Mike Ronanye writes:
SWPC has just made a change in their solar cycle predictions in the middle of the month without any preannouncement. Both Sunspot and F10.7cm predictions were altered significantly.
See the following links:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/
The off-cycle update is in this week’s PDF report which contains the altered graphics:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/weekly/pdf/prf1747.pdf
You can see the last monthly summary here which I have been complaining reporting about, here:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/weekly/pdf/prf1745.pdf
This should have been the January 2009 summary but SWPC recycled the December 2008 summary.
I looked for but was unable to find any press releases. Please search for any additional information and post it here. If you downloaded any SWPC data or graphics hold on to it. I will be updating my SWPC Sunspot animation.
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So, from month to month,
peak SC24 in 2013-06 to 2013-10 becomes more and more a possiblity.
(but this opinion still does need peer review by Leif)
Klaus
I feel very strange track the solar cycle (24) almost daily.
Dr Leif is really getting closer to reality.
Dr Dave still has a chance.
Sorry Dr. Hathaway. (Game over???)
the_Butcher
>I wonder why do these people get paid for?
Gripegut
>How many times have the predictions been changed for solar cycle 24? Too me this is just another example of the problems with making predictions about things we don’t understand
gary gulrud
>I believe the ‘physicist’ in Solar Physicist is an honorific, more dignified than the descriptive ‘wonk’.
Alec Rawls
>These people are NOT scientists.
Dr Sun says: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, I am the great and powerful Solar Physicist!
This time for sure!
(Or “Never say anything more predictive than ‘watch this’ when turning on a demonstration apparatus.”)
Where did the new sunspot go?
Is it gone already?
Jim H (12:32:13) : “What i love about all this is that those of us who are not in favour of turning the global economy upsidedown to reduce carbon emissions need DO nothing. The facts will speak for themselves over the next decade or so.”
True, but by then they’ll have taken away our firearms.
gary gulrud (11:50:04) :”I believe the ‘physicist’ in Solar Physicist is an honorific, more dignified than the descriptive ‘wonk’.”
I think Physics, in the NASA sense, is the art of giving a physic, which the sun could surely use about now.
Dr.Archibald have you seen Franz Heeke´s theory? : http://www.surf2000.de/user/f-heeke/article1.html
Anthony,
Interesting off-topic about China using cloud seeding to promote snowfall
Adolfo Giurfa (10:47:53) :”They are following the Mayan calendar!!”
The Mayans–aren’t those the same guys who believed in sacrificing people to the Sun God?
Jorge
Jim H, a serious reexamination of the thousand-year temperature reconstruction is still necessary.
Even once the oceanic oscillations and contributions are straightened out, there’s still an unexplained longer term 1C/century trend.
Prior to Mann, that portion was “clearly” a rebound from the LIA. With the Hockey Stick as the input data, there is effectively no LIA. So it gets lumped into “Other Causes” and the search for trends that match that data proceeds.
Sloar/climate link in peer reviewed research from Israel
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V12/N8/EDIT.php
Solar/Climate link from Israel, more here: http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/02/nir-shaviv-solar-fluctuations-are.html
We need more thinking out of the box and this is an example of it.
The problem with all the sunspot predictions is that they are based on trends derived from the last sunspot cycle. They are looking in the rear view mirror to predict the present.
If there are factors that vary or if there are factors not understood or not accounted for, then such predictions will eventually fail.
There are trends that may last for 40 -100 years but we clearly see that those trends do change. Relegated to using past trends highlights that they lack a complete understanding of how the sun works.
Alan S. Blue Check out Climate Audit. As Leif checks in here on all things solar,
Craig Loehle chimes in there on temp reconstruction. If you google him on CA there are some 1700+ entries for his name. Here is one of his reconstructions, I believe w/o Mann’s favorite bristlecones, or any dendrology as it is suspected of being more responsive to water than temps. I also overlaid the infamous HS without the observation dataset spliced on the end for comparison (to scale). I believe this ends c. 1995. http://i39.tinypic.com/2q3arlw.jpg
Space Weather Prediction Center, a division of NOAA, the fine folk that bring you your local terrestrial weather SWAG – I mean forecast.
Will they ever get it right?
