As many readers know, I follow the Average Magnetic Planetary Index (Ap) fairly closely as it is a proxy indicator of the magnetic activity of our sun. Here is the latest Ap Graph:
I’ve pointed out several times the incident of the abrupt and sustained lowering of the Ap Index which occurred in October 2005.
click for a larger image
David Archibald thinks it may not yet have hit bottom. Here is his most recent take on it.
The low in the Ap Index has come up to a year after the month of solar cycle minimum, as shown in the graph above of 37 month windows of the Ap Index aligned on the month of solar minimum. For the Solar Cycle 23 to 24 transition, the month of minimum is assumed to be Ocotber 2008. The minimum of the Ap Index can be a year later than the month of solar cycle minimum, and the period of weakness can last eighteen months after solar cycle minimum.
The graph also shows how weak this minimum is relative to all the minima since the Ap Index started being measured in 1932. For the last year, the Ap Index has been plotting along parallel to the Solar Cycles 16 – 17 minimum, but about four points weaker. Assuming that it has a character similar to the 16 – 17 minimum, then the month of minimum for the Ap Index is likely to be October 2009 with a value of 3.
The shape of the Ap Index minima is similar to, but inverted, the peaks in neutron flux, which are usually one year after the month of solar minimum.
David Archibald
January 2009
Wonder what that organist is playin now in LaGrande????
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?map.x=251&map.y=214&minlon=-122.11&maxlon=-116.45&minlat=43.57&maxlat=47.67&mapwidth=354&site=pdt
Adam Gallon (10:22:10) :
A mountain of male bovine excrement there old chap.
Few scientists would argue that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist, the debate is to what extent AGW exists.
You obviously did not read the paper…
The claim is that the analogy comparing the atmospheric “effect” to a greenhouse is invalid, a “myth”. There is no claim that global temperatures are unaffected by the atmosphere. You might call this semantics, but the “debate”, or lack thereof, is being driven by language, and BIG decisions are being made by politicians and a populace largely ignorant of the actual science involved.
This poor analogy is at the very root of what is wrong with the current AGW argument.
sdk (09:31:49) :
“my vote would be to use C, and a procedural approach ! the results would be quite readable and maintainable, if coded from pseudo code viewed that way.”
I believe there is an automated tool for converting Fortran to C. That might be a good start and then convert that code to Java.
I also like the idea of making this available as open source so the entire programming community can have at it.
As I mentioned above for automated converstion see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F2c
Sorry this is OT, but I didn’t see another way to get in touch with you.
This is the address of a newly published commentary in the APS Forum on Physics and Society written by Robert E. Levine. In it, he decries the advocacy implied in the APS’s statement on AGW that was recently the focus of the uproar over their publication of Monckton’s letter. He asserts that the APS has abandoned the “openness principles” of scientific inquiry by issuing a supporting statement for AGW without promoting the continuing research that will improve our understanding of the governing forces of our climate.
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200901/levine.cfm
“The Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner paper summary should be read by all”
Unfortunately, those unprepared to do so are swayed by braggadocio and hollow pretension.
Ed 13:04:57 asks “where is the greenhouse effect”
I think there is no doubt that certain gases like water vapour and carbon dioxide absorb long wavelength radiation and that this keeps the world warmer than it would be if they were not present. The problem is that this has been called a “greenhouse effect”. We were told in school that the glass of the greenhouse lets UV light in but does not let infra red radiation out. As a result of this radiation imbalance the temperature rises until it is sufficient to support losses from the outer surface of the glass to balance the incoming radiation energy. Whilst this schoolboy explanation has some validity it is pretty obvious that the main reason that a greenhouse warms is not the radiation imbalance but the prevention of convection. For example greenhouses have been made from plastic that is equally transparent to UV and infra red radiation (they work perfectly) and one only has to open a roof vent and most of the “greenhouse effect” goes.
I don’t think we should get too hung up about the descriptor “greenhouse gas” although I do regret the fact that it makes the average punter think he knows what is going on and has a “picture” in his mind which is miles away from reality.
Water vapour, and to a lesser extent CO2, methane and other molecules with dipole energies in the infra red region really do affect the radiation balance. There is a good description in Wikipedia but this is my understanding of how it works.
The atmosphere is mainly composed of nitrogen and oxygen and these are transparent to infra red radiation. If these were the only gases in the atmosphere the surface would radiate directly into space. In this scenario the incoming UV energy would be balanced by the outgoing infrared radiation even if the surface temperature was well below zero. The effect of the “greenhouse” gases is to absorb infra red radiation of certain specific wavelengths. Water vapour absorbs relatively weakly but has a large number of absorption bands whilst CO2 absorbs strongly but mainly in one 13 to 18 micron band.
