The Sun today
Solar cycle 24 still getting a slow and very delayed start. This is the third one of these (that I know of) this past year.
From SIDC (Solar Influences Data analysis Center) in Belgium: http://sidc.oma.be/products/quieta/
:Issued: 2008 Dec 14 1156 UTC :Product: documentation at http://www.sidc.be/products/quieta #--------------------------------------------------------------------# # From the SIDC (RWC-Belgium): "ALL QUIET" ALERT # #--------------------------------------------------------------------# START OF ALL QUIET ALERT ....................... The SIDC - RWC Belgium expects quiet Space Weather conditions for the next 48 hours or until further notice. This implies that: * the solar X-ray output is expected to remain below C-class level, * the K_p index is expected to remain below 5, * the high-energy proton fluxes are expected to remain below the event threshold. #--------------------------------------------------------------------# # Solar Influences Data analysis Center - RWC Belgium # # Royal Observatory of Belgium # # Fax : 32 (0) 2 373 0 224 # # Tel.: 32 (0) 2 373 0 491 # # # # For more information, see http://www.sidc.be. Please do not reply # # directly to this message, but send comments and suggestions to # # 'sidctech@oma.be'. If you are unable to use that address, use # # 'rvdlinden@spd.aas.org' instead. # # To unsubscribe, visit http://sidc.be/registration/unsub.php # #--------------------------------------------------------------------# (h/t to sunspotter)
It’s a good thing, if this was not happening, AGW would be burning up the planet by now. Polar Bears would be dead, costal cities under water and gigantic massive hurricanes would be wiping man off the planet.
As soon as the sun comes alive again, AGW will take a giant massive heat wave all across the world and man will never be the same.
Obama must act now and quickly to shut down all Coal Burning power plants. Cars and trucks parked. Heating with NG and Oil needs to be stopped. We have a window of opportunity to save the planet while the sun us asleep!
Stop AGW now! Call Washington! If you need money 1-800-BAI-LOUT
Anecdotal, but;
Its minus 30 deg C here now, and with the wind chill, it was nearly -50 deg C last night. Its still only -41 with the wind chill.
The 14 day forecast is for at least 10 degrees under the historical average.
Right now, its nearly 20 degrees under the historical average.
Global warming?
BRING IT ON. PLEASE!
I think what bothers me most about this whole quiet sun thing is what the various “experts” seems to be saying. Every time a little spot group appears, they seem to rush out with press releases that cycle 24 is finally ramping up … and then it goes quiet again.
Many of these “experts” would gain more of my respect if they simply said “we don’t have a clue what is going to happen next but our best guess based on our theories of how the sun works is …” but they can’t seem to do that. Dr. Hathaway in particular seems to be “sticking to his guns” with regard to his earlier predictions for cycle 24.
Is it really that difficult to say something along the lines of “the sun is exhibiting a pattern we have never seen before in the modern era and we will have to watch it and learn from it in order to improve our future forecasts”?
And nothing on stereo behind, either.
Just have a look at the flux in my lower stitched graphic on this page:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin.htm
The long gentle dip in flux in 2008 culminating in July is purported to be from the orbital eccentricity of distance from Sun, making the reading lower.
Flux is flatlined for 2008, only the solar activity of late March and mid May showing the last gasps of SC23.
There is nothing going on up there.
Nothing, unless you count the co-rotating Equatorial Coronal Hole (Cyclops).
Including today, December 14, 2008 we have 491days without sunspots – possible minus those two days in August – according to NOAA solar indices log. When my counting is correct….Whether those 2 days, orginally pronounced blank by spaceweather.com, but later measured as sunspot days, are finally accepted as blank or as subspot days, will be decided by the Belgian SDIC. Those two days have spoiled the immaculate August, which Anthony has pointed to as a very long blank period. In August, there was also the last ‘all quiet alert’.
From spaceweather.com we have learned, that Dr. Hathaway has expressed his conviction that we are finally beyond the minimum between SC 23 and SC24. However, to my knowledge, he has sofar abstained from presenting another prediction for SC 24 maximum intensity, eventually to come.
When Hansen gave a big speech at the Houston Geological Society recently, he laughed at the solar cycle and, in typical fashion, cherry-picked some photos to ridicule the current state of the sun as a factor in the climate.
Crosspatch,
Hasn’t Dr Hathaway been saying SC 24 is about to start since 2005?
How long can one go on crying ‘wolf’?
To hunter (12:58:55)
We have a saying in Germany: who will laugh last, will laugh longest.
SC 24 has arrived, and the patient is DOA. Brain scans (flux) indicates comatose conditions. Should we plug in the life support system (AGW)?
Somebody should tap Hathaway on the shoulder, he’s wasting his breath trying to give SC24 mouth-to-mouth. What we really need here is a Coroner and an Autopsy. A priest (if the Sun is Catholic) to adminsiter the Last Rites.
Ok, I’m ranting, sorry.
I am wondering if the Co-Rotating Coronal hole will one day grow across the spectrum to be visible.
We could call it the Great Black Spot, along the lines of Jupiter.
Werner: Oh you mean those spots that only ‘Catania’ saw? That happended also on 9/11. I watched the Sun like a hawk every day, projecting, and I never found anything. I checked my seeing, 3 to 5 on the Bortle Scale. I can usually make out the tiniest of spot. Nada.
We should have had a 90 day spotless streak. 80 days minimum.
We wuz robbed!
Till the wolf bites you…
It is clear that sunspots/solar activity and climate are linked (IPCC Report AR4 1.4.3 “The solar cycle variation in irradiance corresponds to an 11-year cycle in radiative forcing which varies by about 0.2 W m–2. There is increasingly reliable evidence of its infl uence on atmospheric temperatures and circulations…could cause surface temperature changes of the order of a few tenths of a degree celsius“. But if the relationship was direct with simple mechanisms then there wouldn’t be any debate today.
There was a long period of low sunspot activity (37 consecutive months with sunspot number under 40) in the 1920’s, yet the global surface temperature (HadCRUT3) continued to increase quite strongly into the 1930’s.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/greenwch/spot_num.txt
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/monthly
The low activity came in the middle of a warm PDO, whereas this time it comes at the start of a cool PDO. Does that make a difference? Until we know the mechanisms, only time (and more research) will tell.
PS. One of the many problems in the IPCC Report is that it ignored its own statement as quoted above, therefore the figures it uses for solar influence are totally unsafe.
crosspatch (12:45:53)
Well said.
While SC23 seems to have finally passed from the scene, and other than a brief spurt of activity last month, SC24 seems to be mostly a no-show. Unless there’s a real surge in activity in 2009, the forecasts seem to be off the mark.
Sitting here in NE Oregon (La Grande) at my place it’s 19F. 7in of snow and the
rest of the week single digits and more snow yup, Global Warming all right..
(It’s not even mid December.)
When do we start to worry that the sun will not go back to its “normal” self
And when does the plan start to jump start the sun.
“normal” because what is normal for something humans have only seen miniscule bit of time in its history
Hathaways forecast for cycle 24 will be accurate…….. since he modifies it regularly as the cycle 23/24 minimum gets longer and deeper. His last modification was in November 2008. Unless December wakes up in a spectacular way soon then the official minimum is going to be July 2008 at the earliest.
Sitting here in NW Calif. (Weaverville) the snow is starting to pile up, 2 more days of it and more snow in the forecast for Thu/Fri. Snow down to 500′ in mid Dec. If this is Global Warming, chain me to the wall.
Trevor (tjexcite) (14:22:59) :
When do we start to worry that the sun will not go back to its “normal” self
And when does the plan start to jump start the sun.
“normal” because what is normal for something humans have only seen miniscule bit of time in its history
I would start to worry if the sun is still asleep in the middle of next year. This would put us into a very long cycle 23by historic standards and begin to cast doubt on cycle 24 happening at all. You can find all the stats on this at Jan Jaansens excellent Solaemon web site
The SC isn’t going to wake up anytime soon. I’d give it at least 6 mos. to do that, looking at the Dalton cycles and other examples that fit the pattern.
Scientists Issue Unprecedented Forecast of Next Sunspot Cycle
March 6, 2006
Predicting Cycles 24 and 25
The Predictive Flux-transport Dynamo Model is enabling NCAR scientists to predict that the next solar cycle, known as Cycle 24, will produce sunspots across an area slightly larger than 2.5% of the visible surface of the Sun. The scientists expect the cycle to begin in late 2007 or early 2008, which is about 6 to 12 months later than a cycle would normally start. Cycle 24 is likely to reach its peak about 2012.
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/sunspot.shtml
Beating on David Hathaway is not productive. He has other masters [e.g. a paymaster]. In addition, he does [did!] believe in his own forecast. Lately [for obvious reasons] he has mellowed somewhat. We both attended a meeting [ http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/RHESSI/napa2008/pts.php ] last week and David opened with this talk:
http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/RHESSI/napa2008/talks/MonI_Hathaway.pdf
Privately he is beginning to lean my way.
4:00 pm and the temperature is 0F here in Colorado. (Normal is about 43F.) I hate to think what winter will be like, if this is what autumn has in store.
It must be the CO2.
Robert Bateman (13:45:33) :
Think of the Livingston/Penn paper: ‘sunspots may vanish by 2015’. Then we are not in a Dalton-type, but in a Maunder-type minimum. Such disappearance of sunspot cycles for 70 years may happen again. The Maunder Minimum is more or less the heart of the so-called little ice age. It is not clear, whether the preceding Stroever Minimum also was of Maunder-type.
The theoretical models of sunspot cycles are mainly based on time series evaluations, similarly as the models for ENSO, PDO, AMO. It is very hard to do any better.
It is possible nowadays to study solar cycles on stars in the galaxy. There exist some data. If those stars are deliberately picked which are equivalent to the sun in size and age, one could make statistics, on how often Maunder-type minima occur. Such a program would last 20 to 30 years, before sufficient statistics was available.
But it could have been started 20 to 30 years ago – and has not been done, nor is it considered now.
Can someone explain how Hansen is apparently ignoring all this?
I have no scientific trainng or qualifications but do have an enquiring mind and loads of common sense and when I went to school I clearly understood that the sun heated the planet
I also know that the Aqua satellite found no hotspots in the Troposhere…and should have if the AGW theory is correct.
Just how is Hansen bluffing his way through…please someone explain?
“And when does the plan start to jump start the sun.”
Anything happening right now with respect to photons being emitted from the sun happened inside the sun 10,000 or more years ago. It takes that long for the energy to work its way to the surface. Therefore, any “jump starting” would take 10,000 years to be felt on Earth.
egrey,
A perfectly valid observation.
If one gets a quiet sun whilst the oceanic oscillations are positive then the oceans will prevail.
The significant changes to global atmospheric temperatures, whether up or down, always occur when solar and oceanic influences are in phase with one another.
!975 to 2000 or so both were in warming mode.
2000 to 2007 sun was declining but oceans still positive.
2000 to date and continuing both are now negative and the oceans overall becoming more negative as time passes.
The 2007 Arctic ice melt marked the last of the oceanic warming of the previous 30 years reaching the end of the line in the Arctic Circle.
Wow. Just wow. I have just started reading this site and both Anthony Watts and many of the people commenting are geniuses. I have to congratulate everyone here for simplifying this stuff and making the complex and often ablexxive situation with global warming as plain as the forehead on my face. Thank you again for your contribution to society.
Why did the picture make me laugh? I must be going mad…
We can solve it. We can control the sun. Do it for the children. It won’t be easy, but if we raise taxes high enough…
Werner: It could well be a Maunder pattern emerging. The problem with that is that there were no sunspots observed prior to Maunder Minimum. The telescope came 100 yrs too late. No pattern exists ( excepting proxy) that can be matched up to say yes, Maunder or no, Maunder.
Alas, I can only offer pattern matching to Dalton Minimum (SC 4-6).
The cycles of 4-6 were unaltered curves, the present (22-24) are forward leaning double-humps.
The overall length and shape progression matches, not the specific curve type.
I fail there.
“but if we raise taxes high enough”
Exactly, we aren’t spending near enough money on the sun. How can our leaders look at themselves in the mirror when they know fully well that they have been completely ignoring this critical resource. We must increase spending on the sun now or we will surely be the worse for it.
In fact, I suggest the UN mandate the purchase of “sun credits”. I just happen to have a source of them and would be happy to provide them to potential buyers on any commercial commodity exchange. With each sun credit purchased, industry can rest easily knowing that their money is well spent and they are doing the rest of the world a great service.
Remember, it is your duty to humanity to increase our spending on the sun!
Buy my product, please.
Hansen is doing what politicians do, picking and choosing his data to fit his theory.
One of the many things I find really disturbing about this whole global warming scare is what if these guys get what they want, we stop building new power plants or even worse shut down some of the ones we have now. Then a bunch of people start driving electric cars… and we go into another little ice age.
It will get awfully cold and dark.
Leif: I don’t mean to bash Hathaway, but when he’s taken 3 stabs at it with his model and came up whiffing, it’s time to move on. When he publicly moves on, he’s off the hook.
And if that means bucking the horse and the hand that feeds him, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
Lewistown, MT. -26F at 5:45pm local time on December 14.
Must be that global warming Hansen ahs been telling us about.
LOL @ Steven Hill
Dude, please tell me these posts are made with your tongue firmly in your cheek.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/GISSvs_Hansen.JPG
Mike,
The solution is to revert to the late stone age, without fires. well, that and 80% of the population has to die off…
Any thoughts on PDO an solar cycle relationship. My guess is that they are directly related but as to what the coupling is and how it works that is the question.
Basil (12:46:18) :
And nothing on stereo behind, either.
This is curious to me. Two of the last three times a sunspot has rotated around the rim, our stereo holography has indicated that there are no sunspots on the other side of the sun. I don’t know enough about the precision of our solar seismic measuring to know if this is absurd or expected.
Leif,
A little help here? Is this usually what happens when a sunspot rotates to the back side of the sun? Do they disappear immediately or do we lack the technology to detect them?
Lief – I have read your paper referenced earlier and I had not realised there was a problem of variability in SSN’s measurements in the recent past.. well up to 1950 anyway. Very interesting.
I don’t think the changes you suggest could be made to normalise the data to current pratice would make much difference to the current anlaysis of how we should view the “unusual” cycle 23/24. Is that right or am I missing something. As you say “time will tell”.
Hathaways article seems to say … well its all very difficult this prediction business and “time will tell”
Bill Marsh: 80% ? I think the last (or only) Stone Age had a population of a few hundred million at most. More like 95% have to drop out. If my vote counts, I’ll decline. We’re up to 7 degrees in this part of Colorado. At least it stopped snowing.
Nothing to worry about, just weather. Soon it will be warm with floods everywhere.
The Sun Shall Rise Again.
Here’s a proxy reconstruction of the PDO back to 1650, about the start of the MM. Interestingly it showns there was a strong negative PDO during the MM, and again towards the end of the Dalton.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/biondi2001/biondi2001.html
I think this was asked above, but I’m not sure I understood the responses. At what point should we start to worry about the lack of sunspots (i.e. if x months/years from we are still not seeing sunspots, things could get interesting). If that’s a simplistic question, I apologize.
Bill Marsh (17:01:08) :
(Speculation): Pre agriculture, and Pre fire, – Human Population probably under 10 million world wide living brutally short lives as v.simple hunter gatherers.
10M is approx 1/6th of 1% of 6B. So die off would be 99.8% of the current human population.
Hollywood disaster stuff
David (15:55:17) :
If you’re finding all this clear, I’m impressed. Clearly we need to send you
over to http://climateaudit.org ! (A fine site, but quite technical.)
There are a few (just a few) webpages that are decent introductions to the
subject, they’ll help you get further up to speed. A couple are
Science, Method, Climatology, and Forgetting the Basics (my page), and Curious Anomalies in Climate Science by Lucy Skywalker. The latter has many good links.
OT.
