A few days ago I wrote in State of the Sun for year end 2008: all’s quiet on the solar front – too quiet that “No new cycle 24 predictions have been issued by any solar group (that I am aware of ) in the last couple of months.” Coincidentally and shortly after that, NASA’s David Hathaway updated his solar prediction page here. He’s made a significant backtrack over previous predictions, and now for the first time he is claiming cycle 24 will be less than cycle 23, not greater.
Kudos to our WUWT resident solar physicist Leif Svalgaard for his foresight. He has been saying for many months that cycle 24 would be significantly reduced, and not greater than 23.
Here is Hathaway’s most familiar graphic, which has an active sun in the background. Perhaps it is time to update that background to something more reflective of the times…..oh wait, read on.
Click for a larger image
Here in this graphic, from Klimadebat.dk we can see how much has changed since Hathaway’s last prediction update in October 2008:
Click for a larger image
Note that Hathaway did indeed change background graphics from October to January. Its just not quite the smooth and nearly featureless ball we see today.
Courtesy of Mike Smith, here is the March 2006 prediction graphic:
Click for larger image
Hathaway’s predicted Cycle 24 maximun in March 2006: 145
Hathaway’s predicted Cycle 24 maximun in October 2008: 137
Hathaway’s predicted Cycle 24 maximun in January 2009: 104
I’d say that represents a sea change in thinking, but the question now is: How low will he go?
I was looking for a substantial quote from Hathaway in his prediction page, but it appears he is being quite conservative in his language, focusing mostly on methodology, not the prediction itself. I don’t blame him, he’s in a tough spot right now.
Meanwhile we’ve had an entertaining episode with the most recent Cycle 24 transient sunspot/sunspeck that appeared briefly yesterday then disappeared almost as fast as it appeared. See the area on the lower right of the sun:
In response to my query asking if he concurred with my assessment of it being an SC24 speck, (he did) Leif wrote to me: “Seems that it has received even a region number 11010. Somewhat ridiculous.”
Then about 12 hours later: “And SWPC has withdrawn the number. No numbered region after all.”
It will be interesting to see which organization counts this event, or not, in the month end tally. Up until this point, we had 25 consecutive spotless days. Now we have more, or not.
h/t to Frank Lansner for the Klimatdebat.dk graphic link and a bunch of other commenters who made note of the Hathaway page
i messed the numbers up in my previous post – should read “i don’t believe he’s adjusting a forecast – rather making a new one. might be a nitpicky distinction, but Hathaway doesn’t appear to be saying that his oct 2008 forecast was for 104, rather his jan 2009 forecast is for 104.”
Dammit, forgot to close the blockquote again. The second paragraph is mine.
These guys are ignoring it.
http://www.solen.info/solar/
Robert,
You would have had to look yesterday. It was in the lower right quadrant, almost at the edge. It dissipated overnight.
Hathaway gave a presentation at Napa 2008 on predicting Cycle 24; http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/RHESSI/napa2008/talks/MonI_Hathaway.pdf. The main prediction methods he relied on were; 1) geomagnetic precursors, which indicate an amplitude of 135 +/- 30, 2) polar field strength which indicates an amplitude of 75 +/- 30, 3) Flux Transport Dynamo models dominated by the meridional flow which indicate an amplitude of 165 +/- 15, and 4) Flux Transport Dynamo models dominated by diffusion which indicate an amplitude of 75 +/- 30.
OT, but look NOAA SST just published for 1/8/09 at http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.1.8.2009.gif
It appears that the entire Arctic and Antarctic Ice Caps have melted in the last three days, along with all the ice on the Great Lakes, Hudson Bay, and around Greenland.
Leif Svalgaard (09:19:30) :
Sunspotter (08:45:33) :
Question–Does anyone know how long and when the longest ALL QUIET on record was?
Some 400 days back in ~1810
and possibly years in the 1650-1700s
But I guess these numbers are based on more primative tech compared to today… On that basis, can we really claim these records are comparable to today? IMHO, I doubt it.
Dave L (10:00:31) :
I just read Landscheidt’s paper published in 2003.
http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/new-e.htm
Very scary.
No need to be scared. This is total nonsense.
For a simple explanation of why, see
http://www.cdejager.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/jagerversteegh-20063.pdf
Question:
Now that 2008 is over and done with we have all the temperature data. Was Tamino right? Was 2008 one of the hottest 10 years of the last decade?
Leif Svalgaard: “All that has happened is that Hathaway has changed his view on which peak to pick.”
Ah, thank you. That makes sense. I had been unaware that he had selected a different point from which he based the forecast on and assumed he had gone with a different set of criteria that could only have appeared after some time had passed.
ak
I used to be involved in forecasting professionally. Since this was in unforgiving wold of business, the correctness of our forecasts [or lack thereof] had far reaching financial and socio-economic consequences and we were under very considerable pressure to get it right.
The very fact that Hathaway has the need for a “new” or “adjusted” forecast on a regular basis tells us that something in the underlying premises / working hypotheses / theories / model is fatally flawed.
