NASA Science News, Dr. Tony Philips
The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.
2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year’s 366 days (73%). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days: plot. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008.
Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year’s 90 days (87%).
It adds up to one inescapable conclusion: “We’re experiencing a very deep solar minimum,” says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center.
“This is the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” agrees sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.
Above: The sunspot cycle from 1995 to the present. The jagged curve traces actual sunspot counts. Smooth curves are fits to the data and one forecaster’s predictions of future activity. Credit: David Hathaway, NASA/MSFC. [more]
Quiet suns come along every 11 years or so. It’s a natural part of the sunspot cycle, discovered by German astronomer Heinrich Schwabe in the mid-1800s. Sunspots are planet-sized islands of magnetism on the surface of the sun; they are sources of solar flares, coronal mass ejections and intense UV radiation. Plotting sunspot counts, Schwabe saw that peaks of solar activity were always followed by valleys of relative calm-a clockwork pattern that has held true for more than 200 years: plot.
The current solar minimum is part of that pattern. In fact, it’s right on time. “We’re due for a bit of quiet-and here it is,” says Pesnell.
But is it supposed to be this quiet? In 2008, the sun set the following records:
A 50-year low in solar wind pressure: Measurements by the Ulysses spacecraft reveal a 20% drop in solar wind pressure since the mid-1990s-the lowest point since such measurements began in the 1960s. The solar wind helps keep galactic cosmic rays out of the inner solar system. With the solar wind flagging, more cosmic rays are permitted to enter, resulting in increased health hazards for astronauts. Weaker solar wind also means fewer geomagnetic storms and auroras on Earth.
A 12-year low in solar “irradiance”: Careful measurements by several NASA spacecraft show that the sun’s brightness has dropped by 0.02% at visible wavelengths and a whopping 6% at extreme UV wavelengths since the solar minimum of 1996. These changes are not enough to reverse the course of global warming, but there are some other, noticeable side-effects: Earth’s upper atmosphere is heated less by the sun and it is therefore less “puffed up.” Satellites in low Earth orbit experience less atmospheric drag, extending their operational lifetimes. That’s the good news. Unfortunately, space junk also remains longer in Earth orbit, increasing hazards to spacecraft and satellites.
Above: Space-age measurements of the total solar irradiance (brightness summed across all wavelengths). This plot, which comes from researcher C. Fröhlich, was shown by Dean Pesnell at the Fall 2008 AGU meeting during a lecture entitled “What is Solar Minimum and Why Should We Care?”
A 55-year low in solar radio emissions: After World War II, astronomers began keeping records of the sun’s brightness at radio wavelengths. Records of 10.7 cm flux extend back all the way to the early 1950s. Radio telescopes are now recording the dimmest “radio sun” since 1955: plot. Some researchers believe that the lessening of radio emissions is an indication of weakness in the sun’s global magnetic field. No one is certain, however, because the source of these long-monitored radio emissions is not fully understood.
All these lows have sparked a debate about whether the ongoing minimum is “weird”, “extreme” or just an overdue “market correction” following a string of unusually intense solar maxima.
“Since the Space Age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high,” notes Hathaway. “Five of the ten most intense solar cycles on record have occurred in the last 50 years. We’re just not used to this kind of deep calm.”
Deep calm was fairly common a hundred years ago. The solar minima of 1901 and 1913, for instance, were even longer than the one we’re experiencing now. To match those minima in terms of depth and longevity, the current minimum will have to last at least another year.
In a way, the calm is exciting, says Pesnell. “For the first time in history, we’re getting to see what a deep solar minimum is really like.” A fleet of spacecraft including the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), the twin STEREO probes, the five THEMIS probes, ACE, Wind, TRACE, AIM, TIMED, Geotail and others are studying the sun and its effects on Earth 24/7 using technology that didn’t exist 100 years ago. Their measurements of solar wind, cosmic rays, irradiance and magnetic fields show that solar minimum is much more interesting and profound than anyone expected.
Above: An artist’s concept of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Bristling with advanced sensors, “SDO” is slated to launch later this year–perfect timing to study the ongoing solar minimum. [more]
Modern technology cannot, however, predict what comes next. Competing models by dozens of top solar physicists disagree, sometimes sharply, on when this solar minimum will end and how big the next solar maximum will be. Pesnell has surveyed the scientific literature and prepared a “piano plot” showing the range of predictions. The great uncertainty stems from one simple fact: No one fully understands the underlying physics of the sunspot cycle.