Radiation from the surface, within these bands, is absorbed by the atmosphere within a few hundred feet. The absorbing molecules then reradiate the energy in all directions. Some of this is downwards and this adds to the UV flux from the sun and warms the earth. The rest is radiated upwards and this is then reabsorbed and reradiated until it gets to a point in the atmosphere when any photon radiated upwards is unlikely to be absorbed and so it is radiated into space. If one increases the concentration of the absorbing gases the altitude of this final radiation into space increases. As temperature decreases with height this reduces the temperature of the radiating layer. Because this layer is colder it radiates less and therefore the surface has to increase in temperature to ensure increased radiation at the other wavelengths to maintain the energy balance.
This is not to say that increasing CO2 will automatically cause global warming. The problem is that the CO2 effect is very small. A doubling of CO2 on its own is only thought to cause a 1 degree F change in global temperatures. To achieve the dire predictions quoted by the scaremongers one has to postulate positive feedback mechanisms such as reduced albedo through melting ice and further radiation forcing through increased water vapour. At the same time one has to ignore the possibility of negative feedbacks such as increased convection losses, decreased water vapour through increased precipitation and higher albedo due to increased cloud.
So the effect is real even if the descriptor is misleading. But the magnitude of the effect is small until proven otherwise. At one time the AGWs argued that there was no other explanation for the recent “unprecedented” rises in temperature and this was proof enough for them of the positive feedback mechanisms. But now the temperature has gone down again and there are a plethora of alternative theories as to why the climate changes.
The onus is on them to really prove their theories.
nobwainer (Geoff Sharp) (05:00:07) :
In nearly 12 months we hit the spot where the solar system exerts its maximum disturbing influence on angular momentum on the Sun, its a strange situation. Normally it would be expecting a very low angular momentum count, but there are 2 planets ganging up on Saturn that have other ideas…and it happens on a regular basis on avg every 172 yrs, we have records showing this for at least 6000 years. This also lines up with grand minima nearly every time for the same period.
Here’s a graph showing that disturbance….follow the green arrow at 2010.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2008/12/sunssbam1620to2180gs1.jpg
Geoff,
Based on your tracking of this phenomenon, are you willing to make a global temperature forcast for the next 1-5 years?
@ur momisugly bradley13 (13:42:10) :
I would agree with you that re-engineering would be an undertaking, but after perusing through their code during my 1st iteration, I suspect that approaching this as a project in any manner would be a great undertaking, or to quote “be a huge service”. This is no trivial task.
As a fellow “gray-hair” with more than 27 years as a computer scientist, professionally active in real world problem solving, I would have to disagree. I believe the modeling of complex chaotic systems is precisely an object oriented problem. I have spent many years in the past developing software for modeling complex human behaviors in a quantitative fashion. I have also developed software for the DOD and DHS, again modeling rather complex systems in a large variety of environments (cannot really detail). Modeling these kinds of complex relationships are not nearly as easy to represent in procedural languages. This is the reason why we have developed object oriented languages. The more complex the system relationships, the more useful object oriented languages become. This is really Computer Science 101.
Fortran was a good technology for mathematical computation as its primary focus is directed towards mathematics in syntax, but as far as mathematical computation in itself, there is no computational performance advantage over many other languages such as C or C++ or many other similarly compiled languages. As for LISP or ML, I cannot possibly imagine trying to tackle such a project using these tools. Fortran to LISP is quite a sharp contrast. I have had rather extensive experience (way back) developing applications with both languages, and they have absolutely no correlation to each other what so ever. They have vastly different fundamental purposes, and in my opinion, neither are well suited for modeling complex chaotic systems. I will cite exception to this in one respect. LISP would be well suited to describing the model structure and relationships themselves, as that is what it is intended, but very poor in its computational effectiveness. Since modeling climate would require crunching huge volumes of data, I believe LISP would be an extremely poor candidate overall as it is designed for managing set theory algorithms and primarily List Processing.
May I ask what it is you teach? Your prior paragraph is quite shocking to me if I am to consider you an educator. Perhaps this explains why I learned far more about computer “tools” and problem solving in my professional career than I ever did in my collegiate career. I have been fluent in more than 40 programming languages and currently actively developing using at least 12 of those. Languages ranging from Assembler programming on PC’s and IBM mainframes, to Java J2EE distributive systems on Intel and AS400 platforms. I know the value of having a robust toolbox, knowledge-base and experience to draw from. I have spent a good portion of my career successfully guiding companies on their own choices of development environments, from languages to operating systems to hardware platforms, always goal oriented and overall subject specific. I am definitely not one of those preconception geeks that only adopts the fashionable technology (ie: “Windows sux .. Linux is all”), rather quite the contrary, each technology has its advantage or disadvantage and each in turn has its place. Throughout my career I have also been a very outspoken opponent to such practice and I have even forfeited some rather large contract opportunities because of my adherence to fundamental principals instead of adopting the industry buzzword of the day.
