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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A very unfortunate name… 8^)
Tallbloke, this was the paper I was talking about:
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/rahmstorf_grl_2003.pdf
“An analysis of the GISP2 ice core
record from Greenland reveals that abrupt climate events
appear to be paced by a 1,470-year cycle with a period that
is probably stable to within a few percent;”
Leif,
What is the primary function and service of the solar cycle prediction panel? In other words, who, primarily, benefits from their predictions?
Are you on this panel?
Thanks,
Bill
(Also) Leif, WRT:
A graph from one of your papers demonstrates the characteristic of any two successive cycles to overlap (beginning of one with tail-end of the previous). I just wondered why 23 and 24 above are shown as non-overlapping. Are these data sketched in only after the fact?
L.Nettles, I liked your story “A birdwatcher who made a fruitless journey to Norway to see a rare snow bunting, returned home to Britain only to discover one of the species had landed on her garden fence.”
Not that uncommon. I know of a Norse solar physicist who turns up in Golden, Colorado every now and again.
About the mammoths: when very young (~50 yrs ago) I remember reading a hypothesis that was very compelling. A huge ‘bleb’ of superheated air and gas was pushed up to the top of the atmosphere, where it cooled and contracted. At some point, it ‘broke through’, and fell onto the surface in Siberia. It was super-cooled, and flash-froze the mammoths in mid-munch. Around the outer fringes of the fall site, out-flowing super-hurricane winds shredded the landscape, flora, and fauna. An example found was frozen pieces of sabre-tooth tiger, amidst a variety of other debris.
Dramatic imagery, anyway. And it covers a few major questions, like, “How DO you freeze a mammoth in a matter of a few seconds? So fast that the cells are unburst by large ice crystals (the ” Birdseye” effect)?”
Bill P (18:44:00) :
What is the primary function and service of the solar cycle prediction panel? In other words, who, primarily, benefits from their predictions?
Are you on this panel?
Yes, I’m on the panel. The primary reason for having a panel is to forecast the solar cycle for planning purposes for satellite orbits and shielding. A secondary reason [evil tongues claim it is the primary reason 🙂 ] is so that the insurance companies that insure satellites can base the premiums on a ‘government’ backed risk factor [the solar cycle strength] without the fear of being sued for setting premium too high. That is why the government [and the insurance lobbyists] wants a high solar cycle [=maximum risk=maximum premium].
A graph from one of your papers demonstrates the characteristic of any two successive cycles to overlap (beginning of one with tail-end of the previous). I just wondered why 23 and 24 above are shown as non-overlapping. Are these data sketched in only after
I’m not sure what you are referring to. My plot of the transition [page 4 of http://www.leif.org/research/Most%20Recent%20IMF,%20SW,%20and%20Solar%20Data.pdf ] clearly shows the overlap.
George E. Smith (15:54:35) :
“” 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.
Albedo is being measured, in interesting ways, copying the link from another thread
http://climatesci.org/2009/01/02/new-jgr-paper-inter-annual-variations-in-earths-reflectance-by-palle-et-al-2009/
“The overall reflectance of sunlight from Earth is a fundamental parameter for climate studies. Recently, measurements of earthshine were used to find large decadal variability in Earth’s reflectance of sunlight. However, the results did not seem consistent with contemporaneous independent albedo measurements from the low Earth orbit satellite, CERES, which showed a weak, opposing trend. Now, more data for both are available, all sets have been either re-analyzed (earthshine) or re-calibrated (CERES), and present consistent results. Albedo data are also available from the recently released ISCCP FD product. Earthshine and FD analyses show contemporaneous and climatologically significant increases in the Earth’s reflectance from the outset of our earthshine measurements beginning in late 1998 roughly until mid- 2000. After that and to date, all three show a roughly constant terrestrial albedo, except for the FD data in the most recent years. Using satellite cloud data and Earth reflectance models, we also show that the decadal scale changes in Earth’s reflectance measured by earthshine are reliable, and caused by changes in the properties of clouds rather than any spurious signal, such as changes in the Sun-Earth-Moon geometry.
