I found a reference to this article while looking at Leif Svalgaard’s website, and since I missed it the first time around, and because the message is still valid, I thought I’d reprint it here. Also, the artwork they provided a hi-res link to makes a great desktop wallpaper. – Anthony
Published: 2008/05/19 06:00:00 CDT
Many solar scientists expected the new sunspot cycle to be a whopper, a prolonged solar tantrum that could fry satellites and raise hell with earthly communications, the power grid and modern electronics.
But there’s scant proof Sunspot Cycle 24 is even here, let alone the debut of big trouble.
So far there have been just a couple minor zits on the face of the sun to suggest the old cycle is over and the new one is coming.
The roughly 11-year cycle of sunspot activity should have bottomed out last year, the end of Cycle 23 and the beginning of Cycle 24. That would have put the peak in new sunspot activity around 2012.
But a dud sunspot cycle would not necessarily make it a boring period, especially for two solar scientists with the Tucson-based National Solar Observatory.
Two years ago, William Livingston and Matt Penn wrote a paper for the journal Science predicting that this could not only be a dud sunspot cycle, but the start of another extended down period in solar activity. It was based on their analysis of weakening sunspot intensity and said sunspots might vanish by 2015.
And here’s the punch line: That last long-term down period, 1645-1715, coincided with the Little Ice Age, a period of bitter cold winters.
That kind of talk could ruffle some feathers in this time of climate change and global warming, starring man-made carbon dioxide as the devil.
The paper, rejected in peer review, was never published by Science. Livingston said he’s OK with the rejection.
“I accept what the reviewers said,” Livingston said. “‘If you are going to make such statement, you had better have strong evidence.’ ”
Livingston said their projections were based on observations of a trend in decreasingly powerful sunspots but reviewers felt it was merely a statistical argument.
He is aware that some opponents of the prevailing position that climate change and global warming are the result of manmade activity — greenhouse gas, specifically carbon dioxide, buildup — are very much interested in the idea that changes might be related to solar activity.
“But it has not been proven yet,” cautioned Livingston, an astronomer emeritus who still works out of an office at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory headquarters building on the University of Arizona campus.
“We may have to wait. We may be wrong. (But) the sun is going to entertain us one way or another,” he said.
It’s not just a scientific curiosity. There’s a lot at stake in predicting whether sunspot cycles are going to be tame or wild, said Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory.
The powerful blasts of radiation that come from solar activity can fry electronic equipment on Earth; particularly vulnerable are satellites.
The high-energy radiation produced by solar flares travels at near the speed of light, getting to Earth in just minutes.
But the magnetic effects of a solar flare can take between two and three days to reach Earth, said Penn, a solar scientist.
In the 1800s, magnetic blasts from intense solar activity induced currents in telegraph lines in the U.S. and Italy, starting fires and damaging equipment. Later, it was learned that solar activity affected radio transmission.
It can also affect the electrical-power grid. A solar tantrum in 1989 blew transformers and caused a blackout in Canada. And a number of satellites are thought to have failed from exposure to high-energy blasts from solar activity.
Satellite operators can turn them away or shut down vulnerable equipment aboard, and astronauts can use shielding to avoid those blasts.
If Cycle 24 is the big cycle predicted, Penn said, “it’s likely we’ll have geomagnetic storms with a lot of sunspots, a lot of flares on the sun.”
Penn said even so-called “quiet sun” periods are far from boring because the sun’s “surface consists of Texas-sized hot gas bubbles, which rise upward at a speed of about a mile per second. The gas cools and falls downward in narrower channels at about the same speed. That’s what we call the ‘quiet sun.'”
“As we get more into the space environment with satellites, GPS and communication satellites, it means money. People who are about to launch new communication satellites really want to know how much shielding to put on their satellites.
“But shielding amounts to weight, which is money. If they want them to last through (an intense cycle), they’re going to want to protect them more, and that will cost them more.”
Penn is the telescope scientist on the McMath-Pierce solar telescope, the strange angular white thing amid all the white and silver-domed things atop Kitt Peak. Specifically, Penn works with an instrument that “sees” in the infrared range to provide information about magnetic activity.
Sometimes, sunspot activity is more than theory or data to him.