This is my graph for Hadley CET from 1660 overlaid with sunspot activity in green (the lower to the bottom the less activity)
Looking at the current lack of spots where does that place us on that graph in terms of comparitive years-i.e how cold do we think it may get compared to the past? ( I understand there is a 70% correlation between sun spot activity and temperatures and that it is electro magentism that is most important) Or is it too early in the cycle to tell yet?
tonyB
Sorry, the Hadley graph is here-it is in Excel so the data can be obtained by hovering the mouse over any data point
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/sunspots_mencken.xls
TonyB
Just a bit O/T
Looks like this weblog deal is having quite an impact on WUWT hits. The reach is up and it looks like rank is highest it’s ever been. Once the competition is done, it’ll be interesting to see how many new visitors remain to relish the open civility of the site.
Just look at these numbers from Alexa !!
kath (09:08:22) :
> I’m just an outsider looking in, but it seems to me that we may be living in interesting times.
It’s worse than that – we live in fascinating times.
RE: Leif Svalgaard (09:58:44) :
There has to be more to it than that, because if I remember the latest blink animation correctly, Hathaway has made 4 predictions. Thus, there has to have been more than just choosing between SC23 peaks, because that would only give you two predictions.
Am I missing something?
It’s hard to tell from just the graphic, but it looks to me like the peak has been delayed by about 6 months in the new prediction.
Hathaway’s latest forecast seems to fit the less active Sun that half the panel forecast back in April 2007:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/PressRelease.html
“Expected to start last fall, the delayed onset of Solar Cycle 24 stymied the panel and left them evenly split on whether a weak or strong period of solar storms lies ahead, but neither group predicts a record-breaker.”
“In the cycle forecast issued today, half of the panel predicts a moderately strong cycle of 140 sunspots, plus or minus 20, expected to peak in October of 2011. The other half predicts a moderately weak cycle of 90 sunspots, plus or minus 10, peaking in August of 2012.”
Thanks for that interesting link, Leon B.
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“The significance here is that the more of this kind of misleading data they post then the more difficult and time consuming it will be to correct public policy which is going to be needed to react to the sun’s activity and hence save lives. ”
Since when does science influence public policy anymore? The Obama administration is allready gearing up to have the EPA designate CO2 as a pollutant. New flash to Obama and the Democrats- the hot air you breathe out contains CO2.
There’s been no warming in the last 10 years and no one in government seems to quesstioning AGW (considering all the previous computer models were predicting continuous warming). Rather they’re still marching headlong into legislation based on a theory that simply became “law” in the public sphere by default (because the proponents dominated the discussion through fear and intimidation against anyone who disagreed with them).
Though I will say, THANK GOODNESSS we’re into some cooling trends here. It may provide be enough time for real science to make it’s way into the public mindset (at least wrest the concept of “science” back from the activists) and undo the damage that’s been that’s been done by the AGW juggernaut over the last decade. Maybe while the public is freezing their rears off, they’ll start looking for rationale to question the AGW immenent-apocalypse propaganda that’s been shoved down their throats.
See linked article where Hathaway is quoted as follows:
David Hathaway of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, says the evidence for past lulls is strong, but he is sceptical about the team’s attempt to predict the arrival of the next one. “This is a little like trying to predict when someone’s winning streak will end,” he says. “We know that it will happen, but reliable predictions are virtually impossible.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126903.700-danger-ahead-as-the-sun-goes-quiet.html
????
I read many people are questioning or even attacking hathaway’s methods of prediction etc…
He has said before that solar science is making new discoveries constantly and you can’t blame him for not having a 100% accurate prediction because although the solar scientists won’t say it directly, they basically hint that they haven’t got the foggiest idea as to what will happen with the next cycle.
Some critics make it look so simple i urge them to bring forward an accurate prediction of SC 24 if they feel the need to complain about the poor predictions of hathaway et al.
At least he is revising his predictions.
Have you ever noticed a 15 day weather forecast? usually the last 6 days change from their initial prediction as the days go by,, so revising of predictions is really nothing unusual or silly.
Just a thought.
LOL!
Good one!
Did Tamino really state that?
“The very fact that Hathaway has the need for a “new” or “adjusted” forecast on a regular basis tells us that something in the underlying premises / working hypotheses / theories / model is fatally flawed.”
Possibly but to be fair it is also telling us that we have not been studying the sun for very long (in a relative sense) and so the probability that anyone is going to provide an accurate model of what it is doing inside over time periods as short as a century or two (over a lifespan of billions of years) are pretty remote. Our understanding evolves over time. This is one cycle out of some tens of millions of such cycles over time. We have recorded 23 of them so far. We have been using “modern” instruments only over the past several cycles.
To expect anyone to have any better understanding is probably expecting too much. Someone might get this cycle or that cycle more accurately but I am willing to bet the sun has a few curve balls in there. And people who peg this one correctly might not get the next one right.