There is some evidence from genetics (link not handy) that the human population bottlenecked down to approx 3000 individuals approx 60,000 years ago.
v.simple PreAgri and PreFire lifestyles leave the population vulnerable to extinction.
Bill Marsh (16:59:01) :
LOL @ Steven Hill
Dude, please tell me these posts are made with your tongue firmly in your cheek.
No Bill, I have been converted over since Obama was voted in, he can’t be wrong and is always right! (smile) I can see just how smart Al Gore is now! WOW, what was I missing? Go Al go…..fire up that jet plane and heated pool! The Carbon Credit checks are going to start coming in anyday now! WooHoo
The poor?, the hell with the poor, they can dial 1-800-BAI-LOUT when the heat bill hits $1K a month.
“A little help here? Is this usually what happens when a sunspot rotates to the back side of the sun? Do they disappear immediately”
I believe it was in the process of disappearing as it was rotating out of sight. Of the cycle 24 spots we have seen so far, most have tended to be short-lived. Few have made the full trip across the face of the sun.
“Any thoughts on PDO an solar cycle relationship. My guess is that they are directly related but as to what the coupling is and how it works that is the question.”
My thoughts exactly. What is the coincidence that the sun goes dormant and the PDO flips at same time. My experience as an engineer says there is virtually no such thing as a coincidence.
The former will take care of the latter.
So far, Leif is 10 for 10 on this website so I guess we should listen to him.
Unless his batting average goes down and he ends up at 10 for 20, but that would be a long time from now.
” Boy cries wolf. Has a few laughs. I forget how it ends,…”
Mike Bryant (16:11:58) : “We can solve it. We can control the sun. Do it for the children. It won’t be easy, but if we raise taxes high enough…”
I was about to congratulate you, Mike; then I had this feeling it may not be an original thought. You didn’t copy this from somewhere…?
Minnesota checking in. Currently -7 F, -35 F windchill @ 21:15 cst.
High of -10 forecast tomorrow.
Graeme Rodaughan (17:33:24) :
OT. There is some evidence from genetics (link not handy) that the human population bottlenecked down to approx 3000 individuals approx 60,000 years ago.
The latest paper on population genetics I read (again, cite unavailable 🙁 … ) theorized that the population of earth was down to less than 30 fertile females at this time, and maybe as few as 6. They tentatively attributed the mass extinction and near extinction of humans to the Mt. Toba caldera eruption in Indonesia. It was an interesting read… but I CAN’T TRACK IT DOWN 🙁
Old Coach (17:04:17) :
what happens when a sunspot rotates to the back side of the sun? Do they disappear immediately or do we lack the technology to detect them?
Most spots only live a few days and so far most of the new spots have been small. It has been known for more than a 100 years that more sunspots are observed to be born in the eastern hemisphere [or even on the backside] than on the western hemisphere, e.g. http://www.sunearthplan.net/2/701/Invisible-spots-on-the-Sun
Colin Aldridge (17:13:02) :
Leif – I have read your paper referenced earlier […] current anlaysis of how we should view the “unusual” cycle 23/24.
This transition is not all that unusual, it is just that most people only get to observe a handful of cycle which colors their perception of what is normal.
If Obama doesn’t get started doing nothing in a big way real soon, he’s going to miss out on a credible claim of “Victory”.
Roger Carr,
“We can solve it.” is Al Gore’s webbsite.
Crosspatch said we can’t do anything about the sun, so I said we can.
I’ve heard “Do it for the children.” maybe a billion times.
Then I just ended it with the higher taxes thing.
I didn’t copy it exactly, I just put a few things together.
Mike
Graeme Rodaughan (17:33:24) :
Googling for human population near extinction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/24/close.call.ap/index.html
http://haplogroup-i.com/2008/human-extinction/
http://www.vhemt.org/ [Okay, so it’s “forward looking”…]
Mike Bryant (20:07:51) : I was being facetious, Mike. Actually congratulating you on a clever post.
What happens in the US if we have a Maunder or a Dalton?
We don’t rightly know. The US was nothing more than a few settlements during the Maunder, and only 1/3 settled during the Dalton.
It can’t be good.
We should be asking the Native Americans that question.
If we are nice enough, they might tell us.
Maybe not.
Patrick Henry (15:17:33) :
Patrick,
Right now it is about -2 in Denver proper. The airport, our new source of official Denver readings is -15.
What is not being discussed, or even observed, by our weather reporting folks is this obvious display of urban heat island effect.
We certainly have enjoyed a warmer than usual November here in Denver. My snap dragons were alive up until this weekend, so I’m not complaining. But I’m sure glad I’m inside tonight.
Jeffrey DeWitt (16:40:34) :
Jeffery,
People are sort of supportive of the notion of AGW until the bill arrives for attempting to fix it. I really believe AGW is a non-issue for most people, especially now with serious economic problems unfolding. Obama’s green team and the like are nothing more than eye dressing for the greenies.
If I’m wrong:
We’ll have some serious economic issues in this country, as you point out.
China and India will continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere, continuing the big experiment on the connection between CO2 and climate change.
By the end of the Obama administration (eight years from now?) the discrediting of the AGW hypothesis should be painfully concluded.
And a whole lot of well connected people will be wealthier.
Leif: “…It has been known for more than a 100 years that more sunspots are observed to be born in the eastern hemisphere [or even on the backside] than on the western hemisphere, e.g. http://www.sunearthplan.net/2/701/Invisible-spots-on-the-Sun”
That’s very interesting. What could cause that?
jeffrey
“Hansen is doing what politicians do, picking and choosing his data to fit his theory.
One of the many things I find really disturbing about this whole global warming scare is what if these guys get what they want, we stop building new power plants or even worse shut down some of the ones we have now. Then a bunch of people start driving electric cars… and we go into another little ice age.
It will get awfully cold and dark.”
And what happens if we squander all the fossil fuels and THEN an ice age occurs ?
Terry Bixler, MattN and Nick Yates,
Please have a look at the talk I gave in Melbourne, Australia, in July 2008:
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/solar-cycles/IanwilsonForum2008.pdf
Nick, be careful which PDO reconstruction that you use. Some of the tree ring proxy’s, like Biondi et al. 2001 and MacDonald and Case 2005, are precipitaion-sensitive, while other are temperature senstive, like D’Arrigo et al. 2001. I would advise using the temperature sensitive proxy sequence of D’Arrigo et al. 2001, as it better refects the PDO switches. These switches primarily reflect changes in seas surface temperatures which should match changes in temperature along the coastal regions of the adjacent continents. It is a little less clear how chnages in the phase of the PDO would afffect coastal precipiation levels.
Leif Svalgaard (19:45:34) :
It has been known for more than a 100 years that more sunspots are observed to be born in the eastern hemisphere [or even on the backside] than on the western hemisphere, e.g. http://www.sunearthplan.net/2/701/Invisible-spots-on-the-Sun
So what does this tell us? Sunspots prefer to be born on the far side rather than on the “western hemisphere”? Is there an observational bias or a physical correlation with the direction to earth?
SC24 is bang on target, and should prove to be the weakest we have seen since 200 yrs ago. But I dont think it will be as deep as the Maunder Minimum (we missed that chance) but could me more “Dalton” like.
Look at this graph showing solar system influence on the Sun. Notice the similar pattern in 1790 as it does now.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2007/05/sunssbam1620to2180.gif
Basically what caused the deep minima of the past is waning, but still strong enough to throw a cycle or 2 into chaos.
dennis ward (23:49:33) :
And what happens if we squander all the fossil fuels and THEN an ice age occurs ?
We will use nuclear power. BTW, the known fossil fuels in the U.S.A. alone will last about 400 years and maybe more, so we have plenty of time to continue business as usual while we ponder your question.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1996/of96-092/map.htm shows where coal is in the U.S.A.; by my eyeball measurement it’s about 1/4 of the country sits on top of coal.
The years of reserves varies with the price so the ‘life time of reserves’ is somewhere between 250 years and 400 depending on what price is used and what you assume for burn rate. Coal can be easily turned to gasoline and Diesel (as done by SASOL in Africa). (Reserves have several levels of definition, but the most common one is based on what it’s worth harvesting at the present price. Price goes up and suddenly Presto! more reserves…)
See: http://www.sasol.com/sasol_internet/frontend/navigation.jsp?navid=1600033&rootid=2
The USGS map is somewhat conservative in that I know of at least one large peat field that they have left off the map. Every so often someone driving past tosses out a cigarette and sets the land on fire… (near Stockton). We don’t think of peat as a fuel here…
Nuclear has about a 10,000 year lifetime before we have to get fancy. With known proven technologies we can move that out to a few million years+.
See: http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/03/cost-of-recovering-uranium-from.html
If that’s not enough, we can move on to Thorium of which there is more than Uranium. 2 to 4 times. It is already working in nuclear reactors today. India has a program (and lots of Th but not so much U) Also we can use it in our present reactors if desired. Thorium Power Inc does that (ticker THPW)
See: http://www.thoriumpower.com/default2.asp?nav=technology_solutions&subnav=thorium101
Disclosure: I own about 10,000 shares of THPW. (Which is really impressive until you find out its 16 cents a share….)
So, there is no energy shortage and there never will be. We run out of power when we run out of planet. Honest.
There is a politically induced shortage of dirt cheap liquid motor fuel. Nothing more.
The real risk is that we damage our economy so much that we can’t put this technology to use in time for an ice age, then we fall back to hunter gatherers and start all over in another 100,000 years 8-|
Have I mentioned lately that Economics is called The Dismal Science for a reason?…
“And what happens if we squander all the fossil fuels and THEN an ice age occurs ?”
Wait…is THAT the reason we’re supposed to cut down on fossil fuel usage?…we’re actually SAVING them for later, when we really need them?
Interesting.
Wonder who would have the keys to said piggy bank?
JimB
Old Coach,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/originals/Weber-Toba/textr.htm
“What happens in the US if we have a Maunder or a Dalton?
We don’t rightly know. The US was nothing more than a few settlements during the Maunder, and only 1/3 settled during the Dalton.”
During the coldest decades of the LIA (which occured during the Maunder Minimum), the East Coast’s problem was not temperature, but precipitation. The Colonists in Virginia and the Carolinas were starving due to no rain. The worst draught to hit North America in a 1000 years occured during the Maunder Minimum.
Question. If the Northern US is as cold as it is right now (witch tit cold by the way), how cold is it in the Arctic? Can we get the Eskimos to start burning coal? Maybe ring the Arctic with fume belching used cars on idle with those SEARS batteries in them? Anything. I’m ready to try anything. If I put any more pipe heaters in my house, I will end up burning the damned thing down.
Hathaway & others were predicting a wild & furious storm laden Solar Cycle 24 a fair while ago now, using evermore sophisticated (meaning adulterated?) models were based on previous Solar Cycles with claims of greater (really?)accuracy by exactly matching previous cycles, yet they got it wrong so far have they not?
Hey Crosspatch, that was my idea for Solar Credits, I completely missed the Carbon Credit bandwagon so I’m blowed if I’m gonna let that Golden Goose get away!
The British half-wits (sorry dedicated climate expert scientists) who recently claimed to have proven that the Sun has “no effect” on climate, are awfully quiet & no further mention of it has been made since a tiny newspaper article back in August. I wonder why? Bet they realised they should have used a + instead of a – in the sums! The BBC has been remarkably silent on the goings on in Poznan & I have heard very little on it at all on national tv news broadcasts, from 2001 onwards climate change & global warming were regularly in the news, are they too having doubts & may be starting to cover their rear ends just in case, like an agnostic atheist?
Even the Met Office seem to be covering themselves backing both ways, they claimed to have predicted a cooler year than 2007 at the beginning, AFTER the temperature drop occurred in January, then in September they predicted that this winter will be milder or as mild as last year’s, wrong so far, I expect they’re on their knees at night at bedtime praying that January & Febuary will get them out of this one, which it could well do of course so that they can claim overall temps were as high or higher so their “puterrr” was right!! We’ll see.
MattN (18:09:57) :
“Any thoughts on PDO an solar cycle relationship. My guess is that they are directly related but as to what the coupling is and how it works that is the question.”
My thoughts exactly. What is the coincidence that the sun goes dormant and the PDO flips at same time. My experience as an engineer says there is virtually no such thing as a coincidence.
1. That’s a pretty easy hypothesis to test: go back to look when PDO shifted since 1900 and ask whether it coincided with solar minimum? Answers from the pros please……
2. A hypothesis could easily be made that increased solar irradiance manifested itself in greater total oceanic heat, however the nature of PDO/AMO may modulate whether this is surface-based or deeper down. It may be that if it becomes deeper down then this will manifest itself in the climate record maybe 30-50 years hence at subsequent PDO/AMO shifts. It could also manifest itself in El Nino/La Nina ratios within PDO cycles.
Any research done on that chaps?
For all you folks shivering in US right now, data from NCDC says west side of country was radically HOTTER in November that average. Now you’re getting a cold blast.
Over here in Europe, we’ve had a pretty cold November and very cold early December. That might be about to change in about a week. Big time.
Any linkages noticed/developed/reported between step changes in US weather and Western European weather? Was thinking on the lines of: blocking Pacific fronts penetrating the US west coast linked to greater fronts migrating from Gulf of Mexico North East and hence going across to Europe to give us rain and snow.
Any reports on that chaps?
Basil (12:46:18) :
And nothing on stereo behind, either.
It seems that sunspot 1009 didn’t even make one rotation of the Sun.
Q for Leif: How often do Sunspots complete rotations of the Sun, ie what’s their typical duration? Current ones seem to be very shortlived.
BTW UK Treasury still has that article on SOlar Cycle 24/25 by David C Archibald from Western Australia claiming a reduced global temperature of 1.5°C to 2020 due to poor cycles 24 & 25. Well that’s wiped out all the warming to 1998 then hasn’t it? No problem!
There’s also a few others added lately with one by retired electrical engineer David Holland, MIEE very interesting.
How curious?
jorgekafkazar (22:43:35) :
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (00:38:11) :
Sunspots prefer to be born on the far side rather than on the “western hemisphere”? Is there an observational bias or a physical correlation with the direction to earth?
There is no generally accepted explanation. Some explanations are considered in http://fenyi.sci.klte.hu/publ/padeu_vol17_mezo_etal.pdf
http://www.ta3.sk/caosp/Eedition/FullTexts/vol4/pp6-24.pdf
and my favorite:
http://www.star.uclan.ac.uk/~sdalla/minnaert1939.pdf
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (01:19:36) :
Basically what caused the deep minima of the past is waning, but still strong enough to throw a cycle or 2 into chaos.
Worthless pseudo-science.
OT, but the human population “bottleneck” may be no more real than Gorebull warming.
Here’s an article by a recognized expert critiqueing a paper in which he was cited as an expert who backs the theory of the bottleneck. Key words “and they refute the hypothesis”.
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/genetics/mtdna_migrations/sub-saharan-africa-population-size-behar-2008.html
Conclusion
As you can see, these data allow a direct test of the hypothesis of a 70,000-year-old bottleneck in Africa, and they refute the hypothesis. The new data allow a powerful model of ancient African population size to be built, one that comes together with archaeological data to give us a really interesting picture of the early evolution of “modern” humans. The model can be tested with new, massive sets of information from single nucleotide polymorphisms, as well as a more detailed chronology of late MSA sites.
JP (06:34:21) : The US today is far more than a few rain-starved settlements on the East Coast. We know almost nothing of the climate of 90% of the country 400 yrs. ago.
Judging by the long dry spells in the SouthEast, though, shades of things to come in a sneak preview.
Leif: is the Western Limb of the Sun as we view it from Earth somehow the direction of motion of our star through the Milky Way? I’d buy a bow-shock effect, but beyond that the imagination is stretched.
Robert Wood (06:58:06) :
How often do Sunspots complete rotations of the Sun, ie what’s their typical duration? Current ones seem to be very shortlived.
Lifetime depends on size:
http://www.ips.gov.au/Educational/2/2/2
Big spots live longer. Small ones don’t.