We have to wait until a copy of the paper gets on the net somehow.
So, Anna V, what I was taught 30 years ago about water keeping the temperature of the Earth livable for humans may actually be true. Cool, I mean warm, but not too warm.
Farewell, America… we really didn’t mean to take you down with us…
“Australia exports coal and sets atmospheric carbon dioxide goals so large as to guarantee destruction of much of the life on the planet.”
Professor James Hansen has written an open letter to Barack Obama
The Australian
Sometimes people talk about sunspots being so small they wouldn’t be spotted 100 years ago. So, why can’t we replicate the observational methods of 100 years ago, and use the number of sunspots observed in that way as a qualitative measurement of Sun’s activity? Maybe people could consider only those spots larger than a given size.
By the way, when we see graphics on the number of sunspots vs time for the last ~400 years, are they considering the increase in accuracy of these observations (i.e. the ability of seeing smaller spots with better instrumentation)?
Dave – further on the Siberian front, if you can track the jetstream from any sources that will give you access to its behaviour these last few months, (( I check it in real-time but don’t know if backdated graphics are available), you would see that it moved south and developed an easterly shift in the standing wave – so when England was getting dumped on in the summer by the upwave, the downwave got as far as the Arabian gulf and the upwave headed into Siberia via Kazakhstan – as others then say, dumping heat in a place where it would then be lost to space in the winter. This warming caused many ducks and geese to delay their migration west to Britain. The jetstream has shifted again, getting compressed by blocking high pressure systems over Iceland and directing warm air from the Atlantic into Labrador (which should be warmer now than normal), and also split with a flat line into Spain. In Britain we don’t get the warm westerly moisture laiden air, instead the cold dry air from northern Europe is drawn westward and Britain is freezing (-10C last night).
The jetstream shifted significantly in the summers of 2007 and 2008 (with record torrential rain in the UK), and I was waiting for the ‘blocking highs’ to appear this winter (CAN ANYONE TELL ME HOW A HIGH PRESSURE SYSTEM DEVELOPS OVER ICELAND IN WINTER WHEN IT IS DARK AND COLD?) – as these pressure systems mark the transition to a cold-phase North Atlantic Oscillation (we’ve had a warm phase coincident with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation for the past 20 years). But more intriguing, work by Drew Shindell at NASA points to these shifts in the jetstream being caused by changes in the solar flux of UV radiation affecting the polar vortex – AND – paleo-ecological evidence points to a long-term shift of this type during the Maunder Minimum.
I have been trying to get our MetOffice to study this stuff!!!
Didn’t read every comment above, so this may have already been mentioned…but Hathaway appears to have revised his prediction on 1/5/09. It appears that he has reduced the predicted peak to around 105 and has moved the peak out to late 2012/early 2013.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml
Thanks, Leif.
“…the government [and the insurance lobbyists] wants a high solar cycle [=maximum risk=maximum premium].”
Must be Big Business with the boom in telecommunications satellites.
Peter Taylor
You have touched on a number of things that I had intended to ask questions about. As a fellow Brit living a few miles away from the Met office in the ‘mild’ South West I am missing the warm wet westerly winds my geography master taught me about in the year…well let’s not go into that just now…
At present we are having a cold winter due to cold easterlies. The last two summers we had wet weather due to the position of the jet strream. Two Christmases ok we had a big high pressure which caused a long cold dry foggy spell which stopped snow falling in the alps (creating a scare about AGW threatening ski resorts)
If a high pressure moves slightly the winds change direction to a warmer/colder position. If we have an altlantic depression we get mild wet days and most notably mild nights and mild winters. In this respect has anything changed over the centuries? Arent the same things to blame/praise according to how good/bad our weather was. Our weather is famously variable as the Hadley 1660 figures -unsmoothed-demonstrate.
