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
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Dave,
think of the arctic ice cap as a bowl of ice cubes with slush surrounding it. Although at times it DOES freeze into large slabs, the movement of the wind and ocean tends to crack all but the thickest sections.
Remember, the area-extent difference is based on the fact that there is unfrozen area between chunks. When NASA says the wind is changing the size, they mean that the chunks are being pushed together and the slush is being pushed against/between the chunks. This will probably result, as previously mentioned, in a thicker, more melt resistant cap.
len (15:34:49) :
“… every time I go through this discertation it tightens up a bit :D”
Don’t forget to run the spellcheck….
Somebody asked for the direction of a new type of model for climate.
Let me talk with an example about chaos.
Take a lake, and there is wind over it. Waves rise. An observer in the lake or on the beach starts recording the wave variables: number of waves, height of waves, type of waves ( longitudinal or vertical) and depending on the conscientiousness, x,y,z,t
Can he make a model that will tell him the time the highest wave ( every seventh wave in some folklore, every thirteenth in another) will arrive, by using the well known differential equations of fluid dynamics and boundary conditions? The answer is NO. The reason is because there are more than one set of differential equations and their variables are coupled. It is a chaotic system, the way climate is. Oh, you can observe that the bigger the diameter of the lake , the larger the waves, the stronger the wind, the larger the waves, smaller waves follow a large wave etc etc. Man has a pattern recognizing machine in his head and will find patterns and correlations in any chaotic system. That does not mean that the patterns have predictive strength for the behavior of a particular wave. And it is a particular wave we are discussing here about the path of our realized climate.
All these, the ocean current oscillations, the sun variations ( yearly too) the storm variations, albedo, etc ….. are each an input with its own differential equations and variables all coupled and interconnected each pushing and pulling on the same variables to give what we observe as weather and climate.
Nevertheless, the very recent theory of chaos has made pathways in understanding and even predicting chaotic systems’ behaviors. In the ” Don Easterbrook’s AGU paper on potential global cooling 29 12 2008″ thread, I linked to a chaos related model by Tsonis et al.
Here are the links again
A. Tsonis et al have tried to model the climate with a neural network, the paper can be found here http://www.nosams.whoi.edu/PDFs/papers/tsonis-grl_newtheoryforclimateshifts.pdf
A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts
Anastasios A. Tsonis,1 Kyle Swanson,1 and Sergey Kravtsov1
Received 5 April 2007; revised 16 May 2007; accepted 15 June 2007; published 12 July 2007.
[1] We construct a network of observed climate indices in
the period 1900–2000 and investigate their collective
behavior. The results indicate that this network
synchronized several times in this period. We find that in
those cases where the synchronous state was followed by a
steady increase in the coupling strength between the indices,
the synchronous state was destroyed, after which a new
climate state emerged. These shifts are associated with
significant changes in global temperature trend and in
ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the
great climate shift of the 1970s. We also find the evidence
for such type of behavior in two climate simulations using a
state-of-the-art model. This is the first time that this
mechanism, which appears consistent with the theory of
synchronized chaos, is discovered in a physical system of
the size and complexity of the climate system.
Citation: Tsonis, A. A., K. Swanson, and S. Kravtsov (2007),
A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts, GeophysRes. Lett., 34, L13705, doi:10.1029/2007GL030288
They use “the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the North
Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the El Nin˜o/Southern Oscillation
(ENSO), and the North Pacific Oscillation (NPO)”
a discussion here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2223
and links here since the climate audit ones do not work
http://www.uwm.edu/~aatsonis/
A good exposition of the use of neural nets in climate is here:
http://www.uwm.edu/~aatsonis/BAMS_proofs.pdf
So IMHO this is one of the future modeling directions.
Another could be to try and make an analogue model of the climate, on the lines of the old time analogue computers: build a computer with coupled electronic modules each representing a specific differential equation. Those computers were orders of magnitude faster than digital in solving differential equations.