Robert Bateman (08:11:33) :
is the Western Limb of the Sun as we view it from Earth somehow the direction of motion of our star through the Milky Way?
Because the Earth goes around the Sun in one year, the direction to the western limb sweeps through all 360 degrees in the course of the year, so answer is ‘no’.
Leif, There is snow all around the world breaking records everyone’s freezing. Piers Corbyn is getting brilliant results with his updated technique including last weeks flooding in Britain to the day months in advance he’s predicting a UK White Christmas someone whose technique you say can’t work when you don’t know what it is. Yet your acting like the objective voice of the absolute. Shake it off there’s loads you don’t know. No change on your part in face of this can only be lucky. Its not good science. Ed
dennis ward (23:49:33) :
“And what happens if we squander all the fossil fuels and THEN an ice age occurs ?”
We will never be out of energy.
The only factor for a tight oil market is refinery capacity.
We have sufficient oil, coal and gas to serve us for the next 300 to 400 years.
This is sufficient time to develop some real alternatives.
The only threat to human kind is the political decision to reverse development as the greens have in mind.
Anyway, it is a very bad idea to restrict the use of carbon fuels and force energy technologies up on people that do not have the potential to generate comparable capacity in out put at an economical price level at this moment in time.
The retarded idea to fuel up cars with corn has brought almost 1 billion people on the verge of starvation.
Wind mills are in need of back up power plants so people pay twice or three times the price compared to coal.
Solar is a real alternative in a limited part of the world but still lacks affordable storage.
Nuclear is dead on a political level but it will be the future.
Especially since a Japanese scientist has developed a method to extract uranium from sea water.
This is sufficient output to energize the world for the next 100.000 years.
Now on the market is a miniature nuclear power plant that comes at a container size.
It’s buried in the ground and delivers sufficient energy to power 20.000 homes for a period of seven years.
We run out of energy when we run out of planet.
Until we develop cheap high power batteries at low prices I do not see to many electrical cars on the roads.
The new generation high performance diesel engines are superior to hybrids and at a fuel price of 1.50 a gallon hybrids and electric won’t sell.
Therefor I think that the combustion engine will be with us for decades to come.
If you want to pay for the “Green Dreams” of the political establishment, it’s your money.
In general I think people worry to much and lack common sense.
That is why our mad politicians get where they are today.
You simply shout the word “Change” a few times and you are elected in office.
Unbelievable if you are familiar with the “Green Dreams” of this guy.
Bankrupt coal and set up a Civil Army to suppress the uprisings when people lack the energy to heat there homes!
David Archibald has it right, a 13 year long cycle 23 will lead to 2.5 degree celcius loss of temperature (some has already occurred), and this period will last 30 years or more. The cooling will be four times larger than the warming of the second half of the 20th century.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf
If you compare solar cycle length to temperature record, there is a definate correlation between the two.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HanoverNH.JPG&imgrefurl=http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2008/08/david-archibald-on-solar-minimum-and.html&usg=__L-JEid7fzssq2II0D0Jndsbx90A=&h=426&w=627&sz=33&hl=en&start=2&sig2=ILobo5pwvFL8er07lKZusQ&tbnid=d_P8FMoex2GHmM:&tbnh=92&tbnw=136&ei=rpBGSbmWEYiDtwe3sYjLCA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddavid%2Barchibald%2Bsolar%2Bcycles%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG
Hansen has bet the farm on his global warming theories, while I am sure he would like his theories to come true, he appears to be even more interested in CO2 controls being introduced so that man’s activities can be regulated.
The Politics is more important than the science.
Edward Morgan (09:08:10) :
Piers Corbyn is getting brilliant results with his updated technique including last weeks flooding in Britain to the day months in advance he’s predicting a UK White Christmas someone whose technique you say can’t work when you don’t know what it is.
Corbyn is not telling what it is. So, whatever it is, tea leaves? or voodoo? doesn’t count in my book.
geoff pohanka (09:19:02) :
David Archibald has it right, a 13 year long cycle 23 will lead to 2.5 degree celcius loss of temperature
We are already past the minimum [August 2008] for a cycle length of ~12 years.
Corbyn’s is using historic records of sunspot count against historic weather records (upcycle, max, downcycle, min for appropriate annual seasons). Since numbers differ then temperature and precipitation projections are adjusted accordingly.
Robert,
I think we have a pretty good idea of our continent 400-500 years ago; it was very dry. Much of the Southeast was ravaged by forest fires akin to those we see in the Desert SW today. I tend to agree with those who look at precipitation as much as temperature to demark climate cycles. North American Climate is determined by the interaction of the NAO, AMO, and ENSO. During the LIA, the Northern Rockies were bitterly cold, but had periods of high precip. Ditto for the Great Lakes. So Cal had mild summers, cold winters, but the interior of the high deserts into the SW were very dry. The Plains through the Southeast and Southern Appalachia were dry; New England had extreme shifts between drought and bitterly cold temps.
I was wondering if the “eastern limb” vs. “western limb” thing might just be that sunspots starting on the eastern limb have more chance of lasting longer (from our point of view) and therefore “count” more.
Lief Svalgaard:-)
Firstly, big respect! :-))
However, although Piers Corbyn may not be telling us “what it is”, he is getting it pretty tight! I he was that bad, he’d have gone out of business by now. Hadley/Tyndall Centre have their fancy taxpayer funded Models but keep things close to their chest, if they can understand them themselves, but are not getting it that right. 2007 saw awful flooding in ares that have historically always been a flood risk, the Met Office didn’t predict these until the last moment, ditto 2008 they said “highly unlikely” based on models a year in advance, they got it wrong in 2008.
The older I get the more I see the scientific world dependent upon computer models, with observations being seconded to the archives. I’ll stick to my sea weed & crystal ball gazing, & the occasional look out the window! The times I have watched a weather forecast in disbelief yelled at the tv “come & look out the window”! It’s all to do with this hype in computer power & long-term weather forecasting, & yes they are more accurate over a week or month, but not that accurate, they never get it bang on every time or even the majority of the time, when it goes wrong they bring out all sorts of excuses why they were fooled, slyly letting it out that climate is unpredictable when it suits them! In their defence, the weather guys are NOT the Climate Change HIWTYL guys, different department, same bureaucrats though! As I have said before, when the UK Met Office can tell what the temp will be a week in advance to the exact measurement (well within ½ a degree) then I’ll believe what they reckon global temps will be in 50-100 years time! I expect they will say the recent beautiful alignment of the crescent moon straddled by Jupiter & Venus on December 1, 2 3 was to blame.
BTW, it’s getting cold again tonight, logs are in, scuttle is full, gas fires lit, brrrrrr! A glass of red is in order tonight with my Saturday night left-overs!
Lately every time I see a sunspot at the SOHO link, I scratch at my laptop monitor and it goes away. SOHO is a great website for monitor cleanliness.
Leif come on, we are all making sense. What’s wrong with that. Follow the thread. Ed
Alan the Brit said :
But the computer models ARE crystal ball gazing, meaning rubbish.
Since we have no rational explanation for the East West sunspot dilemna:
It’s our supermagnet we carry below us. Like Leif says, the effect is persistent as we go around the sun in a year and it’s spinning relative to us anyways. So it has to be US.
Just when you get confident that the Earth is insignificant and puny, up pops something like this that blows the doors off.
Don’t worry, though, it will take at least 300 years to figure out why.
Robert Bateman (13:26:22) :
Since we have no rational explanation for the East West sunspot dilemna:
It’s our supermagnet we carry below us. ……….. So it has to be US.
Just when you get confident that the Earth is insignificant and puny, up pops something like this that blows the doors off.
Mr Bateman
For a possible answer see:
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk Solar Subcycle link
vukcevic:
It surely isn’t good at predicting the amplitude of solar cycles.
The data is to the left, right, above and below that recurring pattern.
I don’t see what it is that it’s supposed to tell me.
You could explain that.
I’ll listen.
The ‘stereo behind’ I believe is a satellite out in Earth orbit that trails the Earth. It shows us a portion of the Sun that is not yet, but about to, rotate into view. When we have an “All Quiet Alert”, it means that there is no visible activity on the Sun plus the Stereo Behind also shows nothing going on that will rotate into view in several days.
Just watch for that co-rotating Coronal Hole on Stereo Behind show up on the leading limb, wait a couple of days, and you will see it again in the current image of the Sun from Earth.
Kinda cool.
Mr. Bateman
Existence of 400 day sub cycle could either be a coincidence or as suggested in the article (http://www.vukcevic.co.uk, link solar sub cycle) result of the Earth/Jupiter magnetospheric interaction. If the later is correct than there is an indirect link between solar activity and the Earth’s magnetosphere and a possible explanation for the “perceived” imbalance in East-West hemisphere as viewed from the Earth’s direction.
There are two satellites out in Solar Orbit at 1 AU. Stereo A and Stereo B.
Or, Stereo Ahead and Stereo Behind.
They are in orbit about the Sun, and in Earth’s path around the Sun.
They are 44.738 and 42.353 degrees leading and trailing the Earth in it’s orbital path.. One sees the Solar Activity that has rotated out of view, and the other one sees the Solar Activity that is about to rotate into view.
So far, we have not yet located the Planet Vulcan. Sorry about that.
oh I love this blog! and miss it the days I cannot get there!
Leif I love your presence here, and I hugely respect your expertise in solar matters, like Alan the Brit, but I fear you use your expertise to prop up your opinions in areas you do not understand. To me, the fact that Piers Corbyn has apparently got a significant number of forecasts right is not a reason to dismiss him because you don’t know his method. It’s a reason to try and find out what method he might be using – and to look around for any clues to shed light on his apparent success.
There are a growing number of pieces of research I’m discovering that do show statistically significant links between solar cycles and earth weather. And when one considers that as was pointed out recently here, the oceans carry 1000 times as much heat storage capacity as does the atmosphere, then one realizes that the highest statistical correlation has to be between oceans and measured temp rather than sun and measured temp, even though ocean heat has surely got to go back to the sun (apart from vulcanism and a tiny human contribution).
I’ve started a thread on our forum to try to collect such material together. Single items might be doubtful – but when the evidence accumulates, and stands at least a preliminary examination regarding quality of science, it is harder to dismiss it all.
Robert Bateman (13:26:22) :
Just when you get confident that the Earth is insignificant and puny, up pops something like this that blows the doors off.
And some like Hung(NASA) and Jean-Pierre Desmoulins have shown that the Earth, in and out of conjunction with Jupiter and Venus line up extremely accurately with all of the sunspot cycles for the last 300 years….normally 2 cycles with slightly diff cycle times will eventually go out of sync as those who thought Jupiter alone was the cause of sunspot cycles discovered. But add Earth and Venus and it sync’s perfectly.
Check Desmoulins graph with sunspot peaks added here
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2008/11/sun_fig5.gif
I’m having a strong feeling of deja vue here, just remembering the “quiet sun” post(s) from late 2007 when I started to visit this blog. A year on – still quiet… Very soon we’ll hear that starter motor sound effect again. :o)
Edward Morgan (12:40:15) :
we are all making sense. What’s wrong with that. Follow the thread.
You are not making all that much sense. At times, the thread sounds like a bunch of ‘yes-men’, comforting each other.
Alan the Brit (11:01:04) :
However, although Piers Corbyn may not be telling us “what it is”, he is getting it pretty tight! I he was that bad, he’d have gone out of business by now.
Down the street where I used to live is a fortune-teller and psychic who has been in business [also makes tarot and palm readings]. She has a sign in her window: “been in business since 1973” and is still at it.
Lucy Skywalker (15:24:12) :
I fear you use your expertise to prop up your opinions in areas you do not understand.
I do not have an ‘opinion’, just like I don’t have an opinion as to whether the Earth is round. This is not a matter of opinion, but of demonstrability and physics.
To me, the fact that Piers Corbyn has apparently got a significant number of forecasts right is not a reason to dismiss him because you don’t know his method.
I have not seen an analysis of his ‘result’ and skill measure, and anecdotal evidence is not enough. As I understand it this forecast are for the UK and as much as I believe that the Brits consider UK the center of the Universe [I once saw a BBC weather TV emission with the title: ‘The Continent is cut off due to fog’], sunspot or universal electric currents or planets or the like must have applicability to other regions [e.g. Bangladesh] as well, but I have not seen analyses either of how well he does there.
It’s a reason to try and find out what method he might be using – and to look around for any clues to shed light on his apparent success.
No, if he won’t tell, his claims must remain non-science. In the end, it boils down to an independent analysis of his skill and all I have seen are some anecdotes, many of which don’t even seem to be extraordinary. E.g. we may be in for general cooling [PDO phase and all that] from which many things follow [white Xmas, floods, etc]. So without skill-analysis and explanation of method, I cannot take this seriously. But, then I also do not consult with my neigborhood psychic, although supposedly her track record is outstanding and she is still in business after all these years.
Lucy Skywalker (15:24:12) :
I fear you use your expertise to prop up your opinions in areas you do not understand.
And everybody here are within areas that they understand, right? Solar physics touch on very many areas that are important to climate as well: radiative transfer, atmospheric circulation, internal oscillations, atmospheric waves, energy considerations, etc, etc.
I was once chastisized for opposing the ‘planetary influence, theories on the grounds that I did not have any expertise in astrology.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (15:51:36) :
But add Earth and Venus and it sync’s perfectly.
Check Desmoulins graph
This does not look like a perfect match, e.g. near the end it is getting out of sync again, with the sunspots leading the planets. The trick of inversing every other cycle is a well known device to generate a correlation where the is almost none.
And it is easy to pick a number of planets to line up. But you have to justify why the other planets shouldn’t be included [Mercury and Saturn, perhaps]. The simple answer is that it then doesn’t work anymore.
Leif Svalgaard (07:11:06) :
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (01:19:36) :
Basically what caused the deep minima of the past is waning, but still strong enough to throw a cycle or 2 into chaos.
Worthless pseudo-science.
Interesting comment Leif, but hardly scientific. I and others have a reasonable theory in this area that can and will be tested very soon, but suspect if we do indeed experience a grand mimimum starting at SC24, you will continue arguing against it until you become part of your own pseudo-science arena.
Predicting a solar cycle based on the last cycle is of little use really, and theorizing solar cycle modulation is a random event, flies in the face of past solar cycle modulation patterns. You have possibly shown there is a floor to solar output but somehow cant acknowledge the downstream cooling effects of staying on that floor for extended periods and conversely how our atmosphere and oceans are effected by multiple high modulation short cycles…in fact from what I have read, you only leave AGW as the remaining factor for any warming.
If SC24 fails to start a grand minimum then my part of the planetary influence theory is certainly shot….but looking good at the moment 🙂
Leif Svalgaard (19:21:30) :
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (15:51:36) :
But add Earth and Venus and it sync’s perfectly.
Check Desmoulins graph
This does not look like a perfect match, e.g. near the end it is getting out of sync again, with the sunspots leading the planets. The trick of inversing every other cycle is a well known device to generate a correlation where the is almost none.
And it is easy to pick a number of planets to line up. But you have to justify why the other planets shouldn’t be included [Mercury and Saturn, perhaps]. The simple answer is that it then doesn’t work anymore.
Yes its out of sync now as it was around 1790 but it returns which is the important factor. Hung and Desmoulins are very aware of that fact and I theorize its because of the other planets (Jovian) that havent been included in their work. If you read their work along with mine it will all become clear to you.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/
I have a chart posted that lines up the exact sysygies of Jupiter/Venus/Earth against the Desmoulins peaks, so the work has been done. Mercury is taken into account but has a very minor influence.
http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/JEVsysygies.jpg
All I can see is that both the Medieval Maximum and the Dalton Minimum got stuck straight over the top of the same repeating pattern.
So if I follow the sequence, one is Maximum next one is a Minimum,
then I should expect the current one to be Not the Oort as the preceeding one is the Oort.