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/menken_hobgoblin.jpg
I saw a study of winds written around 1940 looking at patterns from 1860 to 1940 demonstrating they had notably changed and were causing mild weather over the western hemisphere.
So the question is-when we look at climate are we merely looking at a linked series of random weather events coupled with an unpredicable jet stream which, depending on how the cards fall on the table, might mean the weather is average, or warmer than normal, or cooler than normal, or wetter/drier/windier than normal, but that doesnt make it ‘abnormal’ because of co2.
I’m inclined therefore to see climate as a long series of weather events rather than something that is somehow independent of the weather events that created it. Over a long period of time -even someones average life span- it tends to even itself out as the following table shows.
Someone born in Britain in 1660 and living to 70- Average annual temp 8.87c
Some one in 1670 and living to 70 Average annual temp 8.98
1680 9.01
1690 9.05
1700 9.19
1710 9.21
1720 9.17
1730 9.14
1740 9.04
1750 9.03
1760 9.08
1770 9.10
1780 9.07
1790 9.12
1800 9.15
1810 9.13
1820 9.14
1830 9.12
1840 9.10
1850 9.14 (Start of the famously reliable Hadley global temperatures)
1860 9.17
1870 9.21
1880 9.30
1890 9.39
1900 9.40
1910 9.46
1920 9.497
1930 9.60
1940 9.70 (projected to 2009)
1950 9.76 a bit of a guess and assumes current trends continue
1960 9.83 a wild guess and assumes current trends continue
I decided to call people born in the period from 1660 to 1880 as ‘LIA Everyman’ in as much they lived part of their lives during the little ice age, and those born from 1890 to the present day as ‘UHI Everyman’ (although no adjustments have been made to correct UHI Everyman’s tendency to exaggerate temperatures)
So even through much of the Little ice ages temperatures during someones life span were barely 0.5C different to today. Not something we’d even notice-especially in our famously variable climate!
TonyB
helvio (07:13:06) :
So, why can’t we replicate the observational methods of 100 years ago, and use the number of sunspots observed in that way as a qualitative measurement of Sun’s activity?
We can and we do and we try to compensate for the difference the best we know.
Peter Taylor (07:28:50) :
work by Drew Shindell at NASA points to these shifts in the jetstream
Shindell used what we today consider to be an obsolete reconstruction of the Total Solar Irradiance and the conclusion is therefore no longer valid.
Peter Taylor (07:28:50) :
(CAN ANYONE TELL ME HOW A HIGH PRESSURE SYSTEM DEVELOPS OVER ICELAND IN WINTER WHEN IT IS DARK AND COLD?) –
I can point to the anomalies link http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-081228.gif, and the animation at the bottom of http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/.
4 degrees C extra, considering that the higher up atmosphere is much cooler might do it?
I have been hypothesizing geothermal sources, but I suppose confluence of southern storms around iceland might give a similar pattern ( I do not know enough to guess).
“” anna v (21:12:49) : “”
Anna, I’m familiar with the “earthshine” concept for measuring earth albedo. Yes ingenious (maybe), but when I consider all the gremlins that can beset such a measurement method; I tend to want to say that it appears to be consistent with the obligatory 3:1 fudge factor of all climate modelling models.
So what do we know about the spectral emittance of the moon’s surface; as a function of the moon’s “lunography” ?. What do we know about the angular distribution of the moon’s spectral reflectance; again as a function of the lunography ? What do we know about the time variations of the earth’s spectral albedo as a function of both geography and also variations in clouds ? What do we know about the angular distribution pattern of the earth’s spectral albedo ?
So we have some partial region of the earth illuminated at some oblique angle by the sun; scattering light both in angular space and spectral space, with geographical cloud variations so that part of that radiation falls on some partial region of the moon, reflecting back in some complex spectral and spatial distribution to either an extra-atmospheric satellite, or perhaps returning to earth through some other variable atmospheric transmission window.
Well you get my point. Earthshine is not unlike tree rings or ice cores or coral reefs, as a proxy for what is being accurately modelled by that real system called planet earth.
