Sunspot Lapse Exceeds 95% of Normal

I have not been terribly impressed with NASA, it looks like to them the situation is unprecedented. This graph about NASA sunspot predictions tells you why…
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SSN_Predict_NASA.gif

I like to think that something like a long-term solar inactivity will, at least, take global warming hysteria out of people’s heads for a while, so they can go back to do good research. But then again, it sounds like such a steep price to pay for a readjustment in people’s perception of nature…

When it comes to predicting the strength of solar cycles and grand minima I dont think there are too many experts around…not going on past performance. This is one area of science in its infancy.

Maybe NASA watches Bugs Bunny cartoons…
“Bugs Bunny Rides Again (1948) — Yosemite Sam dares anyone to stop his reign of terror…and guess who takes up the dare? Featuring Bug’s famous “I dare you to cross this line” which would show up in other Bugs vs. Sam toons.”
Just keep drawing a new line in the sand, then another, then another….

Jeff, good thoughts as usual. Interesting to see how the numbers actually shake out.
One very pedantic comment: In the third to last paragraph, I think you meant “affect” rather then “effect” in both places. Unless, of course, you were thinking we might be able to tax our way into a warmer world . . . 🙂

If this turns out to presage an extended period of below-average global temperatures, I hope it is called the “Gore Minimum.”

E.M.Smith (22:05:18) : The least life in the universe is infinitely greater than all of the inanimate galaxies together. They are aware of nothing!

mmh.. i was under the impression cycle 23 ended around september/ocktober 2008.
isnt there a large transitionphase ?

David Corcoran (23:45:32) :
will Dr. Hathaway publish a “Something is Most Definitely Wrong With the Sun, And Say, Have You Noticed How Cold It Is Lately?” article?
Maybe if we apply some political pressure on him. Let’s lobby.

My problem with a title like “Something is Most Definitely Wrong With the Sun” is that there is actually nothing “wrong” with the Sun; it’s our understanding of the Sun that has mistakes.
Just my A$.02…

While in SE Zambia kast year I was told of lake level records running back into the 19th century, kept by European missionaries. These apparently show a clear link with sunspot numbers. I have just googled “malawi lake levels sunpots” and found that there have been many studies confirming this.

Jeff,
Very worthwhile analysis. The method of determining cycle length doesn’t rely on human senses. The elimination of outliers in determining standard deviation seems defensible for this particular case — simply because it highlights the interesting behavior.
Considering your thoughts and eyeballing (yes, not too objective) the entire sunspot series, there seems to be a larger visual correspondence between the cycles preceding the Dalton Minimum and the most recent cycles.
Maybe a prolonged minimum really is in our immediate future. And, despite the lack of accepted explanations, temperature does seem to correlate to sunspots by my feeble calculations.
We’re having an extremely cold winter here — possibly just the first of many. Hope not — much rather have catastrophic global warming (i.e. some low lying beach fronts move a couple miles inland and Canada becomes habitable).

Interesting article, I am not sure we can scream Dalton minimum just yet though…
There appears to be confusion around when the minimum of cycle 23 ocurred,,, some sources say August 08 but then look at December 08, that was a very quiet month as well… is it possible to have double minima??
After all we did have a double maximum in 2000 and 2002!

Found this at Accuweather:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/
“Thus, relative to the mean, i.e, the hypothetical case in which the sun had a constant average irradiance, actual solar irradiance will continue to provide a negative anomaly for the next 2-3 years.”
“Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.”
This led me to:
http://biocab.org/Amplitude_Solar_Irradiance.html
“This evaluation, which takes into consideration the amplitudes, asymmetry coefficient and correlation coefficient obtained from the total solar irradiance reconstructions of Dr. Judith Lean (6) and Dr. Leif Svalgaard (7), is evidence for the theories on the increase of solar irradiance through the last three centuries immediately after the ending of the Maunder Minimum.”
So it’s either El Nino or Ice Cube in a couple years.

It would be interesting to repeat the analysis over the 22 year Hale cycle as well – or over 2 solar cycles – where the magnetic polarity completes one full reversal.
There is some strange repeating cycle in temperatures (and even sunspots) at 25 years lag. If you take the temperature of today and subtract the temperature of 25 years ago, the plot has a definitive up and down cycle which is not expected. I’ve done this with sunspots as well and the plot almost looks like the solar cycle itself.
This is hard to explain unless there is more regularity in the 22 year Hale cycle than in the 11 year Schwabe cycle. Can you try it out.

I’m certainly no expert on climate studies but i have always been interested in the unpredictability of stochastic systems and chaos theory.
What i dont understand about all these supposed predictions from the Met office and other so-called climate experts is how they can claim with any degree of credibility that such unpredictable systems can be modelled accurately or predictions can be made that are anything other than a lucky shot or guess.
Now Ive read Simplicity by Gribbin as well as Gleicks book on chaos, and it seems clear to me that the key finding is that stochastic and chaotic systems like the weather just cannot be predicted with accuracy. Its no good saying “if we knew all initial conditions” we could make predictions. We cannot know all initial conditions, nature seems to be telling us this loud and clear. Whether at the quanum level of the HUP, or in macroscopic systems like the N body problem.
All roads lead to unpredictability. So I’m rather confused by all these claims from climate scientists that they make accurate predictions.
Maybe im being stupid or something but it appears to me that climate scientists who make these claims are going totally againstr the mainstream of accepted science re Chaos, stochatics etc…
By the way great site.
Am i mis-informed?

RE: Barycentric Tide theory (from len): The referenced paper is directly available at:
http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/2007/TM-2007-214817.pdf

«If this turns out to presage an extended period of below-average global temperatures, I hope it is called the “Gore Minimum.”»
Well, 2008 was already a cool year. We have entere the Gore Minimum.

