As many regular readers know, I’ve pointed out several times the incident of the abrupt and sustained lowering of the Ap Index which occurred in October 2005. The abrupt step change seemed (to me) to be out of place with the data, and the fact that the sun seems so have reestablished at a lower plateau of the Ap index after that event and has not recovered is an anomaly worth investigating.
From the data provided by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) you can see just how little Ap magnetic activity there has been since. Here’s a graph from October 2008 showing the step in october 2005:
click for a larger image
However, some have suggested that this event doesn’t merit attention, and that it is not particularly unusual. I beg to differ. Here’s why.
In mid December I started working with Paul Stanko, who has an active interest in the solar data and saw what I saw in the Ap Index. He did some research and found Ap data that goes back further, all the way to 1932. His source for the data is the SPIDR (Space Physics Interactive Data Resource) which is a division of NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC). He did some data import and put it all into a mult-page Excel spreadsheet which you can access here.
I had planned to do more study of it, but you know how holidays are, lot’s of things to do with that free time. I didn’t get back to looking at it until today, especially after SWPC updated their solar datasets on January 3rd, including the Ap Index. Looking at the data to 1932, it was clear to me that what we are seeing today for levels doesn’t exist in the record.
About the same time, I got an email from David Archibald, showing his graph of the Ap Index, graphed back to 1932. Having two independent sources of confirmation, I’ve decided to post this then. The solar average geomagnetic planetary index, Ap is at its lowest level in 75 years, for the entirety of the record:
Click for a larger image – I’ve added some annotation to the graph provided by Archibald to point out areas of interest and to clarify some aspects of it for the novice reader.
The last time the Ap index was this low was 1933. The December 2008 Ap value of 2, released by SWPC yesterday, has never been this low. (Note: Leif Svalgaard contends this value is erroneous, and that 4.2 is the correct value – either way, it is still lower than 1933) Further, the trend from October 2005 continues to decline after being on a fairly level plateau for two years. It has started a decline again in the last year.
This Ap index is a proxy that tells us that the sun is now quite inactive, and the other indices of sunspot index and 10.7 radio flux also confirm this. The sun is in a full blown funk, and your guess is as good as mine as to when it might pull out of it. So far, predictions by NOAA’s SWPC and NASA’s Hathway have not been near the reality that is being measured.
The starting gate for solar cycle 24 opened ayear ago today, when I announced the first ever cycle 24 sunspot. However in the year since, it has become increasingly clear that the horse hasn’t left the gate, and may very well be lame.
Re: Mike Bryant (08:42:35),
I wonder if Hansen is ‘adjusting’ their ice data? (only kidding)…
Leif, most interesting.
Steve Berry – very nearly agree
In ancient records the prime driver can be seen to be solar energy.
With a 6-year delay, and after UHI is properly subtracted, land temperatures reflect the solar patterns today.
But the oceans’ thermal capacity is around 1000 times that of the atmosphere.
So for close correlation, look at the solar links to sea surface temperature
And for high correlation to land temperatures, plot the ocean currents
Ron de Haan (09:35 today)…volcanic activity emits 20 times more CO2 than human industrial activity.
Reference? Perhaps a thread on the current Yellowstone earth tremors will flush this out… Anthony?
“To be fair to them, they ARE understaffed [quantity and quality] because of low funding.”
They may not have enough people, and the people they have may not be the best, but at least,
“NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun…”
Leif Svalgaard (09:16:29) :
In short, solar cycle 23 is very much like cycle 13, and the values of these indices and of the solar wind during the drawn-out minimum of 1901 and 1902 were very much the same as during 2008 and 2009 [expected], so nothing new.
I don’t get this. Last time I asked you about the other indices increasing over the C20th, you said there were instrumental errors and the readings were unreliable. Now you are saying thay are comparable.
Kaboom (01:10:08) :
“….lot’s of things to do…” doesn’t have an apostrophe as well.
So speak the grammar-Nazis.
Grammar nazis is not hyphenated, and nazis is not capitalized.
Capitalized Nazis were the National Socialists, who believed in a charismatic leader and believed government should regulate otherwise free markets. Thank goodness those beliefs have faded into history.
Mike
humble grammar nazi
We in the UK have been assured that there is a great deal of global warmth just around the corner. See the linked article:-
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-scientists-warn-that-there-may-be-no-ice-at-north-pole-this-summer-855406.html
“Ron de Haan (09:35 today)…volcanic activity emits 20 times more CO2 than human industrial activity.
Reference? Perhaps a thread on the current Yellowstone earth tremors will flush this out… Anthony?”
That number seems that it could be about right. A recent article I read showed human activity generating about 3% of global CO2 emissions. Decay of organic matter about 30% (about 10 times more than human activity) leaving 67%. So to say that volcanism accounts for 60% of the remaining 67%, that sounds reasonable with the other 7% probably due to such things fires, animal flatulence, etc.
