Just when you think cycle 23 may be over, it pops out another spot. Here is the SOHO MDI image showing a sunspot dubbed #1012, in solar cycle 23.
From SOHO
For those wondering how this is determined, cycle 24 spots (the new cycle) normally start near the poles and gradually migrate towards the equator as the cycle progresses over 11 years. So in this case, a spot at the equator means it is a cycle 23 spot. The magnetic polarity of the spot also defines it as a cycle 23 spot.
Here is a closer view:
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Re: gary gulrud (10:48:03) :
“Obliquity is currently at 23.446 degrees and decreasing. 5 Kyr ago it was 24.019 and 10 Kyr ago it was 24.229.
Insolation at 65N is about 426 and decreasing. 5 Kyr ago it was 452.48 and 10 Kyr ago it was 469.44.”
During MIS 11 about 400 kyr ago, which is the interglacial whose Milakovich signature most closely matching the current one, climate switched abruptly to glacial when the insolation at 65N reached about 416.
We are close to a Tipping Point (and one that we actually knows exists, in contrast to the ones we are constantly hearing about).
Re MC, I have done what I can, including publishing a book entitled Solar Cycle 24. You can see the front cover on my website at: http://www.davidarchibald.info The book will be in bookstores in Australia in at the end of the month.
Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic (and President of the EU for 2009) sent me a letter of praise after receiving it, and so on the back page for the second print run, above the “Praise from Professors for Solar Cycle 24”, I will put “Praise from Heads of State for Solar Cycle 24”.
The good thing about the whole AGW scare is that it got non-climate scientists to start looking at climate. We can predict climate based on predictions of solar activity. Otherwise we would be floundering about thinking it was a random walk process. My prediction back in 2006 that Solar Cycle 24 would be the start of a Dalton Minimum rerun was based on Clilverd’s prediction of an amplitude of 45. Landscheidt, Hathaway and others were saying that the big, scary downturn was going to start with Solar Cycle 25.
On the Jager and Duhau paper, I found it incomprehensible. Perphaps I could understand it if I tried very, very hard, but I don’t think it is worth the effort because they make predictions seemingly without any supporting evidence. Their prediction for Solar Cycle 24 looks like it is already wrong – an amplitude of 116 (?) in 2011. It is possible that a cycle that has had an ultra weak start could ramp up to solar max in two years, but highly unlikely. For once I am in agreement with Dr Svalgaard – that paper has a lot of assertions but not much else.
On the subject of sunspots, we concentrate on sunspots because that is what we can see. They are a second order derivative feature of the Sun’s magnetic flux. It is like looking at a lava lamp from above, with the magnetic flux tubes rising due to buoyancy. The big thing is the coronal magnetic field strength which we can measure in the form of the Ap Index. Which reminds me that I made a prediction of the Ap Index last month on WUWT of 3 in October 2009. There is a correlation between the strength of the geomagnetic index at solar minimum and the amplitude of the following solar cycle. I have plotted it up and get an amplitude of 25. The margin for error in this estimate is inherently large. The coming solar cycle will be a good opportunity to tighten the calibration on that solar amplitude estimation technique.
On the progression of this minimum, things are going to plan. Ocean heat content peaked in 2003 in that year of very high proton flare activity, and is now in a steady decline. Craig Loehle will have a paper out on that soon. Sea level looks like it has stopped rising and it would be good to see the latest data from those satellites. The Ap Index has fallen out of bed and is still declining. Oulu neutron count remains in uptrend. The peak of that, and thus peak cooling due to cloud formation, usually comes a year after solar minimum so that should be in 2010. The weakness of Solar Cycle 24 is consistent with a sub-50 amplitude and thus a Dalton Minimum rerun is now inevitable.
The rate of cooling will cause the oceans to absorb CO2 at a rate which will offset anthropogenic emissions. I expect the annual increase for the next 25 years to be in the range of 0 to 1 ppm.