E.M. Smith (04:42:18)
Though the irony of tagging Gore with his big mistake, and though the Landscheit option is a popular one, I prefer the Eddy Minimum. Jack Eddy liked words and enjoyed the alliteration of Maunder Minimum, which he named, and chose that name over others perhaps more apt. He’s the pioneer of understanding who should be honored with the choice of name.
=================================

I wonder if any of you guys is a friend of NASA’s David Hathaway and could invite Mr. Hathaway to give his comments on this topic here?

Then again, you could lop off the whole right side of the histogram and then recalculate…that would show them. I don’t believe that eliminating or manipulating inconvenient data is any more fruitful in sunspot analysis than it is in temperature records.

is it possible to have double minima??
————-
Dead cat bounce?

2-sigma = 95%.
1-0.95 = .05
1/.05 = 20
We should expect about 1 in 20 cycles to exceed the 2-sigma number.
How many cycles has it been since the last 2-sigma event?
19
Cycles 3-4 to cycles 4-5 minimum difference = 13.666 years, from Anthony’s analysis above.
Eyeballing the histogram, it is close to a Normal distribution, but it appears to have more weight on the high side, perhaps the cycles are modal. No cycles since 1750 have a 2-sigma event on the low side (8.65 years).
My conclusion: Nothing unexpected is happening.

Thanks to everyone for the comments.
As far as lopping off data or similar comments- If you want to look for an unusually long event which may lead to a minimum (only one example in this record) it doesn’t make sense to include it in the SD analysis. I included the whole dataset in the analysis as well so there’s nothing hidden.
Lief’s criticism is valid. However I believe by my analysis that because I looked for minimum slope, the most recent line in 2009 won’t shift back in time much even if the next cycle really starts going vertical making spots next month. It also visually looks longer at this point.
Perhaps tonight I’ll put the predicted data in the set as presented by Hathaway and see how it compares with history. The predictions have been forced out enough that he may have been predicting a 95% event already.

Re: M Morris (05:21:06)

What i dont understand about all these supposed predictions from the Met office and other so-called climate experts is how they can claim with any degree of credibility that such unpredictable systems can be modelled accurately or predictions can be made that are anything other than a lucky shot or guess.

Hold a piece of paper up in the air in a light breeze. When you let go you can predict in what direction it will go (climate) but not how it gets there (weather). You can predict roughly where it will land but not with any degree of certainty or accuracy. The models basically claim the direction is up but cant predict the path we take to it.
Now in order to predict where the paper will land with any degree of accuracy you would need to know the following:
1. Height above the ground.
2. Surface area of the paper.
3. Dimensions of the paper.
4. Weight of the paper.
5. How flexible the paper is.
6. Friction coefficient of the paper.
7. Atmospheric pressure
8. Humidity.
9. Wind speed
9. Wind direction.
10. Air temperature.
etc etc.
The effect of changing some of these values has on the final resting position will depend upon how far the paper has to drop. Drop it from 6 inches and you only really need to know windspeed and direction. From 6 feet and a lot more parameters have a measurable effect. From 60 feet and it is a near impossibility to predict. Now consider the difference in complexity between the climate and dropping a piece of paper, which why I think all climate models, no matter how accurate with past climate, are useless when it comes to predicting anything.
Oh, and one other thing, the climate models have assumed that there is only one source of the wind and its direction is up.

I’ll just suggest it gently again. Common sense tells me that a lot of sun energy gets through to our atmosphere when there are solar flares and CMEs. That energy will find a way to heat the lower atmosphere. Forget TSI. I admit that flare energy would be hard to measure as an event, but it doesn’t make it any less real.
Let’s see what happens to our temperatures over the next years without this extra energy.

The sun is slowing down in many ways, and it seems a little silly to argue that “nothing unusual is happening” unless unusual has to mean that the sun explodes or blinks out.
I do want to point out that the sunspot data is averaged (we only count spots facing the Earth – so some averaging is certainly required.) Typically, this data is averaged over a 1 year period centered over the current month. Thus, you will not know the average for today until 6 months from now.
Jan09 is probably not the averaged minimum. I suspect that Aug08 will be the future averaged minimum – but we will not know this for at least another 6 to 9 months.
To do this analysis now – all you can claim is a 12.15 year long cycle for 23 (setting the minimum in July08, which is technically possible if late Jan09 and Feb09 etc. suddenly have many large spots). 12.6 is probably incorrect.

I’d have to agree with coaldust. I did an analysis kind of like Jeff id (choosing end/beginning points of cycles based on change from – to + slope) using data up to the end of 2008. However, to better visualize the difference between solar cycles, I overlaid all of the cycles on top of each other using the min between each cycle as the starting point. Here is the pic:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=30ndy1c&s=5
Based on the graph I linked to, the length of SC23 is very similar to cycles 8, 10, 12, and 13, which occurred during the middle to late 1800s.

Pasi (06:44:01) :
I wonder if any of you guys is a friend of NASA’s David Hathaway and could invite Mr. Hathaway to give his comments on this topic here?
Pasi: Leif’s worked with Dr. Hathaway, and has said that Dr. H is usually pretty busy.

Jim:
I thought an expert was someone who was more than 50 miles from home…

To call this possible/potential “minimum” the Gore Minimum gives too much respect to someone who has falsified science and tried pay-to-play re his well lobbied (on a global basis) fairy tale. I prefer what seems to me to be the label of significant workmanship: the Landsheidt Minimum.

