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.
“Assemble, Expand, and Fade”.
It occurs to me that this trinity governs all particular events in the physical realm, including a human life.
Leif, do you think it’s possible to study sun’s activity via dynamical systems techniques?
Leif
“It is not conceivable that the polarity of the IMF has any effect, per se [apart from some subtle geomagnetic effect, hardly measurable – a long story can be spun on this, but that is for another post].”
My apologies. I confused BX with BZ. I’m flummoxed.
Are we to wait long for the ‘other post’.
Erl Happ (04:12:40) :
By what mechanism can the sun affect the Earths atmosphere in terms of density and distribution?
The first point of confusion is that the Earth’s atmosphere is too broad a notion. The higher atmosphere [Thermosphere, Ionosphere, …] responds differently than the lower atmosphere [Troposphere]. But at all levels there are ‘thermal winds’ caused by solar heating [often mediated by factors, such as the surface] which in combination in combination with rotation creates the winds we observe. So there are lots of ways the Sun can affect the atmosphere. What does NOT happen is a ‘compaction’ by the solar wind.
Erl Happ (04:32:07) :
The first requirement of any climate theory is to explain what we observe.
No, the first requirement is that it makes physical, and energetical, sense. If we relax that very first requirement it is easy to come up with a perfect explanation of the observations [e.g. angels pushing the stuff around for our benefit – this was once the explanation of what kept the planets going].
Andrea (07:19:07) :
Leif, do you think it’s possible to study sun’s activity via dynamical systems techniques?
This is [and has] been done, e.g.:
Prediction of Sunspot Cycles by Data Assimilation Method
by: IN Kitiashvili, AG Kosovichev
(22 Jul 2008)
Abstract
Despite the known general properties of the solar cycles, a reliable the forecast of the 11-year sunspot number variations is still a problem. The difficulties are caused by the apparent chaotic behavior of the sunspot numbers from cycle to cycle and by the influence of various turbulent dynamo processes, which are far from understanding. For predicting the solar cycle properties we make an initial attempt to use the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF), a data assimilation method, which takes into account uncertainties of a dynamo model and measurements, and allows to estimate future observational data. We present the results of forecasting the solar cycles obtained by the EnKF method in application to a low-mode nonlinear dynamical system modeling the solar αΩ-dynamo process with variable magnetic helicity. Calculations of the predictions for previous sunspot cycles show good agreement (with ∼10% error) with the actual data. This forecast model predicts that the next sunspot cycle will be significantly weaker (by ∼ 30%) than the previous cycle, continuing the trend of low solar activity.
Erl Happ (07:32:34) :
Are we to wait long for the ‘other post’.
As it does not seem relevant, the ‘other post’ may be a long ways off. Our understanding of all these subtle effects have not changed much since my ‘Skylab Coronal Hole Workshop’ chapter back in 1977. It is set out in excruciating [and eye-glazing-over] detail in http://www.leif.org/research/suipr699.pdf
‘…[e.g. angels pushing the stuff around for our benefit – this was once the explanation of what kept the planets going].’
Well, it was one explanation, at least, v. Dante and Milton. Going back to Plato, at least if we read the __ Timaeus__ literally, celestial objects are themselves living, intelligent beings capable of motion. I don’t believe that Church doctrine ever officially sanctioned belief in such pushy angels (remember also that the Church had discouraging things to say about belief in astrology).
But Dante and MIlton–and Plato, for my money– are interested in poetic and not scientific truth.
No fair considering such ancient and medieval cosmological accounts as laughably primitive attempts to do what modern science does much better. Not really according to Hoyle (or Hubble). A different sort of thinking is involved.
What Newton achieved, in showing with breath-taking simplicity that one might account for the motion of celestial objects in exactly the same way one might with the fall of an apple, was nothing less than the unification of the realm of physical reality as a field for human thought.
But this is to veer, self-indulgently, far off topic; (I wouldn’t blame Anthony if he rejects it), and I am basically parotting what K.J. Burtt says in __The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science__, which is one of those books–the ones that, if you are attached to an American university, and you are seen simply carrying them around, win you a certain reputation.
Erl Happ (04:32:07) :
It also makes complete nonsense of any expectation that the Earth should be warmer at solar maximum, even though Camp and Tung (if my memory is correct) happened to find that it was marginally warmer.
