Guest post by David Archibald
With respect to the month of minimum, it is very likely that Solar Cycle 24 has started simply because Solar Cycle 23 has run out. Most solar cycles stop producing spots at about nineteen years after solar maximum of the previous cycle. Solar Cycle 23 had its genesis with the magnetic reversal at the Solar Cycle 22 maximum. As the graph above shows, Solar Cycle 23 is now 19 years old. Only 9% of the named solar cycles produced spots after this.
The graph also shows the position of Solar Cycle 24 relative to its month of genesis. Solar Cycle 24 is now the second latest of the 24 named solar cycles. January is 105 months after the Solar Cycle 23 maximum. Only Solar Cycle 5, the first half of the Dalton Minimum, is later. This lateness points to Solar Cycle 24 being very weak.
This graph shows the initial ramp ups of six solar cycles that were preceded by a vey low minimum. The ultimate trajectory of Solar Cycle 24 should be apparent by late 2009. If Solar Cycle 24 is going to be as weak as expected, the monthly sunspot number should remain under 10 by the end of 2009.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (08:32:34) :
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2009/01/c14nujs.jpg
Better. I’d add something that says “The red line means: The blue line means: The green line means:”
I can actually read the data now, though have to work at it. May not be the case when not on small laptop… 12″ screen…
Psi (18:21:18) :
How would you paraphrase in short version for the layman what the critics of your theory would say about it? You can leave out the mudslinging about astrology or the ad hominem flavor of the week. 🙂 What would the rational critic say?
The rational critic has to be just that and read all of the theory before jumping to conclusions or considering pre conceived ideas. The biggest area of doubt comes from the lack of solid evidence so faron the actual planetary mechanism acting on the Sun, but we also have very little to go on re the dynamo theory I believe. There is enough data on angular momentum and its effect on the Sun for the theory to be plausible right now, and with the incredibly strong correlations coming out now and with further studies backing up my work (I hope), I am sure science will “try harder” to find that mechanism.
But Svalgaard is right, not before the hard data, correct analysis, and adequate exposition is done.
OOOO! Just learned a new trick. Noticed that my browser presented a micro sized magnifying glass as cursor with your graph. Clicked and zoom! I can read it! Oh Boy!
I agree with Leif. It takes a vigilant mind. An open mind simply lets in a lot of nonsense.
Leif Svalgaard (09:22:49) :
‘Robert Bateman (08:00:09) :
There are two things we should know:
1.) Lack of sunspots leads to climate colder’
We don’t know that either.
Yes, we do know that. The biggest problem is that the trail has been wound up in
a ball so tight that you can’t find where to start the unravelling.
Right now, all you have to do is watch as it happens.
It is as I have stated many times before: You cannot observe something you can’t be bothered with for lack of a better excuse.
Staring at digitial reports will not get the job done.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (19:16:07) :
There are normally 3 opportunities each 172 yrs…
So in a given year there are 3 opportunities? A, B, and C?
Do they occur at the same time? or one month apart? or what?
then 171.4 [not 172] years later there are again A, B, and C?
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (19:30:34) :
The biggest area of doubt comes from the lack of solid evidence so faron the actual planetary mechanism acting on the Sun, but we also have very little to go on re the dynamo theory I believe. There is enough data on angular momentum and its effect on the Sun for the theory to be plausible right now, and with the incredibly strong correlations coming out now and with further studies backing up my work (I hope), I am sure science will “try harder” to find that mechanism.
Thank you. I am continuing to read. But your answer is pretty much what I suspected. To me the empirical evidence of correlation, as long as there are permissible explanations that don’t violate known laws, should be sufficient to overrule an obligation to have a thorough understanding of an exact mechanism — at least it should be an impetus for further investigation as you are doing, and for critics to acknowledge that the correlation seems to point in the direction of the possible, or even likely, discovery of a previously misunderstood mechanism. Isn’t that how science differs from deductive logic? — That premises are formulated on the basis of observed phenomenon, even when causes are not known?
E.M.Smith (19:25:58) :
Better. I’d add something that says “The red line means: The blue line means: The green line means:”
I can actually read the data now, though have to work at it. May not be the case when not on small laptop… 12″ screen…
I just updated the text to explain the colored lines, and will include it in the graphic next time I update it. Glad you can view the graph properly now…I could cut it in 2 like Usoskin did but think that it might lose impact. The new layout really shows the regular grand minima occurring on the Neptune/Uranus conjunctions…thanks for the tip.