Jim Steele Wrote :
Here is an animation done by Michael Romayne on how Hathaway’s prediction has changed over time from the Solar Science Blog.
http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/files/2008/10/ssn_predict_nasa.gif

Does anyone find it weird that the historical prediction curve drops in the March 2008 frame?
Thanks, G

“My conclusion: Nothing unexpected is happening.”
We have been watching the sun for such a short period of time that we have no idea what is “normal” and what is not. We can say something is odd but have to qualify that due to the extremely small sample of observations (over only a few centuries) compared to what we might see over millions or hundreds of millions of years. It could very possibly be that the sun could go into century long periods of low activity. We just don’t know.
To “predict” that we are entering a Dalton-like minimum is probably overreaching though I found Dr. Hathaway’s prediction for cycle 25 very interesting (and wrote to him about a year or so ago to ask if there was any update since that article appeared concerning the “conveyor belt” appeared but didn’t get a reply).
The sun sort if “is what it is” at this point and I believe we should be more occupied with observing what is going on that trying to predict what will go on in the near future. And I worry about what the reaction of our political leadership (globally, not in just my country) would be if we do head into such a minimum. Will they attempt to use it as a “crisis” they can use to political advantage? Will they attempt to be seen as “doing something” about which there is nothing that can really be done? Will they say “we just don’t know what is going to happen, we will have to watch and see” or will they trot out “experts” to validate certain courses of action with presentations with graphs and arrows and projections into the future? I am more worried about the reaction of politicians and governments than I am a minimum itself.
Say you have a natural cycle such as the PDO and say that the sun also goes into deep lulls in activity in a cyclical way. You also have Earth’s precession in its solar orbit and it’s tilt on its axis. We are current experiencing a period where insolation of the far Northern Hemisphere is declining. If you have different cycles of different (and even uneven) length, it is only a matter of time before they “line up” when watched over a period of thousands of years. And you also have fairly random events such as volcanism. Maybe all it takes is a deep solar minimum at the same time as a cold PDO with a volcanic event at just the right time to “trigger” the system to flip to the opposite state. And I believe it is going to be the Northern Hemisphere that decides things because the Antarctica is relatively static in that it has been constantly glaciated for 12 to 14 million years. Expansion of ice in the Southern Hemisphere occurs mostly over ocean and can be broken up each year. Expansion of ice cover in the Northern Hemisphere would be mostly over land where it is anchored and this build up would act more to reduce sea levels which would cause even more ice to be anchored to land as the level of the Arctic Ocean drops.
So lets say you have a deep solar minimum, a cold PDO, declining NH insolation due to precession, and suddenly you have a major volcanic event during the NH fall or winter that prevents the melting of all the ice on land in the far Northern Hemisphere the following summer. And the winter after that even more snow piles up so that during the following summer, even though temperatures have warmed a bit not all the snow from the previous two years can be melted. Now we have a situation with a lot of snow cover during summer and the increase in albedo really matters. This would be particularly true at higher elevations at lower latitudes.
What causes climactic extremes might just be chance alignment of unconnected cycles with a random event (or lack of one) thrown in to act as a trigger. Same for coming out of an ice age. Precession increases insolation of the NH, maybe you get a chance alignment of a very active sun with a warm ocean cycle that leads to a change in weather patterns that melts a considerable amount of ice/snow due to heavy rain. High elevation glaciers begin to recede, snow pack melts more in summer, albedo decreases and the system flips “warm” if there has been a long period of no major volcanic activity (but volcanic activity can prevent that “flip”)
And it seems like the system is more stable in the “cold” state than it is in the “warm” state. We seem to sometimes “miss” coming out of ice ages when periods would be favorable (according to my reading) and have to wait for the next favorable period to come around again. We never seem to miss a favorable period for going back into an ice age during the past couple of million years.
I believe solar activity could be cyclical on a longer scale that the time frames over which we have observed. They could have random variation in magnitude and duration. They can align in time with other events that happen in a cyclical way and whose cycles can also vary in magnitude and duration and all of that salted with random events (asteroid impact, volcano at just the right place at just the right time or the lack of one) that when all line up just right, cause a climactic state change.
So basically, attempts to predict exactly when something is going to happen is probably useless effort. You can probably predict when things are LIKELY to happen. It is a pretty safe bet, in my opinion, to say that this interglacial will end at some time between now and the next few thousand years.
What bothers me is what people are going to attempt to “do about it” when there really is nothing that they can “do about it” other than adapt.

I just love graphs of about 25 solar cycles smashed down into 4 inches.
They are so informative, can’t tell a fat SC from a skinny SC unless you have an implanted bionic microscope in one eye.
Just makes me want to jump out of bed every morning and say “Whoopee!”

Jeff-
I also expect cooling to continue because of previous correlation between reduced solar activity and cooling.
Leif has convinced me that the sun is not the driver. Nevertheless, I believe the sun is a useful indicator.
Lyman Horne

The sun has been shining away for something on the order of 5 x 10^9 years.
Observation of the plasma ‘conveyor belt’ has covered 10^2 years– not even an eye-blink, as one would say in German. So how can we state with any confidence that observed behavior is ‘normal’ or not?

“Based on the graph I linked to, the length of SC23 is very similar to cycles 8, 10, 12, and 13, which occurred during the middle to late 1800s”
Actually, size, length, shape, odd number and context are all part of the pattern-matching Jeff is entertaining.
Cycle 9, which you did not include, is more interesting, possibly 11.

I am always intrigued to read comments like “the sun is not the driver”.
As far as I can tell we understand very, very little about the sun (except that it is the input of our energy).
We have some of the brightest people looking at trying to work it out and I have every faith in people like Leif Svalgaard and others one day working it all out. I believe we have begun to understand a great deal more about the sun and its influence, but, I humbly suggest that our knowledge is still very, very little.
One of the very few things we do understand is the daily solar cycle. Now unless I am mistaken I think we know how that works and if anyone wants to convince me that daily temperatures are not driven by the sun then go right ahead.
After that it gets a whole lot more complex.