Go and explain that to the LIA-Maunder minimum crowd. What marks the solar-climate connection is that people can’t even agree on the basics and tend to ignore [or disparage] all other research that does not conform to their own ideas. There are two causes normally served up for this:
1: “this is an emerging field [after 400 years still struggling] and such disagreements are normal when not all the pieces are in yet”
2: “this is typical for wishful thinking wanting there to be something when there isn’t”
Einstein, from “Ernst Mach”, 1916:
“Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such an authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. Thus they come to be stamped as “necessities of thought,” “a priori givens,” etc. The path of scientific advance is often made impassable for a long time through such errors.”
Leif (18:25:33) Gotcha, and thanks. I’ll be fascinated to see what you make of Steve’s integration.
Erl (04:32:47) You are welcome and you deserve it. You and Leif are going to get this explained to me, yet.
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kim (10:39:12) :
I’ll be fascinated to see what you make of Steve’s integration.
Steve describes his process thus:
“At first I divided the chart made from your data into various periods in Excel(5, 6, 7 years etc ) exported the chart to ImageJ and determined the area of each periodby subtracting each period area from the total starting at the LH side of the chart.. Filled the area under the curve I wanted, made a binary image and counted the particles. I then charted it and compared to Hadcrut (unmodified).”
I don’t know how I can respond to that. Since the data points are equally spaced [ignoring the slight differences between the lengths of months] integration over a cycle amounts to simply adding all the TSI values for each month belonging to that cycle. That is what I did [took all of 10 minutes].
Gar Gilrud:
Is Einstein’s essay on Mach available on the net?
You are driving me to reread Isaacson’s bio.
Arthur Glass:
I yanked it from a web pub of “The Philosopher Scientist”. It centers on his thoughts re: the connection for the scientist between physics and epistemology.
In high school and as an undergrad I remember attaching little esteem to his philosophy but my view has changed some.
“When Bz is south, that is, opposite Earth’s magnetic field, the two fields link up,” explains Christopher Russell, a Professor of Geophysics and Space Physics at UCLA. “You can then follow a field line from Earth directly into the solar wind” — or from the solar wind to Earth. South-pointing Bz’s open a door through which energy from the solar wind can reach Earth’s atmosphere!
Southward Bz’s often herald widespread auroras, triggered by solar wind gusts or coronal mass ejections that are able to inject energy into our planet’s magnetosphere.
Were the teraWatts input in these events spread over the entire globe they might pass for insignificant. Nonetheless, a paper came out this year suggesting a 2-3 degree Arctic anomaly on their basis.
Gary Gilrud:
According to Isaacson, Einstein was, in the annus mirabilis of 1904, a member of a Spinoza study group.
Leif Svalgaard (08:00:31) :
The first point of confusion is that the Earth’s atmosphere is too broad a notion. The higher atmosphere [Thermosphere, Ionosphere, …] responds differently than the lower atmosphere [Troposphere]. But at all levels there are ‘thermal winds’ caused by solar heating [often mediated by factors, such as the surface] which in combination in combination with rotation creates the winds we observe.
The concepts that we have developed relating to a stratification of the atmosphere tend, in my opinion, to compartmentalise our thinking. There are no sharp boundaries on the surface of the Earth to accord with our concepts of ‘regional climate’. From a location that shows a strong central tendency e.g. winter rainfall to another with a different central tendency e.g. summer rainfall, there is a transition zone, and that transition zone actually encompasses the whole. Similarly in the atmosphere, it is useful to have zonal concepts that are derived according to understanding of some dominant feature of the local situation eg Troposphere the ‘turning sphere’ where temperature decreases with altitude, Stratosphere, where temperature increases with altitude and convection is less vigorous, enhanced ozone content etc In the Thermosphere it is obvious that ionisation is a central feature determining dynamics and auroras above the poles to demonstrate a focus of energy.
We do not understand surface climate without an understanding of the process responsible for central tendencies and the way that these processes can wax and wane over time.
I think it is productive to ask to what degree a process that we associate with one atmospheric ‘conceptual sphere’ also operates in adjacent parts of the atmosphere e.g. convection. Although convection is slowed in the stratosphere it must persist because as long as there are differences in density laterally, the less dense material must rise.
