Click for large image
This is the biggest Cycle 24 spot since the first one was seen on January 4th, 2008. This spot looks to have some staying power other than the “specks” we’ve seen winking on and off lately. No squinting to see this one, or wondering if it’s a dead pixel in the SOHO CCD imager or not.
The corresponding magnetogram image, seen here, is also quite pronounced. The polarity is correct, with the white “North” at the top. This spot grew quickly as it came around the rim into visibility. Watch this animation below:
At the same time, to the right of the image, at lower latitude, a new cycle 23 sunspot seems to be emerging, note it has a reveresed polarity from the larger SC24 spot. Solar cycle 23 just won’t give up it seems.
The magentic field, as shown by the Average Planetary index (Ap) remained low in September, see here.
ok Leif, there would be some interesting questions if the cycle 24 ramps up quickly in the next months(especially to whose that have predicted a weak cycle, and i think to many other scientist besides you).
ciao
kim (14:25:02) :
I’m happy to posit that both the sun and the earth have internal cycles, but that the sun’s cycles impact the earth’s.
So, how to you tell them apart? And where in the correlations do you draw the line between them? People [Lean, Rind, Lockwood, Froehlich, and others] have actually tried to do this. The vehicle for this is called ‘multivariate’ correlation. For instance, Lean and Rind [GRL, vol35, L18701, doi:10.1029/2008GL034864, 2008] find:
“[17] None of the natural processes can account for the overall warming trend in global surface temperatures. In the 100 years from 1905 to 2005, the temperature trends produced by all three natural influences are at least an order of magnitude smaller than the observed surface temperature trend reported by IPCC [2007]. According to this analysis, solar forcing contributed negligible long-term warming in the past 25 years and 10% of the warming in the past 100 years”
I know these people well, they are good scientists, not rapid AGW alarmists. You may counter, that correlations are useless without causations, and I would agree, but then we are back to ‘convictions’ and there I might disagree with you, as I have no preconceived convictions to nurse, not being convinced of anything.
I know these people well, they are good scientists, not rabid AGW alarmists.
Leif Svalgaard (18:56:07) :
Paul Charbonneau has written a wonderful review of the “Rise and Fall” of this theory: http://www.leif.org/research/Rise-and-Fall.pdf
Thanks for interesting read Leif, dispels at least two theories on planetary influence. But hardly a conclusive document that closes the door on the subject.
I notice that there doesn’t seem to be any work done on the correlation of Neptune/Uranus and the grand minima’s of the past, but i guess we are possibly seeing that in front of our very eyes right now….if so that will indeed be a wonder.
kim (14:12:55) :
I knew your integration is different than theirs. What are you doing differently?
I know what I do, and my data is on my website for anybody to repeat the integration. I don’t know what they do. What are they doing differently 🙂
Leif,
If/when you hear from Livingston-Penn, would you let us all know here whether the recent 23 and 24 spots still fall on the straight lines towards disappearance by 2014/15. Thanks in advance!
Another bright area about to come around at the same latitude. We’ll see if it’s another spot, but I’d say cycle 24 is finally starting. How fast it gets its act together remains to be seen.
Leif: “My predictions of solar activity has been right on since 1978, so perhaps what you refer to is not a ‘fact’.”
and
“It is like predicting that tomorrow’s max temp will be between 40 and 90 degrees. I’m sure it will be correct, but what’s the use?”
Fer crying out loud, your own 1978 paper says:
“Utilizing the previous estimate of polar magnetic field strength obtained near solar minimum, we have four estimates of cycle 21’s maximum mean yearly sunspot number. These are 155 +- 25, 125 +- 15, 135 +- 20, and 140 +- 20. Averaging these four together we get a value of 140 +- 20 for the mean yearly maximum sunspot number of cycle 21.”
http://www.leif.org/research/Using%20Dynamo%20Theory%20to%20Predict%20Solar%20Cycle%2021.pdf
The mean for Cycle 21 was 165, Leif. And that 1978 prediction was made in April 1978, almost halfway to Cycle 21 maximum. You weren’t “right on”, unless you define another prediction of say 190+-20 being the same. Those two predictions would cover a range between 140 to 210, and if you think being 5 off is still “right on” then that would increase the gap of “right-on-ness” to any wild guess between 135 and 215. In my book I’d call that “useless garbage”.
You’re right on above though about considering what use is a prediction such as those we see, since even were your Cycle 24 prediction to be “right”, it wouldn’t “tell us” who is right and who is wrong, or that we will “know then” about what is going on inside the sun. That isn’t the way science works, Leif. It isn’t a crapshoot where someone wins when they get it right once in a while.
Most predictions have been terribly off for the last few cycles. but I haven’t found any prediction of yours for Cycle 22 or 23. If you have references to those, please provide them, or at least provide references to your claim of successful predictions since 1978.