I am in the belief that we are currently experience something quite interesting in the industry of modeling in general, especially and specifically when talking climate modeling. It appears to me that climate modelers, such as Hansen’s group, continue to throw huge amounts of money and hardware at their problems, but are neglecting to adopt more modern development languages and techniques. I believe this is in large part due to the fact that they are government operated. I worked for the government for a period of time, and I know how they operate, and I can say from a developers perspective, it was a somewhat sad experience in this regard. I utilize far greater technology on my own home projects than they do on some of the multi-million dollar projects I worked on at the DOD. That’s pretty sad.
The other problem with their development efforts is that they usually span such an inordinate amount of time. Take for instance these climate models. This isn’t new code. They have been writing, rewriting, revamping, modifying, and basically “cowboy coding” this stuff for years. Just take a look at the code and you can clearly see this. My experience has shown me that whenever an organization finds themselves in this position with a project, they are eternally bound to the technology in use. They have not the monetary nor human resources to do otherwise. The programmers are unlikely to press for anything else, as they pay their 40 hours and collect their checks. To them, having a mess is good job security in a job that usually supplies a respectable salary, great benefits in a pretty laid back and easy going environment. Not a bad position to be in if you can get it (speaking from experience). The people that head these projects, such as Hansen, don’t actually know technology all that well. No, they don’t! Again, speaking from experience. They only know the buzzwords, they don’t actually understand the intricacies of implementations nor the pros/cons of the specific technology implementations themselves.
In closing, I would agree that Fortran could still work for these models, although not ideal in my judgment. LISP, LM or any similarly narrowly focussed languages are out of the question and I am still shocked at the suggestion. C might be alright, but if you are going to go that way, you would be better off leveraging the power of OOP with C++. Java has the advantage of portability and the possibility (as stated prior) to easily couple to a web interface and expose to the general public, but has the disadvantage of a performance trade-off. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, if launching such a project will utilize multiple programmers, OOP lends itself to cooperative development efforts much more easily than procedural languages do. The idea is to build a lot of little “black boxes”, build the relationship connectors and simply plug them together. Each individual (or sometimes teams) is responsible for her/his box and the function it provides. Others need not know what is inside the box specifically, only what the box requires as input, and in what form it will spit the output. If this doesn’t scream climate model, I guess I am completely missing the problem at hand.
@ur momisugly Richard M (14:55:24) :
Probably several, and his sounds like a plausible idea. One might even be able to leverage such a tool to fundamentally clean the code by replacing some of the identifiers with more meaningful ones. Could be a very good place to begin. Great suggestion!
pochas (06:20:03) :
nobwainer (5:00:07)
“In nearly 12 months we hit the spot where the solar system exerts its maximum disturbing influence…”
When will this influence become apparent? Instantly? What is your vision of the process taking place on/in he sun that generates sun spots? Are there no time lags involved?
Its totally apparent now, its a gradual process as the alignments move into phase. The process taking place is largely unknown, but there is some evidence that the change in angular momentum changes the spin rate of the Sun. This could be internal or overall, but the differential rotation speed is varied. Ian Wilson and Javaraiah have studies on this phenomena. Angular momentum is not a start/stop force, but more a gradual rise and fall. Having said that, we still need to consider inertia and how situations like after SC20, show how a big slow down can affect the next cycles. I think SC21 and 22 activity would have been even higher as the angular momentum was very high at the time.
My graph shows this here http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2008/12/ultimate_graph2.jpg
Meh – I tried using the Fortran to C converter on the GCM (model E) and discovered it’s essentially useless. The amount of manual effort required to make that thing anything like useable is far greater than that required to simply re-write it… but then again, that’s a horrible piece of software.
What really scares me is the thought that Nasa is operating their space program with similar quality of programming… no wonder the occasional Mars lander vanishes, and why do satellites and space labs occasionally fall out of orbit?
@ur momisugly CodeTech (16:32:25) :
Hahah, somehow, this doesn’t surprise me. I was rather astonished at the poor quality of the code myself.
This may require quite a bit of hand picking to accomplish. Perhaps a method of divide and conquer may be necessary. Identify blocks of related coding, break those into modules, further identify components and break them out accordingly. Iterate through this process until you can identify and overall architectural structure, analyze and develop an object oriented architectural model, then translate each of the previously discovered components into their respective objects, develop the relationships and plug them together. Viola! … sounds easy huh? Probably not so much, but still perhaps worth a try.
David Archibald’s AP prediction provide an indication that our solar system has to cope with a reduced protective magnetic shield for many months to come.
It will be interesting to observe the effects described by Nasif Nahle:
http://biocab.org/Cosmic_Rays_Graph.html
His findings provide the following conclusion(s):
“Without a doubt, the present variability in the tropospheric temperature of Earth is directly attributable to the instability of the intensity of ICR, which include He++ and H+ nucleons and electrons. The long and the short intervals match unexpectedly”.