Several years ago, he was making an early-morning run from Tucson up to Kitt Peak to do some solar observing. He noticed his gas gauge was dangerously low and decided to stop for gas at the convenience store in Three Points.
It was about 5 a.m., and no one was there to take cash, so he tried to use his credit card to gas up. But the pay-at-the-pump system was down.
Crossing his fingers and driving up the mountain, Penn said he hoped he’d have enough gas after work to make it back to the station on the way home.
When he got to work, he learned that “a communications satellite had been damaged by (a solar flare). Lots of communications were dropped that morning, and my credit-card pay-at-the-pump attempt was one of them.”
Though Aimee Norton appreciates the practical benefits of being able to predict the sun’s activity, solving some of the star’s mysteries that relate to the big picture are more compelling. Norton is a program scientist on the solar observatory’s SOLIS (Synoptic Optical Long-term Investigations of the Sun) facility at Kitt Peak.
“Part of what we’re trying to understand is how the magnetic field regulates or moderates the energy that is transported in the atmosphere,” Norton said. “Because one of the mysteries of the sun is, it’s hotter in the upper atmosphere than (at the surface). So there is energy being transported. Some people think the magnetic field is somehow magically getting that energy out there.”
Norton said she’s hoping for a powerful cycle, noting, “It would give us more things to do research with — either that or no cycle at all, which would be similar to the Maunder Minimum.”
She said she figures there’s little chance of a completely dead cycle but added, “Wouldn’t that be fascinating if the solar system managed to offset our contribution?”
Because you can’t go
–Visit Solar Cycle 24: www.solarcycle24.com/
–Mr. Sunspot’s Answer Book: http://eo.nso.edu/MrSunspot/answerbook/polarity.html
–NASA’s Solar Physics: http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/whysolar.shtml
–Solar storms: www.solarstorms.org
–National Solar Observatory’s Solis solar telescope (Synoptic Optical Long-term Investigations of the Sun): http://solis.nso.edu
–For more information on sunspots: http://spaceweather.com or http://science.nasa.gov
–For a list of sometimes spectacular sunspot-induced problems: http://sw.astron.kharkov.ua/swimpacts.html
John-X (10:01:26) :
and that the nauseating discussion is only about what if any effect such motion has.
Yes, this is basically the issue, whether different parts of the Sun feel different forces resulting from such motion [which they do not], although Carsten’s question that prompted this was about the distance to the Sun. As I understood his argument, he figured that that distance should vary as the Sun went around the barycenter. It does not vary as the Earth also goes around the barycenter [as even Jupiter does], so the distance to the Sun [which determines the variation of TSI] is just what it would be [to high approximation] if none of the other planets existed. I’m at a loss as to understand why this is not clear. It would certainly have been obvious to Newton in 1666 🙂
In any event, the TSI we actually observe varies just as it should, so even if you can’t see why, you will have to accept that it does.
Leif Svalgaard (10:37:41)
“…In any event, the TSI we actually observe varies just as it should, so even if you can’t see why, you will have to accept that it does.”
Thanks but not thanks for the condescension and conceit.
Frankly I think TSI has become a security blanket for you.
Did I mention TSI? (No, I did not).
You reached for it the moment you felt mildly challenged, just as one reaches for a warm blankie.
And don’t bother telling me what I “have to accept.” I get enough of that from congress.
John-X (10:56:32) :
Thanks but not thanks for the condescension and conceit.
No need to become hot and bothered and nasty. The “you” was a general you. Not specifically the ‘you’ that is “John-X”. But rather the ‘you’ that covers those that believe that the distance to the Sun should be calculated by assuming the Sun goes around the barycenter, but that the Earth does not. E.g. Carsten, and Alexander et al. http://www.leif.org/research/DavidA10.png
Re condescension: perhaps your reference to schoolchildren belongs in that same category…
You Geology 100 notes have no general acceptance and don’t really belong in a serious discussion, except as, perhaps, as an attempt of condescension.
So, cut the vitriol and, perhaps, apologize.
Leif Svalgaard (23:12:21) :
nobwainer (23:01:29) :
If i had clear 10Be records back that far i could verify.
