By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
The sun remains in a deep slumber.
Today we are 15 days into April without a sunspot and with 603 sunspotless day this cycle minimum, 92 already this year. 2009 at this rate, is likely to enter the top 10 years the last century along with 2007 (9th) and 2008 (2nd) this summer.
If it stays quiet the rest of this month, the minimum can be no earlier than November 2008, at least a 12.5 year cycle length. I believe January 2009 is a better shot to be the solar minimum as sunspot number would have to be below 0.5 in June 2008 to prevent the running mean (13 month) from blipping up then. April needs only to stay below 3.2 and May 3.4 to get us to January. This would be very like cycles 1 to 4 in the late 1700s and early 1800s, preceding the Dalton Minimum. That was a cold era, the age of Dickens and the children playing in the snow in London, much like this past winter.
THE ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC ICE STORY
As for the ice, we hear in the media the hype about the arctic and Antarctic ice. The arctic ice we are told is more first and second year ice and very vulnerable to a summer melt.
Actually the arctic ice is very 3rd highest level since 2002, very close to 2003, in a virtual tie to last winter and the highest year according to IARC-JAXA. The anomaly is a relatively small 300,000 square km according to The Cryosphere Today.
There was much attention paid in the media to the crack in the Wilkins Ice sheet bridge. It was not even reflected as a blip on the Southern Hemisphere ice extent, which has grown rapidly as the southern hemisphere winter set in to 1,150,000 square kms above the normal for this date and rising rapidly.
The net GLOBAL sea ice anomaly is also positive, 850,000 square km above the normal. See full PDF here.
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TerryBixler (13:28:19) :
eric (12:02:25) :
“So what are we supposed to make of these facts?
What is the actual change in solar irradience that goes along with the sunspot decrease? How much of a temperature effect should it have? The years 2007 and 2008 were low sunspot number year, ranking ninth and second in number of sunspotless days. Yet both were among the top 10 years in global temperature average in the last century.
Based on recent history, this will be a natural fluctuation in radiative forcing that will have a modest cooling effect even if it persists.”
The oceans have significant thermal mass, the temperatures do not turn on a dime.
Look at the following page:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2
which has a graph of solar irradience:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/Fig4_s.gif
The graphs shows that irradience has been on the low side of maximum since 2003. The lag in surface temperature response is said to be 2-3 years.
However, let’s assume that the solar irradiance does not recover. In that case, the negative forcing, relative to the mean solar irradiance is equivalent to seven years of CO2 increase at current growth rates. So do not look for a new “Little Ice Age” in any case. Assuming that the solar irradiance begins to recover this year, as expected, there is still some effect on the likelihood of a near-term global temperature record due to the unusually prolonged solar minimum. Because of the large thermal inertia of the ocean, the surface temperature response to the 10-12 year solar cycle lags the irradiance variation by 1-2 years. Thus, relative to the mean, i.e, the hypothetical case in which the sun had a constant average irradiance, actual solar irradiance will continue to provide a negative anomaly for the next 2-3 years.
Graeme Rodaughan (14:32:42) :
eric (12:02:25) :
“So what are we supposed to make of these facts?
What is the actual change in solar irradience that goes along with the sunspot decrease? How much of a temperature effect should it have? The years 2007 and 2008 were low sunspot number year, ranking ninth and second in number of sunspotless days. Yet both were among the top 10 years in global temperature average in the last century.”
If you walk to the top of a mountain and then down the other side. As you come down you are still near the top.
The current cooling is being measured against a recent peak. Hence we will be 10th warmest year, 11th warmest, etc…
Have a think about it.
I already have. Solar irradiance has been cyclical with sunspots over the past 50 years, and the average actually has been declining slightly. It has not been the dominant driver of global warming which has just reached a peak.
As a result a drop in solar irradience will not likely create a new “little ice age”, (assuming there was such a thing globally) but will likely create a slight temperature drop.
Looks like Anthony’s influence on the Sun is waning. I do not see any sunspots on the SOHO image. Of course since it was a guest post maybe it does not count.
All you grand minima fans, i would not get too exited for a couple of more years, even if the minimum is Aug 2009, my pick, that is only a 13.3 year cycle which would less than two standard deviations above normal.
grayuk (12:21:34) :
Are the years right in the opening statement?
Or am i reading it wrong?
Quote:
If it stays quiet the rest of this month, the minimum can be no earlier than November 2008, at least a 12.5 year cycle length. I believe January 2009 is a better shot to be the solar minimum as sunspot number would have to be below 0.5 in June 2008 to prevent the running mean (13 month) from blipping up then. April needs only to stay below 3.2 and May 3.4 to get us to January.
This is all in the past
Minimum is (I believe after Jean Meuus) computed based on a 13 month average. It will happen at the earliest some 6 months in the past, for any given time. April and May in the last sentence would be 2009.
I know such precision is unwarranted but my spreadsheet shows today’s 2009 arctic ice extent is less than 2003 by only about 32 hours. Since 2003 was rapidly loosing ice in the Okhotsk at this stage, and 2009 has nothing to loose there, looks like 09 will go ahead in a few days.
crosspatch (14:00:07) re: ice free arctic is normal, I agree, but it has been 40 some years since I read about it. Do you have any modern references I can catch up on? Thank you.
If, as Bill Livingston’s measurement of the sunspots’ magnetism suggests, that they will become invisible by 2015, are we seeing some of that effect already? In other words, are there more sunspots there than we can see? I suspect not, because the radio flux is not rising, but even if Solar Cycle 24 spots start increasing in frequency might not they just get fainter and fainter, and thus less easily visible, thus, not counted, in full?
