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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Bruckner8 (22:23:51) :
We do expect activity to pick up fairly suddenly soon
Gotta love the commitment there!
My point is (and will always be): We don’t know!
Always will be? Hello… at some point we’ll know…
Anyway, the F10.7 radio flux is showing clear [and perhaps even accelerating] signs of the new cycle, so has already picked up:
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
Leif wrote: “Perhaps your bar is MUCH lower than mine….
Coincidental association is not evidence. It rained last week and my car had a flat tire. Is that evidence of rain causing flat tires?”
No…it is not. But the correlations between global cooling and the solar minima are hardly comparable to the spurious rain-flat tire analogy. Come on Leif.
Leif wrote “What I’m saying there is no evidence for is that the Sun is a MAJOR driver, or even THE driver. I’m railing against the all or nothing attitude.”
No evidence?????
The thing that accounts for 99% of the mass in the solar system gets the same status as CO2???
Come on, Leif.
Leif Svalgaard (22:20:36)
“[…] What I’m saying there is no evidence for is that the Sun is a MAJOR driver, or even THE driver. I’m railing against the all or nothing attitude.”
I remember anna v wisely pointing out in another WUWT thread that “indirectly” the sun is the driver.
…nickel & diming climate at so many spatiotemporal scales via so many channels that otherwise sensible people (sometimes) lose their cool?
…Like countless overlapping echoes at many volumes as a whistling train passes through a complex landscape of mountainous islands…
…and the result:
=
Bruckner8 (22:23:51)
“[…] Yet we’re making policy based on complete unknowns? Man, I have to get off this train…”
–
Paul R (21:09:06)
“That’s it I’m off to the Eclectic Universe people, you’re all too complicated.”
=
Keep it simple stupid? Are we in dangerous territory when astrology seems (to many people) to offer more predictive power than economists, climatologists, & astrophysicists?
I can hear the science-funding drums beating – and beating loudly.
(Maybe this is a good sign.)
savethesharks (23:03:34) :
No…it is not. But the correlations between global cooling and the solar minima are hardly comparable to the spurious rain-flat tire analogy. Come on Leif.
They are equally spurious [and not even very good] until we know what causes the correlations, and we don’t. Believing anything else is just settled Goreism, but if that is how low your bar is, then one can understand where you are coming from. So, to follow the advise just giving in another thread:
Dealing with absurdity
When you cannot prove that people are wrong, but only that they are absurd, the best course is to let them alone.
-Science and Hebrew Tradition, “On the Method of Zadig,” p. 13
savethesharks (23:07:22) :
The thing that accounts for 99% of the mass in the solar system gets the same status as CO2???
Explain that to the Venusians…
Paul Vaughan (23:20:44) :
I remember anna v wisely pointing out in another WUWT thread that “indirectly” the sun is the driver.
I don’t…
Lief wrote: “Believing anything else is just settled Goreism, but if that is how low your bar is, then one can understand where you are coming from.”
No Goreism here. LOL How dare you. The ultimate insult. LOL
[snip – and please learn to spell the his name correctly]
Leiff wrote: “When you cannot prove that people are wrong, but only that they are absurd, the best course is to let them alone.”
Then why do you continue to respond, Leif? Over and over again? Why not “let them alone?” What is the source of your anger?
Move on….if you don’t like what I am saying.
Back to topic: The oceans the biggest driver. The sun the second. Thanks Paul for your post.
Common sense should rule…..but it doesn’t always.
Ocean and sun and others shape our lives.
The debate is is the sun? Or is it the ocean? Or is it both….and including more….like Svensmark and then volcanic and other.
CO2 is not likely to be in the short list.
The question is: What are the primary drivers of the Earth’s climate?
A blend of the foregoing seems most likely. “The truth is often somewhere in the middle.”
(Except where AGW is concerned haha…no truth there.)
Chris
Norfolk, VA
savethesharks (00:26:19) :
Then why do you continue to respond, Leif? Over and over again? Why not “let them alone?” What is the source of your anger?
Doesn’t this go both ways? And there is no anger. I’m giving back to society what I owe because of society having funded a lot of my research, so I have sort of an obligation to set things straight.
Back to topic: The oceans the biggest driver. The sun the second.
Oceans 90%, Sun 10% I can live with.
Common sense should rule…..but it doesn’t always.
Well, common sense is not so common…
savethesharks (00:15:59) :
No Goreism here. LOL How dare you. The ultimate insult.
The Goreism is not in the agreement with Gore, but in the acceptance of ‘of course it is the Sun, that is settled by the thousands of claims and by common sense’.
Leif &/or any other solar scientists:
I don’t think it will hurt the thread if there is an effort to include a little more science …
After reading a considerable number of papers on solar north-south asymmetry, I found myself needing to develop a deeper understanding of the migration of preferred flux-emergence regions.
Can you let me know if any of the following merit cautionary notes? – or if there have been major subsequent (perhaps overriding) developments?