Thanks tallbloke,
I noticed that just as I hit ‘submit’ …
Thanks for noticing …
As I have shown on another thread http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/31/2008-ends-spotless-and-with-266-spotless-days-the-2-least-active-year-since-1900-portends-cooling/#comment-69293 any affect from volcanic eruptions is minor and short term. It seems ridiculous to suggest that periods of grand minima do not cause cooling, does that mean we right off the entire little ice age or simply put it down to volcanoes. Likewise do we ignore the last cooling period around SC20 (also caused by the same action that causes grand minima) where “scientists” were worried of the return of an ice age. And I suppose we are all dreaming that we are experiencing colder temperatures right now…some reality needs to be kept in check.
Robert Bateman wrote:
1st, the Sun expands during Minimum and drowns out the sunspots.
The the Earth starts cooling, contracting, the crust buckles under the strain and off pop the volcanoes, rubbing salt into the wounds.
Nice.
From what I’ve been able to uncover so far (noting that I am not a scientist, I’m a historian) is that the Plasma Universe model supports this very type of scenario. Our weather and many other factors of human life (volcanoes, earthquakes) are tied to the Earth’s magnetosphere interacting with the Sun’s. At least from a layman’s perspective its common sense. Kinda like how if the NYSE goes into the toilet, the Tokyo and UK stock market feel it.
I am fully convinced that there are those who will not learn a thing from this episode of sunspot dimming, due to the fact that they have closed thier minds of to the possibility that the very Star which warms our planet cannot possibly do anything to vary our climate.
I expect this sort of stuff from politicians.
Of course not since history teaches us that politicians are only interested, generally, in amassing more wealth and power for themselves. We’re little more than peasants to most of them and they ‘know better’.
Re MC, it is too complicated to explain without graphs. Try Loutre and Berger, 2000, “Future climate changes: Are we entering an exceptionally long interglacial?” They are loony warmers, but they give enough data for you to figure it out.
Of course Dr Svalgaard is right. The prospect of an ice age in some distant future is nothing to a warmer, whose head would be full of visions of oceans of boiling acid due next week. But I can come up with a scare story that might affect some of us alive at the moment, and you could try scaring your children with it. Rahmstorf 2003 noted that the Dansgaard-Oeschger events in the last glacial period came along at very regular intervals. As he noted: “like a precise clock”. That regular interval is 1,470 years. Each event would be a rapid warming followed by a gradual cooling. In the Holocene, there is a similar 1,470 year period called Bond events. But these are rapid cooling events, evidenced by ice rafting in the Atlantic. When was the last Bond event? It was 1,400 years ago during the Dark Ages. So, we have about seventy years to go, on average, for this normally precisely timed event to come along. All we can do is try to enjoy ourselves as much as possible in the meantime.
Leif:
Quoting single years or max and mins etc is not climate.
The fact is that we do not have good evidence that the DM was colder than the surrounding 30-year climate intervals.
Again with respect. You are correct that data from single years are not climate. I don’t know of anyone who would claim so. But then, neither is a decade, or three decades, or ten decades overly indicative of the overall climate and climate trends. As humans decades and centuries mentally mean something to us due to the fact or their relationship to our life span. In a geological sense they are, for the most part, meaningless. How can I say that?
I am not aware of any study that has indicated or proven that the climate has in the recent past reached or exceeded the Holocene Maximum. (Please feel free to correct me if I am in error.) Since that time the climate has warmed and cooled. The long term overall trend since the Maximum is cooling. No one has proven me wrong on that point.
If you remove most of the minor and medium level oscillations in temperature from the data a plot of each glacial period and interglacial shows that the Holocene is behaving exactly (close enough) as previous interglacials. Now we are talking about spans of geological time that have significant meaning.
Good evidence that the Dalton was warmer then periods just prior to and after the event? We apparently are not going to agree. To me it is not logical, nor is there solid evidence, that the climate will experience a warming during one or more weak solar cycles. Nor, sans a strong influence from elsewhere, can the earth experience cooling during a strong solar cycle. I know of no one who boils water by turning the burner off.
It appears to me, from your contributions elsewhere, that you have a tendency to discount the attending consequences of solar activity or lack of it. (I apologize if I have misinterpreted your statements.) Again with the logic; it does not seem to me that the climate system needs to be hyper-sensitive in order to react or reflect a change in solar input. It MUST react. A reduction in radiation means some level of cooling. Cooling means the atmosphere must shed H2O content. Increased precipitation means an increase in foliage, in some areas an increase in albedo (ice, snow, etc). All three (and not limited to) of them result in additional cooling. An increase in solar input generates the reverse.
