We are now at 21 days with no sunspots, it will be interesting to see if we reach a spotless 30 day period and then perhaps a spotless month of December.
From the data provided by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) you can see just how little magnetic field activity there has been. I’ve included it below with the latest available update from December 6th, 2008:
click for a larger image
What I find most interesting about the Geomagnetic Average Planetary Index graph above is what happened around October 2005. Notice the sharp drop in the magnetic index and the continuance at low levels. Read on for more.
This looks much like a “step function” that I see on GISS surface temperature graphs when a station has been relocated to a cooler measurement environment. In the case of the sun, it appears this indicates that something abruptly “switched off” in the inner workings of the solar dynamo. Note that in the prior months, the magnetic index was ramping up a bit with more activity, then it simply dropped and stayed mostly flat.
Currently the Ap magnetic index continues at a low level, and while the “smoothed” data from SWPC is not made available for 2008, I’ve added it with a dashed blue line, and the trend appears to be going down.
As many regular readers know, I’ve always pointed out the sharp drop in 2005 with the following extended period of low activity as an odd occurance. Our resident solar astronomer Leif Svalgaard disagrees with this. But I’d also like to point out that this was the time when global sea level as measured by the JASON satellite and reported by the University of Colorado began to lose its upward trend.
Source: University of Colorado, Boulder
Coincidence? Perhaps. But I think investigation is needed to determine if there is any mechanism that would explain or exclude this correlation.
(h/t Joe D’aleo
also, if you add the number of spotless days for 1911, 1912, and 1913 (all in the top ten spotless years), you get a total of 764 (over two complete years-worth of spotless days)!
if you add 2007 and 2008 (also both in the top ten spotless years) and assuming we reach 253 for 2008 (the number of spotless days in 1912, which appears pretty likely at this point), you get a total of 416 spotless days….still a LONG way to go between now and the end of 2009 to reach the number spotless days observed during 1911-1913. essentially, nearly all of next year would have to be spotless to reach/exceed the same number of spotless days observed during 1911-1913.
only time will tell….
Per Bobby Lane’s note, see:
Obama vows action on global warming
Perhaps not so coincidently, Figure 2 of Josh Willis’ paper last June:
Assessing the globally averaged sea level budget on seasonal to
interannual timescales
Josh K. Willis,1 Don P. Chambers,2 and R. Steven Nerem3
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 113, C06015, doi:10.1029/2007JC004517, 2008
http://www.agu.org/journals/jc/jc0806/2007JC004517/
Shows that the steric component of sea level begins to decrease sometime in 2005. The steric component slope from July of 2003 through June of 2007 is calculated to be -0.5 +/- 0.5 mm/yr as seen in Table 1. This differs from the altimeter measurement for the same time period of 3.6 ± 0.8 mm/yr.
one more thing….if we were to get the 348 spotless days in 2009 to tie the total number between 1911-1913, that would exceed the all-time record number of spotless days set in 1913 (311) by more than 10%. i’m not saying it’s impossible, but it certainly is unlikely.
it is also possible that today’s mproved observational instruments are picking up smaller spot areas that would have been missed in the past with traditional observation methods, artificially lowering the total number of spotless days in the modern era.
David Hagan:
If Hansen and the other AGW scientists would change their tune, don’t you think Gore and Obama would as well?
Blaming the messenger for someone else’s message always seems like a cheap shot.
re:Stephen Hill’s son, I guess he is to be congratulated for having no impact on the climate. Not sure about the CO2 reference though.
Anthony: Looking at the following graphs, I’d have to say that the decrease in Pacific Ocean SSTs is what’s driving the trend of global sea level after 2005.
The Pacific Ocean has been dropping since 2005:
http://i38.tinypic.com/2my3dzb.jpg
The trend in the Indian Ocean’s been relatively flat for a decade:
http://i33.tinypic.com/1z9pxj.jpg
It’s tough to tell what the Atlantic is doing:
http://i34.tinypic.com/11kfuop.jpg
And the Southern Ocean SST anomalies have been dropping like a rock for 20 years and showing no signs of increasing (Brrr!!!):
http://i35.tinypic.com/s3djds.jpg
I covered the big three in this post:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/10/atlantic-indian-and-pacific-ocean-ssts.html
I have seen nothing in Hansen or Gore’s characters that would indicate a willingness to change based on facts.
PearlandAggie is right: A calendar year doesn’t mean anything to the sun.
Apart from the La Nina induced pause and drop in SL, the trend is definately still up and is back to the rate of 3.3mm a year. There doesn’t seem to be any meaningful correlation between sun spots and sea level, if there was surely the sea level would be falling or at least static instead of rising 5mm since February.
Love the snow effect though!
Mary Hinge says:
Did you read what you wrote?
I love the snowflakes and find them strangely soothing. But something tells me we will be seeing a lot more of the real thing, as the northern hemisphere winter starts to settle in…
I’ve been a bit busy and out of touch with the sunspot situation, of late. Are we now definitely in Cycle 24, or is there still a way to go?
Maybe these aren’t snow flakes. They’re paint flakes from shattered Stephenson screens.