Variations in CO2 Growth Rate
Associated with Solar Activity
Dr Theodor Landscheidt
Schroeter Institute for Research in Cycles of Solar Activity
Klammerfelsweg 5, 93449 Waldmuenchen, Germany
http://www.john-daly.com/theodor/co2new.htm
According to the World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases (2003) “The high growth rates in 1983, 1987/88, 1994/1995, and 1997/1998 are associated with warm events of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The anomalously strong El Niño event in 1997/1998 brought about worldwide high increases in 1998. The exceptionally low growth rates in 1992, including negative values for northern high and mid-latitudes, were caused by low global temperatures following the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991.” As this connection could be of great import (Kuo et al., 1990; Metzner, 1996), it is subjected to a detailed analysis.
Naturally, this first result does not yet provide striking evidence, but it opens new perspectives that should be explored by further investigations that yield more details. Hopefully, such additional results will make it less difficult to find a physical explanation of the potential relationship. As to models that generally explain the Sun’s impact on climate change in different fields there is progress. I refer to the AGU Monograph “Solar Variability and its Effects on the Earth’s Atmosphere and Climate System,” edited by J. Pap et al., which is about to appear, and especially the chapter “Atmospheric Ionization and Clouds as Links Between Solar Activity and Climate” by Brian A. Tinsley and Fangqun Yu.
A lot of this commentary strikes me as mean-spirited. As far as I can tell, Hathaway has been among the most willing of our government scientists to say “we don’t really know”. That his predictions have been wrong is clear, but that’s pretty consistent with the whole “we don’t really know” thing.
Do you want him to make the “New Maunder Minimum” call today? Should he start talking about the possibility? And if he did, and honestly said something like “we don’t know what that would mean for those of us on Earth, or how likely it is, but the research I’m familiar with indicates that solar variability has relatively little impact on climate”, would you then hammer him for not endorsing the coming New Little Ice Age?
He studies the sun (which is currently taking him through one of its teaching moments), and as far as I can tell he tries to stay out of the politics of global warming – “Anne Hathaway” and “Berkshire Hathaway” get orders of magnitude more hits on google in conjunction with the phrase “Global Warming” than “David Hathaway” does. If his predictions are wrong, then they’re wrong. You know, he knows, and if he’s trying to hide it, then he might want to stop making explicit quantitative predictions in public. But he hasn’t.
Sorry for the screed, but I’d much rather see someone ask him, politely, what he thinks about the predictive value of the models he’s using, and what probability he’s subjectively placing on this cycle being way out of the norm than read a bunch of folks ragging on an apparently honest scientist.
My expert eyeballing indicates that they didn’t move the goalposts far enough, LOL.
Jim Steele (14:33:26) Quite right. And you know what: there’s word for it, its called Astrology, trying to predict the future from the past without any knowledge or understanding of how the future relates to the past. Or perhaps in this case: Heliology (or is it Solarology? Well, some kind of ology, for sure). It’s quite clear that nobody really understands whether the solar magnetic activity is on holiday or not, and if so why.
Mighty interesting, though, from an empirical point of view: we’re bound to learn something new.
I notice they assume the same curves and amplitudes, but have just moved them out in accordance with the delayed interregnum.
I don’t see this as an application of science, rather an application of CYA.
From these [snip] assessments, I can make a guesstimate of when will tSC24 peak and what will be its value. This is based upon a smooth eye-balling curve fit of their guestimates:
Around about 60 in 2013.
Take this to the bank.
Lief,
I will donate another $100 if my peak is not within 10% and my time frame out by more than 6 months. (That means between July 20012 and June 2014).
Comments by Morgan, re Dr David Hathaway, are the most civilised and decent sentiments I have seen here for some time. What a breath of fresh,clean air. That is the level at which debate should be conducted! (And not, for example, in imitation of the bad reality TV show that is parliament here in Australia). I am sure that David Hathaway is just as intrigued to see what happens next as the rest of us.
And re the recent scourging of the curious Dr Hansen, what was the saying? “Treat the failings of others as gently as you would your own..”
Robert Wood (16:57:24) :
I will donate another $100 if my peak is not within 10% and my time frame out by more than 6 months. (That means between July 2012 and June 2014).
Last thing to be determined is how the peak and its timing are set. The standard way is by the smoothed monthly sunspot number. Since there can be multiple peaks, you may want to stipulate that all peaks be with your ranges, which you then may want to widen a tad 🙂
My money is on 75+/-8 and max in 2013.5