I will hold to this….
We have a current negative PDO state and an AMO that will be neutral to negative at the end of Cycle 24? With the PDO negative the ENSO should be predominantly presenting a La Nina (additional cooling in the NH). If solar 24 and 25 are both weak (amplitudes of 40 – 70) the next positive PDO will be cooler than positive PDOs of the recent past. Warming after Solar 25 will be slow (minimal) and somewhat neutralized by a negative AMO.
I could be wrong. The exciting thing is that although I am getting long in the tooth… I should live to see most of what transpires. I believe that man, man’s science, is about to learn some valuable lessons. Again, I respect your opinion and accept the fact that you and I disagree. Time will soon determine a winner, a draw, or reveal a greater mystery.
Pi R not square, nor round, but rather….. digested.
Steven Hill (11:53:59) :
I am making a serious decision on if I should move South or not.
Gore says Florida will be underwater and others say were in for a extended cold period. Who is correct? Maybe nothing will happen?
Move to just north of Orlando. Highest spot in the state (about 200 feet). If Gore is right, you get beach 10 to 20 miles away. If we get a cold period, you have a nice home in a relatively warm place with beach 50 miles away. In both cases you have Disney World, Universal, and a host of other great things to live near!
Alex
Good evidence that the Dalton was warmer then periods just prior to and after the event?
The cooling was well under way long before the DM cyles began. There were other periods during the 19th century which were just as cool. What evidence is there that the climate during the DM is anything more than ‘internal oscillations’.
There might be one plausible argument for a DM cooling effect but so far – nobody ‘s made it.
Apology – I addressed the previous to ‘Alex’ when it shoud have been ‘Lee’.
Sorry about that.
David Archibald (01:34:29) :
“Rahmstorf 2003 noted that the Dansgaard-Oeschger events in the last glacial period came along at very regular intervals. As he noted: “like a precise clock”. That regular interval is 1,470 years. Each event would be a rapid warming followed by a gradual cooling. In the Holocene, there is a similar 1,470 year period called Bond events. But these are rapid cooling events, evidenced by ice rafting in the Atlantic. When was the last Bond event? It was 1,400 years ago during the Dark Ages. So, we have about seventy years to go, on average, for this normally precisely timed event to come along.”
Well, maybe not all that precisely timed:
“Bond et al. (1997) argue for a climate cyclicity close to 1470 ± 500 years in the North Atlantic region.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1500-year_climate_cycle
So it could have been coincident the Maunder Minimum – Little ice age as easily as a future event. Cycles with the sort of periodicity you are talking about are rarely “precisely timed”, because there are many shorter scale cycles which may be in or out of phase with them. if it did coincide with Maunder Minimum, this may help explain the extra depth and longevity of that minimum in comparison to the other minima which coincide with the 180 year Barycentric oscillation induced ‘retrograde sun’.
And yes if you think you can convince me that we can actually measure cloud cover; feel free to enlightn all of us.
As a guess: How about geosync orbit with a simple albedo variation metric? For the poles you could use one of those very elongated orbits used by high latitude spy sats; again with a whole world view albedo measure. I’m not sure how to tell snow from clouds though…
Keeping in mind that windmills are hazardous to birds, be wary of the unintended consequences of believing and contributing to the all-knowing environmental lobby groups.
Water vapour is the most important green house gas followed by methane. The third important greenhouse gas is CO2, and it does not correlate well with global warming or cooling either; in fact, CO2 in the atmosphere trails warming which is clear natural evidence for its well-studied inverse solubility in water: CO2 dissolves in cold water and bubbles out of warm water. The equilibrium in seawater is very high, making seawater a great ‘sink’; CO2 is 34 times more soluble in water than air is soluble in water.
Correlation is not causation to be sure. The causation has been studied, however, and while the radiation from the sun varies only in the fourth decimal place, the magnetism is awesome.