Pesnell believes sunspot counts will pick up again soon, “possibly by the end of the year,” to be followed by a solar maximum of below-average intensity in 2012 or 2013.
But like other forecasters, he knows he could be wrong. Bull or bear? Stay tuned for updates.
h/t’s to Pearland Aggie and Joe D’Aleo
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vukcevic (00:30:04) :
What is more important: How do you interpret sudden reversal at 1945.
Leif Svalgaard (06:32:06): Any solar-climate enthusiast will tell you that the reversal is due to the cooling effects of the [then] yet to come very large cycles 18 and 19…
There are too many climate enthusiasts around to solicit individual views. I was asking for an expert interpretation. For the moment, I would, and perhaps some others on this blog, welcome a more detailed analysis.
It is an important test case, since all data for the period are available, well understood, and no “double meaning” proxies are required.
This is a period of rapid post-war industrialisation, thousands of coal power stations belching CO2, solar cycles 18 and 19 breaking all records, and yet the global temperature was falling or static.
Do you know what was going on?
I’m neither a climatologist nor an astrophysicist. However, I do work in developing systems that have to manage chaotic processes initiated by mega Joule scale events. The principles I apply daily in my field seem relevant to this area, and lead me to some observations:
1. The value of interest to me isn’t Total Solar Irradiance (TSI), its Total Energy Flux (TEF) (of which TSI is a component). I’ll add that one of my pet peeves is the use of Watts, a unit of POWER, to measure energy. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING.
2. People have cited the value 1300 w/meter**2 at the surface of the atmosphere. Assuming that’s peak, and neglecting energy such as cosmic rays (which I’ll come back to), that’s an average energy flux of 650 Joules per second = 2.3 MJ per hour = 20.5 GJ per year. Per square meter. In a square kilometer, that works out to 20.5 x 10**15 Joules. For the central Pacific (taken as one third of the total area of the Pacific Ocean, 60 M square kilometers), that is 1.2 x 10**24 Joules. .1% of that is 1.2 x 10**21. (For comparison, a 250 KT nuclear weapon has a total energy release on the order of 10**15 Joules.) I am profoundly aware of the difference between (relatively) steady state and impulsive energy release. Nonetheless, and with all due respect to some of the other posters, do NOT tell me this is an insignificant factor.
3. All Joules are not created equal – a fact the young engineer usually learns the hard way. Cosmic rays DO NOT couple into the atmosphere the same way UV does, which is different than visible light, which is different from IR, etc. In fact, not all wavelengths within a given band interact in the same way. I not only want to know the change in TEF, I also want to know if and how the distribution across the spectrum changes.
4. TSI is only the energy from photons. It does not reflect energy produced by interaction of the planetary magnetic field with the solar magnetic field. It does not include the energy flux contributed by particles. TEF includes these.
When I look at the climate, I see a dynamic system seeking a point of energy equilibrium. The processes such as El Nino, La Nina, PDO, etc. are not initiated by magic. They are initiated by a change in the energy input to the system. I want to understand that energy input, the coupling of the energy into the system components, and the process initiated as a result of the coupling. The reason I consider Hansen, Gore, Gavin, Mann et. al. to be monumental frauds is because they claim they can model a system without accounting for the energy driving it. I would hope we don’t make the same mistake.
BTW, I vote for the Eddy Minimum, with “Gore Global Catastrophe” reserved for the disastrous consequences of the policies he advocates.
“4. TSI is only the energy from photons. It does not reflect energy produced by interaction of the planetary magnetic field with the solar magnetic field. It does not include the energy flux contributed by particles. TEF includes these.”
Thank you.
Today in Holland an adaption of this WUWT-article was posted in dutch at http://www.nu.nl (“nu” is dutch for now, at present: <a href=”http://www.nu.nl/algemeen/1943183/zon-was-in-bijna-100-jaar-niet-zo-inactief.html”: “Sun was for a 100 year not so inactive”
Including the quotation about the stock market: The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.. Unfortunately no any source was mentioned, nor a link to WUWT was included.
http://www.nu.nl is a top ten site in Holland!
Thank you, John W. for a wonderful post
Janet Rocha (12:24:52)
“Thank you, John W. for a wonderful post”
ditto
– – – – – – – – – – –
Next – Regarding North-South (N-S) Sunspot-Area Asymmetry:
—
tallbloke (02:16:25)
“Leif told me no-one has ever been able to make much sense of it a year or so back”
Thank you – this is the kind of info I was looking for on socioscientific context.