“I’m working on it…”
It seems you are “working on” anything that contradicts your pet hypothesis.
Lubos Motl on this issue:
“Now, can the relative position of the Sun’s center and the barycenter of the Solar System influence things like the Sun’s rotation? By the equivalence principle, the answer should be No. Physical phenomena in the free fall should be indistinguishable from phenomena outside any gravitational field.”
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/06/sun-jupiter-saturn-spin-orbit-coupling.html
I think I just felt the barycenter effect… either that or I just burped… excuse me… carry on.
I’d like a little critique. I’ve done some reading on the PDO and its affect on the climate. So I graphed the PDO vs. temperature. Corelates pretty well, most of the time. Then I thought I would add in sunspot activity. When PDO drops, and sunspot activity drop, temperature drops, same with increases. When the go opposite directions, the temperature trend ends up somewhere inbetween. I don’t claim to be a scientist, I’m just looking at the data. I tossed in CO2 to the graph just to see if there was any apparent affect.
The PDO is in “cool mode” which can last up to 30 years and the sun is quiet and looks to stay quiet. Is it possible these 2 factors point to a cooling trend? Would someone with more experience/training take a look?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/fourier/high-pass:2/low-pass:25/inverse-fourier/from:1900/plot/jisao-pdo/fourier/high-pass:2/low-pass:25/inverse-fourier/scale:0.2/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1900/mean:12/scale:0.005/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/offset:-325/scale:0.01
Glenn (11:33:17) :
If i had clear 10Be records back that far i could verify.
“I’m working on it…”
It seems you are “working on” anything that contradicts your pet hypothesis.
Yes, that’s how Science works. What’s in it for you making such a comment? And, more importantly, how do you think the general readership would benefit benefits from your uttering?
Leif Svalgaard (12:08:16) :
Glenn (11:33:17) :
If i had clear 10Be records back that far i could verify.
“I’m working on it…”
It seems you are “working on” anything that contradicts your pet hypothesis.
“Yes, that’s how Science works.”
Really? Science works by, well, *working*. This means successful predictions allowing real time usefulness. How you get there is irrelevant, but in the meantime it’s speculation. I suggest you try to support your pet hypothesis on it’s own ground instead of trying to change historical records/data/conflicting evidence/other hypotheses so that yours will look better.
Leif Svalgaard (11:25:27) :
John-X (10:56:32) :
Thanks but not thanks for the condescension and conceit.
No need to become hot and bothered and nasty. The “you” was a general you. Not specifically the ‘you’ that is “John-X”. But rather the ‘you’ that covers those that believe that the distance to the Sun should be calculated by assuming the Sun goes around the barycenter, but that the Earth does not. E.g. Carsten, and Alexander et al.
Please, Leif. This is a misrepresentation of what I have said. I have said that every object in the solar system, no exception, orbits the barycenter. This is precisely the reason why it is beyond my understanding how the distance from the Sun to the Earth can be accurately represented by the Earth’s elliptic orbit around the Barycenter.
In my research i have found a couple of things that don’t seem to add up in the barycenter debate.
1. The sunspot cycles do not match up with Barycenter hi and low points.(altho Leif is helping me with 10Be records to confirm the 19th century sunspot records are correct…which i am grateful and see it as helping my pet theory!)
2. If they did line up, why do we get sunspots when the barycenter returns to the center of the sun everytime Saturn apposes Jupiter (this is when the least impact of momentum is occurring) According to the principle we get sunspot peaks when Jupiter/Saturn come together and then again when they appose.
Here is a barycenter chart (built using JPL) where i have plotted the sunspot peaks(approx dates) onto the peaks and troughs in momentum….they are just not lining up.
http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/ssbdates.jpg
You will notice momentum disturbance at 2009, 1970, 1830, 1650 etc, these all occur from Neptune/Uranus conjunction…to me this area is worth investigating as it coincides with “phase catastrophes” that might explain previous and future Grand minmia…and slow downs as in 1970.
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (16:02:55) :
Please, Leif. This is a misrepresentation of what I have said.
Sorry to have lumped you in with Alexander et al.; there are so many variations on this theme that it is hard to keep track of who believes what.
