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
George and Lief,
You two sound like farmers talking about farm equipment round the kitchen table. We women folk didn’t have a clue what they were talking about since they used numbers instead of names to refer to parts, processes, and models. “How is that 367 workin fer ya Bill?” “Awright I reckon. But did’ya see that thar new 3859A at the farm fair?” Now thet gal war sweet!”
Pamela: We sure do miss Carl Sagan, do we not?
Everyone understood him.
Bjorn Lomberg has an interesting take on climate change, whether or not you think CO2 is to blame. His thirty minute presentation is well worth watching.
http://www.reason.tv/video/show/621.html
Bill Marsh (11:24:58) :
Pretty striking, at least to my admittedly not so well trained eye.
Yes, it is, indeed, strikingly clear that at every minimum the GCR intensity returns to the same level, and that 2008 = 1987 = 1965. Does not take fancy statistics to see.
matt v. (17:59:58) :
Here are just three examples which support the paper posted.
‘report’ is not the same as ‘support’. The paper is garbage on its face.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (16:48:48) :
Your paper unless I missed it doesn’t explain why the solar pole strength is weakening and neither does Schattens….so we don’t have anything to compare with my theory?
No explanation is needed. A solar cycle has 3000 active regions. The polar magnetic flux is very small compared to the magnetic flux in all those regions. In fact, the polar flux is equal to about FIVE of those regions, thus a very, very small percentage. When you are down to FIVE events, pure chance can give you 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7. No further reason needed. You can, in fact, see the individual ‘streams’ of flux that go to the poles in this MWO plot: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/torsional.html
Leif,
The link does not work.
Please post it again.
To Mary Hinge.
I’m sorry, but I have to ask this question. Are you related to Dr. Evadne Hinge?
http://www.hingeandbracket-official.co.uk/index_1.htm
http://www.hingeandbracket-official.co.uk/tribute.htm
Regards,
Perry
Ron de Haan (23:37:09) :
The link does not work.
Please post it again.
Which link?
For the bloggers who claim that the sun has very little to do with our climate I refer you to the paper called LINKAGE BETWEEN SOLAR ACTIVITY, CLIMATE PREDICTABILITY AND WATER RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT by W J R Alexander, F Bailey, D B Bredenkamp, A van der Merwe and N Willemse
This paper is total garbage as has been pointed out many times, both here and elsewhere.
I never trust people who say that a paper is garbage in the case when the paper questions the warmers dogma .
Almost alwyas it turns out that the person didn’t read the paper and was only repeating what he heard/read somewhere .
So I read the referenced paper in detail and here are the findings .
Let’s begin with the conclusion :
The paper is not total garbage .
It is rather long (I think sometimes unnecessarily so) and contains 3 parts .
Part 1
====
Evidence in the data . The data shows statistically significant 21 year period signal . The statistics used are basic and classical .
I would have liked to see Hurst coefficient calculation (they talk about it but don’t do it) and a power spectrum (they evoke it but don’t do it either) .
Unless their data are wrong what doesn’t seem to be the case , the conclusions are standard statistics on time series .
Part 2
====
They discuss and develop correlations between Sun parameters and the data of part 1 . This is again classical statistics . The Sun has been chosen because 21 years is an important period for the Sun .
Of course this kind of approach asks the question if correlation is causation which can never be answered by statistics alone .
This is exactly equivalent to the statistical AGW theory that tries to show correlations between CO2 and GMT and illegaly confuses correlation and causation .
The advantage of the paper compared to the AGW theory is that it uses local experimental data (instead of arbitrary space averagings) in which case the probability that correlation is causation is higher .
However if one stays at the statistical level only , it is still impossible to exclude the case that the correlation is a coincidence due to the finite length of the time series and the behaviour of chaotic systems is known to exhibit all kinds of such coincidences when the data sampling period is poorly chosen .
