The NOAA Space Weather Prediction center updated their plots of solar indices earlier today, on January 3rd. With the exception of a slight increase in the 107 centimeter radio flux, there appears to be even less signs of solar activity. Sunspots are still not following either of the two predictive curves, and it appears that the solar dynamo continues to slumber, perhaps even winding down further. Of particular note, the last graph below (click the read more link to see it) showing the Average Planetary Index (Ap) is troubling. I thought there would be an uptick by now, due to expectations of some sign of cycle 24 starting up, but instead it continues to drop.
Meanwhile, the Oulu Neutron Monitor shows a significant up trend, reaching levels not seen in over 30 years. According to an email I received from Dr. David Archibald, GCR flux has indeed increased:
Oulu Neutron Monitor Data, plotted by David Archibald with prediction point added. Data source: University of Oulu, Finland
Svensmark is watching this closely I’m sure.
Looking at the SWPC graph below, it appears that we are in uncharted territory now, since the both the high and low cycle 24 predictions (in red) appear to be falsified for the current time frame. No new cycle 24 predictions have been issued by any solar group (that I am aware of ) in the last couple of months. The last time NASA made a change was in October 08. The question now seems to be, are we seeing the beginning of a cycle skip, or a grand minima? Or is this just an extraordinary delay for cycle 24 ?
Solar cycle 24: where are you?
h/t to Russ Steele
David Hathaway from Nasa’s NSSTC gave a pitch in early December, including the 2 Flux transport model: high (175) and low (75) predictions. Also mentioned Geomagnetic (135) and Polar Field Strength (75) predictions.
http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/RHESSI/napa2008/talks/MonI_Hathaway.pdf
Significant to me is his closing statement:
“Cycle 24 may help to distinguish between these models. We should know by the end of 2010.”
Refreshing that, unlike the climate modelers, this NASA scientist recognizes his models’ limitations.
Anne
Dave (06:53:14) :
This is the Joe Bastardi (accuweather.com) view of the Russian warmth.
IN the multiyear sense, its the warmth of the north atlantic and north pacific, which is a well known factor as it was back in the 30s-40s and 50s
shorter term same blocking that is sending the brutal cold to our side
Vin Suprynowicz covers the Polar Ice Cap alarmists alarmism.
—————————————————————————-
‘Greenland and the polar ice cap are melting’Commentary
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/37058614.html
Yes, the mechanism of global warming is well-established. It’s primarily solar, and has nothing to do with the tiny amount of “greenhouse gas” mankind produces.
What’s not well-established is any ability to predict whether the globe will be warmer or cooler in three years, let alone 30 or 300.
It’s all about seizing control of (and eviscerating) the economic advantages of the Western nations…if the alleged problem were simply and cheaply solved, how could they get any traction for their real Luddite agenda?
Solar, windmills and geothermal are vastly more expensive (poverty-inducing) and environmentally hazardous (when you consider the backup battery farms and transmission lines they’ll require) than anything we’ve got now. They’re tax-devouring make-work scams.
Only collectivists consider they have any moral right to criticize the “profligacy” of those who create enough wealth to use whatever they can buy on the free market, in any way they choose, whether it be “energy,” land or long underwear. Collectivists are would-be thieves. They simply lack the courage to pull out a gun and deprive the “profligate fat cats” of their wealth directly — they prefer to hire bully-boys in government uniforms to do the job for them, under the sanctified cloak of “shared sacrifice.”
If the greens choose to use less energy, God bless them. Let them go squat around some jungle fire in loincloths, eating half-cooked monkey meat. But somehow, this prospect does not appear to please them. Somehow, they will be happy only if they can impose energy-deficient poverty on me.
DR.M.A. Rose (06:11:04) asked :
“Looking at David Archibalds graph of Oulu Neutron Monioring, are there any records of precipitation that can be correlated to it?”
You might want to check out this paper on clouds and cosmic rays by Harrison and Stephenson:
Empirical evidence for a nonlinear effect of galactic cosmic rays on clouds
http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/77543w3q4mq86417/fulltext.pdf
They found, for example, a 19% increase in overcast days when there was a high cosmic ray flux (above 360,000 neutron counts per hour). A increase in low clouds would increase albedo.
Has the old adage of climate change come true? Has the nether place frozen over?
