A guest post by Jeff Id
Well John Christy gave me a lot to think about in satellite temp trends as far as an improved correction over my last post. Steve McIntyre pitched in some comments as well. It is going to take a bit to work out the details of that for me but I think I can produce an improved accuracy slope over my last posts. In the meantime, I downloaded sunspot numbers from the NASA.
Cycles are interesting things. There are endless cycles in nature, orbits, ocean temp shifts, solar cycles, magnetic cycles the examples are everywhere. What makes a cycle unusual is also an interesting topic. Some solar scientists have claimed that our current solar cycle is not unusual by the record. They are certainly the experts but recently the experts have been forced to update their predictions for the next solar cycle.
Well, I’m no expert on the sun but I do find the data regarding sunspots interesting, particularly in the fact that we are again in at least a short term cooling at the same time sunspots and solar magnetic level have plunged.
Here’s an article from our all understanding US government.
What’s Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing)
And a few beginning lines.
July 11, 2008: Stop the presses! The sun is behaving normally.
So says NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. “There have been some reports lately that Solar Minimum is lasting longer than it should. That’s not true. The ongoing lull in sunspot number is well within historic norms for the solar cycle.”
Cool picture …….
See where the tiny little 2009 tick is. We should be increasing now and well on our way by 2010. By the way, this is an updated graph from the original predition.
Hathaway said, well within historic norms. Forecasting is the most dangerous sport, but I am as curious about this claim as any —he is the expert after all. Here’s a plot of the sunspot data from NASA NOAA numbers.
I did a sliding slope fit to the data to find when the slopes shifted from negative to positive in each cycle. I placed a red line above each point identified. These points are not intended to mean the beginning of a cycle( that is for the experts) but rather to be a consistent software identified point between each cycle.
The red lines represent solar minima. The only line which may not be a minima is the most recent in Jan 09 which we need to reference how unusual solar activity is.
Below is a list of the years the red lines are centered on.
1755.667, 1766.250. 1775.583, 1784.500, 1798.167, 1810.583, 1823.167, 1833.833, 1843.833, 1856.167, 1867.167, 1878.750
1889.500, 1901.750, 1913.167, 1923.417, 1933.750, 1944.167, 1954.250, 1964.833, 1976.250, 1986.250, 1996.417, 2009.041
The years between each minima are currently
10.583, 9.333, 8.916, 13.666, 12.416, 12.583, 10.666, 10.000, 12.333, 11.000, 11.583, 10.750, 12.250, 11.416, 10.250, 10.333,
10.416, 10.083, 10.583, 11.416, 10.000, 10.166, 12.625
So far there has been only one solar cycle which has exceeded the length of the current one. The cycle extended extra long (13.66 years) from 1784 – 1798 and was the last cycle leading into the Dalton Minimum.
A histogram of the distribution of the time between solar cycles looks like this.
The standard deviation of the total record is 1.18 years the mean is 11.01. Well there’s the eleven year solar cycle we hear about.
Two sigma (two standard deviation) difference from the mean corresponds to a 95% certainty of something unusual in our current situation. The numbers this year at mid Jan correspond to about 1.37 sigma of all time records, which is getting close. But that’s not the end of the story, after all I just included the dalton minimum cycles in the data right after we identified the solar cycle prior to the dalton minimum as the one with the longest time span on record. That means, I treated it as though it were a normal event. —– Well I do believe (on faith in nature) this length is normal, the sun isn’t doing anything different from before but there is only one of these long events on record and were we to look for a similar event it would be stupid to include it in the standard deviation dataset. We should only look at data which is not related to another potential dalton minimum from Figure 2 this would be after the dalton minimum and before present day (from 1833 – 1996).
The standard deviation of the cycle start after the dalton minimum 1833 and before 2009 was only 0.79 years. The average Jeff Id solar cycle in the same period is 10.83 years. This puts the two sigma limits of the solar cycle at 9.26 years on the short side and 12.42 years on the long side.
Of course this puts my reasonable analysis of solar cycle outside of the last 176 year normal to a two sigma 95% interval 12.6 years has crossed the limit. With little sign of the next cycle beginning yet, this might get worse. I tell you what, I prefer the taxes from global warming to the cost of glaciers in my yard, it seems like a balance of evils to me. I hope this solar cycle changes soon but we can no more effect the sun with a dance than we can effect global warming with a tax so what choice do we have.
In Dr. David Hathaway’s defense, he made his statement above in July which put the current minimum at 2008.583 which comes to 12.166 years and just inside the 95% two sigma certainty of 12.42.
Now that we’re at 12.6, I wonder if they’ll extend the predictions for the beginning of the next cycle again.
Leif: I understand that the minimum has probably already occurred, but the truly slow start of cycle 24 seems unlike other cycles observed in the last century. Am I wrong on that?
Jim:
I thought an expert was someone who was more than 50 miles from home…
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (22:34:47) :
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.
I agree. If one method doesn’t work maybe we should consider something new.
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/combined.gif
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.
Any chance you could update this post to point at the updated sunspot prediction and at least recognize that NASA has continued to update their predictions… in this case downward.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/08/the-new-nasa-solar-goalpost-cycle-24-maybe-not-so-big/
Obviously the post author chose a specific prediction to work from and I don’t think the updated prediction impacts what he’s analysed but the post could still reference the most recent prediction.