Part3
===
To be fair , I admit that I skipped this part when I noticed right in the beginning that they were showing the Earth’s trajectory in an unusual referential .
As the laws of nature are invariant in any galilean transformation of referentials (as long as the speeds are small compared to c and the space-time flat) , there is no need to choose exotic and complicated referentials .
So whatever they wanted to show , it is probably irrelevant to part 1 and 2 because if they wanted to examine orbital matters , they should have chosen the usual heliocentric referential where the equations are the simplest .
Leif Svalgaard (23:05:13) :
No explanation is needed. A solar cycle has 3000 active regions. The polar magnetic flux is very small compared to the magnetic flux in all those regions. In fact, the polar flux is equal to about FIVE of those regions, thus a very, very small percentage. When you are down to FIVE events, pure chance can give you 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7. No further reason needed. You can, in fact, see the individual ’streams’ of flux that go to the poles in this MWO plot: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/torsional.html
No expanation needed?…but would have thought that’s a standard way of stating your point, but anyway we seem to be getting down to some basics, you think there are many functions within the sun that can generate random events which cannot be predicted over a long time scale if i am understanding correctly?…it is the master of its own destiny….but at the same time you follow the precursor theory and predict the next cycle from the previous cycle and also keep account of the polar field strength…I must be missing something.
The sunspot peaks create patterns that are far from random in my opinion, and seem to follow a fairly smooth curve with abrupt changes of Grand Minima on a predictable cycle. This could not happen with random events?
Perry Debell – I suspect that Mary is more closely related to the famous Reverend Spooner…
Sunspot 1009 does seem fairly close to the equator….would that be normal at this stage of the cycle?
Perry
You are showing your age and your nationality! Obviously I’m far too young to remember them!
TonyB
It is snowing here in New Orleans right now.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (04:34:22) :
“you think there are many functions within the sun that can generate random events which cannot be predicted over a long time scale if i am understanding correctly?…it is the master of its own destiny
You confuse a random event with a random process. Consider the throw of a die. The throw is deterministic [I decide when and where to throw], but the outcome is random [with a fair die]. The outcome determines what happens next, e.g. if I collect some money from the game. Same thing with the Sun: Only about one-thousandth of the magnetic flux ends up in the polar caps, and the transport of magnetic flux is a random process brought about be supergranules see, e.g. http://dot.astro.uu.nl/rrweb/rjr-publications/2001encyclopedia-AA.pdf
….but at the same time you follow the precursor theory and predict the next cycle from the previous cycle and also keep account of the polar field strength
Here we consider the result of the random outcome: the magnetic field at the poles is the seed for the dynamo-induced amplification process. This process is not random, but has substantial order to it, therefore the next cycle depends deterministically on the random outcome of the flux transport toward the poles.
The sunspot peaks create patterns that are far from random in my opinion, and seem to follow a fairly smooth curve with abrupt changes of Grand Minima on a predictable cycle. This could not happen with random events?
And it does not. Careful analysis of the Grand Minima over 10,000 years shows that the time between Minima [or Maxima] is random. See e.g. http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/Moss_SP_2008.pdf
TomVonk (04:25:04) :
I never trust people who say that a paper is garbage in the case when the paper questions the warmers dogma .
Almost alwyas it turns out that the person didn’t read the paper and was only repeating what he heard/read somewhere
You cannot just jump to such a conclusion based on your own dogma. The paper has been discussed extensively at ClimateAudit and most people there agreed it was substandard [to be mild]. Part 3 [that you did not study] is a give-away, as it shows the shallow science acumen of the authors.
So Leif,
I know nothing about how the sun works or sunspots, but I have a seat of the pants mental image of what I think may be going on in the surface layers of the sun. Just for laughs let me lay this on you.
Imagine a vortex of rotating plasma (I assume it is all plasma) that is boring down into the surface, somewhat like a tornado funnel.
