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.
I don’t have a horse in the race, so I don’t need to get on board.
How is that even possible? Is he keeping them from finishing their posts??
Thanks Leif, but what is it intended to prove? That it’s the 100 y modulation that creates the 10.04 y and 12.19 y components? That they are not real?
If so then you have this backwards. You need the frequencies on page 8 to produce the signal on page 7, they are all real. (but you will get a 100 y envelope even without the 114 y component I guess)
Jeff, Not everything has a scientific meaning. Try and think a little more poetically. Anyhow this tit for tat stuff is boring.
If you want to look at the recent sunspot activity data and draw your own conclusions a decent site is:
http://www.dxlc.com/solar/index.html
Individual graphs of each cycle for 1 to 20 are at: Solar cycles 1-20 http://www.dxlc.com/solar/cycl1_20.html
And the last three cycles 21, 22, and 23 can be seen at http://www.dxlc.com/solar/solcycle.html
A thing of interest to note is the monthly average sunspot activity for minima is normally around 10 or more. The last couple of cycles have had minima of 20 or more and now the average is 5 or less and has been for a couple of years. Also the last couple of cycles have had very high peak numbers of sunspots compared to the other 20 cycles. This goes along with the minima of 20 or more.. The minima preceding a cycle seems to give some prediction of how strong the peak sunspot activity will be. If Los Vegas was taking bets on the strength of the next cycle, I would certainly bet on a very weak cycle.
Thanks Anthony for a great site.
lgl (01:09:57) :
Svalgaards frequency report is very weak and fails to recognize that grand minima cycles range greatly in intensity and also the cycles have a window and dont follow exact 171 yr events. This not something that will perform well in this kind of test, although I did notice a reasonable 170.7 yr cycle….go figure.
lgl (01:09:57) :
Thanks Leif, but what is it intended to prove? That it’s the 100 y modulation that creates the 10.04 y and 12.19 y components? That they are not real?
Precisely. When I generated the curve on page 7, I ‘multiplied’ an 11 year curve by a 100-year curve. The program didn’t know anything about 10 and 12 years.
But, we are still waiting for you to state that you have learned and understood that the 11 year peak is where the power is, contrary to your statement “but in the FFT spectrum you don’t find much power at 11.1 yr”. It is important that you get your mind around this so you can drop your misconception and we don’t have to get back to this issue again and again and again and …
It seems that David Hathaway of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, US, is predicting a high peak cycle for cycle 24.
“The bigger the cycle, the shorter the time it takes to get there,” says Hathaway. “A number of us believe it’s going to be a big cycle and hence it will peak earlier.”
“He says tracking the number of sunspots that appear from now until mid-2009 should settle the question of when solar max will occur – the sunspot number ought to rise quickly if it’s an active cycle.” http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13153
I am not a solar scientist but I have spent 40 years using statistics to extract information from data. I still say it is going to be a low sunspot cycle. Perhaps Congress should wait till September to see what cycle 24 does. Otherwise they may have a lot of apologizing to do as we head into a cold winter in 2009/2010.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (06:06:19) :
Svalgaards frequency report is very weak and fails to recognize that grand minima cycles range greatly in intensity and also the cycles have a window and dont follow exact 171 yr events. This not something that will perform well in this kind of test
The same is the case for the 11-year cycle and it shows very well in this kind of test. I did not make the report for you but for the general readership.
Leif,
Yes I know you did, and that’s creating a new signal.
Suppose the sun spot cycle looked exactly like your page 7 signal.
You had a very good day and guessed that the signal was the sum of the frequencies of page 8. So you added them and found an exact match with the real signal. Why on earth would you then question your assumption?
You had not found one possible solution, you had found the only possible solution. Changing one of the frequencies just a little bit and the result would not match any longer.
Do we agree you are supposed to add the frequencies on page 8 and not devide one by another to get the result on page 7?
Let’s take one thing at a time and get back to your second point.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (06:17:13) :
E.M.Smith (00:55:46) : 1) I find it very hard to read at all. The faded small font
Your the 2nd one to comment on that problem.
This is variable with machine… On the neighbors Oh My God! new Mac laptop the site is very readable (I was giving them a tour 😉
On my large LCD screen with the MicroS…Toshiba it is readable enough. On my old iBook it isn’t…
lgl (10:15:11) :
Do we agree you are supposed to add the frequencies on page 8 and not divide one by another to get the result on page 7?
No, as page 7 did not result from any division.
If we assume there were two REAL signals at 10.2 and 11.8 [I take your values]. I can construct the sum of these two [assuming they were real physical things working together] and the product of these two [assuming that one real physical thing modulated the size of the other real physical thing], and then take the FFTs. The result is here http://www.leif.org/research/FFT-simul-peaks.pdf
As you can see the FFT recovers the two periods nicely, but do not show any 11 year peak [just as you surmised it shouldn’t]. However the real sunspot cycle [and the one I constructed with a 100-year modulation – because in the real world the cycle does have a 100-yr modulation] is not like this. There is a dominant 11-yr peak [because that is the real phenomenon] which is modulated by the 100-yr wave resulting in the side peaks. This is elementary and you should be able to grok that.