“” Werner Weber (22:39:30) :
Whenever you invoke the sun as driver of climate variations, you may find a lot of correlations such as Maunder minimum and little ice age, but solar irradiance variations alone are far too small to account for the measured changes in global temperature. Little other than solar induced cosmic ray variations are left to be the driver, which brings up Svensmark’s idea of influencing the cloud formation through cosmic ray produced cloud droplet nucleation. Is there not a new paper based on satellite data, which reports no variation of cloud coverage through solar cycle 23 up to present? “”
Werner,
I keep seeing these statements that (a) the solar constant variation (0.1%) doesn’t explain global warming (I agree) and furthermore, the earth albedo and cloud cover haven’t changed; so nuts to Svensmark’s thesis.
Well on the basis of the papers I have been seeing and what i have been hearing of thse various measurments, I disagree with the second statement.
I also believe that if the solar constant variation over a sunspot cycle was absolutely zero, that the Svensmark scenario is mor ethan capable of explaining all the warming we have had.
What I see as the key paper to this mystery is the July 2007 paper in SCIENCE by Wentz, et al; “How Much more Rain Will Global Warming Bring.”
Essentially Wentz (RSS, Santa Rosa Ca) reported that their satellite measurments showed for a 1 deg C increase in global surface mean temperature, there was a 7% increase in Global evaporation; total atmospheric Water content; and total global precipitation.
They also stated that the GCMs agree with the 7% increase in evaporation and total atmospheric water content (for a 1 deg C rise) but disagree totally in total global precipitation. The GCMs predict from 1 to 3 percent increase in total global precipitation.
Now if total global evaporation, and total global precipitation do not match after a transient adjustment, in the direction the GCMs predict, then the total global atmospheric water content would continually increase, rather than match the 7% increase both observed by Wentz et al, and predicted by the GCMs.
So the GCMs exhibit the obligatory 3:1 fudge factor, in their predictions, and also are at variance with both experimental observation and also common sense, by a factor of from 2 1/3 to 7 times lower than observed precipitation.
So the GCMs are not even self consistent in their prediction, and also contrary to common sense. The total precipitation and total evaporation have to match (at constant temperature), after a transient adjustment of the total water content of the atmosphere because of the 1 deg rise.
The GCMs would predict that the oceans would end up in the sky.
Now what Wentz et al did not say in their paper, but which any 8th grade high school science student could predict, is that a 7% increase in total global precipitation; must inherently imply that the total global precipitable cloud cover should also increase by something of the order of 7%.
Now that cloud cover increase could manifast itself, as an increase in cloud area, or an increase in cloud density (both water and optical), or an increase in cloud persistence time; or some combination of all three of those factors. Not all of those factors would be manifest in a measurement of the earth albedo; particularly the cloud water and optical density.
But that effect would certainly reduce ground level solar insolation by more than just the albedo change.
So perosnally, I believe that the paper of Wentz et al, is experimental verification of some of the implications of Henrik Svensmark’s cosmic ray thesis; and supports a model where the ocean/cloud sytem completely regulates the global surface temperature despite cosmic rays, CO2 and other GHGs, aerosols, and volcanic ash, etc.
Anything that aids in cloud nucleation, particularly in the warmer tropics where there is plenty of atmospheric moisture, lowers the surface temperature (don’t need as much evaporation), and anything that inhibits cloud formation; such as particulate clean air, or diversion of cosmic rays and other charged particles towards the magnetic poles where there is much less water vapor, will lead to surface warming by requiring a higher humidity, more evaporation, to produce the required equilibrium level of global cloud cover. And I believe that model would work the same even if sunspot cycles produced no change whatsoever in the solar constant.
George

Lief,
“Using the ‘official’ smoothed sunspot numbers to calculate cycle lengths skews the length depending on the relative sizes of the cycles.”
It leaves me with some questions.
If the numbers are symmetrically smoothed, wouldn’t the shape of the down/uptrend have a very minimal effect on time?
Maybe I’m not understanding, are you saying the smoothing method decenter’s the minima just by slope or is the smoothing done asymmetrically?
—-
Other comments point out the minima I calculated are not the official cycle start/end values. I just located a consistent point in the data plotted it and ran
a very short analysis having no idea what it would find. The whole thing was the result of about two hours work after spending other time working on an improved correction to satellite temperature signal.
—-
GG sliding slope fit, I mean I fit a slope to a sliding window of the time series data. Sorry for the terminology.

To Frank Perdicaro,
The Obama’s are in DC now (kids in school and all) and today’s high so far is 18F. If it doesn’t hit 20F for the high in the Baltimore region (where I live), it will be the first time in 5 years. Forecast for Tuesday in this area is 32F, mostly cloudy with 10% chance of precipitation.
The optimistic cynic in me hopes that “Climate Change” for liberals will be like abortion for conservatives. You drag it out repeatedly to garner passion in your base but when all is said and done, there is a whole lot more said than done.

George E. Smith (11:54:45)
Hear, hear.