Robert Bateman (19:39:59) :
There are two things we should know:
1.) Lack of sunspots leads to climate colder’
“We don’t know that either.”
Yes, we do know that. [..] You cannot observe something you can’t be bothered with for lack of a better excuse.
Time to quote Yogi Berra: “If I hadn’t believed it, I wouldn’t have seen it”
Leif Svalgaard (19:53:27) :
So in a given year there are 3 opportunities? A, B, and C?
Do they occur at the same time? or one month apart? or what?
then 171.4 [not 172] years later there are again A, B, and C?
As stated in my previous post “Basically during each period/phase each 172 years as N+U begin to close we have a partial line up of N+U+J with S opposing. The angle between N+U is greater so the disturbance to the angular momentum (camels hump in graph) is not as high as the next opportunity but can be strong enough to begin a grand minimum as it did in 1791. 3 complete orbits of J later we return to the optimal centre opportunity. This normally in a strong grand minimum would continue the grand minimum affect on the Sun and then continue on 3 orbits of J again and possibly a 3rd “hit” would occur before returning back to a “normal” conditions as N+U start to oppose each other.”
These opportunities come around on average every 172 yrs. So far I have plotted 34 possible grand minima producing dates over 5676 years. 5676 divided by 33 = 172 as stated in my article.
@nobwainer
Inspection of the chart does show some remarkable correlations. I would point out, though, an issue that I will label the -2298 -573 -75 problem. When I look for places where your alignment numbers show closest alignments, I find a skipped minimum…
You may have some explanation of this in your text (still resting eyes…) but at some point this has to be sorted out. If alignment is best when closer, why are closest alignments a ‘miss’… That is one of the first things I would look for in testing your theory, the limit cases where alignment is ‘best’… If minimum numbers are not ‘best’ that ought to be stated in the graph as a preemptive strike against the ‘common error’ of looking at extremes.
It would also be very interesting to have a line on your graph showing when the retrograde part of the solar orbit happens (the inside small circle of the epitrochoid) after Fairbridge, Charvatova, etc. Either as confirmation, homage, or link to prior art showing advancement of fit of your method over theirs:
http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/31/66/11/PDF/angeo-18-399-2000.pdf
Similarly, a graph with
http://www.aip.org.au/Congress2006/625.pdf
curve for comparison also acts as confirmation or advancement over prior art.
While it’s great to have a new grand theory, it is swallowed better by the reader with evidence that ‘you are not alone’ and that either others found very similar things by different means or that you have advanced their work to new precision or coverage. The house stands best with a foundation of other peer reviewed work in references …
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (20:18:36) :
“So in a given year there are 3 opportunities? A, B, and C?
Do they occur at the same time? or one month apart? or what?
then 171.4 [not 172] years later there are again A, B, and C?”
As stated in my previous post
Repeating the goblygook is no explanation.
The 171.4 years is the time between average conjunctions of U and N calculated from their orbital elements.
I’ll try again, maybe what you are saying is this: the three opportunities occur over a period of 6 complete orbits of Jupiter, i.e. every 11.8592*3 = 35.58 years for a total of 71.15, that is a large spread, which can fit almost anything. Why 2*3? What happened to Saturn?
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (20:18:36) :
As stated in my previous post “Basically during each period/phase each 172 years as N+U begin to close we have a partial line up of N+U+J with S opposing.
When N+U line up, it it very rare that J also lines up with N+U [and that furthermore S is opposing]. If you wait long enough such a line up will occur, but since N+U line up every 171.4 years and J and S every 178.8, the two lineups will drift 7.4 years each time relative to each other, so after 11 lineups they will be completely out of phase.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (19:16:07) :
Check here for the Dalton. http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2009/01/ssbscmax2.jpg
Nice graph. Same issue with labels. What are the colored dots? What do the green arrows mean? What do the gold circles highlight?
I think you have a consistent tendency to make graphs where you know what they say and what the symbols mean, but not say what they are in the graph. That will be an issue… ANYTHING on a graph must have an entry in a table of symbols somewhere. See your local road map for examples…
Leif Svalgaard (20:43:50) :
Repeating the goblygook is no explanation.
But highlighting the important part seemed to do the trick.