So I have a rotating plasma which is pretty damn big by earth scale things, and all that rotating charge creates a huge circulating current; let’s say it is rotating clockwise as we look down on it, so it creates a nice big bar magnet, with I suppose a south magnetic pole sticking out of the surface (hope I got that polarity right from the right hand rule).
Now that tornado may come popping up to the surface from down below (I dunno) or perhaps it starts turning right at the surface and goes down.
The column of rotating plasma, also has a substantial mass of material associated with, so it represents a significant angular momentum spinning there like a flywheel.
It seems as though from Anthony’s pictures, that the sun is rotating left to right, at least that’s the way this latest spot seemed to move, so now I have a rotating mass with a positive angular momentum vector, and I am twisting it with the sun left to right. Now if I did that with a bicycle wheel; turn the handle bars to the left; the bike is going to flop outwards and fall over to the right, so that means that the top visible end of my sunspot, wants to move southwards, and the deep end inside the sun wants to move northwards, so eventually the thing would seem to want to dive under the surface and proceed in a northerly direction, still spinning clockwise, as it proceeds through the solar outer layer, and maybe eventually the deep end, will come back up to the surface, but now the exposed end, will be rotating anti-clockwise, so I will be seeing a north pole.
So I have this mental image of these tubular tornado worms boring into the sun, and flipping over due to gyroscopic precession, caused by the sun’s rotation on its axis. So that would explain why the fileds reverse between cycles; assuming of course that this little boring expedition of mine takes about 11 years.
So Leif, have a good laugh if you like; but does any of that picture make any sense at all ? I’ve been meaning to ask Willie Soon about that picture, but never got around to it, so I might as well ask you.
George
Leif Svalgaard (08:00:06) :
You confuse a random event with a random process. Consider the throw of a die. The throw is deterministic [I decide when and where to throw], but the outcome is random [with a fair die]. The outcome determines what happens next, e.g. if I collect some money from the game. Same thing with the Sun: Only about one-thousandth of the magnetic flux ends up in the polar caps, and the transport of magnetic flux is a random process brought about be supergranules see, e.g. http://dot.astro.uu.nl/rrweb/rjr-publications/2001encyclopedia-AA.pdf
So its a random process that ultimately controls modulation of each cycle using the polar seeding from the previous cycle (and the dice is tossed approx every 11 yrs by an unknown player). So a flaw still exists, the cycle peaks do not follow a random outcome, but in general shows a wave pattern with slow rises and falls except when Grand Minima interrupt.
And it does not. Careful analysis of the Grand Minima over 10,000 years shows that the time between Minima [or Maxima] is random. See e.g. http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/Moss_SP_2008.pdf
Usokins work in this area has 2 major weaknesses in my opinion. He bases his conclusions on 14C records which he himself questions the accuracy of, and if you look at his graph it completely misses the Dalton minimum. If every medium trough was “Dalton like” then we have far more minima than suggested via his plot….so its accuracy has to be questioned. Recent minima back to the Oort (1000 yrs) certainly shows a predictable pattern.
His graph can be viewed here http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/previousgrandminima.png
George E. Smith (16:54:48) :
does any of that picture make any sense at all ?
It may make sense, except it’s not how the Sun operates. You can google things like ‘solar cycle’ solar activity’ solar magnetic field’ to get more info on what is going on.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (18:16:49) :
So its a random process that ultimately controls modulation of each cycle using the polar seeding from the previous cycle (and the dice is tossed approx every 11 yrs by an unknown player). So a flaw still exists, the cycle peaks do not follow a random outcome, but in general shows a wave pattern with slow rises and falls except when Grand Minima interrupt.