“Neither. Naming something like that is intended to give credit for discovery, not cause.”
But, Jeff, Gore discovered the minimum on the same day he invented the internet…

The Lynching of Carbon Dioxide – The Innocent Source of Life
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/hertzberg.pdf
“The first 20 ppm of CO2 essentially makes the atmosphere almost opaque at those previously shown wave lengths (4.3 microns, 15 microns), so that doubling the concentration to 40 ppm increases the heating effect by only 20 % more. Doubling it again to 80 ppm increases the heating effect by only 7 %. As you can see, increasing the concentration further diminishes the heating effect, so that by the time we get to the last century’s increase from 280 to 380 ppm, the effect is utterly trivial. It is as though you had blackened a glass window with one coat of paint so that it was 99 % opaque. Adding a second coat increases its opacity by only 1 % more, but it is now completely opaque. Adding a third coat, has no visible effect at all.”

“In our submitted paper we had the max in 2013, but a reviewer objected to that number saying that we had little basis for that”
Sorry to hear of it.
“Using the ‘official’ smoothed sunspot numbers to calculate cycle lengths skews the length depending on the relative sizes of the cycles.”
Since the ‘corrections’ are provisional we don’t take it as a detraction. Jeff did fine with the ‘data’ as it currently stands.

Ed Scott,
My money job is in optics. I am interested in getting the absorption spectra for gaseous CO2 for the full range of solar wavelengths, yet so far I can’t find it. It has to be out there.
If anyone knows where I can find the data I have seen plotted so many times, it would be appreciated. I’d like to try and reproduce those greenhouse calculations for my own understanding.

After reading many of these comments it appears to me that at this time there are too many variables with some known and others unknown as well as perturbations caused by our solar and galactic environment to accurately predict how long the minimum solar period may last nor when the next maximum may occur or its magnitude. There is a chance that someone may come close by their studies but it would take more than one cycle to verify and hopefully they may live long enough to realize this accomplishment. While using previous solar cycle lengths and maximums and using suspect global surface temperatures and SSTs in analyses well as applying mathematical gymnastics may be interesting in trying to predict future climate the sun in the end may have the last evolutionary laugh or an errant asteroid!

George E. Smith (11:54:45) :
Wow!!
What a posting.
BK

Looking at the distribution, it appears that you have two “populations”, so taking the standard deviation of the entire mess doesn’t have any real meaning. It is like plotting the height of NBA players along with midgets, finding an average of 5′-8″, with a standard deviation of 8″. It really doesn’t give you any useful information.
The two peaks of the distribution suggests that we have two populations, as if the sun operates in two different “states”. When it is operating in state A, the periods tend to be shorter with an average around 10.5. When it is operating in state B, the periods tend to be longer with an average around 12.5.
But until a mechanism is discovered to support this, it is pointless to guess whether the current cycle is a 2-sigma state A or a typical state B.

The Dutch canals have frozen over. Something that has not occured in over a dozen years. This was partly due to temperatures but also due to pollution in the water. Nothing stopped the freezing this year. See link below.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/16/europe/skaters.php

crosspatch (08:00:29) :
“Perhaps it’s time to re-visit the ideas of Dr. Theodor Landscheidt”
Probably not. For example. While the 11 year cycle is somewhat analogous to the orbit of Jupiter, I don’t believe a solar scientist would say that the orbit of Jupiter is responsible for the cycles. And while Landscheidt might have noticed something happening at particular intervals, what he proposes as the cause is probably not it. His plotting of these intervals and how they correspond with events is, however, uncanny.
Not sure that Landscheidt was all that big on linking Jupiter to the 11 yr sunspot cycles, and solar scientists really are still in the dark even though they will profess otherwise. Landscheidt followed on from Jose, and its more than “uncanny”. There has been lots of new work done since Landscheidt, you should check it out and get upto speed.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/

If not the Gore or Hansen Minimum, surely the cap and trade tax could be named after them, or perhaps a electrical brown out like they had in Calif a few years ago….
The Gore Dark Era. The years we had to burn the furnature in the oven to stay warm.

“” Leif Svalgaard (14:51:01) :
George E. Smith (11:54:45) :
as far as I have been able to determine; that roughly 24 hour daily cycle is not even a part of the global climate models, or even the GCMs.
The models use a time step of ~15 minutes, so, yes the daily cycle is part of the models. “”
I stand corrected. That is good to know, that short time intervals like that are used in the models.
Are any of these models available in a form where one could actually use them.
I think about all the computer time and power that is being wasted listening to cosmic random noise and trying to find e-mail messages from ET in there.
It would be much more useful, trying to run physical models of the earth system, than messing with whether there is anybody out ther in the universe who gives a hoot about us.
I can just see it; sneding out a question into the void, asking for a cure for cancer; to a “civilisation” 50 light years away form us. A hundred years from now, somebody is going to get an answer from “out there”, and then ask; “what idiot sent this dumb question out; we’ve known how to cure cancer for over 80 years now!”
Yeah really useful talking with ET.
Well it’s too bad that Hansen doesn’t make data measurements on a scale similar to those used by the models; maybe the models and the measurements would agree if they were modelling what they are measuring, instead of two totally different things.
I would expect that a climate model would be able to replicate Hansen’s GISStemp raw data form each of Anthony’s observation posts, since the models have more detail than the measurments.
Of course If they are unable to replicate the past which is known; what chance is there for them to predict the future ?

“The Gore Dark Era”
I believe we can date it as beginning next Tuesday.
Has everyone else seen all the crap in the detailed Stimulus Bill?