The whole AGW scare is like the tragic bushfires in Victoria, in which some greenies forced people to live in deathtraps on the basis of their ideology. A lot of greenies died as a result, but they took a lot of ordinary, decent people with them. So it is with AGW, and when people realise that they were caused great pain and suffering for no good reason, there will be retribution. Thus the Hadley Centre back peddling to a safer position.
Professor Archibald: “I have plotted it up and get an amplitude of 25″… but some will manage to count ghost spots up to at least 125
“Are you sure you are looking at that correctly? That 1/4 formula between TSI and temp applies to overall temp, not necessarily the incremental changes.”
Leif did the derivation, that is he gave exactly you a formula which applies to incremental chances.
The “temperature” of a celestial body with no atmosphere is defined simply by assuming a black body, where the flux (minus an albedo component) is as Leif says proportional to T^4. So by increasing the solar flux by a multiplicative factor of 1.001 (0.1% increase) you multiply the temperature by the square root of the square root of 1.001, and that is 1.00025.
Yes, the solar cycle signature is that small.
These arcane spot-or-speck disputes ignore the 10.7 cm radio flux from the sun, which is still low. There is data from 1947, and one would think that a new cycle would cause an uptick. The history is long enough to show strong correlation with the activity cycle.
“I am also surprised to see these cycle 23 spots. I had thought cycle 24 had started, we had passed minimum. ”
That’s a confusion which arises with the simple sunspot number plots. Butterfly diagrams show clearly the overlap of the different cycles.
Dell Hunt, Jackson, Michigan (14:01:25) :
Are you sure you are looking at that correctly? That 1/4 formula between TSI and temp applies to overall temp, not necessarily the incremental changes.
Stefan-Boltzmann: S = 5.67 E(-8) T^4
at T=100K, the energy is thus 5.67 W/m2
at T=287K, the energy is 384.690 W/m2
at T=287.072K, the energy is 385.076 W/m2
Difference dS = 385.076 – 384.690 = 0.386 or 0.386*100/385 = 0.1%
The 385 W/m2 is what the Earth actually gets, the rest up to TSI = 1361 W/m2 is reflected or spread over a sphere rather than a disk.
there is an great stat page “solaemon’s spotless days page” . Cycle 24 is behaving exactly like the older sc 10-15 average. I think maybe we should stop comparing sc 24 to sc 16-23. if sc 24 is indeed behaving like the older cycles then we are in about the middle of the spotless phase.
There is no definitive passing of minimum at this juncture.
Mighty SC24 has struck out at the plate.
If we are going to rely on Butterfly diagrams, they had better get some greater precision built into them.
This scale @ur momisugly 4 pixels/year
http://sidc.oma.be/html/papi22c.html
will not get the job done.
Gary Hladik (14:30:04) :
(whisper) I see dead sunspots! 🙂
Yep, a check of all 6 GONG latest images has 11010 dead and gone.
Stillborn?
Thank you Lief.
To continue this delightful discussion by throwing another graph in the mix, look at the updated plot of “Number of spotless days chart at http://www.solarcycle24.com/
There, you can see that, 16 months into the transistion when cycle 23 started, there was already a “zero spotless days” point for cycle 23.
At 17 months, 1 spotless day.
At 18 months, 0 spotless days.
At 19 months, 0 spotless days.
At 20 months, 3 spotless days.
Compare this to the transition into cycle 24.
At 16 months, 27 spotless days.
At 17 months, 20 spotless days.
At 18 months, 16 spotless days.
At 19 months, 28 spotless days.
At 20 months, 25 spotless days.
Unless someone can show that cycle 15 or cycle 16 also started this slowly, I dodn’t think we have an historical precedence for this long lull.
It is much too early to begin comparisons with the Dalton Minimum without such a comparision, but I don’t think that Cycle 24 can be compared to cycles 21-22-23.
Jari (05:23:13) :
Alan the Brit:
I noticed the same thing. Dr. Viki Pope (head of climate change advice at the Met Office Hadley Centre) is now saying in guardian.co.uk:
“Recent headlines have proclaimed that Arctic summer sea ice has decreased so much in the past few years that it has reached a tipping point and will disappear very quickly. The truth is that there is little evidence to support this.