I’ll try again, maybe what you are saying is this: the three opportunities occur over a period of 6 complete orbits of Jupiter, i.e. every 11.8592*3 = 35.58 years for a total of 71.15, that is a large spread, which can fit almost anything. Why 2*3? What happened to Saturn?
Was waiting for that comment….but you have it in a nutshell. If you look at the data it is a very regular pattern of 6000 yrs at least, saying it can fit anything is totally wrong. Grand minima are capable of extended periods of at least 71 yrs and ALL occurrences happen within the guidelines I have stated….never outside although there is a slightly different trend during times like the MWP which are rare which I will address in a reply to E.M.Smith.
Saturn is obviously involved and in particular the angle of Saturn in respect to Jupiter as Jupiter moves between Neptune & Uranus.
Leif Svalgaard (20:55:32) :
When N+U line up, it it very rare that J also lines up with N+U [and that furthermore S is opposing]. If you wait long enough such a line up will occur, but since N+U line up every 171.4 years and J and S every 178.8, the two lineups will drift 7.4 years each time relative to each other, so after 11 lineups they will be completely out of phase.
A common misconception is “the planets have to line up exactly”. That is not the case. Infact slightly offset alignments work best as the image on my article suggests.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2009/01/bestlineup.jpg
Can I suggest everyone have a look at this solar system viewer…its a simple weblink that allows the user to easily watch the movement of the planets at a particular date, simply plug in a date and then use your mouse on the + or – button. It will answer a lot of questions.
http://math-ed.com/Resources/GIS/Geometry_In_Space/java1/Temp/TLVisPOrbit.html
E.M.Smith (20:33:52) :
Inspection of the chart does show some remarkable correlations. I would point out, though, an issue that I will label the -2298 -573 -75 problem. When I look for places where your alignment numbers show closest alignments, I find a skipped minimum…
I have added some more features to the graph and added your suggestions, you might need to refresh the page to see them. -2298 falls right on the bottom of a trough but agree like the others is not a deep minimum. If you look at the angles those cases are extremely weak and the angular movement charts (yet to be published reflect that. There are many different levels of grand minima or even cases like SC20 where it affects the output of the sun but doesnt stop the output of sunspots like a deep grand minimim. This makes the theory stronger in my opinion. The weaker angles are producing weaker grand minima. There is a time during what I call true grand maxima where we get a saw tooth effect in the C14 record and the angular momentum graph.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2009/01/sunssbam-1300to-900.jpg
This is an exciting area and is a transition stage like the MWP where the angles bring about a mixture of type A and B conditions. The green arrows are type A and red is B. Its a time of very weak grand minima action but the disturbance spreads out over longer periods as seen in the graph…this further correlation is very exciting.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2008/12/fig2.jpg
It would also be very interesting to have a line on your graph showing when the retrograde part of the solar orbit happens (the inside small circle of the epitrochoid) after Fairbridge, Charvatova, etc. Either as confirmation, homage, or link to prior art showing advancement of fit of your method over theirs:
The retrograde motion happens every 10 yrs and is ordered in a trefoil pattern outside of grand minima times. During grand minima the retrograde path is more disordered as it is pulled around by N+U. This is happening right now.
While it’s great to have a new grand theory, it is swallowed better by the reader with evidence that ‘you are not alone’ and that either others found very similar things by different means or that you have advanced their work to new precision or coverage. The house stands best with a foundation of other peer reviewed work in references …
I take your point and will preference my article. Previous work laid the foundation but all of it missed the most important part. I stumbled on the Neptune/Uranus factor and kept digging…much more digging to do.
E.M.Smith (20:56:56) :
Nice graph. Same issue with labels. What are the colored dots? What do the green arrows mean? What do the gold circles highlight?
I think you have a consistent tendency to make graphs where you know what they say and what the symbols mean, but not say what they are in the graph. That will be an issue… ANYTHING on a graph must have an entry in a table of symbols somewhere. See your local road map for examples…
I posted that link from another article on the blog about Ian Wilson’s paper…the full article is here explaining all the colours etc.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/90
Yogi Berra parables are not a concern here, observation is.
The decade of the 1790’s got progressively colder, in more than one geographical area. It preceeded SC5. I won’t be the one to say the lung cancer causes smoking.
The decade of 2000-10 is getting progressively colder, in precession of SC24.
Find your smoking gun however you wish, but observe the smoke nonetheless.
