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.
Vincent Guerrini Jr (20:50:27) :
looks like NH ice is going back up quickly to 2004 levels
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
and its taking aim at 2003 as well.
Go red line, go!
“looks like NH ice is going back up quickly to 2004 levels”
And for some reason NANSEN hasn’t updated since 1/11.
Global warming caused the plane crash.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/nyregion/17birds.html?ref=nyregion
Nevertheless, the danger of bird strikes “is an ongoing problem, and it will always be a problem,” said Steven D. Garber, a biologist who was a consultant to the Port Authority in the 1990s.
And it may become more so — despite efforts at mitigation. “There is evidence both in North America and in Europe that birds are shifting their territories,” said Joel L. Cracraft, curator in charge of the department of ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History. “And that has been correlated with global warming.”
Great idea, but, with the usual government, inefficiency they’d probably hit the sun at night when it’s off.
-smirk
“What would it take to run the temperature history with only the sites from about 1990 to see what the temperature history would be?”
You don’t really need to do that much work. Just because the temperature rose at the same time the number of stations dropped doesn’t necessarily mean the dropping of the stations caused the temperature change. Remember, correlation doesn’t prove causation. There is an easier way to tell that involves much less work than digging up years worth of records for thousands of stations.
All you need to do is plot the GISS global anomaly against a satellite-based global anomaly. If the difference between those two jumps at the same time the stations were removed, then you are onto something and the additional work is justified. If the difference doesn’t change much at that time, then the difference didn’t really amount to much and the temperature just happened to rise at about the same time.
“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.
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
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.
Katherine wrote:
“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.”
Your calculation actually understates the amount of CO2 that must be added to a normal atmosphere to drive the Oxygen level down to the safe minimum of 19.5%. Remember that added CO2 would displace the Nitrogen that forms the bulk of air, as well as Oxygen. Since 19.5/20.9=.933, it follows that 6.7% CO2 would be required to drive the O2 level in the atmosphere down to 19.5%.
FWIW, I worked for many years in Breweries where time-weighted CO2 exposures over the work shift were frequently close to the 0.5% PEL (Personal Exposure Limit). In the bad old days when workplace safeguards were less stringent, exposures around 1.5% for long periods were routine. Levels of over 5% (=50,000 ppm) are considered to be IDLH (Immediately Dangerous to Life or Health).
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.
Jeff Alberts, his claim is pollution prevented freezing. The surface water quality in the Netherlands has not changed significantly since the last major freeze 12 years ago. The thaw has set in alright.
The reference btw is the ElevenCityTour. If that can be held, than it’s a proper winter in the lowlands.
Long_Winter (13:35:22) :
ignoring, minimizing and discrediting the observed events (lack of sunspots, […] So, Drs. D. Hathaway and L. Svalgaard are just doing their job in an awkward effort to shape public opinion.
You forget or ignore the fact that I four years ago predicted that the coming cycle would be the smallest in a 100 years…
Pearland Aggie (13:36:51) :
Hey Leif,
Do you have a graphic somewhere that shows the relative positions of new and old cycle spots on the surface of the sun during the transition between the cycles? How high (or low) in latitude does a spot have to occur to be considered a spot from the previous cycle?
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly.gif
How high (or low) in latitude does a spot have to occur to be considered a spot from the previous cycle?
as you can see from the link [the =’butterfly’ diagram] it is pretty easy to tell which spots are old cycle and which are new. There may be a handful of doubtful cases, but considering that there are 3000 active regions in a cycle […]
Robert Bateman (09:27:47) :
Leif, any word on the Gauss strength of 11010?
patience, patience. Bill did get some good data and is busy reducing the raw data to meaningful physical values…
Jeff Id (16:49:26) :
I only showed that we have extended to an unusually long time before the next upshift — comparing like to like.
You only need to look at the last transition as the issue was about 23=>24. I think I showed that cycle 23 was 11.6 years long [from 1997.0 to 2008.6] and thus within one sigma of the mean.
Do you recommend using the timeseries with crossed slopes as in the graphs you gave as examples to identify the minima? I could do the analysis that way as well and use a best fit of Hathaway’s prediction (slide it into place) for an estimate of the next cycle.