I noticed that you did not respond to one poster’s remarks about your record of predictions being poor from a ClimateAudit blog, andI found a failed prediction from Cliver, who has published with you in the past, for Cycle 23 made in 1997, again made months after the Cycle started: [We] “predict a peak sunspot number of 158 (± 18) for cycle 23”. Cycle 23 peak was around 120.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/sola/1997/00000176/00000001/00141563;jsessionid=1m49sq4hue7ja.alexandra
By the way, Leif, what is your latest updated prediction for Cycle 24? I’ve seen
several figures, but am not sure I have the latest. Perhaps though we should wait till halfway or so through the next cycle for the latest. And will you admit that your theory is falsified if your final number is out of bounds, as you have indicated would be the result of a failed prediction?
nobwainer (15:18:19) :
Thanks for interesting read Leif, dispels at least two theories on planetary influence. But hardly a conclusive document that closes the door on the subject.
Nothing can make a dent in the faith of a true believer 🙂
There is one other aspect of burning massive amounts of fossil fuels that I have never heard anyone comment on: The release of heat. Has anyone stopped to assess the amount of heat energy being generated as compared to the typical amount coming from the Sun on a daily basis?
Curiosity is killing me.
Why don’t articles such as Lean and Rind 2008 not consider the many articles demonstrating a large warm bias in the near surface station network for at least the last 25 years referring to the many problems existing from UHI and microsite issues.
Have we really learned that much in the last 10 years since Lean and Rind 1998 where all natural variability uncertainty has been accounted for? Cloud dynamics are now well understood?
Also, why didn’t they do an analysis using satellite data and Spencer’s recent work?
Leif…i am not a religious person and prefer to keep an open mind. What I can see is lots of experts trying to predict this next phase using only the previous phases’s data and not based on a good understanding of the driver…because it doesn’t exist yet.
Its not good science to right something off when there is not evidence to do so and the theory is plausible. If the next two cycles do NOT produce Dalton like performance then there will certainly be evidence against one part of the “planetary influence” theory….but if the reverse happens?
Glenn (16:30:41) :
Fer crying out loud, your own 1978 paper says
Somehow, I knew you would be there. The early paper did not use the actual polar field, because we had not measured it yet. Later papers by Schatten fared better, but my method [as spelled out in the paper with Cliver and Kamide-san] yields these numbers [where 2nd column is polar field, 3rd is observed, 4th is predicted – table 1]:
21 250 165 157 [added later – there is a poison pill in this]
22 245 159 154
23 201 121 126
24 119 ? 75
With the current polar fields, the prediction for SC24 comes to 71 which is not significantly different from 75. The issue is not when the ‘predictions’ were made, by whom, or what Ed Cliver said before our paper. The issue is what Rmax, the polar fields would predict had they been used, and the results are as shown.
There is an interesting aside: Schatten was on the SC23 panel and argued for Rmax(23) = 120, but was voted down by the rest of the panel that went with Hathaway’s 160.
As I pointed out, should the actual Rmax(24) be substantially different from 71, our method has no merit as the spread is too big for it to be useful. So, we shall see.
“The accelerating pace of new-cycle sunspot production is an encouraging sign that, while solar activity remains very low, the sunspot cycle is unfolding more or less normally. We are not stuck in a permanent solar minimum.”
http://www.spaceweather.com/
What difference does it make, if being in a solar minimum will not significantly affect the Earth’s climate? Are AGWers actually sceptical?
nobwainer (19:23:55) :
Leif…i am not a religious person and prefer to keep an open mind. What I can see is lots of experts trying to predict this next phase using only the previous phases’s data and not based on a good understanding of the driver…because it doesn’t exist yet.
The smiley [ 🙂 ] indicated that ‘faith’ was not the standard religious faith. And the method does not just look at previous cases. Ken Schatten’s paper http://www.leif.org/research/Percolation%20and%20the%20Solar%20Dynamo.pdf spells out our understanding of the driver. We are not completely in the dark.
Its not good science to write something off when there is not evidence to do so and the theory is plausible
It is written off because it is not plausible. Let me give you an example on something that is not plausible: A ten-ton rock is lying in a field. An ant crawls up upon it, and the rock crumbles into dust. It is not plausible that the ant did it, even though the correlation is there [it happened ‘just when the ant came’].
Glenn (19:42:42) :
What difference does it make, if being in a solar minimum will not significantly affect the Earth’s climate?
You are quite right that it will make no difference to the climate, but it will make a big difference to the space industry, to communications, and to the insurance premiums for satellites [this last point being the primary reason for the existence of the NASA/NOAA panels for prediction of solar cycle 24].
Leif
“Yes. One might add this: Assemble, Expand, and Fade”
I suppose the duration of the cycle is important? Certainly in comparisons with pre-electronic data, cloud cover in winter, even in southern Italy, would miss low duration spots. Or is this part of the corrections?
I’m skeptical, and not because of one theory of forcing over another, but because severe climactic shifts do occur, and we don’t have a clear picture of what does what.
Do you focus your production on colder climate crops or do you focus on heat & drought resistant crops? The world is grossly overpopulated and we haven’t a concensus on where climate is heading to act in time.
Is society expecting too much of science?
Perhaps they already have.