Observe, observe, observe.
I haven’t made any statements directed towards your hypothesis, I’ve only responded to Leif’s posts. But, as you know, correlation is not causation. Unless you can provide a mechanism to support your hypothesis… I’d have to go with the solar physicist. He’s the one you need to convince, not me.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (21:54:04) :
The two lineups will drift 7.4 years each time relative to each other, so after 11 lineups they will be completely out of phase.
A common misconception is “the planets have to line up exactly”. That is not the case. In fact slightly offset alignments work best as the image on my article suggests.
You missed the point completely [or avoided it]: I’ll try again: the lineups will drift out of phase completely. but perhaps ‘completely out of alignment’ works even better than ‘slightly offset alignments’.
I may suggest that 12 complete orbits of Jupiter would work even better than 6, giving you 7 opportunities instead of three, spread over 140 years. Lots to chose from.
Comparing your work with that of others is an integral part of doing science. Note that your 172 period is not found during the period 1-1600 AD years by other researchers:
Reconstruction of Sunspots Time Series from 14C (INTCAL98).
Velasco Herrera, Victor Manuel
37th COSPAR Scientific Assembly. Held 13-20 July 2008, in Montréal, Canada., p.3306
The analysis of the sunspots series is a tool to study the solar magnetic field and the solar dynamo. Since there are no direct observational data to study the solar variability over long time scales we need to rely on proxy data such as cosmogenic isotopes. By applying the Wavelet transform spectral analysis to the cosmogenic isotope 14 C, we have done in this work a reconstruction of Sun Spot time series during the period 1-1600 A.D. Data of 14 C was taken from INTCAL98. In contrast with other reconstruction methods, our Morlet Wavelt spectral analysis shows the existence of periodicities of 11years during the studied period which is absent in other works. We obtain also the conventional periodicities of 5.5, 22, 60, 120, 240, etc. This result answers the enigma of whether the present solar cycle exists or not before the Maunder Minima.
Jeff Alberts (04:34:36) :
Unless you can provide a mechanism to support your hypothesis… I’d have to go with the solar physicist. He’s the one you need to convince, not me.
Its called angular momentum, time to get on board Jeff or you will be left behind. I suspect Svalgaard will never be convinced even though he has been unable to find one fault so far, and shows a very weak knowledge in this area. So I will be looking to convince others.
Leif Svalgaard (06:01:08) :
The two lineups will drift 7.4 years each time relative to each other, so after 11 lineups they will be completely out of phase.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (20:18:36) :
So far I have plotted 34 possible grand minima producing dates over 5676 years. 5676 divided by 33 = 172 as stated in my article.
You make the [unfounded] assumption that the radiocarbon dates are correct. In fact, they can be decades or even centuries off:
http://geog-www.sbs.ohio-state.edu/courses/G820.01/WI05%20climate%20history/radiocarbon.pdf
Leif Svalgaard (06:01:08) :
You missed the point completely [or avoided it]: I’ll try again: the lineups will drift out of phase completely. but perhaps ‘completely out of alignment’ works even better than ’slightly offset alignments’.
I may suggest that 12 complete orbits of Jupiter would work even better than 6, giving you 7 opportunities instead of three, spread over 140 years. Lots to chose from.
Quite frankly your point made no sense, do I suspect you have no knowledge at all in this area? Did you use the solar system viewer I referred to yesterday, if so you would have seen your point was non existent. They never drift out of phase, but the S angle varies a lot, this S angle is what is the background curve of the C14 graph. N+U come together every 171.4 yrs, around that time J will be between them, it only has an 11 yr orbit so if its not perfectly inline (very rarely is) it wont be far away (max of 5.5 yrs) and at that point the angle of S is set up….there is nothing more to it, sometimes the best alignment doesnt happen right at the conjunction of N+U, thats the point, and why we have this power curve. Every point on my C14 graph coincides with that alignment. You might notice on my graph I have a table, one of the references is “Pos” with 2 results, N/L and U/L. Let me explain:
N/L is Neptune leading, U/L is Uranus leading, meaning the relative positions of those planets when J is between them and S roughly opposite, and under that the N/U angle (deg difference between N&U). If can never go out of phase, only strengthen and weaken.
Comparing your work with that of others is an integral part of doing science. Note that your 172 period is not found during the period 1-1600 AD years by other researchers:
You have to be joking me.