1) Pentti J. Pulkkinen, John Brooke, Jaan Pelt, & Ilkka Tuominen (1999). Long-term variation of sunspot latitudes. Astronomy & Astrophysics 341, L43-L46.
2) E. Forgacs-Dajka, B.Major, & T. Borkovits (2004). Long-term variation in distribution of sunspot groups. Astronomy & Astrophysics 424, 311-315.
3) J. Takalo & K. Mursula (2002). Annual and solar rotation periodicities in IMF components: Evidence for phase/frequency modulation. Geophysical Research Letters 29(9), 31-1–31-4.
4) K. Mursula & T. Hiltula (2004). Systematically asymmetric heliospheric magnetic field: evidence for a quadrupole mode and non-axisymmetry with polarity flip-flops. Solar Physics 224, 133-143.
5) S. V. Berdyugina & I. G. Usoskin (2003). Active longitudes in sunspot activity: Century scale persistence. Astronomy & Astrophysics 405, 1121-1128.
6) I.G. Usoskin, S.V. Berdyugina, D. Moss, & D.D. Sokoloff (2007). Long-term persistence of solar active longitudes and its implications for the solar dynamo theory. Advances in Space Research 40, 951–958.
In particular I am very curious to know of any important developments related to Takalo & Mursula’s (2002) Figure 4(c).
Lower priority: I am also curious to know what you think of Usoskin et al’s (2007) seemingly-assumed north-south asymmetry period of 36000 days (which is evident from the chosen latitudinal angular velocity profile parameters B & Omega_0 if you check the N-S beat periods for both).
Thanks very much for any constructive/helpful comments.
“There is no evidence” is a negative negative legalistic argument..
What is really meant is that it cannot be disproved, and because the notion is not proven currently, therefore it cannot be.
The oceans are a heat sink. Now, where do you suppose all that energy came from? Alpha Centauri? M76? Abell 851?
In the scale of time & distance, the output of the Sun, as far as Earth is concerned, is enormous and dwarfs everything else. It literally blows most of the other stuff running around the Galaxy halfway out of the Solar System. That is, until protracted Minimum strikes.
There are plenty of things around that cannot be measured directly, but we most certainly can and do measure thier effects.
Adolfo Giurfa (11:23:56) :
During the so called Dalton minimum there was not a marked difference in temperatures here in Lima (12° south latitude) as you can see in this old graph:
There’s no “marked difference” in any temperature record. The cold Dalton Minimum myth relies almost entirely on anecdotal evidence, e.g. Napoleon’s march on Moscow – while conveniently forgetting that the Germans had a similar problem more than a century later. The 19th century, in general, was ‘cold’ so finding supporting anecdotes is not difficult. And, as Leif says, volcanic activity was high.
Literature quotes observation in far more places than just Moscow that it was cold in the Dalton. But, by the no “Marked Difference” theory, we have no need of a Farmer’s Almanac or weather forecasting. Every year follows the same pattern of a perfect curve, with each passing day seeing temps inch up during Spring & Summer, and inch down during Fall & Winter. All storms follow the same path and drop the same amount of moisture as they did last year on the same day. All solar cycles have the same length & height. The variation in anything Solar or Climate is a tiny fraction of noise to be totally ignored. Volcanoes always come in pre-set time slices, there never being any marked difference to the pattern.
There were no Ice Ages, no Warm Periods, no Mass Extinctions, and every solar system we have discovered around nearby stars has the same # and size of planets.
We can go on indefinately. Soon, we will invent the perfect stock market predictor and it will never suffer a bad day for the rest of eternity.
There are no marked differences to be found.
Nature, therefore, is totally predictable and universally bland with ony a tiny percent of variation in anything found.
Leif at 00:44:29
Well, it’s sweet of you to thank society, but you’re not fooling me for a minute. Your real obligation is to the truth. And society, such of it as is entrained in me anyway, thanks you for that.
===========================================
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
not necessarily. if the pot has not yet reached equilibrium, turning down the heat input may not cause immediate cooling. If the heat input is still sufficiently high it will still cause warming, but slower. get the heat input just right and the water holds at temp. just because the heat is “down” does not automatically result in “cooling.”
likewise, even though solar output may have declined, it may have been still high enough to induce warming, but at a lower rate, or hold temps steady. This may be reflected in the 10 years of generally flat temperatures.
As solar output continues to fall, no matter how slightly, the system will fall toward a new equilibrium. and it does take some years for the huge ocean heat sink to reach eq.
Paul Vaughan (00:59:44) :
In particular I am very curious to know of any important developments related to Takalo & Mursula’s (2002) Figure 4(c).