Lief,
Ok, that’s what I thought you meant about filtering causing a shift. The effect in the graphs you show where the minimum of the first falls at 16.4 the crossing point of the two lines falls at about 13.9 so the delta is 2.5 units. In the second graph with what looks like much different slope in terms of sunspots the minimum is 15 but the cross point is about 13.2 units for a delta of 1.8. The net change in the cross point is 2.5-1.8 or 0.7 which doesn’t seem like a huge effect for the type of analysis I did. Especially considering the second part of the analysis used the more recent data which has limited variation.
“You might agree with me that if no new cycle 23 spots appear, the minimum was in ~August 2008, no matter what cycle 24 does.”
It wouldn’t really be a good definition for this calculation since I can’t see the magnetic field of the historic sunspots and therefore can’t compare the whole trend (I don’t know if this data even exists for the same timeframe). By locating a consistent point in the trend for each cycle I only showed that we have extended to an unusually long time before the next upshift — comparing like to like.
I do these things to learn though, not to prove a point. The entire analysis took only a couple of hours and so far from what I can tell, it seems reasonably valid in terms of pointing out a less typical effect in solar cycles. I realized before I made the post that the histogram may not be normal distribution but it is enough for me to see where we currently are. I fully expected a very boring result but found that we had drifted outside the typical range for the last 175 years.
—-
One question though if you don’t mind.
Do you recommend using the timeseries with crossed slope matching to identify the minima? I could do the analysis that way as well.

Ever notice that the current short term temperature trending (in geologic terms) has been touted as being unprecedented, even though in historical terms it is not unusual, but when you get a potentially unusual event that could affect the ‘consensus’ argument, they go back to the long term trending to ‘disprove’ any argument against their consensus?
Kind of a double standard in their arguments…

One more thing about the data distribution. Of course it affects the 95% confidence number but remember that 95% is an entirely arbitrary number anyway and my analysis has us well past the 95% level. The histogram which has the bimodal nature is of the entire dataset. After the maunder minimum there are only 16 cycles of data from 175 years to work with.
This leaves only15 delta t’s. From that small set, I don’t know what distribution the data on that few points really has, but it doesn’t look bimodal. What I do believe is that the current minimum to minimum trend is unusually long for that 175 years.
I had some suggestions to use other distributions and things, I don’t know if this bit of data is interesting enough or lengthly enough for that kind of detail.

David Archibald (17:57:51) :
Solar Cycle 23 is now 19 years old, and only a couple of solar cycles have produced sunspots 19 years after the peak of the previous cycle.
Interesting observation, and I bet if we had enough sunspot data we would probably see that type of incident recurring on a cyclic basis.

Jeff Id (13:32:54) :
“Ed Scott,
My money job is in optics. I am interested in getting the absorption spectra for gaseous CO2 for the full range of solar wavelengths, yet so far I can’t find it. It has to be out there.
If anyone knows where I can find the data I have seen plotted so many times, it would be appreciated. I’d like to try and reproduce those greenhouse calculations for my own understanding.”
I don’t agree that “It has to be out there”. In fact I think that, broadly, it was one of the very first things that was disappeared when this scam was thought up.
I have some questions.
All-
Why are we constantly told that the science is settled on this matter? Along with all the “this was explained in 1896” stuff.
Where is the location of all the(/any) new, revealing, authoritative evidence that CO2 “does” anything that the billions of dollars per year thrown at this settled science has purchased on behalf of the tax paying public?
George- In the spirit of your post at (11:54:45) : (and in some hope that your copy of The Infrared Handbook is a book you keep to hand)
What is the real IR fingerprint of CO2?
Why are there still no numbers on the comparison of the fingerprint absorption of CO2 compared to the quantity of its black body absorption? I may have this completely arse-about-face but I am frustrated that we are told “someone knows” and maybe it’s you 😉
I am thinking of making book on the eventual findings relating to the “doubling” problem, it’s just that I just cannot figure the odds based on current theory or lack thereof.
So far I have, estimates dismissed; (for various reasons, from “guy is unknown/out of their field/mad” to “paper contains spelling mistakes”)
22ppmv (a CO2 laser guy)
100ppmv (a disenchanted chemist?)
388ppmv (our current window)
And, of course, the alarmists series that will cause our orbit to degrade and plunge us all into fiery hell;
488ppmv (today, plus a purely arbitrary 100 to add some flavor – an, if they can do it so can I, type of thing)
560ppmv (the supposedly deadly doubling from pre-industrial levels)
776ppmv (the supposedly deadly doubling from current levels)
above 776ppmv (a theoretical limit, possibly based on burning all the combustible material available to us, and where the problem becomes moot as we are all dead)
Any takers? I am in the UK, so it’s off to bed for me, but, in the words of the current Governor of California…,
I’ll be back.

crosspatch: If I get a pinhole leak in my tire, eventually I find myself at the side of the road.
If the sun’s output is less, and the “R” value of the ionosphere has shrunken, I’m sure that over time it’s going to get a lot colder than it is now.
In my neck of the woods, during the solar minimums we get the record high-pressure in January and the record temps, while the rest of the country gets blasted with Arctic Air Mass. And right now, we had a week of breaking the previous records. Seems to be right on track.

Anthony:
If you are still in wonderment about winning the Blog Award, look back at this thread. Just about the time a reader feels like they are drowning in science/technology, along comes Fred to break the spell:
“Congress would pass the “Save the Sun Emergency Protection Act,” which would authorize the ramming of spaceships packed with hundred dollar bills into the sun in an effort to re-start its fusion reaction. After all, it’s for the children.”
When the postings in one thread can cover the gamut from PhD dissertation level discussions to statements which make it difficult to remain firmly seated, how could you lose?

Never mind, my mistake, I mis-read what was being said.

i’d put some money on that bright plage area at 10 o’clock becoming a spot…
I’d put money on it being the death of a spot from the back side of the sun

“If I get a pinhole leak in my tire, eventually I find myself at the side of the road.”
That is sort of where I was headed. If you consider the air in the tire as the energy stored at Earth (mostly in the oceans) and adding air represents day (absorbs energy from the sun) and letting out air represents night (radiates energy into space) then if I slightly reduce the amount I add every day but let out the same amount every night, eventually the pressure in the tire will be measurably less. And while the amount varies over time due to clouds and the like, if there is less available to add, the overall amount added over time will have to decrease somewhat.
Global warming should work by retarding the amount let out at night. Looking at the long term satellite temperature observations since 1979, I don’t see any trends that look anything like the IPCC projected trends.