From the Huffington Post?
————————————————————-
Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-ambler/mr-gore-apology-accepted_b_154982.html
You are probably wondering whether President-elect Obama owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming. The answer is, not yet. There is one person, however, who does. You have probably guessed his name: Al Gore.
Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that “the science is in.” Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.
REPLY: We covered that story here, see the next post down. – Anthony
On Siberia, remember it is enormous. Russia and perhaps western Siberia have been unusually warm, but in the East temperatures plummeted during December, almost as low as -60C (-90F), which I understand to be a thirty year event. Similarly extreme cold has been affecting Alaska, as low as -50F.
It will be interesting to see how all this averages out, with the usual reservations about the quality of observation that Anthony has worked so hard to highlight.
lgl (05:29:49) :
If you are right then this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg
is wrong.
Thanks for the note. Well spotted, my numbers are from NASA
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?old=200112065794
as quoted
Oort Minimum (1010-1050)
Wolf Minimum (1280-1340)
Spoerer Minimum (1420-1530)
Perhaps someone should edit Wikipedia
BOINC! BOINC! You are allowed.
————————————————–
Your Idle Computer Could Help Calculate Global Warming
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=your-idle-computer-could-help
Climateprediction.net allows researchers to parcel out simulations to computers that are online but not being used to full capacity
In reference to sea levels. They have always risen and fallen through out history. The exact mechanisms for it are complex and there is no one single answer.
Back in the past oceanographers knew that sea levels rose and fell but assumed land stayed at a constant level so they used the land levels to figure out what ancient sea levels where. Geologists knew that land rose and fell in elevation and assumed that sea level was constant so used sea level as a measure of land rise and fall. Of course you can see where this is going. Since neither is a constant neither is a good marker for tracking.
It looks like climatologists are back about a hundred years in that they assume land levels are constant and only the sea rises and falls. It seems to be much the same mistake that was made with CO2. The reality is what is going on is much more complex than that and no one single thing is the answer. Given that temperatures have fallen over the last 10 years you would logically assume that sea level was going back down.
After all the contention is that rising temperatures causes sea levels to rise. So the reverse would logically happen if temperatures fell.
One last thought on this. Melting sea ice is not going to cause the sea levels to rise or fall. As an actual test of this you can do at home take a clear glass of water and put 1 or 2 ice cubes in it. Note the level of the water. Now wait for the ice to melt. You should note that the water level doesn’t change.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (05:54:48) :
All the signs are pointing to grand minimum….maybe the last for a very long time, It looks like after this grand minimum we will enter a true modern maximum like the medieval warm period, which had no grand minima for over 200 years. IF it does happen I expect many of the solar cycle predictors taking up a new line of work.
Geoff, If my equation
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/GrandMinima.gif
has anything to do with reality you could be right. One interesting aspect on the graph is that a block of two GM (separated by 120yrs) is followed by 250yrs free block. I hope most of us are around to witness the next GM (if it is coming?) around 2030-40.
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/combined.gif
There are many sceptics (their views I do respect), but these equations say, “this is too much to be a coincidence”.
My motto: ‘the nature is adverse to a coincidence, it is ruled by a cause and the consequence’.
I believe Solar Cycle 24 is submerging according to the ideas presented in this paper:
LONG-TERM SOLAR CYCLE EVOLUTION: REVIEW OF RECENT
DEVELOPMENTS
I. G. USOSKIN and K. MURSULA
And it’s following in the same pattern as I have laid out in this page:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin.htm
If ANYONE can tell me why I should not expect SC24 to follow in the footsteps
of SC5 as I have laid out in the graph on that page, I would really like to hear all about it.
Seriously, all you learned science people out there.
Tell me why I am wrong.
“All the signs are pointing to grand minimum”
I would say it would be premature to reach that conclusion. Notice that Hathaway left many caveats in his presentation and that is probably prudent and I agree with his assessment that “we will know by the end of 2010” which is still some time off.
About the Oulu GCR counts:
Here is the count from another polar station [Sanae in Antarctica]:
http://www.puk.ac.za/opencms/export/PUK/html/fakulteite/natuur/nm_data/data/sanaenm_e.html
If anything a decrease.