This one (SC24/25) is not the Minimum.
Oh, I think this layman will just stick to pattern matching from previous sequences.
I got SC4/5 matching up with SC23/24.
Every month that goes by with spotlessness now whacks off the top of SC24.
And I won’t bother to say why, because I haven’t the foggiest idea.
Robert Bateman (20:34:21) :
I am assuming you are talking about the first article on my blog…the 2nd article is the one i have been referring to.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (19:34:25) :
“Basically what caused the deep minima of the past is waning, but still strong enough to throw a cycle or 2 into chaos.”
Worthless pseudo-science.
Interesting comment Leif, but hardly scientific.
For ‘your’ statement to be scientific you must have a ‘measure’ of the effect [that is waning] and a relationship or threshold above which it is still strong enough to “throw a cycle or 2 into chaos”. If you do not, then the whole thing is just hand waving.
I and others have a reasonable theory in this area that can and will be tested very soon, but suspect if we do indeed experience a grand mimimum starting at SC24, you will continue arguing against it until you become part of your own pseudo-science arena.
Perhaps you forget that I have predicted that solar cycle 24 will be the weakest in a 100 years [ http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%2024%20Smallest%20100%20years.pdf ].
Predicting a solar cycle based on the last cycle is of little use really
Any prediction that is correct is of great use.
and theorizing solar cycle modulation is a random event, flies in the face of past solar cycle modulation patterns.
Standard statistical techniques show that the solar cycle modulation is random in the sense that there are no patterns, so doesn’t fly in the face of anything except cyclomania.
you only leave AGW as the remaining factor for any warming
Aha, there is your real problem. Readers of this blog will know that this is false. It is just the other way around: AGW proponents require a solar cause for all variation before ~1970. They get very upset when I argue that there isn’t any.
If SC24 fails to start a grand minimum then my part of the planetary influence theory is certainly shot….but looking good at the moment 🙂
As long as you have not defined what a Grand Minimum is you are safe. Does the max. sunspot number need to fall below, say, 50 to make it a GM, or below 11?
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (19:54:04) :
If you read their work along with mine it will all become clear to you.
It is clear to me that this is indeed pseudo-science at its finest.
I have a chart posted that lines up the exact sysygies of Jupiter/Venus/Earth against the Desmoulins peaks:
http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/JEVsysygies.jpg
So, what do the numbers signify?
Leif: I am able to find daily sunspot data back to 1818 (SIDC).
Some of it is very sparse (1818 on through 1820’s), with missing days.
Below that, I can only find monthy averages. I have come across references that say that the data was taken daily before 1818, but that it is lost, and the only thing that survives is subsequent studies/reports that reference the original data, thereby preserving the monthly average.
I would like to see any daily data from Solar cycles 4 & 5.
Any idea where I might find it?
Leif Svalgaard (20:59:50) :
For ‘your’ statement to be scientific you must have a ‘measure’ of the effect [that is waning] and a relationship or threshold above which it is still strong enough to “throw a cycle or 2 into chaos”. If you do not, then the whole thing is just hand waving.
A lot of your questions suggest you havent read my or other peoples work i refer to in this area, please do me the courtesy of doing so as I always read yours. http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/58 clearly shows how the alignments were strongest between 1200 and 1800 and are now beginning to weaken. Further research could possibly quantify to what extent that weakening is but the ssb graph clearly shows it. I am adding to this research on a regular basis.
So, what do the numbers signify?
Once again its better to read the detail, but as stated in the article “The table is a plot of J+E+V alignments with each date corresponding with the green peaks on Desmoulins graph. The odd cycle numbers are J+V with E apposing and even is J+E+V aligned.”
Not really. If you make 20 predictions and one is “correct”, it’s obvious that you’re just guessing, and caught up with chance. If you can demonstrate why your prediction is correct, then you’re closer to having something useful. But in the case of climate, you won’t know of you’re correct for the right reasons or by pure chance, since we don’t know all there is to know.
Robert Bateman (21:37:59) :
I would like to see any daily data from Solar cycles 4 & 5.
Any idea where I might find it?
Of course 🙂
Hoyt and Schatten in constructing their group sunspot number compiled as table of all observations by all observers for every day back to 1610. The values given are the number of GROUPs per day. To get sunspot number multiply by 12. You can find the data here http://www.leif.org/research/rawgssn.txt
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (22:03:52) :
A lot of your questions suggest you havent read my or other peoples work i refer to in this area, please do me the courtesy of doing so as I always read yours. http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/58 clearly shows how the alignments were strongest between 1200 and 1800 and are now beginning to weaken. Further research could possibly quantify to what extent that weakening is but the ssb graph clearly shows it. I am adding to this research on a regular basis.
I have indeed looked at many of your papers and also noted that the ‘weakening’ is not quantified and that you therefore have no basis [other than hand waving and belief] to state that “it is still strong enough to throw a cycle or 2 into chaos”. To state that, you must have the things quantified and also have a number arrived at in some meaningful way that marks what is strong enough to throw a cycle [or is it two? this should be quantified too] into chaos [and what is the definition or measure of chaos?]. And have found nothing even remotely approaching these requirements for making the statement you made, which makes it unscientific. Perhaps I didn’t look hard enough?
So, what do the numbers signify?
“The table is a plot of J+E+V alignments with each date corresponding with the green peaks on Desmoulins graph. The odd cycle numbers are J+V with E apposing and even is J+E+V aligned.”
By alignments you must mean that the Sun is also on the line. So you are listing S+J+E+V alignments. You see, a problem with your papers is that many things are stated too vaguely or just implicitly understood by the faithful.
And what is the rationale for making the difference between even and odd cycles? And why not J+E with V apposing? Unless there is a physical reason to do this it is pseudo-science.
I see many green lines on the graph. Presumably you mean the envelope of all these peaks. The peaks should be at solar maximum, or minimum, or halfway, or what is the relation to the cycle? And why are the years 1600-1700 not on the graph? If the method is so good at finding Grand Minima, it should certainly work during the Maunder Minimum.
Jeff Alberts (22:39:54) :
“Any prediction that is correct is of great use.”
Not really. If you make 20 predictions and one is “correct”, it’s obvious that you’re just guessing, and caught up with chance. If you can demonstrate why your prediction is correct,
I guess you missed the crucial statement:
“Predicting a solar cycle based on the last cycle is of little use really”
So if I make 20 predictions each based on the last cycle and they are correct, that is the great value. To be clear: based on cycle 1 I predict cycle 2 correctly, based on cycle 2 I predict cycle 3 correctly, based on cycle 3 I predict cycle 4 correctly, based on cycle 4 I predict cycle 5 correctly, based on cycle 5 I predict cycle 6 correctly, based on cycle 6 I predict cycle 7 correctly, based on cycle 7 I predict cycle 8 correctly, etc. Would you still say that I was guessing? Furthermore the predictions are based on sound physics and not just a statistical correlation.
Lief Svalgaard 🙂
Just to say that not all we Brits believe we are at the centre of the universe, just those who think we still have an empire & can influence an ever changing world! We gave our empire back a long time ago now, although we should never have lost those lands in & around Bordeaux with all that lovely wine, damn the French & that 100 years war I say!
Perhaps Corbyn is using historic sunspot activity to predict weather events even if vague generalisms are used, such as cooling, or warming, or windy! Herschel used sunspot activity to predict the price of corn & won bets on it, more sunspots = lower corn prices, fewer sunspots = higher corn prices, of course the sun has absolutely no effect on our climate whatsoever, apart from heat & light of course that goes without saying!
PS it’s jolly cold this morning in UK, thick fog in south-west with an equally thick frost to boot, not seen the likes for years, this must be getting to be one of the coldest starts to winter for a long time! Odds on a white Christmas going down all the time! Perhaps I’d better put the tennis rackets & a couple of bungy cords in the back of the car – just in case.
Leif Svalgaard (23:17:30) :
and also noted that the ‘weakening’ is not quantified and that you therefore have no basis [other than hand waving and belief] to state that “it is still strong enough to throw a cycle or 2 into chaos”.
There are 2 graphs showing the strength of the alignments…the numbers are behind the graph and could be retrieved but i think the graph shows this adequately. What you are looking for is the disturbance from the normal pattern or “camels hump” as i have crudely described it, and the shape of that hump shows the strength. If you look at 1790 and 1970 you can see the difference and why one lineup started a grand minimum and the other didnt, but certainly effected the cycle.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2007/05/sunssbam1620to2180.gif
Now if you look at this next graph you can see this trend over 3000 yrs, pay close attention to the shapes. http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2008/11/995-2985ssb.jpg The Oort minimum moves to another timeframe as the alignments move over time which can easily be seen using a solar system viewer and by viewing this graph. It also explains the long period of no grand minima resulting in the MWP. The alignment gets weaker when S begins to line up poorly with the apposing alignment of J+N+U as it does right thru the MWP. There is much more work to do, so giving you a number and predicting exactly what will happen in the next few cycles is hard, but if we follow previous patterns it seems that once we start a grand minimum it doesnt matter how the alignments fit for the next cycle…the sun still behaves chaotically (meaning in grand minima mode).
By alignments you must mean that the Sun is also on the line. So you are listing S+J+E+V alignments. You see, a problem with your papers is that many things are stated too vaguely or just implicitly understood by the faithful.
And what is the rationale for making the difference between even and odd cycles? And why not J+E with V apposing? Unless there is a physical reason to do this it is pseudo-science.
I see many green lines on the graph. Presumably you mean the envelope of all these peaks. The peaks should be at solar maximum, or minimum, or halfway, or what is the relation to the cycle? And why are the years 1600-1700 not on the graph? If the method is so good at finding Grand Minima, it should certainly work during the Maunder Minimum.
Yes I mean with the Sun included in the alignment (I show a solar system view of that near the end of my report (wouldnt call it a paper).
The even/odd scenario seems to follow the GO rule, the suggested harmonic rhythm would favor a stronger modulation when all 4 are in alignment . Agreed you could plot Venus as the apposer or Mercury or Mars and perhaps many have done that in the past…but the J+E+V sysygy is the one that syncs perfectly with sunspot cycles and the question has to be asked why. If this sysygy was not a driver you would expect it to go out of sync after 300 yrs, but perhaps it does and requires further work? The weakness in the argument at present is how this sysygy effects the Sun, and is open to several theories, but to me its a beginning of an understanding which is more than “science” has to offer long term right now.
Most of Desmoulins peaks line up with sunspot cycle maximums except at times around grand minima…this in itself is of interest as discussed before but in the past the slight out of phasing has realigned without losing a cycle. It would be great to see his work extended back further along with Carl’s SSB graph. I have the JPL data back to 3000 yrs BC for Carl’s SSB graph and intend to plot it when I get time.
Jeff Alberts 🙂
Too true, rather like certain medicine practice being in the words of “Number Watch”, voodoo with Latin!
As a Chartered Engineer, I can if necessary, tweek my structural analysis programme to suit me! For instance if I have to generally take a certain safety factor for a design, I might get PASS PASS FAIL PASS in the output, & if think that factor is OTT in the particular circumstances, I can go into it, change the parameter, & get PASS PASS PASS PASS all the way to the end, I can take an “engineering judgement” on it! So computer models can be likewise tweeked & tuned to produce anything the operator wants to show. It’s something that worries many of us in the profession that “engineering judgement” is being taken out of the equation in favour of the print out which has to be “right”! Absolutely!
Apologies if this has been posted…
Our newly discovered Plasma Blanket:
http://www.dailytech.com/Scientists+Discover+Cloak+of+Plasma+Around+Earth/article13688.htm
And my favorite comment:
Anthropogenic Plasma Cloak Depletion (APCD) should concern us all.
JimB
“E.M.Smith (04:57:18) :
“”dennis ward (23:49:33) :
And what happens if we squander all the fossil fuels and THEN an ice age occurs ? “”
We will use nuclear power. ”
Err – what happens when your nuclear power station is swept away by 400 feet or so of ice? Maybe not a problem in the USA, but it might be in lil ole Britain.
Not something I particularly worry about, just wondering though.
Incidentally, I don’t consider using fossil fuels to advance the human race as “squandering”. On the contrary, it is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. I hope, soon, that we’ll come to realise this and start making more use of our coal reserves – particularly here in the UK where we have around a thousand years supply (though not all of it is easily accessible). Most of all, I hope we start to make use of coal to liquid technology to eliminate our dependence on foreign gas and oil.
Leif, What’s that psychic reckon to the weather anyway?
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (04:10:23) :
The even/odd scenario seems to follow the GO rule, the suggested harmonic rhythm would favor a stronger modulation when all 4 are in alignment
If you cannot see the arbitrariness and ad hoc cherry picking involved in all of this there is little hope that I can induce some reason. There is precious little science in this, and it is my hope that readers can see this for themselves. If not, we have descended into what Carl Sagan called the ‘Demon Hunted World’.
Edward Morgan (08:12:05) :
What’s that psychic reckon to the weather anyway?
Well, last time I passed her window there was a sign: “Closed today due to unforeseen circumstances”, so perhaps science is the better way to go…
Stan (05:52:48) :
Err – what happens when your nuclear power station is swept away by 400 feet or so of ice? Maybe not a problem in the USA, but it might be in lil ole Britain.
You go underground?
I was impressed while visiting Finland more than twenty years ago to visit a complete underground conference/museum center.
If you have nuclear energy, you can do it.
In Kappadocia, in Turkey now, at a 2000 meter plateau, there are underground villages going seven stories down, part of the tourist interest now.
Humans are good at adapting.
I read this blog with interest, in particular Leif Svalgaard’s demolition of nobwainer’s (Geoff Sharp) theories, also noticed brief exchange between Bateman and vukcevic. I’ve looked at vukcevic’s subcycle theory, not too convinced, but it does appear there is something new in there, since I have not come across similar analysis before. I am certain it should be worth of Leif’s comment.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (22:03:52) :
Leif Svalgaard (20:59:50) :
I think the effect that is measured is the solar orbital angular momentum and the threshold is when it becomes zero to negative (i.e. when the sun is in the retrograde part of the orbit on the inner loop of the epitrochoid. ) See the citations below for why I’ve come to think this.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/58 clearly shows how the alignments were strongest between 1200 and 1800 and are now beginning to weaken.
You might want to look at:
http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf
Also
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/31/66/11/PDF/angeo-18-399-2000.pdf
and http://www.aip.org.au/Congress2006/625.pdf
The first of these is an homage to Rhodes Fairbridge by Richard Mackey, but in the process provides some nice citations and explanations of the relevant work he influenced. I’ll paste a couple of bits in below.
The second is a nice exposition on the solar orbit and why that might cause or be correlated with solar cycles. I. Charvatova pulls together the planetary positions, the solar orbit, and solar cycle data to show correlations.
The last one is my favorite, though in some ways the simplest (maybe that’s why 😉 in that the author, I.W.G. Wilson shows that many of the solar periods map to sidebands of more basic physical cycles of orbits. It ties up some of the loose ends like Jupiter orbit not exactly matching sunspot cycles.
Oh, and this is an interesting page too in that it shows solar oblateness does change with activity:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/02oct_oblatesun.htm
Oct. 2, 2008: Scientists using NASA’s RHESSI spacecraft have measured the roundness of the sun with unprecedented precision, and they find that it is not a perfect sphere. During years of high solar activity the sun develops a thin “cantaloupe skin” that significantly increases its apparent oblateness. Their results appear the Oct. 2nd edition of Science Express.
It speaks to some of the ‘what happens’ part of the activity cycle. How solar oblateness might be changing with output (though they leave open the issue of causality – giving a few ‘hand waves’ at magnetic processes).