Leif Svalgaard (19:38:28) :
“The early paper did not use the actual polar field, because we had not measured it yet. Later papers by Schatten fared better, but my method [as spelled out in the paper with Cliver and Kamide-san] yields these numbers” (snip)
You claimed earlier that your predictions from 1978 were “right on”. So now 2005 is 1978? How come you don’t just refer to your right on predictions from 1978 on, instead of hyping what hasn’t been borne out yet, from a 2005 prediction of a future Solar Cycle?
“With the current polar fields, the prediction for SC24 comes to 71 which is not significantly different from 75. The issue is not when the ‘predictions’ were made, by whom, or what Ed Cliver said before our paper. The issue is what Rmax, the polar fields would predict had they been used, and the results are as shown.”
The issue certainly *is* when predictions were made and whether they were “right on”, Leif. But as to your claim of predictions being borne out in hindsight, as they say in the funny papers, that’s what they all say. For example,
“We review how the so-called flux-transport solar dynamos work and show that such models calibrate well with solar cycle observations, and simulate well the relative peaks of the past 8 cycles. This success provides a basis for forecasting a strong solar cycle 24.”
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=C5296290465BE450F8EF064BEF2B8F7C.tomcat1?fromPage=online&aid=533508
So we have at least two competing predictions, one for a weak cycle and one for a strong cycle, both “methods” claiming that models ran on previous cycles works well. Should both take credit, and should we assume that both theories are “right on”, that now we “know”, that both have “told us” what is happening inside the sun?
Leif Svalgaard (20:14:12) :
The smiley [ 🙂 ] indicated that ‘faith’ was not the standard religious faith. And the method does not just look at previous cases. Ken Schatten’s paper http://www.leif.org/research/Percolation%20and%20the%20Solar%20Dynamo.pdf spells out our understanding of the driver. We are not completely in the dark
I read your referred paper….and i have to say..war and peace without substance.
If that’s the best science can do on the understanding of the “driver” we have a long way to go…lets use that “understanding” to predict the next 5 cycles….not likely.
Its not good science to write something off when there is not evidence to do so and the theory is plausible….
Leif says..It is written off because it is not plausible. Let me give you an example on something that is not plausible: A ten-ton rock is lying in a field. An ant crawls up upon it, and the rock crumbles into dust. It is not plausible that the ant did it, even though the correlation is there [it happened ‘just when the ant came’].
Your so predicable lol…what u say is plausible maybe quite different than most.
anna v (21:27:58) :
I suppose the duration of the cycle is important?
No, not of the solar cycle, but of the life cycle of each spot [which may be what you meant]
Certainly in comparisons with pre-electronic data, cloud cover in winter, even in southern Italy, would miss low duration spots.
Zurich and Italy [where the backup station was] are on opposite sides of the Alps and usually have ‘complimentary’ weather: if one is cloudy, the other is clear, so didn’t miss much because of the weather. The real reason for the ‘correction’ is the deliberate decision of Wolf not to count small spots and of his successor, Wolfer, to count all spots. ‘Splicing’ these different series together is tricky business.
nobwainer (03:30:43) :
If that’s the best science can do on the understanding of the “driver” we have a long way to go…lets use that “understanding” to predict the next 5 cycles….not likely.
Since the decay of one cycle is a fairly random process, we don’t think we can ever predict more than one cycle ahead as we need to observe the [unpredictable] polar fields at the start of the next cycle. This is in contrast to the planetary people who can predict the cycle millions of years in advance with impunity. So, we are definitely inferior to those guys.
Glenn (23:42:24) :
And now to Glenn:
So we have at least two competing predictions, one for a weak cycle and one for a strong cycle, both “methods” claiming that models ran on previous cycles works well. Should both take credit, and should we assume that both theories are “right on”, that now we “know”, that both have “told us” what is happening inside the sun?
As usual you have no idea how science works. The reason there are competing predictions with very different outcomes is that we do not know enough about the conditions inside the Sun and how these affect the dynamo process. As long as the different models give the same result [the hindcasts] we cannot discriminate and decide. We have to wait until such time that the models diverge wildly. Now is such a time.
The issues are these:
1) is the dynamo deep or shallow? or a bit of both?
2) what is the speed of magnetic ‘diffusion’ inside the Sun? fast [our case] or slow [Dikpati]. This determines the time scale for the ‘magnetic memory’ [5 years or ~30 years]
We said in our prediction paper that “The coming cycle 24 has the
potential to become a test of their [Dikpati] model”. And of ours as well, of course. Even if the test comes out in favor of one of the models, that does not show that that model is ‘it’ [as there could be other explanations we just haven’t thought of]. And if the test comes out ‘halfway’ then all we know is that both models are wrong.
This shouldn’t be so hard to grasp.
We had a CDC something or other computer in my center back in 1967. Programs on decks of cards which were turned into binary. Had learned how to correct the binary cards themselves in order to save time. Data on huge tapes. We were measuring and analyzing 2 meter bubble chamber physics photos. I know that my lap top is more powerful than than wonder machine.