If you can, yes. I have done this for 21=>23, 22=>23,and 23=>24 in http://www.leif.org/research/Most%20Recent%20IMF,%20SW,%20and%20Solar%20Data.pdf and have plans to back in time, but it is a lot of work.
Jim Steele (14:19:35) :
Could you explain the mechanism for the Solar Conveyor belt and if it s still abnormally slow now, 2 years after Hathaway’s observation?
There is a meridional circulation [material at the surface moving from the equator to the pole at about 20 meter/second] that must have a return flow deeper down in order to avoid all of the Sun ending up at the poles. This flow is difficult to measure and recent data are conflicting so the honest answer is that we don’t know. There may not even be a conveyor belt: there may be multiple cells, or rolls, or local variations. The data is messy.
Also could some one direct me to a link with a summary of Leif’s argument that the sun is not the climate driver?
This is a big topic. The short answer is two-fold: 1) the solar variations are much smaller than we thought they were, and 2) multi-regression analysis over the past 130 years show that at most 10% can be explained by the Sun.
Does anyone know of calculations measuring the currents induced by space weather. Like an electrical generator, increasing a magnetic field proportionally increases the current.
Yes, this is well-understood and monitored. The total power input [includes flares and CMEs] is of the order of tens of GigaWatt, which is about a million times less than what TSI gives.
And over the last 100 years the solar magnetic field has reportedly doubled.
It has not, see http://www.leif.org/research/Reply%20to%20Lockwood%20IDV%20Comment.pdf
E.M.Smith (17:01:48) :
They could have a model with 15m steps but modeling a world that is twilight all the time everywhere.
I asked them, they do have a rotating Earth in the models if I understood them correctly.
‘Your calculation actually understates the amount of CO2 that must be added to a normal atmosphere to drive the Oxygen level down to the safe minimum of 19.5%.”
It isn’t the lack of oxygen that causes CO2 to be toxic. It is the buildup of CO2 in the blood causing a lowering of blood pH resulting in acidosis.
Sekerob:
“Here’s how Nansen sees reality.”
Rather, how Nansen saw reality back on 11 January.
David Archibald (17:57:51) :
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. El Ninos and La Ninas are additive, and it looks like we are in for a 1970s-style run of La Ninas.
I saw that entry and figured right off that it will create a stir.
This is my thought. Please respond to any part that you disagree with.
As long as a negative PDO state exists the dominant ENSO will be La Nina and cooler temps especially in the Northern Hemisphere. The negative PDO may last through Solar Cycle 24. If 24 is as weak as it appears it may be then the next positive PDO will be minimal. Weak El Nino dominance in the ENSO, limited warming.
As Solar Cycle 25 is arriving the AMO would be going to a cooler negative than other negative cycles of recent past. Should Solar Cycle 25 also be weak (which I think it may well be), the next negative PDO would be cooler than the present one, stronger La Nina, and an overlap with a negative AMO. Thus, no significant warming in the near future but rather stasis to cooling and potential for extreme cooling in about 22 – 25 years. Cool climate to prevail for 30 plus years.
I left out increasing phytoplankton population, increased albedo, stalled or decreased CO2 levels, etc. but I think that is outside of the scope of my intent at the moment.
crosspatch (21:24:32) :
“If I get a pinhole leak in my tire, eventually I find myself at the side of the road.”
[…]
if there is less available to add, the overall amount added over time will have to decrease somewhat.
And this is why I like “kitchen science”… Two very very direct observations that caused me to think (a slow and painful process, but one that I try to do anyway 😎
Where is the leak? Where is the ‘less available’?
OK, so the leak is where it’s cold? That would be the N.Pole right now. (Anyone know if the S. Pole is also extra cold? Is it a ‘poles’ thing or a ‘n.pole’ thing?) S.Pole ice is growing (though the peninsula is warm?) so I would guess that it’s a ‘both poles’ thing. How do we tell?
Where is the less available? We had a large pool of warm water, but now we are having a new La Nina and the PDO has flipped. Can that be correlated with more clouds (who measures clouds?) or less TSI? If it is just wind driven, then what drives the wind? Or is it more complicated with stratospheric vs tropospheric temps being the clue?