Using a box of air in a Copenhagen lab, physicists traced the growth of clusters of molecules of the kind that build cloud condensation nuclei. These are specks of sulphuric acid on which cloud droplets form. High-energy particles driven through the laboratory ceiling by exploded stars far away in the Galaxy – the cosmic rays – liberate electrons in the air, which help the molecular clusters to form much faster than climate scientists have modeled in the atmosphere. That may explain the link between cosmic rays, cloudiness and climate change.
As I understand it, the hypothesis of the Danish National Space Center goes as follows:
Quiet sun → reduced magnetic and thermal flux = reduced solar wind → geomagnetic shield drops → galactic cosmic ray flux → more low-level clouds and more snow → more albedo effect (more heat reflected) → colder climate
Active sun → enhanced magnetic and thermal flux = solar wind → geomagnetic shield response → less low-level clouds → less albedo (less heat reflected) → warmer climate
That is how the bulk of climate change might work, coupled with (modulated by) sunspot peak frequency there are cycles of global warming and cooling like waves in the ocean. When the waves are closely spaced, the planets warm; when the waves are spaced farther apart, the planets cool.
The ultimate cause of the solar magnetic cycle may be cyclicity in the Sun-Jupiter centre of gravity. We await more on that. In addition, although the post 60s warming period is over, it has allowed the principal green house gas, water vapour, to kick in with humidity, clouds, rain and snow depending on where you live to provide the negative feedback that scientists use to explain the existence of complex life on Earth for 550 million years. The planet heats and cools naturally and our gasses are the thermostat.
Check the web site of the Danish National Space Center.
Tallbloke, I can’t find the abstract right this minute but I know I read a paper by Rahmstorf which did an analysis which showed the 1470yr cycle had a peried accurate to 2%
TomT (09:58:24) says: “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.”
Ha, ha. I am a geologist and I have never heard of this. In geology there has always been the concept of relative sea level. “Relative” meaning with respect to the local dry land, recognizing that sea level at a certain location is a consequence of both local isostatic movement of the land (tectonic or glacial) and global eustatic sea level.
TomT says also: “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.”
Tom, This blog is a contender for the best science blog. Are you sure you have to explain all this?
Looks like the UK metoffice has laid down the gauntlet predicting 2009 to be one of the ‘warmest’ years on record. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20081230.html
I think this simply will not wash with the general public
Bob B (05:01:40) :
Tallbloke, I can’t find the abstract right this minute but I know I read a paper by Rahmstorf which did an analysis which showed the 1470yr cycle had a peried accurate to 2%
From the wiki page I linked:
* ≈1,400 BP (Bond event 1) — roughly correlates with the Migration Period Pessimum (450–900 AD)
* ≈2,800 BP (Bond event 2) — roughly correlates with the Iron Age Cold Epoch (900–300 BC)[9]
* ≈4,200 BP (Bond event 3) — correlates with the 4.2 kiloyear event
* ≈5,900 BP (Bond event 4) — correlates with the 5.9 kiloyear event
* ≈8,100 BP (Bond event 5) — correlates with the 8.2 kiloyear event
* ≈9,400 BP (Bond event 6) — correlates with the Erdalen event of glacier activity in Norway,[10] as well as with a cold event in China.[11]
* ≈10,300 BP (Bond event 7) — unnamed event
* ≈11,100 BP (Bond event 8) — coincides with the transition from the Younger Dryas to the boreal
I’m sure you don’t need me to do the maths to see that many of the intervals are way more than 2% different to 1400 years. Some as much as 60% different.
“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.”
Absolutely. I do not see Al Gore going without. and as for the climate protesters at various airports and coal power stations, many of them used old inefficient buses and some even flew to the protests. Just because they sit in their own filth at their protest camps, it doesn’t mean that they are green!
I am not forcing anyone to use more energy, They should not force me to use less.
It is time for some sanity, After all, only in “AGW world” can the massive increase in polar bear population get them put on the threatened species list!
It is time for some sanity, After all, only in “AGW world” can the massive increase in polar bear population get them put on the threatened species list!
::snicker::
Yea, nothing like bemoaning an apex predator becoming ‘extinct’. Wonder if those same people will try and reason with a polar bear to keep from being its lunch.