Mary Hinge:
George E. Smith addressed your point 2.
on point 4:
So when the Hadley Center tells us that the average Central England Temperature on March 19th 1772 was 7.3 C, they have not introduced false accuracy? How accurate were thermometers in 1772?
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cetdl1772on.dat
on point 6:
Why don’t you ask Hadley for the station records for China? Good luck, here is their response to a similar request.
To quote Phil Jones:
So you can prattle on about peer review, but you are defending a cloistered community of unscientists that has built a moat around their data and methods, pulled up the drawbridges, put their fingers in their ears and are behaving like this.
And remember that undersea volcanism is going to be about twice what land volcanism is (but probably more since the mid-Atlantic ridge, for example, is basically one continuous volcano down the middle of the ocean).
PaulHClark (11:44:07) :
their assertion that there was a step change in solar activity in 1923. Having read all your comments here and on CA I feel that you would not agree with this. Am I correct?
Yes, but I have not read their paper. Do you have a copy? email to me if you don’t want to post the link.
tallbloke (12:34:50) :
I don’t get this. Last time I asked you about the other indices increasing over the C20th, you said there were instrumental errors and the readings were unreliable. Now you are saying thay are comparable.
One should, of course, use my version of the corrected indices. Here is a plot of Ap back to 1844 http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-2008.png . The blue curve shows 27-day Bartels rotation averages and the red curve is a 13-rotation [nearly one year] running mean. Because the values have been corrected for the semiannual variation and the averaging interval is shorter than a month, the values shown will be slightly larger than the monthly means [from SWPC] plotted by Anthony, but the relative variation [on a yearly basis] and the trend should be the same. And that is the important bit; the units don’t matter.
Mike McMillan (12:36:47) :
Capitalized Nazis were the National Socialists, who believed in a charismatic leader and believed government should regulate otherwise free markets.
Sounds very much like our government…
OT and slightly depressing!
The European Union (after donating £1m!) denounces socialite’s carbon offset project that pays poor farmers in Mozambique to plant trees, that absorb CO2, and, additionally, to protect existing forests
This project set up the N’hambita Community Carbon project five years ago in partnership with Edinburgh University attracted hundreds of poor farmers “Who were now cutting down trees”
The law of unintended consequences- rings a bell for anyone?
“http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5439366.ece”
Its open….
http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-science-blog/
oops – put quotes round link
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5439366.ece
meanwhile…quietly…
Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979
http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=13834
speaking of animal flatulence…LOL
EPA ‘Cow Tax’ Could Charge $175 per Dairy Cow to Curb Greenhouse Gases
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20081230165231.aspx
unbelievable…..
@TonyB
Tony, another item is: how to download datas frequently or scheduled.
One approach is: using R (like Steve McIntyre from CA, http://www.climateaudit.com)
For others, which are more accustomed to Microsoft and/or Windows environment,
in the MS Office is, since MS-Office 2000 a – programmable, using VBA – Webbrowser control. I did use this approach first, when I started to download various data, scheduled.
Nowadays, I do use the – free – express versions from MS Visual Basic and C# in combination with the – free- express version of the MS SQL server. The SQL server
has some limitations: the first is: any database file has to be smaller than 4 GB,
but that’s no real limitation for personal use. I do use more than 320 databases, which -each – are below that limit, but the sum is neary 800 GB now.
I don’t know, if this is helpful to you, or anybody else here, but there may be somybody here or there, where it may be helpful.
Another Great post and commentary. Thank you Anthony. And thank you Leif, mods and the rest of the bunch, you all make the commentary of this blog one of the best on the web.
Ladies and Gentlemen, don’t forget to vote for yhe 2008 Blog Awards!
It only takes five seconds.
“And remember that undersea volcanism is going to be about twice what land volcanism is ”
Why? Ocean floors are much closer to the heat of the interior. Land and ocean surface area ratio wouldn’t seem to be a valid gauge of the amount of heat, vulcanism or geothermal activity either.
“” Lucy Skywalker (12:16:04) :
Leif, most interesting.
Steve Berry – very nearly agree
In ancient records the prime driver can be seen to be solar energy.
With a 6-year delay, and after UHI is properly subtracted, land temperatures reflect the solar patterns today.
But the oceans’ thermal capacity is around 1000 times that of the atmosphere.
So for close correlation, look at the solar links to sea surface temperature
And for high correlation to land temperatures, plot the ocean currents
Ron de Haan (09:35 today)…volcanic activity emits 20 times more CO2 than human industrial activity.
Reference? Perhaps a thread on the current Yellowstone earth tremors will flush this out… Anthony? “”
Lucy, I can’t say that I correctly deciphered who said what in your post; hard to tell what was a reference ansd what your own words.