Does anyone find it weird that the historical prediction curve drops in the March 2008 frame?
Thanks, G
No… an ex-spurt is a former drip under pressure.
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.
Leif, any word on the Guass strength of 11010?
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!”
Robert Rust:
“we only count spots facing the Earth”
Only recently do we have the ability to count spots on the other side of the Sun…which means if we counted spots away from Earth, we’d have no comparison to past records where it was only possible to count on this side of the Sun.
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
One thing that needs to constantly be in our mind when we discuss these things is the sun spot size. Every day earth experiences about 2 dozen earthquates, but no one is alarmed by this because most of them are “tiny tims” In the same way the tiny tim sunspots don’t amount to a hill of beans. The sun is quiet and it is going to get colder. Too bad they don’t rate sun spots like we rate earthquakes, maybe that would help us.
Basil (08:21:46) :
looking at the charts on Page 4 of the solar cycle transitions, how did you calculate your “yearly smoothed” values?
Running mean over the year. At the end [last six months] I use my prediction of the next cycle. This can, of course, be debated, but I prefer this way rather than the various fancy ways of doing this such as Savitzky-Golay Smoothing that is just extrapolation.
Others:
In these graphs:
http://www.leif.org/research/Crossover%20and%20Smoothed%20Minima.pdf
I’ll try to explain the problems I see with calculating the length of the cycles. I construct artificial transitions between two cycles [old cycle dark blue; new cycle pink] using linear decline and ascent for simplicity. The open circles show the sum of the two ‘sunspot numbers’. The black smooth curve is a 5-point smooth. The abscissa is not years but more like half-years counted from the maximum of the old cycle. The time goes from max to max. The two cycles have different sizes and a parameter P quantifies this: P = size new/size old and is plotted at the high end of the pink curve. The first graph is for a very small new cycle [only a quarter of the old], while the last transition graph is for a very high new cycle [2.5 times the old]. The time TS of the smoothed minimum is also marked on the graphs [16.4 for the 1st].
And here is my point: On the 1st graph TS is past the last spot of the old cycle and on the last graph TS is before the first spot of the new cycle. The TS is thus unphysical. I would prefer the time of the crossover TC as a better definition. One could smooth the old cycle and the new cycle separately in order to pinpoint the crossover [as I did in what Basil referred to]. The very last graph shows TS and TC as functions of the P-parameter. It is clear that if the next cycle is small, the length of the current cycle as measured using TS [the official method] will be too big. As I have mentioned, using TC, solar cycle 23 is within one sigma of the mean and therefore not unusual, even if longer than the mean.
Using the ‘official’ smoothed sunspot numbers to calculate cycle lengths skews the length depending on the relative sizes of the cycles. A lot of the numerology that uses such ‘lengths’ is contaminated by this effect and is over-interpreted and has little to do with science.
David Corcoran (08:57:54) :
the truly slow start of cycle 24 seems unlike other cycles observed in the last century. Am I wrong on that?
No, as I have predicted several years ago [ http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%2024%20Smallest%20100%20years.pdf ] cycle 24 will be the smallest in a 100 years and thus probably a slow starter. There is an interesting aside to this paper. In the abstract we say that maximum would be ~2011 [the ‘~’ signifies ‘approximately’]. 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, and in effect forced us to just use the average solar cycle length [you use the average if you don’t know better]. Peer review can sometimes be detrimental, although most often the paper improves.
coaldust (07:50:41) :
Just because something has happened before is not evidence that it is not unusual.
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?
“The “analysis” by Jeff appears to contain at least one fundamental flaw. ”
Not sure what that might be. May 1996 is the official 23 minimum although September 1996 was supported by some. The major criterion of minimum is a smoothed 13-month SS count.
If that fact remains, 6-9 months from now the ‘official’ minimum will certainly follow July/August.
“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.
It is good that others mention that the system of the
sun, and sun spot minima distribution might not be
random, but rather chaotic. We really do not know.
So, I can hit this issue with the same stick used on
the recent digits thread.
Assuming a Gaussian distribution, and then performing
Z-score analysis only provides useful information if the
underlying process is _known_ to be random. It is easy
to fool most of the people, including one’s self, with a
sure sounding, but completely worthless, analysis.
Stepping slightly off topic, we all see this problem writ
large today. The mathematical model for packaging
securitized mortgages assumed a smooth Guaussian
distribution of risk. It was fundamentally wrong: some
people are deadbeats. Their ability or desire to repay
loans is not and cannot be related to my repayment
history via Gaussian analysis. The distribution is
discontinuous and non-differentiable. The model
collapsed, and now we all have a $1,000,000,000,000
error to deal with. The basis for the mortgage mess is
incorrect application of mathematics. Let us not make the
same error in the climate discussion. We cannot afford
another $1,000,000,000,000 error at this time.
Let us all hope for snow in Washington DC on Tuesday. Lots
of snow.
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.
All this talk about sunspots!
Check the ice graph on the right,,, some pretty good growth there!
“” 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
Interesting website that is no longer live.
Jupiter’s Dance
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.
Neither. Naming something like that is intended to give credit for discovery, not cause.