—
tallbloke: “I took note of your comment on the other thread about the matter, but I’m unsure how you used logarithms to get a high correlation N-S difference and overall sunspot area.”
Log(|N-S|+1) is one of the simpler transforms I explored.
You have to add 1 (or some other positive number) to avoid the singularity [i.e. Log(0)].
I work in base 2 because it facilitates interpretation (one can speak of the effect of doubling).
There are other transforms that give even higher correlations, but discussing them here will pollute the thread with excessive technicalities.
I don’t know the physics, but there is no (1st-order at least) statistical mystery here, aside from the well-known anomaly (centred at ~1964) related to Solar Cycle 19.
I ran some time-integrated cross-correlation analyses and the following variables are all very strongly related:
|N-S|, Total Sunspot Area, Sunspot Number, geomagnetic aa index
Schwabe (~11a) subharmonics appear in the timescale spectra (which is no surprise).
[Note on terminology: Do not confuse “timescale” with “time”.]
I haven’t looked in the N-S sunspot area literature yet, but I will be very surprised if |N-S| isn’t already on this list of related variables (with total sunspot area, sunspot number, geomagnetic aa index, & others) in the consensus view.
It is noteworthy that |N-S| shows a less straightforward time-integrated relationship with cosmic ray flux. (Although noteworthy, this is not surprising.)
—
tallbloke: “You have seen the correlation I’ve discovered. […] I found there is still a visually obvious correlation between solar displacement in the z axis and absolute difference in hemispheric sunspot distribution without including overall sunspot area, though it’s R value will be low.”
Can you (or anyone else) post monthly summaries of these z-displacements to a webpage in plain-text? I need at least 1891-2006. It would be best if you keep the format simple: 3 columns: Year Month z-displacement (nothing else).
If you do this, I should be able to shine some light on this pretty quickly.
—
Leif, if there are any articles you think I might benefit from reviewing, please fire away.
I think to try and pin climate on any one event is the mistake that most folks make. I know I have said this before but if you think of climate like a big one armed bandit, all conditions must be right for extremes in climate temp. With the current solar min, had it hit during a warm ocean phase, it wouldnt be so worrysome.. Had there been no major volcanic erruptions, it wouldnt be so worrysome. Ect.. Ect.. All these things need to be in sync to cause unusual cooling or warming. I found it interesting that volcanic erruptions during some of our warmest periods were low, add a El Nino and a very active sun and you get .. ding ding ding ding…. warmer temps..
( http://toms.umbc.edu/ , about half way down page has “Recent chart of TOMS volcanic SO2 against time” )
Are they interrelated? I dont know but it seems like conditions currently are ripe for some darn cold climate to occur.
vukcevic (13:17:13) :
Natural mechanism for medieval warming discovered
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16892-natural-mechanism-for-medieval-warming-discovered.html
Thanks vukcevic. I read the publication referred to in the sci-news story this morning:
Valerie Trouet, Jan Esper, Nicholas E. Graham, Andy Baker, James D. Scourse, David C. Frank (2009). Persistent Positive North Atlantic Oscillation Mode Dominated the Medieval Climate Anomaly. Science 324, 78-80.
Abstract:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/324/5923/78
Comment:
This speculation about a La Nina/MCA link is interesting when considered in conjunction with regional glaciation-history anomalies – for example Garibaldi Park in southwestern British Columbia, Canada:
Koch, J., Clague, J.J., and Osborn, G., 2007. Glacier fluctuations during the last millennium in Garibaldi Provincial Park, southern Coast Mountains, British Columbia. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 44: 1215-1233.
http://www.sfu.ca/~jkoch/cjes_2007.pdf
Note what they have to say about when the LIA started.
(Caution: I’m not so sure about their interpretation of Grove (2001).)
The Garibaldi glaciation-history article was inspired, in part, by the following gem:
Gregory C. Wiles, Rosanne D. D’Arrigo, Ricardo Villalba, Parker E. Calkin, and David J. Barclay (2004). Century-scale solar variability and Alaskan temperature change over the past millennium. Geophysical Research Letters 31, L15203.
http://web.cortland.edu/barclayd/publications/GRL_2004.pdf
Those who read Charvatova, Fairbridge, etc. may find solace in these articles.