Love the snowflakes!!! I do not post often and have a question. I understand the concern about the sun’s activity. Here on earth our own magnetic field is in flux. It has decreased 10% in a short amount of time and appears to be shifting towards a polar reversal. These polar reversals occur about every 300,000 years and it’s been over 700,000 years since the last one. Instead of having magnetic fields from the poles, fields are forming in other areas. Does earth’s internal magnetic flux have an effect on weather patterns? Does this flux allow for more cosmic rays or less or for cosmic rays entrance at other points [not poles]? Thanks for any thoughts or information on this issue. Trying to understand all the interactions
“I see a couple of black spots on the sun, one at the equator near the east, another in the north east. Dead pixels, I assume?”
I can’t see one at the equator, but the one north east I think is a dead pixel. If the image is generated using some kind of micro-scanning technique, then it will give some weight to the surrounding pixels, hence, if you zoom it (I use Virtual Magnify Glass), you can see it’s actually 4 pixels in size. Still, it could be a spot I guess.
Well Leif’s Cosmic ray (neutron) graph is interesting, specially the match between the two detectors. Is the average, simply the average of those two sites or something else.
Also, what are you using these days as a Neutron detector; and what is the energy range of these neutrons.
I assume that the Neutrons are being generated in the atmosphere from charged particle collisions, rather than coming in from outer space (or solar)
So what happens if you plot sunspot cycles on top of the Neutron flux.
I haven’t played with Neutrons in right about 50 years, so I imagine that you do things differently today.
Enquiring minds want to know.
George
davidgmills wrote:
“If Hansen and the other AGW scientists would change their tune, don’t you think Gore and Obama would as well? Blaming the messenger for someone else’s message always seems like a cheap shot.”
I didn’t interpret his statement as a cheap shot. Being in a position of influence/authority means you are not just a “messenger.” There are thousands of scientists who have signed a statement indicating that they are unconvinced about the extent or importance of AGW. If you’re in a position of power, you have an obligation to listen to more than one voice and adopt a reasonable position based on all the facts you can reasonably gather. You ought not just regurgitate whatever nonsense is thrust upon you by the most extreme alarmists, such as Hansen, and certainly not if you are in a conflicted position of potential personal gain from the alarmism.
To Mary Hinge,
Here is the updated sea level chart from Jason-1 on the same basis as the University of Colorada chart.
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/images/news/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_J1_Global_NoIB_RWT_PGR_NoAdjust.png
The slope is down to 2.4 mms per year (since 2002) and there has definitely been a pause in sea level rise since the third quarter of 2005.
(Just further noting that the only ocean basin seeing sea level rise at all is the Indian Ocean and the far Western Pacific which has been recharged by all the El Ninos since 1998. All the other ocean basins are flat since 1992.)
Sorry, I meant to say all the other ocean basins are flat since 2002.
Stanford Uni have updated their solar polar strength graph showing continued weak strength and no indication of polarity change yet.
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Polar.gif
I am still trying to find data on any apparent slowdown of the solar differential rotation rate but without success…but would like to put money on it.
Meanwhile the planets align just like in the late 1790’s with matching sunspot activity, leading us into a mini Dalton?
The SC24 peak could be as early as Feb 2010.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/
ElphonPeedupon,
Typing to darn fast….brain was not engaged
A month ago, Hathaway was pronouncing that the Sun was returning to life.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/07nov_signsoflife.htm
He even still predicts a peak in cycle 24 for 2012. Really?
AMSR-E shows the ice approaching the highest levels compared to the data there. Will 2009 have the most ice of the period? I expect so.
OT, but this may be very important. The main company that validates carbon offset projects for use in emissions trading has been suspended.
This may be like the bond rating companies issuing high ratings for packages of mortgages. The whole cap and trade scheme seems to me to depend on an unachievably high level of trust – if people’s carbon offsets stand a chance of becoming worthless, the whole market could collapse overnight.
Via Icecap, http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081209/full/456686a.html says in part:
UN suspends leading carbon-offset firm
Emissions trading rocked as Norwegian company is left in limbo.
Quirin Schiermeier
As international climate talks began last week in Poland, the United Nations (UN) suspended the work of the main company that validates carbon-offset projects in developing countries, sending shockwaves through the emissions-trading business.
Based in Oslo, Det Norske Veritas has in the past four years validated and certified almost half of the 1,200 projects approved under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). At its meeting on 28 November in Poznań, the CDM’s executive board temporarily withdrew Det Norske Veritas’s accreditation after a spot check carried out in early November at the firm’s headquarters revealed serious flaws in project management.
The board did not specify which projects are affected, but cites problems with the company’s internal auditing processes, and says that one of its staff members was verifying CDM projects without proper qualifications. As a result, “validation activities could not be demonstrated to be based on appropriate sectoral expertise”, the board reports.
davidgmills
“Blaming the messenger for someone else’s message always seems like a cheap shot.”
The issue is not that Obama is repeating Gore’s message, but that Obama is President Elect and in his own capacity promises to act on what he perceives as “scientific fact”. That appears likely to have major detrimental consequences to the economy – but much more so the sever impact on the poor in developing countries – because it diverts key attention to a non-critical issue when the critical issue is to provide alternative fuels to accommodate the pending decline in light oil. If we don’t, we shut down the economy in proportion to decline fuel availability.
See Germany’s recognition of economic realities:
“Merkel: Jobs More Important Than Climate Change”