Try this: Because the barycenter is mainly determined by Jupiter [apart from the sun, of course] it moves but slowly [12 years to go round – or if you like, the Sun moves but slowly]. Launch a spacecraft from the [almost stationary] barycenter such that the spacecraft’s circular orbit takes it around the Sun. Because of its proximity to the Sun, the spacecraft will move very fast, completing its orbit [and returning to the barycenter] every few hours. Its distance from the Sun’s center is constant, yet “every object in the solar system, no exception, orbits the barycenter”. What does the spacecraft do? does it go around the barycenter in a circular orbit every few hours? yet passes through the very barycenter every few hours.
And
Glenn (16:01:53) :
does not deserve further comment at this point.
Just a thought. If many solar system events happen in cyclical ways, including individual planetary events, eventually they will coincide (or at least some to many of them will coincide). That does not mean that all of those things affect one thing (such as temperature). It simply means that, for example, at the moment temps went down, these other things occurred at the same time. It is a correlation but clearly would not be a cause and effect. It would also be true that as these cycles slowly go in and then out of phase, the correlation could extend for quite some time, leading some to say, “this has got to be a cause and effect event”. But it could still just be coincidental. I think that is why Leif always looks for a plausible mechanism to sort out these coincidental observations from likely cause and effect observations.
This is just an inane, mean-spirited piece of false reasoning. Glenn, reading your posts, I often wonder who/what you are. Clearly, you are no scientist. Clearly, you lack civility and decorum.
I should not have to politely rebut your illogical diatribe — cleanly penned by one ignorant of, and challenged by, reasoned discussion.
Pamela Gray (17:02:25) :
Just a thought.
Spot on, Pamela.
nobwainer (16:45:15) :
1. The sunspot cycles do not match up with Barycenter hi and low points.(altho Leif is helping me with 10Be records to confirm the 19th century sunspot records are correct…which i am grateful and see it as helping my pet theory!)
You can find the 10Be data for every year since 1428 at
http://www.leif.org/research/GCR-10Be-1428-2008.xls
McCracken has calibrated the raw 10Be counts to Neutron Monitor GCR count equivalents [in per cent of the maximum count at current minima]. His data originally had a time shift of two years that he had not taken into account. This comes about because it takes that long for 10Be to fall out of the stratosphere and settling on the surface, while the Neutron Monitors give the GCR flux without delay. The shift was done in 1970-71. It is also very likely [see some of my papers on that on my website, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Comment%20on%20McCracken.pdf ] that the calibration has a shift ~1948, causing by trying to use very old balloon data from the 1930s as calibration points. I have left this error in the data. You can correct it by subtracting 10% from the CR% before 1948 or so.
I also give my list of sunspot numbers and TSI back to 1610. These are my own assessments and must be used at your own risk.
Niels (8-10-2008) gave a link to Lubos Motl’s blog on the barycenter topic and that makes this whole issue clear to me. He links to a 1965 paper by Paul Jose. So this 178 year pattern of the big planets happens to be 8 times the average 22 year solar cycle. Is that a coincidence or a cause? I see lots of diagrams of barycenter paths, but no statistics showing that there is a real correlation. Coincidence is enough to get an unkillable belief going. Add in a Mayan calendar and some Maunder Minimums for good measure. But it’s still numerology, not science. Nine wave stuff, a common belief, but not something a scientist would believe.
Pet Rock (22:38:38) :
Coincidence is enough to get an unkillable belief going. Add in a Mayan calendar and some Maunder Minimums for good measure…
The distance to the Sun is precisely 1 billion times the original height of the great Khufu pyramid, proving beyond a doubt that it was built by extraterrestrial aliens, because there is no way the ancient Egyptians could have known that. Another unkillable belief…
Pet Rock…perhaps you should dig a little deeper, there is plenty of correlation going on. The last four minimia have a 178 yr gap and had Neptune and Uranus coming together….we are in the same spot again, if the sun goes to Dalton like minimium again in the next few years we will be able to observe it for real this time around with lots of gadgets and maybe learn something. Science really still doesn’t have a decent theory to explain so we are not in a position to gloat.