Leif,
Why didn’t you try adding 10.2 , 11.8 and 114 instead?
Sorry, it must be somewhere around 70, not 114
Leif Svalgaard (11:53:32) :
[and the one I constructed with a 100-year modulation – because in the real world the cycle does have a 100-yr modulation]
I am a bit out of phase with this discussion, but where this 100-year cycle modulation is originating from?
(do we have a mild case of cyclomania creeping in ?)
Corrinne Novak (08:21:02)
That article is a year old, from January 2008.
Hathaway’s predictions (is the proper word ‘prediction’ when it is updated along the way?) has been changed since then.
I found a decent animation showing the evolution of the predictions
http://homepages.tesco.net/~trochos/ssn-nasa-predictionsb.gif
vukcevic (15:05:41) :
I am a bit out of phase, with this discussion, but where this 100-year cycle modulation is originating from?
If you have in mind Grand Minima cycles, they occur in pairs, in sequence 2,0,2,0..
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/GrandMinima.gif
Ok Leif, last one for tonight. Add 10, 11 and 11.8 Disregard the negativ part (instead of fiddling with the long cycles to add) and you will see a very interesting variation in cycle length.
http://virakkraft.com/10-11-11,8.jpg
lgl (15:45:12) :
Add 10, 11 and 11.8
Of course, if you put in the cycles to begin with, you get them back, but the interesting part is that you get the observed 10 and 12 year peaks in the power spectrum simply by modulating the 11-year cycle [which we know is there]. No need to invoke extra cycles when fewer will do.
vukcevic (15:05:41) :
I am a bit out of phase with this discussion, but where this 100-year cycle modulation is originating from?
Sunspot numbers were low around 1700, 1805, 1902, 2008, roughly 100 years apart. And I only calculated the power spectrum for the past ~300 years.
Leif,
Exactly. Why testing that FFT works, it does, every time.
So you agree then that the 10 and 12 y cycles are real and if you want to build the observed signal from clean sine waves you have to add both of them to the 11 y cycle?
Your modulation is not that interesting. You have used one of many possible methods to produce a signal that looks similar to the observed. Then of course the FFT spectrum will have to look similar too. I believe this modulation has nothing to do with reality. How does it work? How does the Sun manage to multiply two frequencies? How is this modulator constructed? And how can you achieve the observed cycle length variation (mainly from 9.5 to 12.5 or so) by this modulation? All your cycles on page 7 are very close to 11 years.
vukcevic (15:05:41) :
I am a bit out of phase with this discussion, but where this 100-year cycle modulation is originating from?
Leif Svalgaard (23:10:16)
Sunspot numbers were low around 1700, 1805, 1902, 2008, roughly 100 years apart. And I only calculated the power spectrum for the past ~300 years.
The equation I published some five years ago, goes further and identifies all minima during the last 1000 years (with a proviso you change phase every 250 or so years).
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/GrandMinima.gif
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/combined.gif
Actual numbers provided by NASA.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?old=200112065794
Vukcevic,
Yes you have the 11.8 and 10 y cycles (doubled) in there so you are on the right track. If you add the 11 y too you will probably get a bigger variation and maybe get rid of the phase errors around 1800 and 1900.
lgl (05:09:41) :
Vukcevic,
….If you add the 11 y too you will probably get a bigger variation….
11.8 and 10 astronometric numbers (as are all the other numbers in my equations). I can’t see where 11 would come from. I believe it is necessary to be solidly based on the existing verifiable data.
Vukcevic,
From the 22 yr solar cycle. According to Leif’s FFT the 11 yr is clearly there.
It is not where I first searched for it, but that’s another story ..
When all said and done I cannot discount planetary influences (nor do I say they are the cause of anything) but I do note that:
Mercury – 46 orbits – 11.079 Yrs
Venus – 18 orbits – 11.074 Yrs
Earth – 11 orbits – 11.000 yrs
Mars – 6 orbits – 11.286 yrs
Then
Saturn – 6 orbits – 176.746 yrs
Jupiter – 15 orbits – 177.933 yrs
and if you take the ‘synodic periods’ of the planet couplings (that is the intervals between planetary conjuctions as seen from earth) of the following:
Jupietr/Saturn – 9 pds – 178.734 yrs
Jupiter/Neptune – 14 pds – 178.923 yrs
Jupiter/Uranus – 13 pds – 179.562 yrs
Saturn/Neptune – 5 pds – 179.385 yrs
Saturn/Uranus – 4 pds – 181.455 yrs
then I would humbly suggest there may be something that might cause us to question why we see solar cycles that fit with 11.1 yrs and 179 yrs (P.D. Jose 1965).
I have always been fascinated by the number phi and its relation to the world/universe around us and I am now coming to the view that one day when our brightest astrophysicists have worked all this out they will find that the above correlations are quite important in relation to solar cycles and the impact they have on the earth’s climate.