Even if the judge is out, there is plenty of interesting evidence to consider.
There is a precedent here. The standard dogma (ie realclimate etc.) is that the dip is due to fewer aerosols and a few papers have been published to support this idea. Whereas the standard dogma about the sun is that while there seems to be a good historical sunspot-temperature correlation, sunspots haven’t actually increased since 1960. Hence they conclude that the rise from 1980 to 1998 must be due to manmade GHG’s. But all these clever people didn’t stretch themselves to connect those two arguments and say that it’s just as feasible to say that the suns effect too may have been masked until the atmosphere cleared up. Hence one could easily conclude, using similar logic that we should have been on a temperature plateau since 1960, not 1998. Ok so it’s no more than convenient guesswork but exactly the same standard of guesswork is often called “evidence” in climate circles.
Let me throw something out there for the math wizards to consider. I recently saw a TV special on Rogue waves that discussed how until very recently, scientists thought rogue waves described by seamen were physically impossible or extremely rare. Newtonian wave models just would not cooperate in showing how they could exist.
However, A. R. Osborne (Fisica Generale, Torino) noticed a similarity to Schrodinger’s wave equation in quantum mechanics, to traces of wave action that hit a major oil platform and went to work to see if a rouge wave could be predicted by a modification of that formula.
He found that it in deed could, and that when they went looking for them with satellite radar data, they found that rogue waves were relatively common in the deep ocean.
The thing that has been nagging at me is, that the trace of a rogue wave in this link, looks a lot like the 1998 temperature spike.
http://at.yorku.ca/i/a/a/h/51.htm
On thinking about it, if a rouge wave is possible in the ocean, is it not conceivable that the same sort of behavior could exist in an average temperature plot for a body like the earth, as it oscillates around an average temperature? This like the PDO and AMO are just different types of periodic motion.
Likewise could it not also apply to the sun and its cyclic behavior of sunspots and levels of energy output?
Just curious if anyone is looking at this sort of non-linear approach to these cyclic events?
Larry
hotrod (17:54:00) :
Excellent post, Hotrod I SAW that Science Channel piece on rogue waves.
Very interesting the 1998 temperature spike as being a “rogue wave.”
Waves are nothing but a transfer of energy…..and even if those waves take years or many years…they are STILL transfers of energy.
Fascinating thought….and I follow you. Thanks.
Chris
Norfolk, VA
Interesting sites on the study of quantum mechanics and rogue waves
http://www.physorg.com/news155478110.html
http://quantumphysics.tribe.net/thread/f2a0f8ff-e9de-44df-8304-24c1de070868
http://thefutureofthings.com/column/1005/the-wave-that-changed-science.html
Thanks again, Larry.
Chris
Norfolk, VA
if ‘it is therefore less “puffed up.” ‘ then the volume of the atmosphere is smaller.
From gas function: VP=KT,
T=VP/K,
the total mass of the air is constant, average P should have no change.
Do we expect lower average temperature on earth?
Larry and Chris,
http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/76506-another-catastrophie-due-global-warming.html#post1281139
Check the graph linked from the above post. The interaction of varying length cycles and wavelengths do indeed produce extra high peaks, which in this case fit the data rather well.
Paul, I’ll chuck the data onto a page on my site and give you the link if you email me at the address I gave on the other thread.
Tallbloke,
That blog thread was really long (though informative). Couldn’t weed through all of it. Can you post the actual link to the graph you mention?
Thanks
Chris
Leif Svalgaard (19:57:49) :
vukcevic (10:25:22) :
“1.4% less overall solar energy hitting the earth will not change the environment significantly.”
If the solar energy changed 1.4% the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere would change 1.4/4=0.35% of 288 degrees or 1 degree. The reason for the division by 4 is Stefan-Boltzman’s law.
I’m layman. but Stefan-Boltzman’s law is for radiation body ( the sun) not the earth.
If the earth receives 1.4% less energy, then the temperature of the earth will decrease accordingly by 1.4%.
I think, that there is a linear relation between temperature and the energy. (if there is no state change, heat capacity change ..)
For example: using 10 cal energy heating 1 gram of water, the water temp will increase 10 C. using 20 cal energy will cause the water temp increases 20 C. (assume under normal pressure and the water heat capacity is a constant. all water remains as liquid. )
Leif Svalgaard, what do you think?
