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
Corrinne Novak (15:34:55) :
“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 (sic) that he will communicate with all Americans directly via e-mail.
What could go wrong?
If you want to know whether Obama is really listening to the American Public or if he is listening to Al Gore follow what happens to NAIS (animal ID) The USDA wants to regulate farming with fines up to $500,000 and 10 years in jail so the issue is almost as critical as the carbon dioxide tax. Out of the top ten or so Ag issues, three were “Stop NAIS” and a couple more were support small farms/ farm freedom. “Protect Our Food Supply – Stop NAIS!” Actually made into the top 25 despite a complete media blackout and the lies spread by the USDA.
http://www.change.org/ideas
http://libertyark.net/
This gives me hope that the internet can, with the help of the sun, counter the “Global Warming Hoax” too. Al Gore is also anti-American farming.
This comes from the Ag Journal, Billings, Montana: “At a recent ceremony at the White House, Vice President and presidential candidate Al Gore let slip what many have long believed was his real intention as regards to U.S. agriculture.
“While presenting a national award to a Colorado FFA member, Gore asked the student what his/her life plans were. Upon hearing that the FFA member wanted to continue on in production agriculture, Gore reportedly replied that the young person should develop other plans because our production agriculture is being shifted out of the U.S. to the Third World.”
http://showcase.netins.net/web/sarahb/farm/
I wonder what Gore thinks American citizens are supposed to do for a living once he shuts down manufacturing, farming and outsources computer programming?”
Corrinne Novak,
It must be clear that most of us are extremely skeptical in regard to the current developments, the financial and economic crises, the “War on Carbon Fuels”, the tax measures effecting the food productions and all other plans.
If these measures result in a failed policy it will not take much time before people start paying with their lives.
Gravitational compression would seem to me to be a constant, easily calcuable. It’s effect then would be establish a nightime minimum as in a polar night, given a constant atmosphere content.
As for Mars, while it’s atmosphere is almost wholly CO2, it hasn’t much of an atmosphere, hence it is far colder for it’s distance for the Solar heating it recieves, which it doesn’t do a great job of holding onto.
Venus has an extremely thick atmosphere of mostly C02. It is far warmer than it’s distance.
The two planets above would be far different if thier atmosphere were identical to Earths, and so would the Earth be far different if it had a CO2 atmosphere.
For a planet with almost no atmosphere, Mercury is a good test case for TSI and gravitational compression.
So, take the difference between Mercury’s nighttime temp and the cold of space, scale up to Earth size, and you have a reasonable approximation of Earth’s gravitational compression heating.
Lack of magnetic field will also help isolate in the Mercury case.
I have to say, Bill Illis, that I like very much your line of thinking. Use the other planets to help solve for Earth. It sure beats the tar out of monkeying with data to further your cut of the political pork barrel pie, which at the end of the day is not Science, but simply lining up at the nearest politically correct feeding trough.
braddles (03:32:15) wrote: “Will people talking about computer languages and other irrelevancies go away please?”
No! Braddles… please! I find all this talk fascinating, and am filled with awe and admiration for those posting. It may even lead to a project which drags (no doubt kicking and screaming) many hot air balloons into Century 21, as implications in the posts being made seem to indicate a whole lot of the “climate science” we are getting is coming from hand-cranked codes and coders of yesterday.
Let the future take fire! Even better; let me watch the first sparks here.
John Finn (09:36:25) :
….and you can’t deny that SC19 (the strongest cycle ever recorded) was also during a cool period.
Granted, that is indeed a mystery still unsolved perhaps. I have been searching for something concrete on atomic testing through the late 40’s and 50’s but without much success, but did come across some old forum posts on the late John Daly’s site where Dr. Landsheidt commented on a similar discussion. He was of the opinion that nuclear testing might well explain the discrepancy.
Just what sort of info are you looking for? The complete list of above ground nuclear tests has been available since 1962 in documents published by the U.S. Government.
===================
1 Trinity 16/7/45 Alamgordo New Mexico — tower shot — 19 kt yield
2 Combat 5/8/45 Hiroshima Japan ——– air burst —– nominal yield
3 Combat 9/8/45 Nagasaki Japan ——— air burst —– nominal yield
4 Able 30/6/46 Bikini atoll ————- air burst —— nominal yield
5 Baker 24/7/46 Bikini atoll ——– underwater burst —- nominal yield
6 x-ray 14/4/48 Eniwetok ————– tower shot —– 37 kt yield
7 yoke 30/4/48 Eniwetok ————– tower shot —– 49 kt yield
8 zebra 14/5/48 Eniwetok ————– tower shot —– 18 kt yield
9 Able 27/1/51 Nevada test site ———- air burst —– 1 kt yield
10 Baker 28/1/51 Nevada test site ———- air burst —– 8 kt yield
11 Easy 1/2/51Nevada test site ———- air burst —– 1 kt yield
12 Baker-2 2/2/51 Nevada test site ———- air burst —– 8 kt yield
13 Fox 6/2/51 Nevada test site ———- air burst —– 22 kt yield
14 Dog 7/4/51Eniwetok ————– tower shot —– not specified
15 Easy 20/4/51Eniwetok ————- tower shot —– 47 kt yield
16 George 8/5/51 Eniwetok ————– tower shot —– not specified
Nominal yield indicated wartime designs intended to yield approximately 20 KT yield
The list goes on —
Source see:
The Effects of Nuclear Weapons
Samual Glastone Feb 1964
pages 671- 677 Appendix B
Was available from Government Printing Office
The book was republished in 1977 without the detonation listing appendix.