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In the meantime there was an article today which conveyed what I call irresponsible comments by a scientists.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.72971d0d0ab6d933e237108c5a05b3c8.421&show_article=1
And of course the actual study will be published in Nature tomorrow.
kim (15:24:27) :
If, as Bill Livingston’s measurement of the sunspots’ magnetism suggests, that they will become invisible by 2015, are we seeing some of that effect already? In other words, are there more sunspots there than we can see? I suspect not, because the radio flux is not rising,
But it is: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
and there have been ‘plages’ that did not produce spots. This is unusual in recent memory.
eric,
I think you will find that most of us here find all of them manipulation of the GISS temperature data, along with the loss of stations and lack of true global (they estimate the poles) coverage to make that a less then preferred resource. Please show that the years you mention follow a similar pattern in either the UAH or RSS temperature logs – obviously if these years are near the top of the GISS charts they should also be near the top of the RSS and UAH data (hint – less data but they aren’t near the top)
Perhaps if you compared the GISS solar irradiance graph to the satelite temperature readings you might find more of a common pattern that might look like solar irradiance was in fact impacting temperature.
one update on my previous, instead of “most of us”, I should have said “SOME of us” – not fair of me to generalize that which I don’t know to be true – I know others share my opinion but not how many.
Hi Leif,
I’m looking at your F10.7 graph, and it seems to me that you’ve simply taken the data and used Excel to generate a parabolic trend curve.
My problem with believing that there is actually an uptick in activity is that a parabolic trend will always show an uptick, given the initial data conditions you have here. For example, what would a curve fitted to startpoint 2008.0 and endpoint 2008.82 yield? I’m guessing a much steeper uptick.
I don’t have the source data here to play with, but I wonder what a linear trend would show? Eyeballing the data, it seems to be converging to around 74.
Neil
Eric,
Solar Irradiance is not the only factor concerning the sun that is taken into consideration, Changes in the sun’s magnetism are also important; likely more important.
From solarcycle24.com:
“The sun continues to be blank of sunspots and the spotless streak is now at 39 days. Keep in mind there was some tiny sunspots in March which is being counted by some sources.”
This is obviously referring to the mini-micro tiny tims that lasted barely 12 hours which were ‘magically numbered’ (not by NOAA), around 9 days after they had disappeared. Clearly there were folks not too happy with a low March ss count and even less happy with the notion of a *gasp* spotless streak greater than 30 days. Clear bias in my opinion. http://www.solen.info/solar/ does not show these tiny excuses-for-spots (which were not even official).
@ur momisugly BillS
I mostly share your opinion. Does that help?
Did anything happen in 1912 connected with ice?
Neil O’Rourke (16:07:45) :
I’m looking at your F10.7 graph, and it seems to me that you’ve simply taken the data and used Excel to generate a parabolic trend curve.
Taking the data is in itself the right thing to do.
The trend is a third order curve fitted to the minima of the F10.7 curve, The important reason for this is that F10.7 is really the sum of two different physical effects: free-free emission [giving the slowly varying background which I’m fitting] and gyro-resonance emission from active regions [giving the rotationally modulated signal – the vertical lines are 27 days apart]. The background depends on the density and temperature of the lower corona and we think those are related to the ‘general level’ of emerging magnetic flux. I, personally, think that is an indicator of the ‘building material’ of solar activity. You are welcome to have a different opinion.
I don’t have the source data here to play with, but I wonder what a linear trend would show? Eyeballing the data, it seems to be converging to around 74.
For the next few hours the graph will have a linear trend superposed.
You can get the source data for F10.7 here: ftp://ftp.geolab.nrcan.gc.ca/data/solar_flux/daily_flux_values/current.txt
Be sure to use the ‘adjusted’ flux.
eric (14:44:56) :
GCRs, think Svensmark.
Snow this morning on Mt. Diablo in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Where is that global warming? Did they lose it in the couch cushions?
Maybe it ran away with sun spots.
Just Want Truth said:
Where? Damn it felt cold last night, so I can believe it!
I work in Santa Clara, so where is the Devil?
“TerryBixler (16:29:04) : GCRs, think Svensmark.”
See video here :
I agree, it’s complete rubbish. What is interesting to me, however, is the number of negative comments – 52 out of 52. It seems the public tide is turning fast against AGW alarmism.
My favourite comment was made by “Funnyman”:
It’s a never ending cycle of
-1- peer reviewed paper making wild apocalyptic claim
-2- get more funding from government to research said claim
-3- make even more outlandish claim!
I am bored of this crisis. Can we have a new one yet ?
Does someone have a chart more recent than this one, that shows expansion of sea ice?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2007_Arctic_Sea_Ice.jpg
“If August 2008 was the minimum why is there still no ramp-up for sc24 ?”
The TSI does show a minima and I gather other things do too.
(said that about TSI months ago)
If all we know is true, KISS principle, maybe the sun carries on with cycles at low activity therefore no sunspots. They might be the optional sunroof.
Richard Sharpe (16:52:55) :
It’s in the East Bay, near Clayton. You might have been seeing the top of Mt. Diablo all the time, and didn’t know it, when you look Northeast of Santa Clara on a clear day. I saw the snow this morning when I was driving past Alamo on 680. I had to look close because I couldn’t believe my eyes to see it this late in the year.
in Wiki :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Diablo