Henry Galt wrote:
above 776ppmv (a theoretical limit, possibly based on burning all the combustible material available to us, and where the problem becomes moot as we are all dead)
Why would we be dead at above 776ppm?
First, CO2 is close to max absorption of thermal radiation. See: A Window on Water Vapor and Planetary Temperature – Part 2. Doubling CO2 will not double its effect, only close the gap to max absorption.
If you’re worried about toxicity levels, you can take heart from Toxicity of Carbon Dioxide Gas Exposure, CO2 Poisoning Symptoms, Carbon Dioxide Exposure Limits, and Links to Toxic Gas Testing Procedures:

Basic Information about Concentrations of CO2 in Air
1,000,000 ppm of a gas = 100 % concentration of the gas, and 10,000 ppm of a gas in air = a 1% concentration.
At 1% concentration of carbon dioxide CO2 (10,000 parts per million or ppm) and under continuous exposure at that level, such as in an auditorium filled with occupants and poor fresh air ventilation, some occupants are likely to feel drowsy.
The concentration of carbon dioxide must be over about 2% (20,000 ppm) before most people are aware of its presence unless the odor of an associated material (auto exhaust or fermenting yeast, for instance) is present at lower concentrations.
Above 2%, carbon dioxide may cause a feeling of heaviness in the chest and/or more frequent and deeper respirations.
If exposure continues at that level for several hours, minimal “acidosis” (an acid condition of the blood) may occur but more frequently is absent.
Breathing rate doubles at 3% CO2 and is four times the normal rate at 5% CO2.
Toxic levels of carbon dioxide: at levels above 5%, concentration CO2 is directly toxic. [At lower levels we may be seeing effects of a reduction in the relative amount of oxygen rather than direct toxicity of CO2.]

So: CO2 levels have to be 50,000ppm to be directly toxic. But according to the geologic record, atmospheric CO2 has never exceeded 8,000ppm: image
Again, from Toxicity of Carbon Dioxide Gas Exposure, CO2 Poisoning Symptoms, Carbon Dioxide Exposure Limits, and Links to Toxic Gas Testing Procedures:

What are the Allowable Limits of CO2 EXPOSURE – Carbon dioxide exposure limits PEL and TLV set by OSHA and NIOSH
Carbon dioxide is regulated for diverse purposes but not as a toxic substance.
The U.S. EPA CO2 exposure limits: The U.S. EPA recommends a maximum concentration of Carbon dioxide CO2 of 1000 ppm (0.1%) for continuous exposure.
ASHRAE standard 62-1989 recommends an indoor air ventilation standard of 20 cfm per person of outdoor air or a CO2 level which is below 1000ppm.
NIOSH CO2 exposure limits: NIOSH recommends a maximum concentration of carbon dioxide of 10,000 ppm or 1% (for the workplace, for a 10-hr work shift with a ceiling of 3.0% or 30,000 ppm for any 10-minute period). These are the highest threshold limit value (TLV) and permissible exposure limit (PEL) assigned to any material.
OSHA CO2 exposure limits: OSHA recommends a lowest oxygen concentration of 19.5% in the work place for a full work-shift exposure. As we calculated above, for the indoor workplace oxygen level to reach 19.5% (down from its normal 20.9% oxygen level in outdoor air) by displacement of oxygen by CO2, that is, to reduce the oxygen level by about 6%, the CO2 or carbon dioxide level would have to increase to about 1.4% 14,000 ppm.
In summary, OSHA, NIOSH, and ACGIH occupational exposure standards are 0.5% CO2 (5,000 ppm) averaged over a 40 hour week, 3% (3,000 ppm) average for a short-term (15 minute) exposure [we discuss and define “short term exposure limits” STEL below], and 4% (40,000 ppm) as the maximum instantaneous limit considered immediately dangerous to life and health.

If tomorrow we suddenly woke in a Jurassic environment in terms of CO2 levels and temperatures, we would still be “safe.”

“looks like NH ice is going back up quickly to 2004 levels”
And for some reason NANSEN hasn’t updated since 1/11.

Fred (16:11:22) :
“Suppose Something IS Wrong with the Sun (something like entering a Grand/Great Minimum). Suppose such a change in solar activity might have profound implications on climate, ecosystems and our civilization. What would be the response of the government if it knows or suspects the situation?”
Congress would pass the “Save the Sun Emergency Protection Act,” which would authorize the ramming of spaceships packed with hundred dollar bills into the sun in an effort to re-start its fusion reaction. After all, it’s for the children.

Great idea, but, with the usual government, inefficiency they’d probably hit the sun at night when it’s off.
-smirk

“you missed the whole point…What is not OK is to calculate minimum they way he [and everybody else in general”
Hardly. I briefly thought the same thing, until I saw the April 2007 panel report and realized ‘minimum’ is a compromise intended to comprise a number of loosely coincident features. Two that stood out were coronal holes and IMF.
Coronal holes should be reduced in number and size and be ‘rigidly’ transequatorial, as they are approaching of late. Last summer they were sometimes 2 and 3 at a time, and often confined to either hemisphere.
The IMF should at times resemble MM standing over the HVAC vent on the sidewalk, thrusting down her uplifted skirt. July/August only gave a hint of lift, usually looking more like a tutu.
I’d say the chances we’ll all do it your way are those of a snowball on the photosphere. Ditto that for revising SS numbers to your specs.