Chris:
http://ray.tomes.biz/global-temp-cycles-human.png
A nice demonstration of the way 5 cycles of varying lengths can interact to accurately hindcast the temperature record, and predict a cooler few decades ahead, but read the caveats in the post I linked above.
John W. (08:29:48) :
I would add to your list two more total energy inputs:
1)gravitational, with the tides. This is not only friction but also continuous movement of waters in the ocean from the whole column, the cold bottoms and the hot tops.
2) geothermal not only the occasional active volcanoes on earth and ocean bottom but also the continuous heating from magma towards the surface, particularly at the ocean bottoms where the depths are large. In south african gold mines temperatures of 50C of the rocks have been found at 4 km down. Some ocean bottoms are 4km down and I see no reason the internal heating of a sphere ( nearly) would not follow the symmetry.
I have looked at the values and translated to watts per m**2 ( and I agree that it is a funny unit for total energy, but that is the way the climate science projects energy !!) these last two inputs are of the order of a small percentage to the purported CO2 induced energies.
But it is a chaotic system and there are large regional variations in the changes in incoming energy, both totally and differentially in the spectrum. Take the UV which has the largest changes within the 0.05% of total sun energy that Leif acknowledges, it is 6% , and if you look at the map (third down in article) http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/UVB/uvb_radiation3.php
you will see that it is absorbed more in specific ocean sites. Adolfo (upstream) noticed they are correlated with the Nino locations, but I am not familiar with those to be able to give an opinion. This differential absorption allows for a mechanism of correlations with TSI . In addition an article on plankton http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/0702_planktoncloud.html
adds more correlations with changes in albedo, to which albedo the climate is extremely sensitive: try the toy model http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/Earth_temp.html .
Thanks Tallbloke. But would the 1998 spike be considered a “rogue wave” or in the bounds of normal variability?
Whats your thoughts….
hotrod (17:54:00) :
Just curious if anyone is looking at this sort of non-linear approach to these cyclic events?
Larry
Have a look at the thread http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/16/synchronized-chaos-and-climate-change/
Climate and weather are the result of many more coupled differential equations than waves in the ocean, and that is where the analysis of dynamical chaos applies.
A rogue wave presentation http://www.tulane.edu/~lkaplan/Cuernavaca_freak.pdf
1998 Spikes – supplementary images:
Note the really sharp drop in length of day (LOD) during 1998, which is synonymous with a sharp increase in earth rotation speed:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/LengthOfDay_1974_2005.png
http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/earth-orientation/images_eo/lplot1.gif
http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/time/master-clock/images/variability.png
Rate of change of LOD = dLOD and MEI = multivariate ENSO index:
http://ivs.nict.go.jp/mirror/publications/ar2003/acoso/img1.gif
savethesharks (22:23:34) :
Thanks Tallbloke. But would the 1998 spike be considered a “rogue wave” or in the bounds of normal variability?
Whats your thoughts….
1878 was a whopper:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1870/to:1880
So on the limited dataset, you might say such an event might be a once in a hundred year natural variability sort of thing. It might be interesting to see if historical records from ships logs etc had anything to say about unusual trade winds in the south china seas, indian ocean etc at that time. And then maybe see if the atlantic temperature rose soon after. That might tell you if it was a similar El Nino type event. Don’t know where you’d find the records though.
It’s interesting that it occurred not long before solar min, rather than on the upswing of a new cycle like the 1998 event.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1850/to:1885/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/to:1885/scale:0.0015/mean:12
And also interesting to note the decadal swings in global SST and land temps were generally ‘out of phase’ with the solar cycle at that period.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1850/to:1885/mean:43/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/to:1885/scale:0.0015/mean:12/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1850/to:1885/mean:43
tallbloke (22:02:26) :
Chris:
http://ray.tomes.biz/global-temp-cycles-human.png
A nice demonstration of the way 5 cycles of varying lengths can interact to accurately hindcast the temperature record, and predict a cooler few decades ahead, but read the caveats in the post I linked above.
5 cycles sequence is important.
Solar cycle anomalies as well as N/S asymmetry are subject to the 5 cycle sequence.
http://www.geocities.com/vukcevicu/CycleAnomalies.gif
http://www.geocities.com/vukcevicu/Anomalies.gif
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/MaunderN-S-excess.gif
Paul, please email me rog at tallbloke dot net for the ephemeris data. Let’s collaborate.