—
Note that, three days ago, the “official” sea-ice-extent graph showed that 2009’s sea ice was at it’s all time highest recorded level ever! Of course, “sea ice extents” have only been recorded since 2001, but still …. 8 causes more warming -> causes more melting/less freezing -> causes more warming …. is proved wrong.
“How can I miss you if you won’t go away!”…
Thinking the unthinkable, and hoping I’m merely being paranoid…
How can we differentiate between a late Cycle 23 sunspot and and an early Cycle 25 (yes twenty-FIVE) sunspot?
David Archibald (16:39:19) :
The big thing is the coronal magnetic field strength which we can measure in the form of the Ap Index.
There is a correlation between the strength of the geomagnetic index at solar minimum and the amplitude of the following solar cycle. I have plotted it up and get an amplitude of 25. The margin for error in this estimate is inherently large. The coming solar cycle will be a good opportunity to tighten the calibration on that solar amplitude estimation technique.
We have the Ap index and Sunspot number [with good calibration] back to the 1840s. Here http://www.leif.org/research/Sunspot%20Number%20at%20Maximum%20Following%20Ap%20at%20Minimum.png is a plot of Rmax [dark-blue open circles] at the solar max following the year where Ap is minimum [about 6 months after sunspot ‘minimum’] and of Ap at that point [pink curve]. There is a well-known correlation as shown. Both a power-law and a linear relation is shown. There is not much difference [the power-law marginally better]. The blue diamonds show the calculated Rmax for the power-law and the red circles for the linear relation. they both match the observed values as well as their R2 values say that they should. Note that the right-most point is a prediction of cycle 24. Since we don’t know what Ap will be for this minimum I have guessed [based on assuming that the values for the past several months will stay where they are] that Ap = 4 for this transition. The predicted value of Rmax with this guess for Apmin is thus 75+/-10 in good agreement with what the polar field precursor technique gives [ http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%2024%20Smallest%20100%20years.pdf ]. Back at the deep minimum in 1901, Ap was 4.1 so 4 seems a reasonable choice. Keep in mind that the NOAA values for recent Ap are just plain wrong [too low].
While Rmax=75 is low [as we said in 2004: the lowest in a hundred years], we are not in unknown territory and not quite at Dalton minimum levels.
Robert A Cook PE (20:01:47) :
Unless someone can show that cycle 15 or cycle 16 also started this slowly, I dodn’t think we have an historical precedence for this long lull.
Back in 1810 the lull was ~400 days and presumably much longer during the Maunder Minimum.
It is much too early to begin comparisons with the Dalton Minimum without such a comparision, but I don’t think that Cycle 24 can be compared to cycles 21-22-23.
Agree, cycle 24 will be more like cycle 14 and friends.
Robert A Cook PE (20:10:46) :
Don’t forget that Cryospehere’s sea ice area record goes back to 1979, see e.g. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/sea.ice.anomaly.timeseries.jpg (Firefox (not sure about other browsers) will zoom in where you click on the image if it starts out scaled to the window.)
The Dalton was SC5 & 6.
I would never think of comparing SC24 to SC15. It doesn’t fit the pattern.
SC5 sure does.
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin.htm
and
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin1.htm
for your comparison pleasure…in detail of course.
Alan the Brit (06:04:52) : Surely there is much more in the combination of Milankovitch Cycles & solar output variations.
Solar variation happens on a much different time scale (though still important!). Cycles are in the tens of years to a probable 2400 or so year cycle. The Milankovitch cycles are generally 20,000 to 100,000 year scales. On the very long scale, the sun is warming consistently over it’s billions of years lifetime…
As I understand it the correlations between global temps & solar variations is definitely there, we are at near circular orbit with perihelion in early January, as this precesses thro time closest approach to the Sun will be in July in several thousand years time, we are also about half-way thro our axial tilt upwards with around 10,000 years to go before it all starts back down again.