Please excuse my most recent [sun off at night] ; hadn’t read that by Dave Wendt (16:40:07) at the time.
Old joke; like me.

A bit of confirmation of what I’ve show from diatribe guy.
http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/december-2008-update-on-sunspot-stats/
He has a pile of numbers in this post but if you take the time you can get a feel for what’s going on. He wrote this on Jan 6.

Sekerob:
“Here’s how Nansen sees reality.”
Rather, how Nansen saw reality back on 11 January.

Sekerob
Neil/Vincent et al, yeah right, almost approaching 2004, 2003, the special protective goggle view. Here’s how Nansen sees reality.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
what is a “protective goggle view” I wonder?
Are you saying Nansen’s graph is right and the IARC-JAXA one is wrong? What is the basis for your “yeah right” sarcasm?

Katherine (21:29:12) :
“Why would we be dead at above 776ppm?”
Because the runaway, flaming atmosphere would have parched us waaaay before then 😉
The post was mostly tongue in cheek but to follow on….
I choose to believe a few things that run counter to much of the agenda. One would be that I believe that we find oil, gas and coal wherever we choose to look for it. If convenience suggests we should purposefully fail to look somewhere, for political, financial(political) or economic(engineering) reasons that does not mean they are not there. The guesstimate of 776 can be at least tripled as easily extracted reserves are underestimated for similar reasons. I am ex navy and have worked in the oil business so this is not news to me, although I am lay.
We trust these people (until recently autonomously) with a large part of the nuclear arsenal. One would guess the research has been thorough.
http://atlanticlegal.org/php/uploads/4108.pdf
“A study of nine nuclear ballistic submarines reported average CO2 at 3,500 ppm with a high recording of 10,600 and for ten nuclear attack submarines, an average of 4,100 ppm with a peak of 11,300 ppm, yet during the usual months-long deployments of nuclear submarines, this continuous exposure had no adverse effects. See R. Hagar, “Submarine Atmospheric Control and Monitoring Brief for the COT Committee, Presentation at the First Meeting on Emergency and Continuous Exposure Guidance Levels for Selected Submarine Contaminants” (2003) While it is true that submarine crews are composed of young, healthy men, the research is clear that CO2 is not problematic until its concentration reaches about 28,000 ppm, and there one begins to see slight headaches, and “…the bulk of the data indicate a no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL) for CO2 of about 25,000 ppm…” National Academies, Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, EMERGENCY AND CONTINUOUS EXPOSURE GUIDANCE LEVELS FOR SELECTED SUBMARINE CONTAMINANTS 40 (2004). Average atmospheric CO2, even at 800 ppm, is of course much more than an order of magnitude less. (For the emission scenario IS92a, see supra, n. 22, the IPCC estimates that the atmosphere will contain slightly more than 700 ppm(v) carbon dioxide in the year 2100.)”

A query regarding the Maunder minimum for the experts out there.
Is it believed that during the Maunder the 11 year solar cycle in fact continued but the solar max levels were so low that either the size or number of sunspots were not generally detectable with the equipment of the time OR was it that during the Maunder the 11 year cycle simple “fell to pieces”?

nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (15:16:10)
vukcevic (09:11:11) :
I agree. If one method doesn’t work maybe we should consider something new.
And the current method is not working is it vukcevic. But everyone keeps their head in the sand. You might enjoy this bit I wrote in another thread on this website that is near dead. Its related to Jose’s work.
Thanks for the note: I will look up P.Jose’s work.
But everyone keeps their head in the sand…
I say with a bit of coercion as well. When I submitted my article in 2003 (http://www.vukcevic.co.uk )
response was that it would not be accepted since it refers to the Jupiter’s and Saturn’s orbits. In my second attempt, the J & S are not mentioned, although all numbers are clearly there, and it was passed ?!
I am only an amateur and intruder in this field of science, but I am surprised that even most reputable scientists are not excluded (as just indicatedin posts above).
I just hope that the global temperatures and CO2 effect data are not subject to the same treatment.

Hathaway isn’t the only one having to move graphs and minimums forward.
They are all getting undercut. SIDC is also eroded.
Yes, it’s late, but disbelief is a tough thing to get over. It’s human nature, nobody is immune.
It will stop messing with your mind when you accept that it’s out-of-control and out of bounds. SC24 is late.
It’s mid-Jan 2009, and there’s nothing going on up there.

Warmers avert your eyes from Icecap today, because you will end up frothing at the mouth. I have made a prediction of -0.4 degrees for May UAH MSU.
I suppose “frothing at the mouth” could be confused with “sniggering uncontrollably”.
I suspect the reaction of most warmers will be “roll on June”.

RE: Precipitation
We have good data on precipitation, arguably much better data than for temperature. Not least because we have objective precipitation measurements for quite large areas from dam and catchment flows. Something we don’t have for temperatures.
While the models may incorporate increased water vapour and hence precipitation from the observed warming (as a feedback), that’s not the picture we get from the real world. For example, this comprehensive study from Japan shows a clear decline in precipitation over the 20th century.
http://www.mlit.go.jp/tochimizushigen/mizsei/water_resources/contents/issues.html
The precipitation data supports the theory that the observed warming results from decreased cloud cover, which means the precipitation data supports Svensmark’s GCM/cloud link.

Neil Crafter (00:14:10) :
Try these 2 as well: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries_thumb.png
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/200901_Figure5_thumb.png
Warning: JAXA was 0.87 million short on SIE mean compared to NSIDC/NCDC for December 2008. Every month a similar shortfall, so know which source to consider when drawing conclusions.