Similarly, ionisation is a matter of degree. The presence of ozone in the upper troposphere/ lower stratosphere is an indicator that short wave radiation is providing sufficient energy to keep two electrically unbalanced oxygen molecules that have a preference for a conjoint relationship, apart. The concentration of ozone also depends upon environmental constraints, temperature and humidity and there are no sharp boundaries between the stratosphere and the troposphere. Cirrus clouds are sometimes seen in the stratosphere. The stratosphere is more influenced by outgoing radiation from the surface than the upper troposphere (so evidencing heating from surface rather than solar influences).
If we consider a conjoint population of particles with unbalanced/balanced electrical charges then the forces that operate on particles with unbalanced charges will affect the others in the same way that a crowd of people exiting a football stadium are carried along with each other and it becomes very difficult to retrace ones path.
So, to understand what is happening we need to ask where the limits are to the processes that are responsible for our ‘conceptual zones’.
So, where are the limits to the atmospheric effects of the process described by Gary Gulrud (13:33:02) :
I think we are just scratching the surface here. We have no idea of the cause of ‘sudden stratospheric warmings’ and why they seem to be confined to the northern hemisphere. It is plain that the upper troposphere warms and cools over thirty to 100 years affecting cloud cover and this is a major dynamic affecting tropical temperature. We need to pay as much attention to the temperature of the upper troposphere (routinely sampled for thirty or forty years) as we pay to the gyration in magnetic needles at the surface of the earth.
This is not to belittle what the magnetic needle tells us, because in sensitive and imaginative hands it tells us a great deal.
Leif, thanks for your great generosity in opening a window to further our understanding of the sun. Yours is a rare and brave commitment.
Gary Gulrud (13:33:02) :
South-pointing Bz’s open a door through which energy from the solar wind can reach Earth’s atmosphere!
Southward Bz’s often herald widespread auroras, triggered by solar wind gusts or coronal mass ejections that are able to inject energy into our planet’s magnetosphere.
Except that that is not the way it works in a literal sense [there is no window through which pours energy directly into the atmosphere]. What happens is that more energy is fed into the magnetospheric tail from where it may be fed into the night side upper atmosphere [we were discussing ‘day side’ effects].
Were the teraWatts input in these events spread over the entire globe they might pass for insignificant.
TeraWatt input is rare. Typically, the input is of the order of 30 GigaWatt. To compare wtih TeraWatt would be like considering hurricanes as the normal state of the troposphere.
Erl Happ (16:05:22) :
As I said, I have given up already. You basically have the energy flows backwards except for the heating peaks at the stratopause and the ionosphere. Even the mesosphere is heated from below [from the stratopause at 1hPa] as is the troposphere [from the surface at 1000 nPa]. Your understanding of the ‘greenhouse’ effect is wrong too. The reason for the greenhouse effect is that the atmosphere contains molecules with more than two atoms [H20 being the most] so that they have more ways of containing energy, rotation, vibration, etc. These molecules absorb and emit at wavelengths corresponding to Earth’s radiation temperature, half of the re-emitted energy is radiated downwards and that is the cause of the greenhouse effect. This has little to do with CO2 compared to H20 and is not something that is ‘supposed to happen’ or ‘assumed by evil forces’. The effect of this half downwards emission is to raise the temperature by the fourth root [Stefan-Boltzmann again] or two, or a factor of 1.19 increasing the temperature to 255K*1.19 = 303K. The actual effect is a bit smaller, because the emitters aloft are of lower temperature than the surface, but you should get the idea. But enough already.
Erl Happ (16:05:22) :
We need to pay as much attention to the temperature of the upper troposphere
And we need to do this because that is where the cooling happens, not the heating. You are barking up the wrong tree. It is not about how solar activity adds energy to the system [because there is precious little extra energy to add, but [if there is an effect, at all] how solar activity might help cool the system. But I don’t really want to get started on post number 666 [or more] on this topic as it will have as little effect as all the hundreds that went before it.
Erl Happ (16:05:22) :
there are no sharp boundaries between the stratosphere and the troposphere.
