Solar Cycle 24 has ended according to NASA. Yes you read that right. Somebody at NASA can’t even figure out which solar cycle they are talking about. Or, as commenters to the thread have pointed out, perhaps they see that cycle 24 has been skipped. We’ll be watching this one to see the outcome. – Anthony
Michael Ronanye writes in comments:
NASA has just changed the name of the project from Solar Cycle 23 to Solar Cycle 24. I would love to have attended that meeting.
B.9 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE MINIMUM OF SOLAR CYCLE 24
Clarified March 10, 2009: All references to “Solar Cycle 23″ have been updated to “Solar Cycle 24.” Reference in Section 1 to “Solar Cycle 22″ has been updated to “Solar Cycle 23.”
See the changed text here:
Causes and Consequences of the Minimum of Solar Cycle 24
Talk about Freudian Slips, what Solar Cycle is it anyway? No wonder they can’t make predications!
But it gets even better. NASA has just declared that Solar Cycle 24 is over. Read the first paragraph in the above PDF:
1. Scope of Program
In 2009, we are in the midst of the minimum of solar activity that marks the end of Solar Cycle 24. As this cycle comes to an end we are recognizing, in retrospect, that the Sun has been extraordinarily quiet during this particular Solar Cycle minimum. This is evidenced in records of both solar activity and the response to it of the terrestrial space environment.
Obviously someone made an error when editing the text of the original document and did not catch their mistake. Quick, make your own backup copy of this “Great Moment in Science”.
quick, someone needs to edit the last sentence of your post ;o)
REPLY: I fixed Mike’s text. Thanks, – Anthony
[Start quote.] “The reporting of Big Brother’s Order for the Day in The Times of December 3rd 1983 is double plus ungood and makes references to non-existent persons. Rectify in full and submit your draft to higher authority before filing.”
Oh good, I have been waiting for this Solar Cycle minimum to end so that I can start looking forward to warmer weather again. It’s been in the -30s C. for the past 4 days and we would all appreciate a return to normal seasonal temperatures. I just hope someone passes this information onto the sun.
Thanks Antonio, I am a graduate of the Jacksonian School of spelling!
Mike
It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
President Andrew Jackson
It’s not a mistake. NASA public relations is captured by the AGW movement, and it’s their job to obfuscate the solar cycle – climate causality. They’ll do it in more ways than just making silly SC24 predictions. Here it’s publishing erroneous articles. They’ll be plenty more ways.
The old veil of bumbling incompetence over what is really strategic falsity.
We mustn’t blame NASA. Sure, they have a lot of rockets blow up, like the one a week or so ago, but it isn’t their fault. Global Warming makes the rocket components overheat.
This particular error was also caused by Global Warming. Circuits in their computers have been fried by higher temperatures than they were designed to handle, again, the fault of Global Warming.
We can’t blame them for confusing information about basic facts, as about what Solar Cycle we’re in. They are doing the best they can, struggling with the high temperatures of the past couple of years even as they turn down their air conditioners to make things better.
Don’t believe it when critics say that NASA people are dumb or lying. They are just overheated.
Must have been the negative feedback.
Climate dyslexia seems to be reigning supreme these days.
Careful, now. That may not be an error. We don’t know what they meant if they didn’t come right out and define precisely. They may know something we don’t, like a clue that SC24 has met an untimely death, as in the skipped cycle that Adolfo referenced above.
Could mean that they see L&P projection as snuffing out SC24 to a shoulder of a ramp, or it could be a typo.
Lost cycle or bum cycle or phantom cycle, do we really know?
Never has the phrase :”Good enough for government work!” been more true….
from the swamp…cdl
“”” DR (08:27:51) :
For those interested, Scafetta and Willson have published a new paper on TSI in direct conflict with those claiming changes in TSI cannot account for late 20th century warming, i.e. the sun is basically an incandescent light bulb in the sky. “””
DR, I don’t even have a problem with the concept of the sun being just an incandescent light bulb in the sky. BUT ! So long as the lightbulb exhibits the same sort of magnetic field variations that the sun exhibits, as well as that shockwave mantle, I don’t care if TSI doesn’t change one iota; it’s the magnetism changes, and what that does to the charged particle/cosmic rays arriving at earth (and where they get steered to) that I look to for a direct solar/climate link.
In fact I’m getting really tired of hearing the mantra that the TSI only changes a tenth of a percent over a sunspot cycle, in dismissing the sun’s influence. That just indicates to me that the comment comes from someone who isn’t thinking this whole thing through.