Geoff, fair warning though, every time you put planetary position and solar cycle in the same sentence Leif has his oblateness change and his activity goes up! 😉
To quote from a paper by Richard Mackey about Rhodes Fairbridge:
Blizard (1987) presented evidence that the precessional effects on the sun of the planets depends on the degree of oblateness of the sun and on the angle of inclination of the plane of a planet’s orbit in relation to the sun. Since the sun is a fluid, the precessional effect may induce a fluid flow toward the equator of the sun from both hemispheres. The flow of plasma on the sun directly effects solar activity.
and
Burroughs (2003) reported that the sun’s barycentric motion affects its oblateness, diameter and spin rate.
and
In several papers, Rhodes Fairbridge (for example, Fairbridge 1984, 1997 and Fairbridge and Sanders 1987) describe how the turning power of the planets is strengthened or weakened by resonant effects between the planets, the sun, and the sun’s rotation about it’s axis. He further described how resonance between the orbits of the planets amplified the planets’ variable torque applied to the sun.
I can’t speak to the veracity of any of these papers, being but a lowly amature, but they look like reviewed papers in real science publications. That they all tend to point in the same direction (the sun did it, and maybe the planets helped) is interesting.
3 more spotless days and 2008 is the second highest number of spotless days since 1900.
Lucy Skywalker (15:24:12) :
Leif I love your presence here, and I hugely respect your expertise in solar matters, like Alan the Brit, but I fear you use your expertise to prop up your opinions in areas you do not understand.
Leif has a professional reputation to uphold. (Something I wish more scientists understood…) He can not for the slightest moment relax the hard requirement that what HE knows is pure, proven, reviewed, and consistent. That is the nature of being a professional scientist.
Speculation and theorizing must be kept clearly labeled as that or he will be attacked in the blood sport of academic publishing.
Better to leave the rampant speculation to amatures like us 8-}
Rhys Jaggar (06:56:27) :
For all you folks shivering in US right now, data from NCDC says west side of country was radically HOTTER in November that average. Now you’re getting a cold blast.
At inflections (in many things, including stock markets) you get a ‘battle ground’ between the old tend and the incipient trend. This tends to show as larger than normal swings or ranges. What I see happening is just the inflection battleground between the old, warm, trend and the new, cold, trend.
(Reasoning by analogy, I know …)
Stan (05:52:48) :
“E.M.Smith (04:57:18) :
We will use nuclear power. ”
Err – what happens when your nuclear power station is swept away by 400 feet or so of ice? Maybe not a problem in the USA, but it might be in lil ole Britain.
Well, I was only addressing the issue of from whence the power would come after oil, but… If I were you, I’d move to Brazil when the glacier approaches, or maybe India…
Incidentally, I don’t consider using fossil fuels to advance the human race as “squandering”. On the contrary, it is one of the greatest achievements of mankind.
Spot on! The positive feedback loop that is economic advancement depends on our using energy. Lots of it. And the more we use and the faster we use it the further and faster we advance. THAT then leads to discovery of ever more energy and ways to use it, which perpetuates the cycle of virtue.
It is that feedback loop that the “AGW back to the stone age” herd does not understand. As soon as we stop advancing, we start dying.
[Obligatory defensive statement: I am all for efficiency improvements. They don’t change this statement. It’s all the energy in NH3 synthesis and plastics synthesis and aluminum refining and… that lets us each have more stuff to eat and enjoy and lets more of us do research to discover even more ways to live better.]
To Alan the Brit:
Well I have to say that living in the good ol ‘US of A, just north of Houston used to have its compensations, compared to the south west of the UK (despite the miles of oil refineries and the uneventful beaches on the coast).
However, these last few weeks have changed my mind. I always used to be able to answer the question ‘Why on earth did you settle in Houston TX, when you come from Somerset where the cider apples do grow?’ with a flippant ‘Well at least the sun shines with some predictability!’
Not today though. It’s grey and just a little above freezing… again. And there was that little spot of bother with the snow last week. I even had a snow ball fight with my sons. I mean to say we are on the same latitude as Morocco, we should be sub tropical. What is the world coming to?
Radun (09:32:15) :
I read this blog with interest, in particular Leif Svalgaard’s demolition of nobwainer’s (Geoff Sharp) theories
If your going to make a statement like that, perhaps you could give me some examples of such “demolition”.
Tip: Emotional comments are not equal to rational debate.
E.M.Smith (10:29:13) :
Thanks for your input, i have read the first 3 citations you refer previously. They are working in similar areas but perhaps not looking at Neptune/Uranus as a major player in the Suns Grand Minima cycles.
The NASA link is interesting, in particular 2 comments.
“That may sound like a very small angle, but it is in fact significant,” says Alexei Pevtsov, RHESSI Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters. Tiny departures from perfect roundness can, for example, affect the sun’s gravitational pull on Mercury and skew tests of Einstein’s theory of relativity that depend on careful measurements of the inner planet’s orbit”
“These results have far ranging implications for solar physics and theories of gravity,” comments solar physicist David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. “They indicate that the core of the sun cannot be rotating much more rapidly than the surface, and that the sun’s oblateness is too small to change the orbit of Mercury outside the bounds of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.”
Maybe the rigid structure of the past can be pried open.
Love the back and forth. As good (boring?) as Wimbledon.
One place to look for physical evidence of cooling, warming etc is (surprise!) the farming news. Those guys have to live with the results of planting choices until harvest, and perhaps a useful exercise is to look at things like grape harvests (very susceptible to cold snaps), news about plantings, etc.
Because, unlike politicians and weather ‘forecasters’ (let’s not even mention the IPCC…), plants don’t lie, cherry pick, obfuscate or – well – act like humans. they just grow. Or not. Or badly.
I do find it interesting that there is a lot of anecdotes about ‘cool start to…’ or ‘harvests were down because of variable weather…’ and so on.
This is just how one would expect the first stages of an overall cooling to be reported. Of course, there’s no mention of any effect on our rather tightly coupled, just-in-time structures. Yet.
Nope, didn’t miss it. But you did say “any” prediction, not a series of always correct predictions. 😉
Jeff Alberts (20:04:16) :
Nope, didn’t miss it. But you did say “any” prediction, not a series of always correct predictions. 😉
You are permitted to assume that I would not make an obviously silly statement [“any …”] and that the series was meant, where each prediction builds on data from the previous cycle.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (15:35:52) :
The NASA link is interesting, in particular 2 comments.
[…] Tiny departures from perfect roundness can, for example, affect the sun’s gravitational pull on Mercury and skew tests of Einstein’s theory of relativity that depend on careful measurements of the inner planet’s orbit”
“These results have far ranging implications for solar physics and theories of gravity,” comments solar physicist David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. “They indicate that the core of the sun cannot be rotating much more rapidly than the surface, and that the sun’s oblateness is too small to change the orbit of Mercury outside the bounds of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.”
What all this means is that the internal structure of the Sun is precisely what standard solar theory [without internal circulations caused by external ‘forces’] posits it should be. I work closely with one of the authors [Hugh Hudson] and know fully all the details of the work. You can’t go there to find support for your ideas, ’cause there ain’t any support to be had there.
Maybe the rigid structure of the past can be pried open.
is nonsense.
E.M.Smith (10:50:55) :
Leif has a professional reputation to uphold. (Something I wish more scientists understood…) He can not for the slightest moment relax the hard requirement that what HE knows is pure, proven, reviewed, and consistent. That is the nature of being a professional scientist.
It is not. Many professional scientists spend their time tearing down what is ‘pure, proven, reviewed, and consistent’. It is every scientist’s dream to prove Einstein wrong. Most of my recent work has been directed to demolishing standard ‘knowledge’, e.g. showing that the geomagnetic activity series are wrong, that the sun’s magnetic field did not double the last hundred years, that the modern sunspot numbers are too high, that TSI did not vary as much as thought, that the Sun is not a primary driver of climate change, etc, etc.
E.M.Smith (10:29:13) :
I have come to respect your perspicacity on the AGW subject and your expertise on a lot of stuff.
Geoff, fair warning though, every time you put planetary position and solar cycle in the same sentence Leif has his oblateness change and his activity goes up! 😉
Before this happens, or maybe concurrently since it takes some time to get the posts moderated, I would like to discuss my POV on this planets/barycenter etc business. It has started to also get my goat.
Firstly, I am a retired experimental particle physicist and have no stake in solar theories at all. As a particle physicist with string theories in tow, I am quite willing to consider hypotheses of many more dimensions and many more forces: we have introduced dark matter in the soup after all :). Speculation is allowed, but in my books there should be a physics model behind these.
Secondly, as an experimentalist I honor data and measurements.
So lets talk of coordinate systems and physics ( forget general relativity).
We are allowed to transform all equations by Galilean transformations into anything that catches our fancy.
Lets take the geocentric coordinate system that dominated the science of the times for a thousand years, and the language of astrology till now. We have the sun running around the earth once a day, and walking the ecliptic on the night sphere, and the planets doing little circle dances on their epicycles merrily getting retrograde and what not. Lots of angular momenta there, no? What about the barycenter, squiggling around the ecliptic and the sun on the night sphere?
What does it all mean in this coordinate system?
It means that we would have to use extremely complicated equations to get any physics input into this, though it is there. All these motions etc that we observe in this system are calculable, but we would be nuts to try to do so, because gravity is much more simply expressed in the heliocentric system. There is no meaning to talk of angular momenta of the planets in this coordinate system.
What I try to mean with the above is that coordinate systems are in the head of the designer but physical forces are unique, measurable and dictate their inherent coordinate system by the ease of calculation.
Also consider that the only action at a distance for a planetary system that has been proven experimentally is by the force of gravity. Of course there is radiation and ejection of matter and collisions with out of solar system objects but lets ignore them for this argument. I am also not talking of electric universe and non general relativity scenaria, and iron suns that are science fiction at the moment. I am talking of measurements we have now.
This means that the only visible/measurable effects on planets and the sun are tides, and resultant changes in rotation/trajectory due to the exchange of angular momenta and energy. Tides on earth are strong. They are of the order of 30 cm but in the liquid oceans due to the morphology of the bottom can become multiples of that. Tides on the sun, induced by the planets, are of the order of 2mm as we have been informed by Leif.
This is about the effect of the planets, whether you look in a coordinate system with the sun as the center, or a coordinate system with the barycenter as the center, or the earth as the center. It is the effect of the known forces. The barycenter is a virtual mathematical spot that has no gravitational forces since it has 0 mass itself. The earth is a spot that has some gravity but the calculations would become horrendous if you tried to find the equations of motion with it as a center. Motions around it cannot induce anything more in the sun than the induced motion of the sun when a dancer does a pirouette and we consider her the center of coordinates ;). Similarly for the barycenter.
The motion of the barycenter can be considered as a proxy for all the planets in some calculations if convenient, it is correlated to the tides of the sun, but does not induce them , it is the mass of the planets that does so.
The barycenter of the moon earth system runs below the surface of the earth in time with the moon, and is correlated to the tides, but certainly does induce them. Otherwise the earth would be kneaded like dough every 24 hours or so.
And my favorite: Walk down the street with somebody your height and weight, one on each side. Your combined barycenter will be in the middle of the street. A car goes through your barycenter. Do you feel anything? Why not? It is the forces and not the geometrical point that is important.
P.S. to my above
I am not impressed with correlations between two sinusoidal like curves with many wiggles. Some correlation will always be found. In such cases only hard nailed physics models can have any meaning, and the correlations will then not be proof, but will allow the model to stand because they would not contradict it. In this “sun motion” business there is no physics model. I can think of many physics “science fiction” models that would give a much stronger role to the motion of the planets than simple Newtonian gravity allows, but it would be just that: science fiction, unless the extra forces needed would be demonstrated in the lab. Still the barycenter motion would be just a distracting change of coordinate systems.
Such waffle…lets cut thru the rhetoric and face the facts. EVERY time over the past nearly 1000 years when Neptune and Uranus come together we have had Grand Minima. It takes around 179 yrs for this to occur. We are there now…I dont think anyone can dispute that?
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (06:04:26) :
when Neptune and Uranus come together we have had Grand Minima. It takes around 179 yrs for this to occur. We are there now…I dont think anyone can dispute that?
I’ll dispute that. The Dalton Minimum [if there was one deep enough to be called a Grand Minimum] was perhaps in 1812, so the Grand Minimum of the 1990s [1812+179 = 1991] is already past.
Leif Svalgaard said:
But Leif, you are forgetting how slippery the slope is. The minimum was in the pipeline.
Richard Sharpe (09:06:14) :
But Leif, you are forgetting how slippery the slope is.
With slippery concepts, slippery theory, slippery data, and slippery facts, I guess we can all slide downhill into that slippery morass where there is no escape.
OOPs,
In my anna v (22:27:58) : waffle, in the paragraph before last a “not” is missing :
“The barycenter of the moon earth system runs below the surface of the earth in time with the moon, and is correlated to the tides, but certainly does not induce them. Otherwise the earth would be kneaded like dough every 24 hours or so.”
Leif Svalgaard (20:50:45) :
It is not. Many professional scientists spend their time tearing down what is ‘pure, proven, reviewed, and consistent’.
Leif, I never said your mind was closed. I said that you keep what is known, reviewed, etc. clearly in that category and what is speculation, new theory, etc. in another clear category. No? And that you can’t just go running off to endorse some new theory as ‘known’ until you’ve got some good reason to do so. No?
You are absolutely correct that good and exciting science is based on the tearing down of things that are wrong in what is ‘known’, but I would assert that you don’t do that willy nilly… My assertion is only that you leave it in the ‘known’ bucket until your theory is strong enough and proven enough to publish.
Somehow I think we are in violent agreement… sigh.
anna v (22:27:58) :
I have come to respect your perspicacity on the AGW subject and your expertise on a lot of stuff.
Why, thank you! [blush]
Before this happens, or maybe concurrently since it takes some time to get the posts moderated, I would like to discuss my POV on this planets/barycenter etc business. It has started to also get my goat.
I agree with everything in your post. FWIW I think there is a coordinates problem in the whole solar motion discussion and that the use of barycenter has become loaded with expectations that are not deserved (by both pro and anti ‘sides’). I fully understand that the only things with real effects are real bodies in the solar system, but that doesn’t change the utility of the barycenter concept (i.e. a solar system mass centered frame of reference).
My “position” on it is rather tame. I think there might be something interesting there, or maybe not, so why not explore it?
I’ve read some papers on the correlation between planet position and solar state and earth impacts (mostly weather). There are many of them and I’ve put links to some of them in posts on this site. They appear to be peer reviewed and published in reputable sources (but not being a professional scientist I can’t really discern that well enough since I don’t know all the players. I have to depend on others to cast stones at their reputations…)
The papers look, to me, to show a fairly well proven correlation and that leads to a suspicion on my part that there might be something causal going on. What that causality might be is something that I find an amusing question. IMHO, any attribution of causality is in the rampant speculation ‘bucket’ of ideas (where good science seeds are planted, along with many many weeds…) I like to explore the rampant speculations about causality since something interesting might be found there (and don’t like it when folks want to spray the whole seed patch with roundup, killing good with bad.)
The notion that everything is in free fall so no effect can happen is, IMHO, too simplistic (and the NASA announcement about oblateness seems to show that). That the tide on the sun is too small to influence anything is an assumption that seems to need some analysis (the height is small, but given the density and the gravity field I’d expect motion and forces to be significant). There is a great deal going on that is not understood and to ignore a strong correlation and not investigate it in favor of the accepted dogma seems a bit dogmatic. Absence of proof is not poof of absence.
On the other side, the notion that during it’s retrograde orbital motion the sun may travel back though parts of the solar mag field that were somehow left behind looks to me like hand waving (but I don’t know enough about solar mag fields to toss rocks at it.) I also find the notion that the planet position is all that matters without any physical model to be laughable. Astrology is, IMHO, trash. (That does not mean I hold his belief in astrology against Landscheidt. Newton was an alchemist and Einstein believed in an invisible man in the sky with a fixation on head hair counting… The science done is all that matters, not what fantasy they hold in their off hours.) Then there is the whole issue of magnetic & particle effects that leaves me a bit befuddled. Don’t know if it’s tin foil hat brigade or not.