The transport of flux to poles is a random process. In general though, there will be a tendency for a big cycle to have more surviving flux than a small cycle, so several big cycles often occur together as well as several small cycles. This is not a sure thing, though, and that is where the random element comes in. Like, cycle 19 was very large, yet somewhat less polar flux was produced, so cycle 20 was small. This is not a ‘flaw’, but is very characteristic of such chaotic variations. The ‘technical term’ is that the process has ‘positive conservation’ or ‘memory’
Usokin’s work in this area has 2 major weaknesses in my opinion. He bases his conclusions on 14C records which he himself questions the accuracy of, and if you look at his graph it completely misses the Dalton minimum.
The 14C record is not perfect, but it is not so bad as to obscure the variations. And the Dalton minimum was not really a Grand Minimum. Usokin is not the only one that has come to this conclusion. In fact, that is the generally accepted wisdom. There is no predictable pattern in the Grand Minima.
Jørgen F. (04:16:03) :
The little white lie that ran amok……
Very interesting perspective….
Leif,
What is your opinion about the NASA publication Chilly Temperatures During the Maunder Minimum, by Drew Shindell stating the following quote:
“The drop in temperature was related to ozone in the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere that is between 10 and 50 kilometers from the Earth’s surface. Ozone is created when high-energy ultraviolet light from the Sun interacts with oxygen. During the Maunder Minimum, the Sun emitted less strong ultraviolet light, and so less ozone formed.
The decrease in ozone affected planetary waves, the giant wiggles in the jet stream that we are used to seeing on television weather reports.
The change to the planetary waves kicked the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)—the balance between a permanent low-pressure system near Greenland and a permanent high-pressure system to its south—into a negative phase. When the NAO is negative, both pressure systems are relatively weak. Under these conditions, winter storms crossing the Atlantic generally head eastward toward Europe, which experiences a more severe winter. (When the NAO is positive, winter storms track farther north, making winters in Europe milder.) The model results, shown above, illustrate that the NAO was more negative on average during the Maunder Minimum, and Europe remained unusually cold. These results matched the paleoclimate record”. – end of quote.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=7122
A possibly stupid question to Dr Svaalgard: If the sun has little effect on climate variations, how does this affect climate science and climate models? I belive the sun has been used as an explanation of climate variations in the past (?) – if we now know that is not the case, how do we know that current variations is not due to some unknown factor? Have your findings been discussed by climate scientists?
Pardon my bad english, my native language is swedish…
Leif
never trust people who say that a paper is garbage in the case when the paper questions the warmers dogma .
Almost alwyas it turns out that the person didn’t read the paper and was only repeating what he heard/read somewhere
You cannot just jump to such a conclusion based on your own dogma. The paper has been discussed extensively at ClimateAudit and most people there agreed it was substandard [to be mild]. Part 3 [that you did not study] is a give-away, as it shows the shallow science acumen of the authors.
I jump to this conclusion because it is a good empirical rule . I have observed both on the net and especially in the RL that people who design skeptic papers as “garbage” have in 9/10 cases not read the paper and rely on some third party who said that it was garbage .
So I always check by myself .
I didn’t read CA but as I read the original paper , I confirm that the first 2 parts are standard statistics . One could certainly refine but the period is there .
It is actually very easy to read and to check for everybody even if they are sometimes much too long compared to usual scientific paper standards .
On top when the question is climate statistics I always heavily weight all local analysis while I attribute a weight of epsilon to “global” analysis . Here we are local .
So 7/10 for the first part and 7/10 is not “garbage” in my book .
I agree with you that their first chart in the third part looks … strange .
By strange I do not mean wrong but unusual and probably irrelevant .
I also agree that it suggests that they will probably go orbital (in literal sense too :)) and that’s why I skipped it because I’d be loosing my time .
It might be that they deserve 1/10 for this part what would be “garbage” .
But as I mentally “cut off” the third part , I am left with the first 2 that are interesting , classical and largely correct .
N Sweden (04:28:12) :
Pardon my bad english, my native language is swedish…
Your english is better than most native speakers around here… and far better than my Swedish!
Hey, it’s english… There is no equivalent of the French Academy, you can do pretty much whatever you want with the language…