Larry
hotrod (15:31:34) :
How much heating is generated in the atmosphere by the kinetic energy of ions and electrical currents in the auroral displays?
a few tens of GigaWatt. E.g. http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/pmap/
Thanks!
So that works out to a fraction of a percent of the suns total irradiance, around about 0.1% give or take.
Larry
hotrod:
Check out Tsar Bomba. The Russians exploded a 50 megaton monster in 1961 that scared the bejesus out of the whole world. They sent copies of the filming around the world, wanted everyone to know what they could do. They even managed to sober themselves up. It had to have put out significant heat, and I’m sure you can find other tests they did. They were not shy about the size of the bombs they tested.
REPLY: Lets steer back to the thread please. – Anthony
Granted, that is indeed a mystery still unsolved perhaps. I have been searching for something concrete on atomic testing through the late 40’s and 50’s but without much success, but did come across some old forum posts on the late John Daly’s site where Dr. Landsheidt commented on a similar discussion. He was of the opinion that nuclear testing might well explain the discrepancy.
It doesn’t bother you, then, that 2 recent cycles for which there is good quality data in terms of both temperature and solar observations have failed to produce the expected results.
Just a question since I haven’t read this thread before.
This AP index; as in planetary index. is the planetary simply a reference to earth or is this more generic involving other planets? i.e. is it an “earth” index ?
George
hotrod (15:06:51) :
“a few tens of GigaWatt.”
So that works out to a fraction of a percent of the suns total irradiance, around about 0.1% give or take.
Do the math , Larry. The surface of the disk intercepting TSI is 3.1416 * 6370000 m ^2 = 1.25e14 m^2. TSI is 1361 W/m^2, so total intercept is 1.25e14*1.361e3=1.7e17. A few tens of GigaWatt, say 50 for sum of both hemispheres, is 5e10 W, so fraction is 5e10/1.7e17= 3e-7, or 0.00003%.
Ooops !
Looks like I fumble fingered the calculator there — thanks Leif!
Larry
hotrod (20:33:45) :
Looks like I fumble fingered the calculator there
Perhaps a bit of wishful thinking there 🙂
The effect is really negligible as all the other electrical/magnetical/induction proposals that have been brought up. A few minutes at a summer noon in the Mojave Desert should convince anybody.
John Finn (16:53:46) :
It doesn’t bother you, then, that 2 recent cycles for which there is good quality data in terms of both temperature and solar observations have failed to produce the expected results.
I would not expect temp to follow solar activity precisely, as we have discussed there are other factors involved. What do you think caused a drop in temps after 1940?
E.M.Smith (08:26:50) :
I do a lot of Oracle programming – I’d like to try this. Maybe we can get a couple of different programming tracks going, one using a database with SQL and maybe a Java version with flat files, so we can compare results.
Can you contact me? You can reach me at bionuclearguy at gmail dawt com.
I would not expect temp to follow solar activity precisely, as we have discussed there are other factors involved. What do you think caused a drop in temps after 1940?
Ocean shifts.
John Finn (02:16:06) :
Ocean shifts.
And where does the ocean gets it heat from?
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (13:37:34) :
NINT is a standard Fortran (also F77) intrinsic function[…]A similar intrinsic function INT simply truncates the decimals. So NINT(value) = INT(value + 0.5)
Thanks! This actually caused me to think a minute (foreign as that sometimes it to my brain 😉 and I realized that while I had done some maintenance on F77, I actually had FORTRAN IV in class! I remembered the INT trick.
Ric Werme (13:46:23) :
It rounds to the nearest integer.
Thanks as well! I’m slowly getting my “FORTRAN legs” back, seasick though it has made me 😉
Ric Werme (13:46:23) :
It rounds to the nearest integer
What is the integer nearest to 2.5 ?
to -2.5 ?
Leif,
You didn’t put in Ric’s whole quote: “It rounds to the nearest integer. (int() rounds toward 0 (down for positive number, up for negative.”
Depending on the sign, the nearest integer would be either +2 or -2. Wouldn’t it?
[PS: I know you were just being funny with ‘integer’ -2.5.]
I hope Leif Svalgaard or one of the other people taking part in this discussion can help with a gnawing problem I have had for some time.
Looking at the (admittedly flawed) Vostok ice core data (trace of temperatures during the last ~400,000 years) it would seem that deglaciation/warming occurs much faster than glaciation/cooling –BUT I can not figure out why the warming is so STEEP and the cooling is so gradual.
Peter Salonius
Break out your magnifying glass…there seems to be a tiny speck forming in the southern hemisphere!
How desperate am I to be looking so carefully??????
Steve M. (11:43:43) :
Break out your magnifying glass…there seems to be a tiny speck forming in the southern hemisphere!
and a SC23 speck at that.
PD Park (00:03:41) : Can you contact me?
Done.