The exact details of Svensmark’s thesis on cosmic ray influence, may be up for discussion; but I can’t see how the whole concept can be simply dismissed.
When people are talking about hundredths of a degree change, in something that is nothing more than a manufactured climate datum (say GISStemp), and trying to bestow some scientific significance to that; it is just plain silly to ignore the clearly demonstrated solar effect on cosmic and charged solar particles.
George
I expect Leif will respond to Scaffeta’s paper.
We need clarifying this.
Usokin:”Based on a re-analysis of
available sunspot data, we have suggested that solar
cycle #4 is in fact a superposition of two cycles: a
normal cycle in 1784-1793 ending at the start of the
Dalton minimum, and a new weak cycle in 1793-1800
which was the first cycle within the Dalton minimum.”
They must use the same proof reader that the State Department uses for English to Russian translations.
It’s a good thing these guys aren’t rocket scientists and work on sending rockets into space
It appears that they had moved the goal posts as far as they could so now they are moving the whole stadium. Or perhaps the research funding for Cycle 24 has already run out and they now need to fund research into “Cycle 25.”
I may or may not have said this before,, but I just cant help thinking that this has something to do with the whole enigmatic mystery that surrounds “the number 23”!! 😉
Cycle 23: “The Sunspot Cycle That Would Not Die”
To be followed by the Sunspot Cycle That Would Not Live?
I’ve always felt that cycle 24 was the second peak in the curve of what we refer to as cycle 23. The next cycle that comes along should be cycle 25 sometime in the year 2023.
It’s going to be a long, cold decade for the AGW crowd.
I’ve noticed that the solar flux (as reported at http://www.solarcycle24.com) has been steadily ticking up since reaching a minimum in July. It isn’t clear to me whether the “observed” solar flux that underlies that trend is adjusted for distance from the sun (aphelion/perihelion effects) or not. The minimum in July does correspond with aphelion, but it seems strange to use unadjusted numbers.
If the reported numbers are not adjusted, we’ll probably see them start trending down again now (perihelion was January 4th), and the slight trend upward indicates nothing more than a steady minimum with decreasing distance from the sun. If they are adjusted, however, the trend may mean that we are, in fact, slowly ramping up to cycle 24, with sunspots a more variable indicator.
This is what NASA says (in the posted link above):
“Causes – Solar output
Lowest sustained solar radio flux since the F 10.7 proxy was created in 1947;
Solar wind global pressure the lowest observed since the beginning of the Space age;
Unusually high tilt angle of the solar dipole throughout the current solar minimum;
Solar wind magnetic field 36% weaker than during the minimum of Solar Cycle 23;
Effectively no sunspots;
The absence of a classical quiescent equatorial streamer belt; and
Cosmic rays at near record-high levels.
Consequences
With the exception of 1934, 2008 had more instances of 3-hr periods with Kp=0 than any other year since the creation of the index in 1932;
Cold contracted ionosphere and upper atmosphere; and
Remarkably persistent recurrent geomagnetic activity.”
George E. Smith
I agree with you. The point is the debate on TSI being “settled” plus ignoring of all evidence of the sun’s indirect effects.
You do relaize the title of this entry is “Solar Cycle 24 has ended…” right?
We on 25 now?
Wow.
I decided to check out Watt’s up for the first time recently, to evaluate the quality of “skeptics” arguments.
A whole post, and dozens of comments, about a typo.
Fortunately, in my field, when I make a typo (or other trivial mistake), we correct it and move on. Nobody writes up a multi-paragraph memo, or saves a copy in case I later deny I made the typo, or posts references to Orwell because they are convinced that I will subsequently pretend the typo never happened.
I am very glad that my work does not generate the reaction that scientists working on global warming must endure. If it did, I would be far too busy responding to BS to actually get anything done.
REPLY: Well then if you evaluate the whole blog based on one story, then you would be guilty of using a single data point to determine your opinion. The fare has been rather light on science the last few days because I’ve been traveling. Mostly I posted this because it was funny, not that it was relevant, unless of course they authors have decided that we have indeed skipped cycle 24…then it is hugely relevant. Stick around to find out the answer. – Anthony Watts
Dang, so Leif’s prediction of SC24 max of 75 or so was wrong? He’ll be disappointed.
🙂
The main text says:
Predications? I knew they had trouble with predictions, but I have no idea of what a Freudian predicate is. I’m not sure I want to know….