I’d like a dollar for every time I’ve read that the ocean’s heat capacity is 1000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere.
So what about that humungous piece of rock which acts as a substrate for bothe the oceans and the atmosphere; does it have a heat capacity of any consequence ?
Tracking heat capacity can be a misleading enterprise. Just consider some of the thermal energy exchange processes. In the case of the rocky part of the earth; including UHIs, we typically don’t see a whole lot of convection going on; at least not in time frames of much interest to us.
During the day sunshine, the earth surface heats up to hotter than its long term mean temperature from absorbed solar energy (less albedo losses). That temperature rise creates a thermal graident, that propagates energy downward at a rate proportional to that temperature rise. At the same time, that heated surface is also radiating EM radiation, at a rate limited by the Planck BB radiation limit; modified by the surface spectral emissivity; but also dependent on the fourth power of the absolute temperature rather than linearly with temperature rise. And from the point of view of CO2 resonance absorption in the IR, the EM radiation spectral peak emittance goes as the fifth power of the absolute temperature, while moving further to the short wavelength side of the CO2 absorption spectrum.
So the relative energy transport split between surface conduction to the deep crust, and also the direct thermal conduction to the atmospheric gases; and the EM radiated portion; it makes a great deal of difference if you use the long term flux averages of the official NOAA energy budget, or whether you use the actual real time fluxes which are four times as high at least. Thew energy split is quite different in those two calculations.
The oceans on the other hand throw us a real curved ball. The main heat driver; old Sol, deposits his energy at multi metre depths in the oceans, where it too starts to diffuse by conduction to the depths and surrounding waters; but it also unleashes an incessant upward convection, which acts to transport (over time) most of that heat right back to the surface. And most often; convection trumps conduction when it comes to heat transport in fluids. The return of that energy to the surface results in a delayed IR radiation cooling but also a delayed evaporative3 cooling which is a very powerful heat transport mechanism. On top of that, the re-radiated IR emissions from the atmospheric gases are completely absorbed in the top ten microns of the ocean surface and lead to a very prompt evaporative cooling.
So despite the higher thermal capacity of the oceans compared to the atmosphere, the thermal energy transport mechanisms in the ocean don’t look too favorable for transporting the bulk of arriving solar energy to the ocean depths as is commonly assumed.
The very difference in these thermal processes as a function of terrain; is one of the strongest arguments against the very concept of a “mean Global surface Temperature” as having any scientific validity or significance whatsoever.
Hansen’s GISStemp Anomaly plots, are just that; plots of GISStemp anomaly as he defines it, and reports it. There is no scientific connection between GISStemp anomaly and anything else physical on this planet; and the violations of the Nyquist Criterion, both spatially, and temporally, are so egregious as to completely invaildate any claim to them representing a “Mean Global Surface Temperature” or anything else. They have no more scientific validity than does the average telephone number in the Manhattan Phone Directroy; or the global mean number of animals per hectare on planet earth (animal meaning anything from ants to blue whales; and not plants).
I just voted for WUWT as my favorite science blog !!!
Leif your words sounded good. Can someone tell me if the sun doesn’t act on temperature then what does? A less active sun means a drop in input to the earth, that’s final.
[snip–out of bounds on this blog, please be more polite ~ charles the moderator]. Not in my name. Ed
“Why? Ocean floors are much closer to the heat of the interior. Land and ocean surface area ratio wouldn’t seem to be a valid gauge of the amount of heat, vulcanism or geothermal activity either.”
Most spreading centers, hot spots, and volcanic arcs are in the ocean. In other words, most of the places where there tend to be volcanoes are under water. A new Hawaiian island is being built as we read this off the coast of the island of Hawaii, for example. Some of the volcanoes have built up to the point where they have emerged from the sea (the Aleutian Islands, for example) but more lie under the sea such as a brand new one just reported within the past month or so off the coast of the state of Washington. There are several more off the coast of Oregon.
My main point was that when people think of volcanic activity, they think only of the volcanoes on land and forget that there are actually a lot more under the ocean and many of those are nearly constantly active. There are active volcanoes even under the ice in the Arctic Ocean and undersea volcanoes are suspected as the cause of at least one mass extinction event.
Basically, twice as many is probably low, the number of undersea volcanoes is probably much larger than that. Active volcanoes have even been found in the Antarctic Ocean.
Also at places like the mid-Atlantic ridge where you have nearly constant volcanism, it is hard for volcanoes to form the shape we generally recognize as a volcano because the crust spreads and pulls it apart. But they do generate a tremendous amount of CO2. Again, I would expect the amount of CO2 generated by undersea volcanoes to vastly outweigh that generated by volcanoes on dry land.
Would one expect CO2 released from deep ocean ridge volcanose to actually make it to the surface ?