I guess that’s just a long winded way of saying I like it when folks get to speculate freely about the mysteries of our physical world and don’t like it when folks pee on the speculators rather than just saying “that’s interesting, but I think you missed [foo]”. (FWIW, I find it equally annoying when someone from the tin hat brigade says absolutely stupid things that can trivially be disproved and doesn’t take guidance to the proof.)
And I suppose that is just a long way of saying “Play nice with each other and be polite. Help each other learn.”
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (15:35:52) :
Thanks for your input, i have read the first 3 citations you refer previously. They are working in similar areas but perhaps not looking at Neptune/Uranus as a major player in the Suns Grand Minima cycles.
If I understand the papers I cited correctly they are saying it’s the total effect of all the angular momenta, so the contributions of Neptune / Uranus vs others to solar effects ought to be in direct proportion to their contribution to momentum. I don’t know what that contribution is vs. Jupiter, Saturn, et. al. but it ought to be easily calculated (though I’m too lazy at the moment to do it… kids home from college, christmas preps and all…)
Jupiter is larger but is closer to the sun, and IIRC the further away and faster bodies have more effect on angular momentum. My suspicion is that all the planetary position observations are just a simple way to see the angular momentum changes, so I’ve just gone with the papers that look at A.M. directly and figured “why look at individual planets when you have the total impact of all the planets and it’s all that matters anyway?”
This is all complicated by the resonances that develop in orbits over time. Something I’ve not got a good handle on, BTW. but could cause misleading conclusions since things will have related periods that can be confounders.
Leif Svalgaard (08:08:50) :
I’ll dispute that. The Dalton Minimum [if there was one deep enough to be called a Grand Minimum] was perhaps in 1812, so the Grand Minimum of the 1990s [1812+179 = 1991] is already past.
Poor attempt Leif, trying to steer away from reality again. Neptune and Uranus were together during the Dalton (and the Maunder, Sporer, Wolf) and were not together between those minima. You cant ignore that and have to at least concede its a coincidence at minimum.
Look at the graph again http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2007/05/sunssbam1620to2180.gif and look at 1790, thats where the disturbance begins leading into the Dalton, 179 years later the same line up but weaker causes SC20 (1970) to be a very poor and long performer. Then another lineup in 1830 during the Dalton, add 179 years and you have what we are experiencing today.
You need to read my report again because your not taking it in, basically when Neptune and Uranus come together there is 3 alignment chances, Partial/Optimum/Partial with the partials varying in strength which precisely explains the lengths of the preceeding minima (Wolf 2 alignments, Sporer 3, Maunder 3 and Dalton 2)and perhaps only 1 alignment in Grand Minimum this time around.
anna v (22:27:58) :
This means that the only visible/measurable effects on planets and the sun are tides, and resultant changes in rotation/trajectory due to the exchange of angular momenta and energy. Tides on earth are strong. They are of the order of 30 cm but in the liquid oceans due to the morphology of the bottom can become multiples of that. Tides on the sun, induced by the planets, are of the order of 2mm as we have been informed by Leif.
This part intrigues me Anna, I remember waking up and finding my yacht completely beached after a 3 mtr tide. I would like to see where the 2mm figure comes from and if it varies at times like now, also how plasma is effected by tides especially considering there may be no bottom to the plasma ocean.
E.M.Smith (16:05:49)
I like to explore the rampant speculations about causality since something interesting might be found there (and don’t like it when folks want to spray the whole seed patch with roundup, killing good with bad.)
I agree with Anna v, and enjoy your wise and coherent conclusions.
Jupiter is larger but is closer to the sun, and IIRC the further away and faster bodies have more effect on angular momentum. My suspicion is that all the planetary position observations are just a simple way to see the angular momentum changes, so I’ve just gone with the papers that look at A.M. directly and figured “why look at individual planets when you have the total impact of all the planets and it’s all that matters anyway?”
Totally agree, they all play an important role as a group, but it seems that during certain periods of alignments that role has a marked effect on the Sun causing Grand Minima.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (16:28:16) :
Then another lineup in 1830 during the Dalton, add 179 years and you have what we are experiencing today.
The Dalton was way past in 1830. It is as simple and as real as that.
Leif Svalgaard (19:46:24) :
The Dalton was way past in 1830. It is as simple and as real as that.
Your getting low on arguments….sunspot records and 14C clearly suggest otherwise.
http://sidc.oma.be/html/wolfaml.html
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2008/11/c14.jpg
But I will repeat it again.
EVERY time over the past nearly 1000 years when Neptune and Uranus come together we have had Grand Minima. It takes around 179 yrs for this to occur. We are there now…I dont think anyone can dispute that?
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (21:03:44) :
“The Dalton was way past in 1830. It is as simple and as real as that.”
sunspot records and 14C clearly suggest otherwise.
They may ‘suggest’ that to you, but the data actually show otherwise:
http://sidc.oma.be/html/wolfaml.html
This discussion about Uranus and Neptune ‘coming together’ -it’s absolutely definite that they last ”came together’ in the early 1990s.
I have an astrology book with 100 years of planetary positions on the floor with me and dug it out.
Exact conjunction: February 1993 at 19.5 Capricorn; Oct/Nov 1993 at 18.6 – 18.7 Capricorn!
A few years before there was also a ‘triple conjunction’ of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune with two exact conjunctions of two pairs of planets:
Saturn-Uranus conjunction in February 1988 0.5 Capricorn; June 1988 29 Sagittarius; October 1988 28 Sagittarius;
Saturn-Neptune conjunction in March 1989 13.7 Capricorn; June 1989 11 Capricorn; November 1989 10 Capricorn.
If you’re saying that that conjunction (which lasts about 2 years) may have an effect on the solar cycle 15 years hence, that’s a testable hypothesis if you have enough historical data. After all, if sunspot patterns in one cycle can affect the next, why couldn’t a large planet conjunction affect one sunspot cycle (e.g. 22/23) leading to major effects in cycle 24?
Not saying it’s true. Just contributing to the chat.
Rhys Jaggar (09:53:48) :
This discussion about Uranus and Neptune ‘coming together’ -it’s absolutely definite that they last ”came together’ in the early 1990s.
You are spot on Rhys, but there is more (which makes my statement even more specific). They come together every 174 yrs(N+U only) but we have to wait for 2 other planets to align before the “disturbance” takes place. The pattern is N+U+J together with S on the other side of the Sun.
Check the full theory here: http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/58
Here is a solar system view of what I think will be a big date in 2010. The alignment as just outlined plus J+E+V (which some think control the 11 approx sunspot cycle) http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2008/12/2010view.jpg
According to my calculation a new Dalton type minimum could occur within next 20-30 years.
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/AmEn.gif (To=1941)
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/extrapolation.gif
This type of minimum could under pressure from rise in interstellar (galactic) magnetic field turn into Maunder type minimum as shown in
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/1600-1700.gif
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (16:47:43) :
. I would like to see where the 2mm figure comes from and if it varies at times like now, also how plasma is effected by tides especially considering there may be no bottom to the plasma ocean.
There is also the minor question of what happens to nuclear reaction rates when the pressure rises under a (slightly) deeper tide layer of very heavy sun… Maybe nothing much, maybe more. I don’t know if there is some nuclear reaction that can almost proceed, if it gets just a bit more pressure, and kicks off a whole lot more energy when it does.
I can see a plausible case for greater spin rate moving mass to a more oblate perimeter and reducing net pressure, thus lowering reaction rates. Is it ‘in the weeds’ at a few dozen decimal place or is it significant? No idea.
Would these fantasy effects balance each other? Result in chaotic effects? Be lost in all the clearly understood mass flows and pressure fluxes? Of the three, I’d vote for ‘no effect, lost in the wee decimal places if there at all’ were I was forced to pick an answer; but I’d love to see evidence to the contrary. (And I’m not willing to say “impossible” without good analysis and reason.)
Wow has this ever wandered far afield
Rather than make any comment on the recent posts…
What’s the spotless count at now?
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (16:47:43) :
I would like to see where the 2mm figure comes from and if it varies at times like now, also how plasma is effected by tides especially considering there may be no bottom to the plasma ocean.
To calculate the height h of a tide:
Ones uses these variables:
G = gravitational constant = 6.672E-11 [E-11 means ten to 11th power]
m = mass of tide producing body
a = distance of tide producing body
R = radius of body on which tides are raised
M = mass of body on which tides are raised
Then calculate:
g = G M / R^2 [acceleration of gravity on surface]
t = G m ( 1/(a-R)^2 – 1/a^2 ) [tidal acceleration]
f = 1 + t / g
h = (sqrt(f) – 1) R
insert for Moon upon Earth:
M = 5.9736E+24 kg
m = 7.3483E+22 kg
R = 6.3781E+6 m
a = 3.84403E+8 m
h = 0.37 m = 370 mm
for Jupiter upon Sun
M = 1.9891E+30 kg
m = 1.8986E+27 kg
R = 6.96E+8 m
a = 7.779E+11 m
h = 0.00048 m = 0.48 mm
for Venus upon Sun
M = 1.9891E+30 kg
m = 4.8685E+24 kg
R = 6.96E+8 m
a = 1.0821E+11 m
h = 0.00046 m = 0.46 mm
for Earth upon Sun
M = 1.9891E+30 kg
m = 5.9736E+24 kg
R = 6.96E+8 m
a = 1.496E+11 m
h = 0.00021 m = 0.21 mm
for Saturn upon Sun
M = 1.9891E+30 kg
m = 5.6846E+26 kg
R = 6.96E+8 m
a = 1.4334E+12 m
h = 0.00002 m = 0.02 mm
for Uranus upon Sun
M = 1.9891E+30 kg
m = 1.8986E+25 kg
R = 6.96E+8 m
a = 2.877E+12 m
h = 0.0000000000 m = 0.00 mm [smaller than Excel can deal with even in double precision]. Perhaps somebody can do the calculation with enough decimal places to get a non-zero result.
For Neptune the tides are smaller still.
All other planets raise much smaller tides. The sum of all tides if they were in sync is about 1.2 mm.
Leif Svalgaard (15:43:31) :
[E-11 means ten to minus 11th power, i.e. divide by 10^11]
for Uranus upon Sun
M = 1.9891E+30 kg
m = 8.681E+25 kg
R = 6.96E+8 m
a = 2.877E+12 m
h = 0.0000000000 m = 0.00 mm
If Neptune and Jupiter are coming together and the combined affect will bring on frigid temps all over the world, look busy, Jesus is coming.
(sarc off)
Thanks Leif, it looks as though Neptune and Uranus doesnt have a significant effect on the Sun regarding tides, but there is a tidal effect from J+E+V that could explain the correlation in Desmoulins graph. So there must be other phenomena involved when it comes to the Neptune/Uranus factor.
nobwainer (18:00:15) :
there is a tidal effect from J+E+V that could explain the correlation in Desmoulins graph.
1.15 mm = 0.04 inches does not look like an effect at all
So there must be other phenomena involved when it comes to the Neptune/Uranus factor.
Or none at all, as the forces are so minute. Maybe Uranus and Neptune are blocking incoming UN-rays from the Orion Spiral Arm?
Leif Svalgaard (15:43:31) :
Then calculate:
g = G M / R^2 [acceleration of gravity on surface]
t = G m ( 1/(a-R)^2 – 1/a^2 ) [tidal acceleration]
f = 1 + t / g
h = (sqrt(f) – 1) R
if we use the fact that t/g is very small, the last two lines can
be rewritten as one:
h = t / g / 2 * R
This expression does not lose precision and one gets for Uranus:
h = 0.00000043 m = 0.00043 mm or 230 times smaller than the thickness of human hair. For Neptune the effect is 750 times smaller than the thickness of human hair.
Correcting a small clerical error [for Mercury], I found:
The sum of all tides if they were in sync is about 1.4 mm. But it is very, very rare that all the planets are lined up on same or opposite side of the Sun.
Perhaps we should make a brave step forward (with a new 2009) and consider negative feedback due to interaction between magnetospheres and -magnetic field lines in a coronal mass ejection forming a “rope” that is thought to thread through the structure.- as quoted at
http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/impact/about_luhmannArticle.html
by Dr. Svalgaard’s colleagues from Berkeley (see graphic b).
Dr. Svalgaard, the ejected plasma expands and travels outwards from the Sun, but charged particles (forming electric current) travel along it back to the Sun, thus an opportunity for a feedback.
Leif Svalgaard (22:06:35) :
Correcting a small clerical error [for Mercury], I found
Dont forget Mars….so we have proved a small tide for the planets inside Jupiter hoping your calculations are correct, and no one knows how these tides may affect the Sun. We also have very strong correlations with J+E+V rotations and the sunspot cycle. Until we know more (and we know very little) thats the best we can do until more data is forthcoming. You dont know what a 1mm tide might do?
You never know…those UN-rays might be the mechanism for your solar random number generator.
More on tides:
For Sun upon Earth
M = 5.9736E+24 kg
m = 1.9891E+30 kg
R = 6.3781E+6 m
a = 1.496E+11 m
h = 0.165 m = 165 mm [or 45% of the lunar tide]
If you move the Moon closer, e.g. to only one-tenth its current distance, the tides grow to be disastrous:
For Moon upon Earth:
M = 5.9736E+24 kg
m = 7.3483E+22 kg
R = 6.3781E+6 m
a = 3.84403E+7 m [only one tenth the current distance]
h = 472 m = 1550 feet
nobwainer (03:20:11) :
Dont forget Mars….
0.0000064 m = 0.0064 mm [so can be forgotten]
We also have very strong correlations with J+E+V rotations and the sunspot cycle.
Jupiter 0.48 mm
Venus 0.46 mm
Earth 0.21 mm
Mercury 0.20 mm
Since the tides from Mercury are as large as from Earth, we must have a J+E+V+M correlation. There is no justification for including E but not M.
Leif Svalgaard (06:38:46) :
nobwainer (03:20:11) :
We also have very strong correlations with J+E+V rotations and the sunspot cycle.
Jupiter 0.48 mm
Venus 0.46 mm
Earth 0.21 mm
Mercury 0.20 mm [on average]
Mercury 0.41 mm at perihelion
Since the tides from Mercury are as large as from Earth, we must have a J+E+V+M correlation. There is no justification for including E but not M.
In fact at perihelion, Mercury’s tides are twice as large as those form the Earth, so the dominant contribution should be from J+V+M.
PS:
a handy [approximate] formula is
(h/R) = (m/M) (R/a)^3
This captures the physics [understanding of the tidal generation], so
h = R (m/M) (R/a)^3
Leif Svalgaard (11:11:44)
Since the tides from Mercury are as large as from Earth, we must have a J+E+V+M correlation. There is no justification for including E but not M.
Not so sure about that, both Hung and Desmoulins suggest the orbit of Mercury is too fast to have any effect.
Desmoulins:
“It seems that Mercury and its syzygies with Venus and Jupiter have no effect. Perhaps the quality of a syzygie is also linked to the time it lasts (say the number of days during which the angular sector is smaller than 15 degrees), or to the the time integral of the tidal effect. The impulse of tidal energy looks like a triangle rather than like a Dirac impulse, the time integral of the energy being lower, for the same amplitude, if the basis of the triangle is shorter). Due to the higher angular speed of Mercury, the syzygie time is smaller for syzygies including this planet.”
He also produces a chart with similar tidal figures to yours.
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/jpdesm/sunspots/sun3.html
nobwainer (14:09:04) :
“It seems that Mercury and its syzygies with Venus and Jupiter have no effect.”
Even if some secondary factor comes in [moving too fast etc] there should be ‘some’ effect, perhaps a bit smaller. A much more likely explanation is that tides have nothing to do with anything, being much too small. This is the position taken by almost all scientists that have thought about this.
Leif Svalgaard (16:00:44) :
Even if some secondary factor comes in [moving too fast etc] there should be ’some’ effect, perhaps a bit smaller. A much more likely explanation is that tides have nothing to do with anything, being much too small. This is the position taken by almost all scientists that have thought about this.
