so the two pillars supporting the TSI ‘background’ have now fallen by the wayside. Furthermore, we have learned more about the distribution and form of the Sun’s magnetic field, also showing no background contribution to the TSI.
Take away the rising background, takes away the rising TSI and we are back to a simple cyclical TSI rising and falling simply with the sunspot cycle. If Livingston and Penn are correct that the sunspots will disappear [be invisible] by 2015, it is possible that there were also simply invisible during the MM. We know from cosmic rays that the Sun’s magnetic cycle was still going, so possibly one might speculate that even during the MM, TSI was behaving as today.
AnonyMoose (11:28:28) :
Looks like GISS model solar forcing isn’t trying to forecast solar behavior. Their diagram shows cycle data ending around 2000, so they might not have run models using the data from recent months.
They just use a simple extrapolation forward. Not too bad. Worse is that they use the obsolete Lean TSI backwards in time [with the pronounced rise during the first half of the 20th century]. This makes their solar forcing skewed in the sense that they implicitly can push some of the pre-1970 temp increase over on the Sun making the claim for AGW later on stronger…
I wonder if my September 2009 WAG that I made (No, it is not even a SWAG) for the month that solar cycle 24 will end up being correct. Not that it matters much anyway. Seeing as how Jupiter is 7.79 x10^8 kilometers from the sun, I doubt a couple of solar widths (diameter = 1.4 x10^6 km) shift in the barycenter will have much of an affect on anything be it tides nor the magnetic field of the sun. Jupiter is so far away, that a single solar width closer is only 1/556th of the distance.
John M Reynolds