The station with the least influence of the Earth’s field is Thule almost right at the northern magnetic pole
Thule data can be found here:
http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/~pyle/bri_table.html
and a graph here: http://www.leif.org/research/thule-cosmic-rays.png
Some numbers for Thule:
1965 1 4674
1965 2 4652
1965 3 4668
1965 4 4700
1965 5 4703 <=== max
1965 6 4663
1965 7 4642
1965 8 4635
1965 9 4625
1965 10 4647
1965 11 4675
1965 12 4674
and
2008 1 4566
2008 2 4561
2008 3 4544
2008 4 4542
2008 5 4553
2008 6 4554
2008 7 4570
2008 8 4594
2008 9 4622
2008 10 4630
2008 11 4645 <=== max
2008 12 4641 [estimate]
not up to 1965 levels
There are even indications that the primary cosmic ray intensity may be decreasing:
http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/reprints/2007bieber.pdf
That link also contains a good discussion of all the factors involved in long-term cosmic ray assessment.
And BTW, Oulu counts have stopped increasing:
2008 Jan 6592
2008 Feb 6576
2008 Mar 6577
2008 Apr 6586
2008 May 6578
2008 Jun 6582
2008 Jul 6598
2008 Aug 6636
2008 Sep 6658
2008 Oct 6678
2008 Nov 6704
2008 Dec 6702
I warn against based wide ranging conclusions on data from a single station. Long-term stability is hard to achieve. One really has to look at many stations. Luckily there are many stations: ftp://ftp.bartol.udel.edu/pyle/NMWorld.gif
and globally, GCRs are not at an all-time high, but just where they should be for an odd-even cycle transition. The only thing a bit out of the ordinary is that this minimum is ‘wider’ than the several previous ones and the sharp-peaked GCR curve is less sharp.
NOAA keeps track of many global indices, including the GCR neutron monitor count here http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/alerts/solar_indices.html
It stands today at 100.1% of ‘usual minimum value’
Reviewing the potential climate temperature scenarios. Temperatures get colder as you go down the list.
1) A cooling similar to that from 1945 to 1978.
2) A cooling similar to that of 1879 to 1916
3) A Dalton minimum type event
4) A Maunder minimum type event
In brief and not all inclusive statements this is how I see those potentials.
1] Due to the way Solar Cycle 24 is behaving and the state of the PDO and the ENSO I think we will be colder than the 1945 – 1978 cooling.
2] If Cycle 24 pans out to be a cycle of moderate or greater activity then the cooling may be similar to this period. However, I think we will be colder. Over one year ago I said that 2008 would be a year of historic numbers of spotless days. I have also stated that 24 will be very weak. Some predict an amplitude as low as 75. I feel that 40- 45 is more realistic.
3] Although not a certainty, a Dalton type event is more and more becoming the most likely scenario. It is uncanny how close the activity of Cycles 22 and 23 have mimicked Cycles 3 and 4 just prior to the Dalton. I currently feel the activity of Solar Cycle 24 will be much like that of Cycle 5.
4] The only way I see us coming close to a Maunder type event is if 24 comes as a total dud and and then Cycle 25 is almost totally inactive as well. Then we might come close to a Maunder type event but would be slightly warmer unless another influence (major volcanic eruption, etc) occurred during the same period.
Alan the Brit (05:37:40) I remember an article about the mammoths in Siberia, may have been NG, late 50s early 60s, perhaps. An expedition had found ‘fresh-frozen’ mammoths, that had apparently been frozen constantly for many thousands of years. If I remember correctly, they even ate some of the meat, I don’t recall if it was curiosity or low rations that led to that. The closest I could find on Google was National Geographic – Jun 1962, Vol. 121, No. 6 had an article on mammoths, but I don’t know if that is the article about the frozen mammoths.
Basil (06:32:55)
Leif’s got your dose of skepticism at 07:32:37, today, on the Ambler thread.
=========================================
Here’s a link to de Jager’s paper:
http://www.cdejager.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/solaractivandclimate-nethjgeosci.pdf
@TomT
Thank you for your remarks. I have gotton no data so I asked. The more so I read someone’s whining recently about rising sea levels and how pacific islands are sinking in the waters due to human induced CO2.
Sea level can be measured from satellites and this way it brings “absolute” data against the sea versus land (and vice versa) “relativism”.
I thought about land ice of course. 🙂 Melting floating ice does change nothing as far as water level is concerned.