Yes but: Our orbital changes are not really solar variations. The sun is staying (more or less) constant while we change how close we are and how the heat is distributed…
But your key point is quite valid. We are protected from ices ages only during a very short window when everything lines up “just right” to melt the summer ice and snows on the North Pole. We past optimal ’tilt’ some time ago (as you implied, about 10k yrs ago) and precession was optimal when it had perihelion on December 22 but we’ve gone on past to January.
That the Warmers are stressing over Arctic ice melt in the summer just makes me think like I did about a car chasing dog: “What will you do with that car tire once you since your teeth into it?” The last thing we EVER want to see is snow and ice persisting through the summer on an ongoing basis (i.e. adding snow each year to a ‘multiyear’ ice pack…)
So the ‘bottom line’ is that the best, warmest, times are behind us now. The good news is that it can take thousands of years for things to change much. The ice accumulates in a more or less straight line for about 100,000 years. So plot the distance from the North Pole ice to where the ice used to end (New York) and divide by 100,000 years. I got about 800 FEET per year.
Not exactly going to run you down 😉
My bigger worry would be the 1500 year Bond Event sequence (that during ice ages is still there and is called a Dansgaard Oeschger event then). It’s about time for one of these… The last one (Bond Event 1) was from about 450AD to 900AD – the Migration Period Pessimum (you know, the Dark Ages?) … 1500 + 450A.D. = 1950 A.D…
The odd thing about them is that there is no cause known. There is a postulated solar cycle, but little to no evidence. All we really know is that they DO happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1500-year_climate_cycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period_Pessimum
What we ought to be doing is building robust food production, distribution, and storage sytems; large nuclear reactor facilities; and figuring out how to make a stable world political economic structure that will not devolve into war and chaos if “things go really badly”… Not tilting at CO2 windmills…
Leif Svalgaard (10:28:21) : It is clear that cycle 24 has started.
In the same way as my old lawn mower: Chuf chuf WHEEZE pop flut flut CHUF flut flu fl pop chuf chuf wheeze flut flut chuf sputter…
😉
Nice collection of links, BTW.
Mr. Archibald,
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Sir, when you write (or speark) people pay attention.
I’m over in the US. Any way to purchase your book over here?
Walter Dnes (20:33:59) :
Thinking the unthinkable, and hoping I’m merely being paranoid…
How can we differentiate between a late Cycle 23 sunspot and and an early Cycle 25 (yes twenty-FIVE) sunspot?
…
Now, now. Don’t you worry your sweet head no more about dat little problem. (grin)
See, we can’t have an (early) cycle 25 sunspot until there are at least a few cycle 24 sunspots.
tty (15:55:31) :
tty, In my opinion 400 Kyr Ago is a bad comparison. The interglacial which ended about that time was anomalous, essentially a double / long / extended interglacial. Its characteristics are quite different from the Holocene. In fact that was one of the key points of my series on the next glacial period.
http://penoflight.com/climatebuzz/?page_id=394
For a close match to the Holocene you need to go back almost 800 Kyr Ago.
If you don’t want to read through the series of blog entries I have prepared a graphic comparing 800 kyr , 400 kyr, and the Holocene….
http://penoflight.com/climatebuzz/Files/3GlacComb2.jpg
We live in exciting times. It seems that modern science is going to get its first up close look at a spectacular solar minimum event. The CO2 theory may well be greatly challenged resulting in a better understanding of our climate and man’s influence on it. Ultimately, over the next few thousand years, science will get a front row seat to the transition into a glacial period. Perhaps even begin to fully understand why they occur. It is a shame life is so short; I will miss most of it.
The old lawn mower analogy wins.
Ask your physicist if Grand Minimum is right for you.
We have all seen the coastal land loss images of inundation.
What about the loss of higher mountain habitat and settlement, as well as crop migrations that would result from a repeat of the Little Ice Age?
question to Leif Svalgaard:
has the Gauss value of the last solar spots been measured?
tony (03:43:34) :
has the Gauss value of the last solar spots been measured?
The numbers (V19 and R16) on
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/images/cur_drw.jpg are the field strengths of the two spots in hektoGauss [i.e. 1900G and 1600G].