I think I have a handle on the ‘slow leak’ (at least one pole, O3 reduction) but I’m missing how to show where less new heat is being added… I get the whole ‘sun doing less’ thing, but how do we show where less is reaching the surface?
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.
Well, that’s a good start at falsification of their claims…
crosspatch (22:29:57) :
All you need to do is plot the GISS global anomaly against a satellite-based global anomaly. If the difference between those two jumps at the same time the stations were removed, then you are onto something and the additional work is justified.
Ooooohh! Nice idea!
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?
gary gulrud (22:30:35) :
“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.
I’m on that panel and ‘minimum’ is not a compromise. The discussion was about what the symptoms of minimum were.
I was one of people that 35 years ago realized the structure of the IMF and the evolution of coronal holes, and helped [at the famous Skylab workshop] to explain these features to the solar and space community.
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 evolution of coronal holes is an interplay between the strength of the polar fields and the emergence and decay of old and new cycle regions which often is quite random. There is no special relation between coronal holes and solar minimum. There can be are transequatorial holes at any phase of the solar cycle. Here is an image of the famous rigidly rotating ‘Italy-shaped’ transequatorial hole in 1973, three years before solar minimum.
You can learn more about the results of the Skylab workshop here:
http://www.leif.org/research/A%20View%20of%20Solar%20Magnetic%20Fields,%20the%20Solar%20Corona,%20and%20the%20Solar%20Wind%20in%20Three%20Dimensions.pdf
The picture we sketched back then is essentially unchanged today, even further corroborated by later data, e.g. from the Ulysses mission.
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.
The undulations of the skirt often disappears at minimum and the skirt can become completely flat [this happened in 1954, f. ex.], but is really determined by the balance between low-latitude magnetic fields [left over from the old cycle and also supplied by new cycle regions] and the polar fields. If the polar fields are weak, like now, the waves in the skirt are large. We can’t sit around forever and wait for the undulations to go away to indicate that we are at minimum, but it will not happen because the polar fields are not getting any stronger [which would flatten the skirt].
All these things were discussed at length and the conclusion was that we couldn’t use the coronal holes and IMF as reliable indicators of ‘minimum’. Some of the oversimplifications [like a flat current sheet at minimum] tend to muddle the waters as we realized that we can not just use the appearance of the corona and of the current sheet as they were in 1996-1997 as something every minimum should have.
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.
As long as the Sun does [and it is well on its way], things are fine with me. I do not like appeal to authority, but I do know how these things work as I was co-discoverer of our modern understanding of the large scale corona and IMF.
forget the Italian Boot image:
http://www.nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/detail/nasaNAS~7~7~34967~138834:View-of-coronal-hole-processed-from
Leif Svalgaard (14:08:47) :
The issue hangs on what the minimum is. We can arbitrarily define that the minimum is the lowest value of a 13-month smoothed sunspot count, but the Sun doesn’t know about that. One could argue that there may be a point where ‘aggregate’ solar activity at that point is minimal.
I believe that the 13 month smoothing is in principle wrong, for a simple reason that as my analysis of solar cycle shows that there may be a 13 month sub cycle
( http://www.vukcevic.co.uk link solar sub-cycle )
I did sub-cycle analysis on the unsmoothed data, it is definitely there, but if you apply same analysis on the smoothed wayform it is mostly suppressed. Some may dispute the existence of the sub-cycle, but if it is even a remote possibility of its existence, then the 13 month smoothing is an inappropriate technique for determining time of minima
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.)”
Leif: “And by the same criterion the previous minimum was 1997.0, so the cycle length should be 2008.6 – 1997.0 = 11.6 which is less than one sigma from the mean.”
Leif, keep on trying to play devil’s advocate. There will be a day, I hope, that you’ll have to concede that there is a) an anomalously long lul in sunspot numbers between cycle 23 and cycle 24, b) that cycle 24 is one with weak solar activity AND c) that there is a link between solar activity and climate, whatever mechanism may be responsible.
Jeff’s approach is one that is not without merits and the point he made in his reply to you is sound:
Jeff Id (16:49:26) : “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”
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”?
“simply” not “simple”.
Sorry