The group of people that authored these articles are living in their own parallel universe [so to speak]. Some of the stuff they peddle are rediscovery of already well known items, others are pure speculation [nothing wrong with that per se] and not generally considered to be of interest. Take for example the T&M paper. There are three well known periods in the IMF: the 1-year period [called the Rosenberg-Coleman effect, see http://www.leif.org/research/Asymmetric%20Rosenberg-Coleman%20Effect.pdf ], and periods around 27 days [26.84 and 27.14 days] and 28.5 days [see: http://www.leif.org/research/Long-term%20Evolution%20of%20Solar%20Sector%20Structure.pdf , especially Figure 5]. And the phenomenon of ‘active longitudes’ has been known for more than a century and has some explanation in dynamo theory [see e.g. the paper just mentioned]. The bottom line is that the periods have distinct [and mostly understood] causes and are not two waves beating against each other.
I’m sure this was not constructive/helpful but such is the science.
Mark Wagner (06:36:14) :
turning down the heat input may not cause immediate cooling.
Tell that to the people that advocate ‘clear, direct [not delayed] correlations with solar cycles’ as per the topic of the this thread, or perhaps there is an 11*n year lag [n integer 0, 1, 2, 3 …].
Robert Bateman (01:20:42) :
What is really meant is that it cannot be disproved, and because the notion is not proven currently, therefore it cannot be.
For true believers evidence is irrelevant anyway….
Leif Svalgaard (22:20:36) :
Geoff Sharp (17:31:19) :
That is but one forecast of many. I am predicting less than 50SSN for SC24 & SC25
You prediction [like many of the others] is not based on sound physics and can be dismissed out of hand. If mine [72+/-8] turns out not to come to pass, I’ll have to abandon the theory. I assume that you will do the same if yours fail, i.e.should the SSN be greater than 50.
Such a bold move….I can only say you are very keen with such a small window. The last grand minimum was 200 years ago and they counted spots just a little different to the sunspecks we count today. My confidence is in two very low cycles (however you measure them) followed by a reasonable recovery. I can predict this because I know what is driving the Sun, its not a crap shoot for me. Your method of reading the inevitable may come unstuck this time around, or perhaps you may fluke it with sunspeck counts, but what is completely obvious is that you have no real understanding of what drives the Sun long term.
Geoff Sharp (17:31:19) :
But I can see some weaseling starting to appear, no need to invent new ways of measuring sunspots or “baby grands”, the metrics are already in place.
At the upcoming Space Weather Workshop at the end of April, there will be a presentation by Ken Tapping [who maintains the F10.7 radio flux measurements]:
Title: The Changing Relationship Between Sunspot Number and F10.7
Abstract: Sunspot Number and the 10.7cm solar radio flux are the most widely-used indices of solar activity. Despite their differing nature and origins at different places in the Sun, these two indices are highly-correlated to the point where one can be used as a proxy for the other. However, during Solar Activity Cycle 23 we started to see a small but definite change in this relationship….
—-
This may be the first signs of the L&P effect that, of course, has had a decade or so to do its thing. Since F10.7 is an absolute measurement [W/m2], the SSN must be slowly changing its calibration.
“As usual, you make no sense whatsoever.”
Indeed, none of us makes any sense. The rabbit is the illusionist’s paradigm.
gary gulrud (08:58:14) :
“As usual, you make no sense whatsoever.”
Indeed, none of us makes any sense. The rabbit is the illusionist’s paradigm.
Whatever you are talking about does not seem to have a justified place in a science blog. But, I’m sure the readership can filter such things out … so what’s the harm…
Leif Svalgaard (08:50:04) :
This may be the first signs of the L&P effect that, of course, has had a decade or so to do its thing. Since F10.7 is an absolute measurement [W/m2], the SSN must be slowly changing its calibration.
First signs?….it been going on for 4 billion years….its called a “grand minimum”
Geoff Sharp (08:35:04) :
“I assume that you will do the same if yours fail, i.e.should the SSN be greater than 50.”
My confidence is in two very low cycles (however you measure them) followed by a reasonable recovery.
Without an error bar such a statement has no real meaning. Perhaps 50+/-25, then you are safe.
Geoff Sharp (09:12:29) :
First signs?….it been going on for 4 billion years….its called a “grand minimum”
I don’t think you understand that what is important is what the magnetic field is doing and not what the sunspot contrast is doing. The magnetic field controls TSI and the cosmic ray modulation which some hold responsible for climate change, but that in any case have consequences for the ionosphere and the geomagnetic environment.
It almost sounds like you are peddling the idea that a Grand Minimum is not a minimum of solar activity but just the result of invisible sunspots.
Is it really a scientist that takes care of spaceweather.com? Lokk at what he wrote today:
“22 DAYS AND COUNTING: The sun has been blank for 22 days in a row. That seems like a long time, but it’s not even close to the 100-year record set in 1913 when the sun was spotless for 92 consecutive days. Can the deep solar minimum of 2009 produce a new record? Check back in 70 days for the answer.”
100 years ago am I quite certain they could not see the microspots that are getting counted today using satellites and specialized telescopes.