I have a small WIP report showing the correlations here http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/gasgiants.pdf
Having said that we know correlation is not cause and thanks Leif for the 10Be data. The Data seems to suggest the 10Be spikes(reverse) are perhaps different to the sunspot spikes in the early 19th century, but maybe not different enough. I am thinking its probably not the most accurate proxy around. I looked over the geomagnetic aa data for the same period the other night and it seemed to line up with the sunspot records very closely…we might not be able to test the ultimate accuracy of Wolf in that period?
Here’s a pic of Leif’s data: http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/leif10bessn.jpg
Leif Svalgaard (16:50:29) :
Try this: Because the barycenter is mainly determined by Jupiter [apart from the sun, of course] it moves but slowly [12 years to go round – or if you like, the Sun moves but slowly]. Launch a spacecraft from the [almost stationary] barycenter such that the spacecraft’s circular orbit takes it around the Sun. Because of its proximity to the Sun, the spacecraft will move very fast, completing its orbit [and returning to the barycenter] every few hours. Its distance from the Sun’s center is constant, yet “every object in the solar system, no exception, orbits the barycenter”. What does the spacecraft do? does it go around the barycenter in a circular orbit every few hours? yet passes through the very barycenter every few hours.
Well, sorry my wording was imprecise, I give you that. With “every object in the solar system” I meant primary objects gravitationally bound to the solar system, not satellites gravitationally bound to one of the planets for example. The Moon (Luna) does not orbit the solar system barycenter (the Moon-Earth barycenter does). Your spacecraft is similarly a satellite if the Sun.
If you gradually increase the mass of your spacecraft, it will increasingly influence the barycenter position …. your example holds only for neglible mass objects.
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (12:09:20) :
With “every object in the solar system” I meant primary objects gravitationally bound to the solar system. Your spacecraft is similarly a satellite of the Sun.
It is a ‘primary’ object. It does not influence the barycenter [red herring of yours, I think 🙂 ]. How would it know that it was NOT a primary object. Even if you increase its mass to planet size it would not move the barycenter measurably because its distance from the Sun is so small. So my question remains.
Increase the mass of the spacecraft. At what point does it become a ‘primary’ object? and how does it know to behave differently at that point? All bodies in orbit around the Sun are primary objects.
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (12:09:20) :
The Moon (Luna) does not orbit the solar system barycenter (the Moon-Earth barycenter does).
Similarly, the Earth does not orbit the solar system barycenter (the Earth-Sun barycenter does). By that argument.
Looks like a sunspot has appeared recently, as of Oct 9, 1600. Magnetogram also shows a spot. Is this the last spot that had blinked in and out?
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/javagif/gifs_small/20081009_1600_mdi_mag.gif
Here’s an interesting report from the “Biology Cabinet” that shows some nice diagrams of the orbital path of the solar system. The diagram shows a Barycenter (shudder) type movement around the center of the galaxy.
It also suggests the the angle of attack is 90deg….NASA recently suggest about 60deg and i have seen others at 45deg…..so much to learn.
http://biocab.org/Coplanarity_Solar_System_and_Galaxy.html
nobwainer suggested I did deeper to find the correlations between conjunctions and sun activity. My digging suggests to me it does not exist. Show me your most convincing evidence. Maybe it’s Gleissberg related, but I don’t even believe in that one. If the only evidence for it is the VERY sloppy coincidence with four minimums, I will say that if the coincidence is still there after 100 or more minimums, I’ll take it more seriously. Suppose the minimums do come in cycles of about 178 years, they would appear to be in phase with conjunctions for a while and then drift out of phase — unless they actually are related. But just being in phase for four cycles does not prove they are related. (And who is willing to say that mimimums come in fixed length cycles?)
One day I notice that the turn signals of my car are in exact sync with the turn signals of the car ahead of me — so must there be a link between them? The closer the cycle lengths are, the longer it will be before they drift out of phase. When they are out of phase, you will still say there is a link, but it’s at 60 degrees before conjunction or something. That is the problem with the barycenter theory. Why should the effect not be at some interior level of the sun which then takes a long time to reach the surface?
In the good old days when people were adding cycles upon cycles to explain the apparent motion of the planets, they wasted their time; they should have studied math instead. The ellipse made it all so much simpler.