Can see a few “wuss” words creeping in there 🙂
vukcevic (02:28:45) :
Perhaps we should make a brave step forward (with a new 2009) and consider negative feedback due to interaction between magnetospheres
This is perhaps a plausible theory for planetary influence but would stand up much stronger if this negative feedback could be measured? Plus if we assume there is feedback how do the planetary positions change or influence this feedback. I noticed you have forecast strong activity for SC24 using “waves” created from past solar cycles instead of using planetary positions.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (21:53:26) :
Can see a few “wuss” words creeping in there
I’m not in that game. Because tidal effects are the same at opposition and at apposition [conjunction] it is a sure sign that the ‘effect’ is not tidal if you have to use opposition in one cycle and apposition in the other. As I said: pseudo-science.
Leif Svalgaard (23:27:47) :
I’m not in that game. Because tidal effects are the same at opposition and at apposition [conjunction] it is a sure sign that the ‘effect’ is not tidal if you have to use opposition in one cycle and apposition in the other. As I said: pseudo-science.
?…The tidal influence of J+E+V+Sun all aligned would certainly be different to J+V+Sun with E opposed (other side of sun). This is the resonance that Hung and Desmoulin describe as the governing factor. That resonance is what matches the sunspot cycles. Check the planetary positions against the table I referred to earlier, it all lines up nicely.
http://math-ed.com/Resources/GIS/Geometry_In_Space/java1/Temp/TLVisPOrbit.html
http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/JEVsysygies.jpg
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (23:19:18) :
This is perhaps a plausible theory for planetary influence but would stand up much stronger if this negative feedback could be measured? Plus if we assume there is feedback how do the planetary positions change or influence this feedback. I noticed you have forecast strong activity for SC24 using “waves” created from past solar cycles instead of using planetary positions.
One aspect of feedback (which differentiates it from gravity) is a cumulative effect; i.e. small change in energy in the loop produces over period of time effect well beyond individual packets. Although speed of propagation of particles along the loop may be low electromagnetic field along the loop propagates at the speed of light.
NASA posed a question:
There are many unanswered questions: Why do the portals form every 8 minutes? How do magnetic fields inside the cylinder twist and coil? “We’re doing some heavy thinking about this at the Workshop,” says Sibeck.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/30oct_ftes.htm
My answer: it takes 8 min for EM field feedback from the Earth’s magnetosphere to reach the source and temporary shut it down (Sun-Earth distance is 8 light min)
My prediction for SC24 can be estimated from equation
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/AmEn.gif
and for mid 2013 gives about 80, for year later 77.
This equation (rounded off numbers) is based on planetary orbital periods i.e.118 = 4×29.65, 270 = 3x(11.86 + 84), To=1941 year of JSU triple conjunction.
There are two good reasons why the magnetospheric feedback varies over orbital periods for major planets end its effectives is not always coincidental with their conjunctions. I will be, regarding this particular aspect,
updating my website
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk (solar current link) with some new ideas soon.
Happy Christmas and New Year to all.
Correction
vukcevic (01:46:25)
…270 = 3x(11.86 + 84)
should read 290= 3x(11.86 + 84)
3x(11.862 + 84.02) = 287.646 or rounded off to 290 as shown in
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/AmEn.gif
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (00:07:03) :
?…The tidal influence of J+E+V+Sun all aligned would certainly be different to J+V+Sun with E opposed (other side of sun).
No. To see this, think of the Moon: there is a tidal bulge in the ocean facing the Moon, but there is also an identical tidal bulge on the other side of the Earth: http://science.howstuffworks.com/question72.htm
vukcevic (01:46:25) :
Why do the portals form every 8 minutes? […]
My answer: it takes 8 min for EM field feedback
FTEs do not form every 8 minutes. What he is saying is that there are a couple of hundred every day, some even occurring at the same time but at a different place of the magnetopause.
Leif Svalgaard (04:10:05) :
No. To see this, think of the Moon: there is a tidal bulge in the ocean facing the Moon, but there is also an identical tidal bulge on the other side of the Earth: http://science.howstuffworks.com/question72.htm
No..think of what would happen if we had another moon on the opposite side. No tides, so there we have our pulse (resonance). Next?
Leif Svalgaard (04:10:05) :
btw…did you check out my alignment dates on the solar system viewer?
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (05:29:14) :
“there is a tidal bulge in the ocean facing the Moon, but there is also an identical tidal bulge on the other side of the Earth”
No..think of what would happen if we had another moon on the opposite side. No tides, so there we have our pulse (resonance).
In that case the tides would be twice as high. We don’t have another moon, but we have a Sun that also produces tides (46% of those caused by the Moon) and when the tides from the Sun and the Moon combine we get the so-called Spring tides and when the Sun is 90 degrees from the Moon we get Neap tides that are smaller. Since antiquity, people have noticed that oceans exhibit a much greater tidal range around the time of the full and new Moon. This is when the Moon and Sun are either together in the sky or are on opposite sides of the sky. It is a bit disconcerting that I need to point this out [twice] in this day and age, but apparently science literacy is somewhat on a decline. Perhaps Wikipedia can be of help here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide
Leif Svalgaard (04:19:49) :
FTEs do not form every 8 minutes.
Dr. Svalgaard
Thanks for the note.
I was quoting directly from NASA’s website:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/30oct_ftes.htm
……….. Approximately every eight minutes, the two fields briefly merge or “reconnect,” forming a portal through which particles can flow. The portal takes the form of a magnetic cylinder about as wide as Earth.
And again:
………. There are many unanswered questions: Why do the portals form every 8 minutes? How do magnetic fields inside the cylinder twist and coil? “We’re doing some heavy thinking about this at the Workshop,” says Sibeck.
If NASA has made mistake on their website I am happy to accept that.
What he is saying is that there are a couple of hundred every day, some even occurring at the same time but at a different place of the magnetopause.
I have no problem with that. It is not impossible for a same magnetic loop to make multiple reconnections along the magnetosphere’s tail. There are also fast and slow particle streams.
Considering
– If 8min is accurate (?)
– It has been known for more than a 100 years that more sunspots are observed to be born in the eastern hemisphere [or even on the backside] than on the western hemisphere…. (I suspect your preference for this is being an illusion)
– my “discovery” of 400 day subcycle
there would be a reasonable amount of evidence to start seriously considering possibility of a magnetospheric feedback.
I am happy for you to challenge my amateurish excursions, it encourages me to keep going. I would be even happier, if a certain Dr. by using an obscure viking pseudonym, would play a devil’s advocate, by using his vast experience and detailed knowledge, dig out facts in favour of the “feedback hypothesis”. A forlorn hope.
Happy Christmas.
vukcevic (09:02:12) :
“FTEs do not form every 8 minutes.”
If NASA has made mistake on their website I am happy to accept that.
NASA did not make a mistake. You interpreted their wording incorrectly. The 8 minutes is the average time between FTEs, this means that sometimes they are 4 minutes apart, sometimes 12, sometimes something else. In the course of the day they observe about 180 FTEs, so 24 hours * 60 minutes / 180 FTEs = 8 minutes per FTE. This is very different from saying that FTEs follow each other 8 minutes apart. Another way of saying this that the number of FTEs per unit of time is constant independent of solar distance [as the North/South switches of the IMF is carried outwards by the wind], so you will see about the same number go by in a hour, no matter where you are. Since Jupiter is much bigger than the Earth, it should intercept more than 100 times more N-S switches, i.e. see an FTE on average every 5 seconds [or less].
– If 8min is accurate (?)
Yes and no. On average, yes, as a clockwork, no, as they can be arbitrarily close.
– It has been known for more than a 100 years that more sunspots are observed to be born in the eastern hemisphere [or even on the backside] than on the western hemisphere…. (I suspect your preference for this is being an illusion)
Not ‘illusion’, but selection effect
– my “discovery” of 400 day subcycle
There is an annual variation of geomagnetic activity. This is due to the fact that we are closer to the Sun in January and hence see a stronger IMF and solar wind. This variation accounts for most of the variation you see and will for extended periods be in phase with your reference curve and at other times be out of phase [or in anti-phase]. Because your reference period is 1/11 of a year longer than a year, this in/out phase will show an 11-year variation.
There can be no feedback as the solar wind is supersonic, in the sense that it flows out 11 times faster than any electric or magnetic signal can flow ‘upwind’. In addition, the conductivity of the solar wind is so high [practically infinite] that the magnetic field is ‘frozen’ in, i.e. is compelled to move with the plasma, i.e. outwards. That is why there is a measurable interplanetary magnetic field in the first place: it is the Sun’s field ‘dragged’ along by the outflow.
Re: 8 min etc.
– Average 8 min is no problem for a feedback. Longer than 8 min portal, feedback not strong enough to shut down the source instantly, shorter than 8 min, source may ‘reignite’ following pulsating feedback. (If 8 min indeed is average one would be tempted to conclude that those around 8 min are the most numerous, but would be interesting to see a 24h breakdown if such does exists).
– Jupiter’s case. To be able to sense the Jupiter’s magnetosphere response, Earth would have to be within the same magnetic loop (rope, portal), which would mean loop being at least 4AU wide, I think that is unrealistic. These could be as frequent as you suggest and they may possibly be found hidden within Jupiter’s radio signal pulsations.
– Eastern hemisphere anomaly be it real, ‘illusion’ or selection effect either it exists or not. If it does not exists that is fine. There are more anomalies which can be linked to the (magnetospheric) planetary effect:
Activity is higher in the second half of even-numbered solar cycles and in the first half of oddnumbered cycles. My periodicity equation Y1 (see http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/ solar current link) uses rectified (abs values) form, but in its un-rectified form it distinguishes between even and odd cycles . Also I have come across following: About 2 years after sunspot maximum, Largest peak compound of transient and recurrent magnetic activity. Descending phase of the solar cycles are largely recurrent.
– 400 day subcycle “discovery”. I was not referring to IHV magnetic precursor (I agree there with you) but to an apparent subcycle contained within 11 year Sunspot cycle as described in http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/ solar subcycle link. I am absolutely certain that you would under no circumstances (at least not for time time being) attribute this subcycle to the fact that we are closer to the Sun in January or anything else related to Earth.
– Your last paragraph I have no problem with. Solar wind moves forward with a particular speed, so do particles within a magnetic loop. Particles moving within the loop , regarles whether they arrive back to the source or not (as shown at illustration b at http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/impact/about_luhmannArticle.html ) constitute an electric current, its associated electromagnetic field (not the ‘frozen’ magnetic field of the solar wind) propagates along the loop at speed of light back to the source hence possibility of feedback from a loading by the impacted magnetosphere. Here I would use, not entirely accurate, but a useful analogy of a DC current through a wire. Outside the wire there is fixed magnetic field, while electrons (if you wish) move within at limited speed, but associated electromagnetic field inside the wire propagates at ‘near’ speed of light and would ‘instantly’ reflect change in a load onto the generator.
vukcevic (13:54:41) :
but associated electromagnetic field inside the wire propagates at ‘near’ speed of light and would ‘instantly’ reflect change in a load onto the generator.
I don’t think we communicate at all. There cannot be any electric or magnetic feedback traveling upwind. The solar wind plasma acts as a Faraday cage. It is like the Sun in surrounded by a copper sphere, except that the shielding is even better.
And there can easily be a yearly [or earth-related] effect on the sunspot number, because the count depends on the seeing, which depends on the weather, etc. Not, that there is a large effect, but it is not impossible at all.
Leif Svalgaard (14:03:51) :
And there can easily be a yearly [or earth-related] effect on the sunspot number, because the count depends on the seeing, which depends on the weather, etc. Not, that there is a large effect, but it is not impossible at all.
For an estimate of subcycle intensity see http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/SC17-SC23.gif (blue line, amplitude x 2, pp about 30 which is about 20% of solar max for SC17, in SC23 caused prominent dip or a double max of even greater magnitude).
Also visible in magnetograph http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/Field.gif
I don’t think we communicate at all.
Agreed.
Leif Svalgaard (14:03:51) :
vukcevic (13:54:41) :
“but associated electromagnetic field inside the wire propagates at ‘near’ speed of light and would ‘instantly’ reflect change in a load onto the generator”..
I don’t think we communicate at all. There cannot be any electric or magnetic feedback traveling upwind. The solar wind plasma acts as a Faraday cage. It is like the Sun in surrounded by a copper sphere, except that the shielding is even better
Do you know what a Faraday cage is?.
Leif Svalgaard (08:12:43) :
In that case the tides would be twice as high
Ok…see your point, and the fact that the Sun is not a solid body would also make no difference because of the standard tidal gravitation force acting, meaning that matter/plasma would not be drawn through the centre of the Sun if we go by fig. 5 at wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_force
So for 2 or more bodies rotating around the Sun, to get a tidal effect it would need to be a neap tide alignment vs a spring tide alignment. Desmoulins study does seem to favour “spring tide” alignments if i understand it and only looks at alignments within 15 deg…so we have sunspot peaks lining up with both J+E+V+Sun and J+V+Sun and E opposing (the strongest tidal effect witnessed in both line ups as you say) and as the sysygy moves to the “neap tide” positions the resonance and weaker sunspot activity occur. I had it wrong thinking the 2 sysygies created the resonance where actually its between those sysygies that the weakened beat happens, thanks for setting me straight. Hung takes a different view and looks at alignments that can include up to 90 deg but get a lower ranking.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (21:34:01) :
lining up with both J+E+V+Sun and J+V+Sun and E opposing
and with V opposing and with J opposing and with M opposing and not opposing, etc. Lots of extra peaks, all equally strong, so you have many constellations to cherry pick from and can match anything. As I said, this is pseudo-science at its finest.
Leif Svalgaard (18:58:13) :
Do you know what a Faraday cage is?.
Ah, that brings memories. It is thanks to that wire contraption, rather then my and mine colleagues practical skills, that no one got electrocuted while as young students some 40+ years ago, we were reproducing (Nicola) Tesla’s coil experiment, in a basement under a lecture theatre, were some years earlier Milutin Milankovic conduncted his classes.
As fate would have it, some time after, for many a year, at a lunch break, I would stroll to north side of the Waterloo bridge, down to Savoy place, walk into that small unassuming but elegant red brick building
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Michael_Faraday_statue_AB.jpg/400px-
where many of the Faraday exhibits were kept, as well as the occasional IEE society (being member of) lectures were held.
I was somewhat disappointed that you did not found some time to take look at http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/ solar subcycle link. Perhaps in the New Year, for which I wish you (and your family) all the best.
Leif Svalgaard (22:29:50) :
and with V opposing and with J opposing and with M opposing and not opposing, etc. Lots of extra peaks, all equally strong, so you have many constellations to cherry pick from and can match anything. As I said, this is pseudo-science at its finest.
Not that many really…only 3 planets are capable, but it still stands as a very plausible theory which you have been unable to debunk. Hung is very open to feedback on his paper, why dont you send him a paper on your thoughts?
vukcevic (03:27:29) :
“Do you know what a Faraday cage is?.”
Ah, that brings memories. It is thanks to that wire contraption, rather then my and mine colleagues practical skills, that no one got electrocuted while as young students some 40+ years ago, we were reproducing (Nicola) Tesla’s coil experiment, in a basement under a lecture theatre, were some years earlier Milutin Milankovic conduncted his classes.
The solar wind is a Faraday cage. Its conductivity is higher than copper.