“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.”
Actually, land rises and falls every year seasonally. January/February it bulges at the south pole, then works its way across Indonesia in Spring and as the ice melts at the North Pole, the land actually rises as mass is transferred to the South Pole. Geoff Blewitt of the University of Nevada, Reno has shown using GPS that the crust of the Earth deforms seasonally. The exact amount of deformation would depend on the amount of mass transferred from North to South pole and where you are measuring the deformation. Deformation at high latitude tends to be in the Z axis and deformation at the equator in the X and Y axis with the surface being “pulled” toward the area of increased mass. This area would start at the pole in January/February, make its way quickly across South America to the Antarctic reaching maximum in in July/August and then continue moving across Indonesia back up to the Arctic again and basically rotates around the Earth as mass moves back and forth from pole to pole.
An increasing amount of ice difference between summer and winter would increase the amount of crustal deformation. You can read more about it here with registration or subscription:
A New Global Mode of Earth Deformation: Seasonal Cycle Detected.
I would imagine it would be quite different when we have maximum ice at the South pole and minimal ice in the Arctic as we had in 2007. In no case can one rely on a gauge sitting on the ground to measure sea height. You are going to get noise that is greater than the annual change in sea level from the normal seasonal crustal deformation as mass moves from one pole to the other over the course of the year.
http://www.physorg.com/news150397996.html
Volcanoes Cool The Tropics, Say Researchers
January 5th, 2009 in Space & Earth science / Earth Sciences
This is Mount Bromo, an active volcano in East Java, Indonesia. Credit: Paul Krusic, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Climate researchers have shown that big volcanic eruptions over the past 450 years have temporarily cooled weather in the tropics—but suggest that such effects may have been masked in the 20th century by rising global temperatures. Their paper, which shows that higher latitudes can be even more sensitive to volcanism, appears in the current issue of Nature Geoscience.
The history of British winters,
http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=other;type=winthist;sess=
The Little Ice Age in Europe,
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/little_ice_age.html
“” E.M.Smith (04:28:09) :
And yes if you think you can convince me that we can actually measure cloud cover; feel free to enlightn all of us.
As a guess: How about geosync orbit with a simple albedo variation metric? For the poles you could use one of those very elongated orbits used by high latitude spy sats; again with a whole world view albedo measure. I’m not sure how to tell snow from clouds though… “”
Well E.M., I evidently didn’t make my point very well. With any satellite , you cannot monitor 100 % of the earth surface 100% of the time, and clouds come and go at very fast rates compared to earth rotation.
Yes in principle a set of geosynchronous orbit satellites in appropriate orbits might see more of the globe simultaneously if not very accurately, particularly at the grazing incidence rims. Even polar orbit satellites have their limitations because of the 23 1/2 degree earth axis tilt. It is inherently impossible to maintain an orbit that constantly flies over both poles; well not impossible if you have a continously powered satellite that can change orbit constantly.
Likewise, geosynchronous orbits react to the earth’s CG, and not to its surface rotation (except as a perturbation) so they too must wander. But even if you can get good albedo readings, and as you say discriminate snow from clouds; how to you simultaneously monitor the transmission losses to the ground through such clouds, not being able to view the whole thing from under the clouds . All sky cameras have only limited coverage, lots of optical distortions to correct for.
It’s amazing that modellists can wax poetic about the feedback enhancement of CO2 absorption of IR but just don’t even think about the feedback mechanisms of changes on the sun, both small Solar constant variations (0.1%), and far more significant magnetic and cosmic ray interventions.
The cosmic ray influence on cloud formation is itself irrefutable; at least it is to any nuclear physicist who ever heard of the Wilson Cloud Chamber; and even bacteria can influence cloud seeding, as was found back East when individual water droplets from rain were foud to be contaminated with potentially harmful bacteria, that had multiplied inside a falling raindrop that the bacterium was probably responsible for nucleating.
Water will condense on any surface that is larger than zero size; but free water molecules absent a substrate, are reluctant to coalesce into droplets.
I’m not sure that that is related to the 2T/r excess internal pressure due to surface tension; but then I am not sure it isn’t either.