His findings eliminate the AGW doctrine and provide support for the Svensmark Theory.
It also provides support for David Archibald’s predictions.
Now unleash the wolves.
Squidly (16:25:40) :
@ur momisugly Richard M (14:55:24) :
I believe there is an automated tool for converting Fortran to C. That might be a good start and then convert that code to Java.
Probably several, and his sounds like a plausible idea. One might even be able to leverage such a tool to fundamentally clean the code by replacing some of the identifiers with more meaningful ones. Could be a very good place to begin. Great suggestion!
Squidly : I also have about 27 years of experience as a software developer and software architect. I agree with your long post regarding languages and conclusion regarding C++. I would just add that C++ is multi paradigm and does not enforce object orientation per se, it can be used as “a better C”. But I would use it precisely for object orientation and I do that daily.
I have also long experience with Fortran and how to integrate it with C++. I can say with absolute certainty that trying to convert undocumented and messy Fortran to C using an automatic tool is the sure way to a useless result….
There are essentially two workable options:
1. Call , from C++, existing Fortran subroutines without touching the Fortran source code or
2. Redesign the code from scratch
If the existing code is non-trivial and not well understood, the second option will be the fastest.
RK (09:55:21) :
“I think Al Gore wins no matter what. If this AGW theory turns out to be bogus (which seems to be), his notoriety surely will rise to rival Mr. Ponzi’s and outlives his mortal time on earth. Gorified science?”
RK, How is that possible.
The USA now has a President that made the following statement:
“Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology.” Barack Obama
And recently he anounced that he will communicate with all Americans directly via e-mail.
What could go wrong?
@ur momisugly Carsten Arnholm, Norway (17:06:51) :
I guess I would personally be more inclined to option #2, but perhaps in not yet knowing enough detail of the code we are working with here, this could be more that what it may seem on the surface?
I am hesitant to simply break out modules of Fortran and call them from another language, as that doesn’t appear to me to gain anything of value in the long run. If I were to involve myself in such a project, it would be to further develop the process and ultimately create a model that is more accessible by others, such as through a web interface. Hence my tendency to lean towards a Java/J2EE solution as lends itself nicely to developing such a web application. This of course would necessarily require a complete rebuild, and perhaps a tremendous amount of work.
“so don’t count on a solar driven little ice age.”
I am not counting on one, I am waiting for the grand experiment to produce a result. I am not assuming I know the answer because I have looked at the output of models that can’t possibly have the skill to describe the next step in our climate. Tell you what though. If there is a little ice age, I don’t plan to spend a lot of time explaining how the planet got it wrong and the models are still right.
BTW, it is -10F outside, we are looking at -20F for the second time in a little over a week and only the third time in my life. Based on my car thermometer, I think there is a different kind of UHI that even affects rural areas. Vehicle caused turbulence heating. I noticed, on these past two extremely cold nights, that my car thermometer dropped 5 degrees F when getting off a traveled highway onto my lightly traveled road, and when it was -20F, it dropped another 5 degrees when driving the 700 ft up my non traveled driveway.
I think that the cold air settles in layers, with the dense, -20F air near the ground, and the warmer, -10F air maybe 10 or 20 ft above. As trucks and cars drive by, the turbulence brings down the warmer air to the highway. The colder air stays settled near the ground, for instance, at my garage, which is far from the road and separated by a small wood.
@ur momisugly TJ (17:48:40) :
Now that is one of the best ideas I have heard in a while! I wish the AGW proponent groups would heed that idea.
captdallas2 (05:24:13) :
Since Lief has not shown up yet. The solar magnetic field flips regularly every 7.5 to 15 years. The last time the Earth’s field flipped was about 800 Kyears ago. The state of the Sun and its magnetic field is interesting, but not alarming. It may lead to a grand minimum, but the change in Total Solar Irradiance is small so don’t count on a solar driven little ice age.
If the last cool periods (LIA) weren’t driven by the Sun, what was the driving factor, and don’t tell me volcanoes.
@ur momisugly TJ (17:56:33) :
I have wondered these things similarly myself on occasion. At times, I can simply walk around my yard and feel a difference in temperature. This fact always makes me wonder how it is that we can assume we are able to measure ground surface temperatures with any discernable accuracy, especially over time as stations are moved from place to place, and most especially to the 1/10 or 1/100 of a degree. This seems to me to be impossible.
Ed (a simple old carpenter) (13:04:57) :
‘And I can’t stop reading about this stuff, it’s an addiction. ………
So where’s the greenhouse? I’m confused’
Well old carpenter, I recommend the following link?
He does a nice job of explaining the so called ‘greenhouse effect’
http://wwwjunkscience.com/Greenhuose/
try
http://wwwjunkscience.com/Greenhouse
I need to clean my glasses
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse