Usually, and that means in the past year, when you look at the false color MDI image from SOHO, you can look at the corresponding magnetogram and see some sort of disturbance going on, even it it is not visible as a sunspot, sunspeck, or plage area.
Not today.
Left: SOHO MDI “visible” image Right: SOHO Magnetogram
Click for larger image
Wherefore art though, cycle 24?
In contrast, September 28th, 2001
There will come a time when Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming will be remembered as another example of Lysenkoism… fraudulent scientific theories propped up by a failing state.
The serene sun seems to be the sign of contradiction for alarmism. Each day brings new counter-proofs.
“The advantage of being a cynic is that you expect little, get nothing and yet remain serene” – Charles Krauthammer
What effect do solar cycles have?
I think most would agree that the average cycle length is 11 years and varies between 9 to 14?
If this is true then a FFT plot of total solar irradiance would show these regulat cycles as peaks.
If peaks are visible and TSI have an effect on temperature then these peaks should be visible in the temperature records, An FFT will not be affected by:
*delays in TSI to temperature (days or years providing the delay is constant)
*positive or negative or no trend in temperature (UHI will not affect the peaks)
*absolute values of temperature (arctic or equator will not matter).
*the peaks are time accurate unless temperature reporting has been done in a different universe (i.e. a peak at 7.8 years is NOT the same as a peak at 8 years)
however:
* records are not available for long enough to give sensible output beyond say 50years
* peaks occurring at slightly varying periods will give a wide hump in the output
Looking at one FFT of temperature for one place shows vague peaks NOT at the required peiod but has so much noise that no real conclusions can be drawn.
I therefore took a number of places with LONG records:
central England, Hohenpeissenberg, Uppsala, Melbourne, New York Central Park , Albany, Binghampton, Shanghai and did a simple average of the FFT output.
The FFT of Leif’s TSI data and the averaged temperature FFT is shown below:
http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/861/averageffttempcftsi.jpg
The FFTs are all from monthly data (hence peak at 1 year) and all records have been padded out with 0s to enable a 4096 sample FFT to be made (this gives an artificial high level at long periods)
Note that the scale is period and not frequency (as is usual in FFTs).
The FFTs are done in excel.
I think it is evident that there is no VISIBLE TSI influence on temperature. However there are apparent peaks at 7.8 years approx and possibly at 2.3, 3.5, 13 and 19 years.
Am I wrong and if so why?
Bill
It’s amazing that we are getting such a marvelous chance to test Svenmark’s theory. While lots of folks predicted a weak solar cycle, this one is seriously interesting. We could get a minimum worth a name.
I don’t believe the changes in solar radiation are given enough credit for changes here. True, natural variations due to changes in distance to the sun and the like are greater in amount, where the impact in radiation is going to be seen are at the extreme ends of these natural changes.
For example, if the sun’s output is just a little less than normal, then the peak radiation we get when the we are closest is less and the minimum is more extreme as well. And it probably doesn’t play out over a single year. But after several orbital cycles of less radiation from the sun, the earth would have to lose energy to space. So while at any given time the solar radiation received is within the bounds of “normal”, it is at the extremes of maximum and minimum seasonal variation where the difference will be most important.
If radiation doesn’t reach the level this summer than it reached last summer, maybe a little more ice is left. Maybe if we have two or three entire solar cycles that peak at lower levels, the impact begins to be noticed. While I won’t buy into the notion that a change is going to be felt immediately, if it becomes a pattern over decades, I can’t see how it can’t help but be felt eventually.
But here we are with nearly another month gone by and still no spots. At what point does this become anomalous? I understand that cycles vary in duration and some are longer than others … but when do we cross, say, the 75th percentile into the longest 25% of cycles?
Dr. Hathaway was quoted in a NASA press release in 2004 as saying that it appeared that the current solar minimum might arrive a full year earlier than predicted:
“”This is a sign,” says Hathaway, “that the solar minimum is coming, and it’s coming sooner than we expected.”
…
But researchers are making progress. Hathaway and colleague Bob Wilson, both working at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, believe they’ve found a simple way to predict the date of the next solar minimum. “We examined data from the last 8 solar cycles and discovered that Solar Min follows the first spotless day after Solar Max by 34 months,” explains Hathaway.
The most recent solar maximum was in late 2000. The first spotless day after that was Jan 28, 2004. So, using Hathaway and Wilson’s simple rule, solar minimum should arrive in late 2006. That’s about a year earlier than previously thought.”
Well, it turns out it arrived even sooner as a NASA release from March 6, 2006 announces the arrival at solar minimum, a year and a half earlier than expected. Now here we are in March 2009.
On March 10, 2006, NASA released the following:
“This week researchers announced that a storm is coming–the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). “The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one,” she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.
…
Like most experts in the field, Hathaway has confidence in the conveyor belt model and agrees with Dikpati that the next solar maximum should be a doozy. But he disagrees with one point. Dikpati’s forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.
“History shows that big sunspot cycles ‘ramp up’ faster than small ones,” he says. “I expect to see the first sunspots of the next cycle appear in late 2006 or 2007—and Solar Max to be underway by 2010 or 2011.”
And so here we are. No “doozy” in sight.
I have followed what Leif has been saying and been patient. But it seems that what the “experts” say this year will be completely different next year. It is getting very difficult not to take anything said on the subject with several grains of salt.
Yup, no sooner than I posted this, one appeared. Thats Murphy for ya! – Anthony
Actually I think if you check back for the last six months or so whenever you mention the lack of sunspots on here, one shows up. 🙂
Wherefore means “why” in modern English, not “where”.
This is why Juliet said “wherefore art thou Romeo”, asking why he has the name of Montegue’s son, and not the name of a man she could wed.
George, the high latitude would think of the cycle 24, but the polarity of the cycle is 23 … or maybe 25?
Simon
Regarding the Simon’s English.
It is way better than my Italian.
He needs make no apology.
I’d never seen the “sunspek” discriptor before.
Saw it on http://solarcycle24.com/ then realized it had been used here.
Is that a new coinage, or am I just slow?
REPLY: Or maybe I just typed too fast and dropped the “c”. ? – Anthony
How the real deniers think: “It is crazy – crazy – to think the sun has a major influence on Earth’s climate! Clearly CO2, a life-giving trace gas comprising less than one percent of all greenhouse gases, is driving major climate change. Computer simulations prove it. Let’s destroy our fossil-fuel based energy infrastructure immediately and send humanity back to the dark ages so we can SAVE THE PLANET!”
What of the energy we reflect back to the sun? What becomes of that?
It’s a very small new sunspot according to the Solar Cycle 24 website
http://www.solarcycle24.com
“A small new sunspeck has formed high in latitude in the northern hemisphere. It has the proper latitude of Cycle 24 but with the opposite magnetic polarity. It poses no threat for solar flares.
Today I am watching the STEREO Behind images as there appears to be a bright area approaching the eastern limb. It is still too early to tell if this will be anything of interest or just another Cycle 24 dud.”
Is anyone else concerned that the few spots that we HAVE seen in the last, say, six months have all been FUNKY in one way or another?
First, just about every other spot seems to have SC23 polarity (apparently including this latest one, even though it is HIGH LATITUDE) Very spooky.
Second, about half the recent spots have been SPECKS which lasted HOURS instead of days. Many of these likely wouldn’t be counted in centuries past.
Third, of course, there just AREN’T ANY SPOTS relative to where we are supposed to be in the cycle. Zip nada null set.
Seems like a “shy” polarity shift; a failure to “snap-over” as it were; like a meta-stable wobbling.
Questions:
(a) is there an established criterion for “calling” a minimum? (while you’re IN IT, I mean; ex post facto seems like it would be pretty easy to call). I’m supposing there isn’t.
(b) I can’t get ANY traction with this, but I keep trying if this IS a Minimum, shouldn’t it be named the Gore Minimum (or perhaps Gore-Hansen)?
My feeling is that if this indeed a Minimum, and the climate follows the Maunder and Dalton pattern (or, heaven forbid, a colder pattern), future generations REALLY need to be reminded about the hubris of AGW.
(c) how many days until we’re outside TWO standard deviations for the length of SC23?? I seem to recall that we shot past one std deviation sometime this winter, and that the 2nd was pretty quick thereafter (ie the distribution is pretty tight about 11.6 years). How big does the excusion have to be (in std deviations) before this becomes a noteworthy event?
Repetitive quote of the year:
“The sun is blank. No sunspots.”
“The sun is blank. No sunspots.”
“The sun is blank. No sunspots.”
Chris
Norfolk, VA
Thank you to Simon’s blog! 😀
of course…sunspeck is 23 cycle. anybody saw a 24 spot? 😉
Am I wrong and if so why?
TSI is not the whole story. It ignores indirect (magnetic and/or Svensmark) effects.
Even the IPCC acknowledges these indirect effects. Right before they proceed to ignore them.
George M (16:14:06) :
“I don’t know any ethnic Chinese, so I wonder who laid the: “May you live in interesting times” on me?
Maunder?
Dalton?
Sporer?
Whatever. Bring it on!”
That´s a good and healthy psyche!! . You know, those anxious of solving their traumas unavoidably seek their own “end of the world” (By the way we try our best to help them find it)
Nothing will happen…whatever it comes..cheers!
There are two specks, one on each hemisphere!
This published prediction was made by R. W.Fairbridge & , J. H. Shirley in 1987:
“Our tentative prediction is for inception of a new prolonged minimum within the time span of the solar barycentric orbit of 1990-2013.” in
Prolonged Minima and the 179-yr cycle of the Solar inertial motion, p. 207:
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1987SoPh..110..191F/0000197.000.html
The solar barycentric orbit of 1990-2013 happens to be the current solar orbit. The predicted prolonged minimum Cycle 23 started in 1996 and the absence of sunspots is still continuing. To the best of my knowledge, The late Rhodes Fairbridge and Shirley were the only scientists to actually predict the current prolonged minimum. NASA was caught flat-footed and still seems totally clueless! That is especially ironic because the work published 22 years ago by Fairbridge and Shirley at Caltech JPL was funded by NASA (JPL is a NASA facility). Page 204 has an excellent diagram of the current barycentric solar orbit. As noted in the paper, these orbits are very different from perturbed Keplerian orbits.
I sdlo highly recommend this paper:
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/31/66/11/PDF/angeo-18-399-2000.pdf
Pretty interesting, don’t you think? I’m a retired orbit specialist, who worked at JPL from 1965 to 1980. I find barycentric solar orbits most fascinating.
REPLY: We don’t think much of barycentrism here. Too little mass to make any difference. Dr. Svalgaard has debunked it extensively here – Anthony
Gotta change that conveyor belt!
ice2020
Simon,
I went to your blog. Well done young man!
Dave
mark wagner (17:53:31) :
TSI is not the whole story. It ignores indirect (magnetic and/or Svensmark) effects.
Even the IPCC acknowledges these indirect effects. Right before they proceed to ignore them.
But, I thought these were sychronised to sunspot count and therefore TSI.
If this is so their effect should also produce a peak around 11 years.
RA RA RA RA
Don’t know whether to believe Leif or my lying eyes.
At what point (date) do we/they start to re-evaluate?
Ninderthana (15:41:21) :
captdallas2,
“Has it ever occured to you that the undrelying mechanism that drives the PDO
may be indirectly linked a mechanism that drives solar activity?”
Have do done any supplemental linkage work with 10Be and 14C records that are associated with solar activity or are these proxies irrelevant to your study?
I’m from the UK. We could not feed a population of 30(ish) million people in WW2 withouth the stalwart support of our allies, paticularly the USA, and now we have a population of 60 million and rising. Given historical records that co-relate grain production and sun-spot numbers I think we are up the proverbial without a whotzit