With a suitable definition of ‘sharp’ e.g. 1 inch thick, you could be trivially correct, but this is not of interest. What is important is that the stratosphere has a temperature inversion [people in Los Angeles can tell you what happens then], thus stable against convection [that’s why it is called the stratosphere in the first place: it is stratified], while the troposphere is heated from below, and unstable against convection. I could go on and on, but won’t [already been too much].
Leif Svalgaard (21:01:36)
Thanks Leif. The data is noisy – still interesting. I’ll mess around with it a little more.
There is not much left from our “Significant Cycle 24 sunspot group” that has sparked this discussion is it not?
Kim and anyone else interested in this – Leif has asked me to post our conversation here.
Leif:
Since the data points [monthly values of TSI] are equally spaced, to integrate over a cycle, you simply add up all the monthly values belonging to that cycle, then do the same for the next cycle, etc. Takes 10 minutes to do for all the data. The result is the graph I showed at http://www.leif.org/research/SumTSI.png
Steve:
So I did it your way and got the very much the same result as you (I guesstimated the start and end of cycles).
The crux of my inquiry was – why do we differ in result?
Well, I divided the sums of each cycle by the cycle length and got my result.
So, I am somewhat confused. What does this mean?
The average TSI of each cycle gives the same result as literally taking the area under the curve of each cycle. Why would this have a pattern that would in any way have somewhat the same pattern as Hadcrut?
Leif:
Then you are not integrating over the cycle, but simply computing the average TSI for each cycle which not surprisingly would simply vary as the average sunspot number, low for small cycles, high for large cycles. That the result in some way resembles the HADCRUT is not a surprise, because you knew that there was such a coincidence to begin with. You could also have plotted against the square root of the U.S. population [or any other quantity that you know have increased over the past few centuries] and find a correlation.
The integration idea came because people were claiming that is (sic) was TSI working over a longer time interval that was somehow important or the
total effect over a cycle, or something. Never quite clear to me.
So it was fun and I learnt some new skills but always suspected that if you didn’t quite understand what you were doing all sorts of “correlations” pop up.
Thanks Leif (and I should have listened to William Briggs!!)
Back to the spot, I check it every morning .
Half way through and still there :).
One of my strong memories is watching a setting sun in the Aegean, back in the eighties, and idly wondering how it was possible for a seagull to keep such a steady course, when I realized it was a huge sunspot I was seeing.
Ron de Haan (19:58:37) :
There is not much left from our “Significant Cycle 24 sunspot group” that has sparked this discussion is it not?
We could show it the honor to continue the discussion until its final demise 🙂
It is interesting to watch how all these ‘solar’ topics always converge to the same questions: barycenter, AGW, Erl, climate correlations, diverse nit-picking. But, of course, everything is connected.
‘What is important is that the stratosphere has a temperature inversion [people in Los Angeles can tell you what happens then], thus stable against convection [that’s why it is called the stratosphere in the first place: it is stratified], while the troposphere is heated from below, and unstable against convection’
What about ‘sudden stratospheric warming events’ over the poles during the winter? These events at the 10 mb level seem to be predictors of the development (in the NH) of a blocking pattern at 500mb and the consequent establishment of a negative AO and NAO. In other words, get your mukluks ready.
Arthur Glass (21:14:26) :
What about ’sudden stratospheric warming events’ over the poles during the winter?
For once, good ole Wikipedia has the correct answer:
“In a usual northern-hemisphere winter, several minor warming events occur, with a major event occurring roughly every two years. One reason for major stratospheric warmings to occur in the Northern hemisphere is because orography and land-sea temperature contrasts are responsible for the generation of long (wavenumber 1 or 2) Rossby waves in the troposphere. These waves travel upward to the stratosphere and are dissipated there, producing the warming by decelerating the mean flow. This is the reason that major warmings are only observed in the northern-hemisphere, with one exception. In 2002 a southern-hemisphere major warming was observed. This event to date is not fully understood.
There exists a link between sudden stratospheric warmings and the quasi-biennial oscillation: If the QBO is in its easterly phase, the atmospheric waveguide is modified in such a way that upward-propagating Rossby waves are focused on the polar vortex, intensifying their interaction with the mean flow. Thus, there exists a statistically significant imbalance between the frequency of sudden stratospheric warmings if these events are grouped according to the QBO phase (easterly or westerly).
—–
So, there you have it.