The earth is continuously making measurements of how much electromagnetic radiation it wants to emit into outer space, in order to prevent a planetary melt down; and what we really want to know is what the hell the earth thinks is the correct amount to report.
Earthshine is like asking your bookmaker’s gardner’s wife, for a tip on the big race this weekend.
But that refeerence you cited, seems to be saying that during the period (recently) when the earth temperature stood still, the earthshine didn’t show much cloud cover variation in albedo. Well I might say one could have predicted such a result; but I’m glad somebody is trying to measure such things. Perhaps one day we will get to the end of the claims that cloud cover is not chjanging and having no effect ont eh earth’s climate; which by inference absolves the sun from any responsibility either.
George E. Smith (11:23:21) :
I agree that there are too many convolutions intervening, but it is interesting that they are hitting the problem from many sides:
There is a previous article by the same authors, http://www.iac.es/galeria/epalle/reprints/Palle_etal_EOS_2006.pdf
and they are using not only earthshine but also satellite measurements and ground cloud measurements to estimate albedo.
For fun, I guestimated from the figure the values of albedo and derived a temperature and posted it on a previous thread. There is heating and then there is a steady state.
The Palle plot is also in
http://www.leif.org/research/albedo.png
with the temperatures either atmoz http://atmoz.org/blog/2008/02/27/4-global-temperature-anomalies-say-the-same-thing/
or junkscience ihttp://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/MSUvsRSS-m.html
I used the toy model at http://junkscience.com/Greenhouse/Earth_temp.html to turn albedo to temperature and got much greater swings in amplitude ( not surprisingly) than measurements.
Normalizing on the atmoz anomaly plot for of 2005, I get, starting from 1984, (accuracy not so hot, estimated by eye)
-1.3 C 1984
-1.46
-0.80
-0.63
-1.13
-0.47
-1.17
-0.15
-1.13
-0.01
0.44
2.69 1998
0.83
0.83
0.83
0.5
1.15
-0.96 2004
0.35 2005
I am waiting for the next years albedo values :).
Leif Svalgaard10:01:11) :
“work by Drew Shindell at NASA points to these shifts in the jetstream
Shindell used what we today consider to be an obsolete reconstruction of the Total Solar Irradiance and the conclusion is therefore no longer valid.”
Indeed neither TSI or f10.7 are valid proxies for UV reconstructions as they do not capture the required frequencies for photochemical amplification or attenuation.(eg Rozanov)
Much the same for GCR and “averaging” where there are widespread discrepancies between neutron monitors and both balloon and satellite observations and latitude attenuation eg Bazilevskaya et al
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/SSR_Baz_2008.pdf
Got a new sunspot! Lower right hand.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html
Viewed (timestamped 2009/01/07 00:00)
I watched this on magnetogram since earlier today.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/javagif/gifs_small/20090107_0000_mdi_mag.gif
Remember, you heard it here first. Get it while it’s hot.
Is that a small spot (two?) at about 4 o’clock near the limb?
The sun’s still spotless after 25 days. Last night’s sunspeck appears to have been a too short-lived event to be worthy of official notice.
In other news, I hear Hathaway has come out with a new forecast. Sure hope they can do an update on what’s now showing at SWPC’s graphs. They’re showing an embarrassing disconnect between the old forecast and the current situation.
Leif Svalgaard 10:25:50 04/01/2009
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.
In that article was reported an evident cosmic rays decreasing in geographic south pole. What about the north pole? Any monitoring there, I suppose…but it could be a relevant question in relation to possible long term climate effects of cosmic rays in artctic areas.
Sergio da Roma (04:11:14) :
“There are even indications that the primary cosmic ray intensity may be decreasing […]”
In that article was reported an evident cosmic rays decreasing in geographic south pole. What about the north pole? Any monitoring there,
Thule is near the northern magnetic pole: http://www.leif.org/research/thule-cosmic-rays.png