Thanks, P2O2
Basil (06:32:55) :
I don’t really see a basis for how high DA is projected CRF to go, and if there is any pickup in SC24, then CRF probably peaked in November or December. But if SC24 continues to struggle out of the starting gate, all bets are off.
GCR [or CRF] modulation is not a big mystery. There is a fairly uniform [at least in our neighborhood] interstellar CRF. It is uniform because the galactic magnetic field scrambles and mixes the GCRs from many sources. What we measure cannot be higher than that. Solar modulation of the CRF happens mainly because of the scattering by ‘interaction regions’. These occur because solar wind with different speed [from coronal holes and CMEs] is emitted in the same direction [due to solar rotation] thereby catching up with slower wind emitted earlier [27 days ago] in that direction. The effect of this ‘catching up’ is a region of compressed and tangled magnetic field which is what scatters the GCRs. A cosmic ray coming in from afar will on average encounter ~50 of these regions before reaching us and thus has a good chance of being scattered. That number [50] varies with the solar cycle: it is much larger due to random CMEs near solar maximum.
The CRF was recovering through 2007 until about October. Then [actually a bit before, but there is a delay in getting this through the heliosphere] a significant coronal hole developed causing solar wind near the solar equator to be emitted alternatively at 350 km/s and 700 km/s for the next several months. The effect of that is a clear 27-recurrent pattern in the modulation that you can see so clearly in the CRF data. The modulation ‘takes away’ GCRs so it shows as a series of dips. the upper envelope of the dips is modulated less and shows the ‘real’ flux. When the coronal holes and high-speed streams abated this fall, the modulation went away and we are back to the ‘normal’ minimum flux. The story is that there are [rather well-understood] reasons for the variation of the CRF and that the observed variation is not uncharted territory. As we can’t have less modulation than no modulation, there is no physical basis for a future, significant increase of the CRF. And, indeed, the monthly mean CRF has already starting its decline commensurate with a [statistical] solar minimum sometime last summer [August perhaps].
Anthony. I see the comments of “would it have been seen 100 years ago” and what not. I got a strange idea? How about when these tiny-tims are found why not “use” the old ways and try to image it?
I do not pretend to know how difficult this would be but it would be a interesting experiment I think. It would lead to a greater understanding of the maunder minimum I think no?
During the 1990s, temperatures rose quickly and people were quick to explain that as proof that CO2 was causing global warming. During the current period, temperatures are falling and people are quick to associate that with sunspots.
Both temperature trends were more likely due to ocean patterns. Be careful not to make the same mistakes, in reverse.
Lee Kington (10:36:22) :
Temperatures get colder as you go down the list.
1) A cooling similar to that from 1945 to 1978.
2) A cooling similar to that of 1879 to 1916
3) A Dalton minimum type event
We don’t have good temperature records for the ‘Dalton minimum’, but what we have [Central England, Ireland, Central Europe] shows that the time of the Dalton minimum was a time with generally higher temperatures than the 30 years on either side of the ‘minimum’. Even if about a decade was hit with cold due to large volcanic activity [Mayon, Tambora, …]. Without the volcanoes, the Dalton minimum would have been significantly warmer. So, the ‘folklore’ about minimal solar activity and low temperatures doesn’t hold up very well. The really cold period during the 1900th century came in the 1840s and 1850s when solar activity was up to levels typical of the past 20 years.
Many climate alarmists seem to claim that cosmic rays have no trend and thus cannot explaining climate change. The measurements show that cosmic ray intensities indeed have changed. From 1960’s to 1990’s there was a decrease. And global warming. Thereafter more cosmic rays have reached our atmosphere. And there has not been much global warming. How long will they be able to ignore the fact that the combination Sun+cosmic rays have a large impact on our climate?
Leif (10:25:50)
What’d I tell you about the shape of the peak of cosmic rays? Or did I tell you that about the solar sourced ones?
==================================
“We will know by 2010”
How is that any different that “We will know by 2009” or
“We will know by 2008”.
If, after 2-1/2 years of this, the general idea has not sunk in, it never will.
Like a gambler at the slots or the craps table, it’s the next handle pull or toss of the dice will be decisive.
It never comes, the control of the game is external.
And that is the only thing you will know by 2010.
Cycle 24 is an avalanche victim.