REPLY: We all (well most of us) drive Faraday cages, which is why the safest place to be during a lightning storm is your car, tornadoes are another matter, ditch the car for a ditch or culvert. – Anthony
Thanks for the advice Anthony. Long before Faraday, selected few (in Europe at least) had their own personal ‘made to measure’.
http://wemma.org.uk/img/HRVIIIArmour.jpg
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (04:03:14) :
Not that many really…only 3 planets are capable,
4 planets. The combinations are [Xo means planet X opposing]
S+J+V+M+E
S+J+V+M+Eo
S+J+V+Mo+E
S+J+V+Mo+Eo
S+J+Vo+M+E
S+J+Vo+M+Eo
S+J+Vo+Mo+E
S+J+Vo+Mo+Eo
S+Jo+V+M+E
S+Jo+V+M+Eo
S+Jo+V+Mo+E
S+Jo+V+Mo+Eo
S+Jo+Vo+M+E
S+Jo+Vo+M+Eo
S+Jo+Vo+Mo+E
S+Jo+Vo+Mo+Eo
all of these will have the same effect. The theory is automatically debunked [i.e. no further debunking needed] if one has to cherry pick just one or two combinations and give no reason why those have effect and the rest not. If you want to argue that M and Mo should be excluded, we are still left with
S+J+V+E
S+J+V+Eo
S+J+Vo+E
S+J+Vo+Eo
S+Jo+V+E
S+Jo+V+Eo
S+Jo+Vo+E
S+Jo+Vo+Eo
Since M and Mo are as strong as E and Eo on average and as strong as V and Vo near perihelion of M, it seems hard to exclude M and Mo. In addition, there is no justification for using V for even cycles and Vo for odd cycles [except that it ‘fits better’, which is not physical]. It should be clear that no further debunking is needed.
But there is more. Consider a system containing only S and J, then J will cause a constant tide on S at all times, just like the tides caused by the Moon on the Earth are always there. This will clearly not cause a solar cycle as the tide is always present and does not vary with a 11.86 year period [we ignore the small eccentricity of Jupiter’s orbit]. So, the solar cycle is NOT caused by Jupiter. And Jupiter’s ever-present tide can thus be ignored. This is an important point, so I would like you to acknowledge that you have understood that. To repeat: if Jupiter were the only planet, there would be no solar cycle if solar cycles are caused by planetary tides. Agree?
The next-largest tides are caused by Venus. The neap tides with respect to Jupiter [at +/-90 degrees] will occur every 112 days, so there should be a 122 day cycle. The 10 extra days is because Jupiter has moved a bit during the 112 days a half-orbit of Venus takes. Still no solar cycle. And so on with all the other alignments. It doesn’t matter when the other planets align with Jupiter, because Jupiter’s tide is always there, and the Sun rotates so fast [27 days] compared to planetary movements that the tidal bulge sweeps over the Sun many times, e.g. 13 times per year, or 159 times during a Jovian year.
So, a planet aligning with Jupiter does not cause the solar cycle either: Venus does that more than 30 times during a normal 11-year solar cycle. Your ‘plausible’ theory now posits that in spite of the constant 48 mm Jupiter tide, and the 46 mm Venus tide [hitting ~30 times per cycle] having no effect on the cycle, the 21 mm Earth tide [when it coincides with the non-effective 48+46 mm J+V tides] is the one causing the solar cycle, regardless of the fact that the 41 mm Mercury-perihelion tide has no effect.
Debunking is easy.
Leif Svalgaard (08:20:52) :
The solar wind is a Faraday cage. Its conductivity is higher than copper.
Since the solar wind is a Faraday cage, external electric and changing magnetic fields propagating at ‘near’ light speed can have no effect on the Sun. The only way you can maintain currents in space is to have bodily transfer of particles, and that is hard to do upwind.
Leif Svalgaard (10:21:43) :
So, a planet aligning with Jupiter does not cause the solar cycle either: Venus does that more than 30 times during a normal 11-year solar cycle. Your ‘plausible’ theory now posits that in spite of the constant 48 mm Jupiter tide, and the 46 mm Venus tide [hitting ~30 times per cycle] having no effect on the cycle, the 21 mm Earth tide [when it coincides with the non-effective 48+46 mm J+V tides] is the one causing the solar cycle, regardless of the fact that the 41 mm Mercury-perihelion tide has no effect.
Debunking is easy.
Readers will have noted my typos here: 48 mm should be 0.48 mm, etc, making the whole thing even more doubtful.
Leif Svalgaard (08:20:52) :
The solar wind is a Faraday cage. Its conductivity is higher than copper…….It is like the Sun in surrounded by a copper sphere, except that the shielding is even better.
I do not doubt you are correct. However
……..NASA is starting work on a mission called Solar Probe Plus that will plunge deeply into the sun’s atmosphere. For its finale, Solar Probe Plus should be in position to witness how the sun energizes the most dangerous particles produced in solar storms just at the peak of the sun’s stormy season.
As far as I understand it, the above the Probe will be ‘upwind’ at least at the critical time of next max, does this make radio communications questionable?
Correction
Leif Svalgaard (08:20:52) :
The solar wind is a Faraday cage. Its conductivity is higher than copper….It is like the Sun in surrounded by a copper sphere, except that the shielding is even better.
I do not doubt you are correct. However
……..NASA is starting work on a mission called Solar Probe Plus that will plunge deeply into the sun’s atmosphere. For its finale, Solar Probe Plus should be in position to witness how the sun energizes the most dangerous particles produced in solar storms just at the peak of the sun’s stormy season.
As far as I understand it, the Probe will be ‘upwind’ at least at the critical time of next max, does this make radio communications questionable?
vukcevic (14:17:25) :
does this make radio communications questionable?
No [even though if you get too close to the Sun, the signal is lost in the corona], but I don’t think you were talking about electromagnetic waves [like light and radio waves]. I read things about ‘magnetic loops’ and electric phenomena. So if Jupiter is a source of light, heat, microwaves, and other electromagnetic radiation, all of these will get through, but these would not need to rely on magnetic connection via ‘loops’ or reconnection. To be honest, it is hard to figure out what you claim because you are just too vague. Now, light is another matter, so if you are asserting that Jupiter shines light on the Sun, those rays will, of course reach the upper atmosphere of the Sun. Microwaves and radio waves will also get through, but the energy that they carry is minuscule. I’m reminded of the old anecdote that the total energy of ALL the radio waves and microwaves that have EVER been intercepted by ALL our radio telescopes in ALL the time since observations began, together is less than the kinetic energy of a single falling snow flake.
Because the solar wind is a Faraday cage it has been impossible to observe the interstellar medium, except for the neutral particles and dust. So, if Jupiter sends out Jovian dust, that will get through.
Leif Svalgaard (10:21:43) :
Debunking is easy.
First of all have you read Hung and Desmoulins work I refer to?
Way too many options there, we have already discussed why Mercury is not an option and its about “most aligned” days so we have to align with one of the planets so lets start with J. That leaves us.
S+J+V+E
S+J+V+Eo
S+J+Vo+E
S+J+Vo+Eo
A long way from being debunked.
In addition, there is no justification for using V for even cycles and Vo for odd cycles [except that it ‘fits better’, which is not physical]
The justification is that when the results from testing most aligned days is in, that is what appears, at least in Desmoulins work.
To repeat: if Jupiter were the only planet, there would be no solar cycle if solar cycles are caused by planetary tides. Agree?
You choose to ignore the perihelion etc, I wouldnt do that in your hypothetical scenario as its still a resonance (very weak) that may have an effect which cant be ruled out. If we ignore elliptical orbits we would end up with two 1mm tides taking roughly 27 days at equator to complete 1 circuit.
Your ‘plausible’ theory
Its not my theory, Its Hung’s and Desmoulins and by your statements you dont seem to have read them as your not understanding “most aligned days”. If you think you are debunking the theory lets see your reply to Hung.
http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/Citations.aspx?id=330
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (16:03:49) :
First of all have you read Hung and Desmoulins work I refer to?
Yes, and I’m not impressed.
That leaves us.
S+J+V+E
S+J+V+Eo
S+J+Vo+E
S+J+Vo+Eo
which is still twice as many as used. No explanation for why.
The justification is that when the results from testing most aligned days is in, that is what appears, at least in Desmoulins work.
That is the unphysical ad-hoc justification, namely that that is required to make it work, with no explanation for why.
You choose to ignore the perihelion etc, I wouldnt do that in your hypothetical scenario as its still a resonance (very weak) that may have an effect which cant be ruled out. If we ignore elliptical orbits we would end up with two 1mm tides taking roughly 27 days at equator to complete 1 circuit.
two tides 0.48 mm which are ALWAYS there. So, now you are invoking the ellipticity of Jupiter’s orbit. The tides at perihelion are 0.55 mm and at aphelion 0.41 mm. If you want to ascribe the effect to that, then you should only use syzygies near Jupiter perihelion and the the whole scheme falls apart [which one(s), if any, in your list was at Jupiter perihelion?]. So, you agree that if Jupiter’s orbit was circular there would not be a solar cycle caused by Jupiter?
And you ignore the fact that Venus aligns with Jupiter more than 30 times per cycle.
your not understanding “most aligned days”.
Because it doesn’t make any sense. [it seems that Hung didn’t get it either, see below – did you see that when you read his paper? if yes, why gloss over it? if no, perhaps more care is in order…]
Its not my theory
sounding a bit wussy, perhaps…
If you think you are debunking the theory lets see your reply to Hung.
First, Hung includes Mercury in his alignments. Perhaps he didn’t understand the ‘most aligned days’ either…
In fact, there are 6 cases involving M and only 4 involving J. Several of his cases are not independent as they have occurred in the same active region. This invalidates his statistics. If I were a referee, I would not have recommended publication. And, BTW, it was never published, except as a ‘technical report’.
Second, if the tidal effects are so effective on the largest flares, they should be even more effective on the smaller flares of which there are thousands. People [including myself] that study flare distributions have not found any clear preferences in the occurrences of smaller flares. There may be a very small tendency for a 154-day period, but even that is not generally accepted. Hung also does not take the perihelion only effect into account, so why should I?
that may have an effect which cant be ruled out
You can’t use ‘may’ and ‘cant’ that way. If it only ‘may’ have an effect, then it ‘may not’ as well, and if it ‘may not’ then it is ruled out.
Clearly, you are in possession of at least a certain amount of critical thought, so it is a [sad] mystery that you have been taken in by the nonsense of the tidal theories, but, hey, there is one born every minute 🙂 right?
Leif Svalgaard (18:00:47) :
Most of your comments dont justify a reply. If its such nonsense I challenge you to reply to Hung.
I and hope your not as rude to him.
merry xmas.
Leif. Forget the 11 yr cycle, there are much bigger things in the wind. I have done some more research this weekend with a major break through. You need to read my report again (remember its wok in progress)
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/58
I have also sent Dr. Hathaway an email, hoping he reads it.
Leif. Forget the 11 yr cycle, there are much bigger things in the wind. I have done some more research this weekend with a major break through. You need to read my report again (remember its work in progress)
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/58
I have also sent Dr. Hathaway an email, hoping he reads it.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (15:23:09) :
Leif. Forget the 11 yr cycle
Does this mean that you have given up on the tides and are now the angular momentum wagon?
Leif Svalgaard (16:03:58) :
Does this mean that you have given up on the tides and are now the angular momentum wagon?
Certainly not, but do think there are more important cycles. Neptune & Uranus
not only control Solar Grand Minima but also the modulation of each cycle…its been staring me in the face…its follows a pattern especially before a grand minimum or episode like SC20..its always a gradual build up of cycle strength which is caused by N+U giving strength(and weakness) as they come together.
Neptune & Uranus perhaps control rotational speed of the sun, which is affected by the Angular Momentum of the Jovian Planets. Neptune and Uranus are the controllers of the 2 main drivers creating Angular Momentum, as simple as that, the sunspot cycles curve follows that control, they can add or take away that Momentum. I need now to prove this with Solar rotational data if I can find it somewhere.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (17:00:06) :
Neptune & Uranus perhaps control rotational speed of the sun
Sigh…
Solar rotational data if I can find it somewhere.
http://www.leif.org/research/ast10867.pdf
might give you some pointers. Or you can read off the values from the graph. I think I have steered you there before, and you wanted data from yesterday to investigate a 179 year cycle…
Leif Svalgaard (16:03:58) :
If its not rotation speed it will be something else affecting polar strength….it ties in with your theories but now gives a chance at predicting the polar strength for any future cycle instead of relying on a random number generator.
Leif Svalgaard (16:03:58) :
This should be easy to graph….there is a range of angular momentum from 0 – 4.500E+47 (whatever that is). Pick a centre point of 2.2500E+47 and weight each result away from that centre point (0 is as strong as 4.500e+47). Plot that against a sunspot cycle chart and watch the match up remembering to allow some lag time (maybe 5 yrs) for the Sun to get up or down to speed.
Leif Svalgaard (16:03:58) :
And to make it real nice we could add a weighting factor to the calculated momentum figure to allow for major changes in speed/polarity (wind up/wind down inertia factor) say: if a cycle drops or increases by more than 50% from the previous cycle, add or subtract that percentage from the next cycle and half of that again added to the next cycle…I have done some rough stuff on paper and it looks to align perfectly for the last 10 cycles.
Why do Mars/Earth syzygies have such a warming effect?, I made a forecast of heavy snow falls through this December, http://co2sceptics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=85&start=20 knowing that the temperature uplift from this alignment (Dec 5th) after a cold period would bring high levels of precipitation, and this is why the Arctic ice halted too. Gravity cannot be the answer.
Leif Svalgaard (16:03:58) :
Ok here’s the graph with sunspot peaks matched with momentum. No allowance made for inertia or grand minima effects (history shows the cycles stay low for 2 cycles regardless of momentum after minima event).
http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/ultimate_graph2.jpg
Leif Svalgaard (17:59:06) :
http://www.leif.org/research/ast10867.pdf
might give you some pointers. Or you can read off the values from the graph. I think I have steered you there before, and you wanted data from yesterday to investigate a 179 year cycle…
I am looking for a graph that shows me the change in rotation rate of the sun over 200 yrs so I can match it against the angular momentum vs SSN graph I just posted. Ang mom and SSN already line up so if rotational rates also follow the same pattern I bet solar polar strength graphs would do the same…tying the whole lot up…that would make it beyond doubt.
If its only availble for the last 40 yrs I am sure that would still be enough to show a match…esp with 1970 and now in the mix.
That paper you referred concludes that a slower rotation rate increases activity…slow down/speed up probably doesnt make a diference in the grand scheme, as long as we identify a slowing of activity. Whether more angular momentum speeds up or slows down the rotation rate is guest work on my part.
I could theorize that more angular momentum puts more resistance on the Sun thereby slowing the rotation rate which increases solar activity.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (23:20:15) :
I am looking for a graph that shows me the change in rotation rate of the sun over 200 yrs
The data does not exist for 200 years. The best we can do is the graph [Figure 1] in the paper that shows the rotation rate for each year since 1878. There are only a few sporadic measurements before that.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (23:20:15) :
That paper you referred concludes that a slower rotation rate increases activity…
You have cause and effect backwards. Increasing activity causes a slower rotation. This is because the interior of the Sun [apart from the polar regions] rotates slower than the surface, and solar magnetic fields connect the interior with the surface leading to a drag on the surface slowing it down.
More on solar rotation 1915-1975:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008AGUFMSH13A1503B
Leif Svalgaard (08:52:15) :
Thanks Leif, I dont think I am going to find what I am looking for in this area. Plus there is quite a few options: equatorial, differential, internal etc…I would need to get all 3 at min to determine a change I think.
BTW I have updated the momentum graph showing 1700-2070 with predictions.
http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/ultimate_graph2.jpg
Here’s a graph I made that Leif might be interested in….a SSB torque from 1740-2070.
Amazing likeness to the WSO solar pole strength graphs. 1790, 1830, 1860, 1970 and 2010 of most interest. Torque is neutral when polar strength is weakest?
http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/ssbtorque1740-2070.jpg
Just for the record, Piers Corbyn lost his bet on the UK having a white Christmas this year.
Is that light flare a spot coming up there?
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/eit_284/512/
the_Butcher (05:32:53) :
Is that light flare a spot coming up there?
It is a region of enhanced magnetic field. There may be a spot in it, but not necessarily. http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html shows no spot yet.