While the sun still struggles to form cycle 24 spots like seen in this weak plage area (upper right) in today’s SOHO MDI and Magnetograms (shown below) Paul Stanko of NOAA writes to tell me of an interesting development in his tracking of the International Sunspot Number (ISN).
Paul writes:
My running mean of the International Sunspot Number for 2009 just dipped below 1.00. For anything comparable you now need to go back before 1913 (which scored a 1.43) which could mean we’re now competing directly with the Dalton Minimum.
Just in case you’d like another tidbit, here is something that puts our 20 to 30 day spotless runs in perspective… the mother of all spotless runs (in the heart of the Maunder Minimum, of course!) was from October 15, 1661 to August 2, 1671. It totaled 3579 consecutive spotless days, all of which had obs.
Errant counting of sunspecks from Catainia aside, it appears that we haven’t seen anything like this in modern history.
We live in interesting times.
A possible physical connection between solar activity and climate… Solar irradiance doesn’t change THAT much during the solar cycle, and sunspots have a so-so correlation with climate. But there hasn’t been a working physical theory to connect solar cycles and earth’s climate… until now. See the article at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090409142301.htm
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“When you drag a heavy object over a surface, the interface becomes hot. In JOULE-II we were able to measure directly two regions being dragged past each other, one being the ionosphere — being driven by flows in space — and the other the earth’s atmosphere,” says Knudsen, who also is the head of the Space Physics Division of the Institute for Space Imaging Sciences (ISIS). The institute is a research partnership between the University of Calgary and University of Lethbridge.
The measurements confirmed what other scientists consider the boundary or edge of space. “The results have given us a closer look at space, which is a benefit to pure research in space science,” Knudsen says. “But it also allows us to calculate energy flows into the Earth’s atmosphere that ultimately may be able to help us understand the interaction between space and our environment. That could mean a greater understanding of the link between sunspots and the warming and cooling of the Earth’s climate as well as how space weather impacts satellites, communications, navigation, and power systems.”
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In plain English, the direct cause of heating at the top of the earth’s atmosphere is friction between Earth’s atmospheric wind and Sol’s solar wind. This is a much more direct mechanism than GCRs and cloud formation. Rather than trying to find a correlation between sunspots and temperatures, we should be looking for a correlation between solar wind and temperatures.
The past couple of decades have been rather active, solar-wise, and temperatures have gone up. But recently, solar wind has been recorded at the quietest levels in 50 years of data. And this is when temperatures have turned downwards.
Leif… are there records of solar wind velocity and dynamic pressure archived anywhere? It would be interesting to plot them versus earth temperatures. And unlike sunspots, there is a logical, physical mechanism to explain things.
One other difference between todays spot counts and those in the early days is that I would imagine back then it was a curiosity so they would likely go out at some point of the day, take a look, later on draw a picture, and whatever they had at that point it would be the count.
Today these sunspeck’s (when those even happen) will pop in and out in the span of a few hours and be counted. If in yesteryear it wasn’t there WHEN they did the observation no one would have known it existed.
Kinda like minimum bandwidth needed to accurately transmit a signal, if the bandwidth is too small the info gets garbled or removed.
Just a general observation, the Ap bottomed out a couple months back and was hitting below 5 for some time, recently it has been abveraging in the 4 to 10 range.
Rob (13:46:57) :
Why mention foggy, rainy LONDON, why not SUNNY SOUTH OF FRANCE, SUNNY SPAIN, SUNNY ITALY
Maybe because that was where Hoyt and Schatten were, in foggy, rainy London, when they conducted their observations?
Mark
/// Meanwhile, it certainly appears that, led by the great southern oceans, the planet is cooling:///
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2sh/from:1998/plot/hadsst2sh/from:2001/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/trend
I may be wrong but according to this graph surely the planet is still warming – but just at a slower rate than previously ? On the graph It has only ‘cooled’ for one month. But no doubt the readings were accurate for that month and wrong for all the other months.
MattB (14:17:55) :
I would add that considering that we are about to have two satellites that will have a full view of the sun and also that so many people look at the live images of the sun at every second… yeah, I don’t think we will miss any sun spots. That could be a different thing though if we are hit by a Carrington event or if they shut down the internet.
Walter Dnes (14:15:22) :
Leif… are there records of solar wind velocity and dynamic pressure archived anywhere? It would be interesting to plot them versus earth temperatures. And unlike sunspots, there is a logical, physical mechanism to explain things.
Yes, at http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/form/dx1.html
Anaconda (10:23:56) :
The Sun is somnolent: Heavy with sleep.
The questions that no one can answer are how long will the Sun be in this somnolence and why is the Sun in this prolonged period of somnolence.
Perhaps answering the “why” will put Science in a position of answering “how long”.
It’s the Barycenter stupid.
{The above trip down barycenter lane is not endorsed, approved of, or recognized by Anthony Watts, the moderators of this blog, or many of it’s participant. It should therefore be disreguarded as a phantom or other meaningless garbage and not be commented upon.
The use of the term Stupid is in no way directed at the poster referenced or any other poster on this blog. It was meerely to be construed as a bad joke (just like the use of the term barycenter) and in no way is designed to be a derogitory term.
IT’S merely a contraction of the words It is and comprises the subject and predicate of the sentance in one. THE is a definite article which is used to indicate a singular being in this case the noun BARYCENTER. STUPID, is an adjective which as mentioned earlier is designed to be construed as a joke and not a particular admonishment of the intilectual capabilities of any who post on this blog (all other blog’s are not included in this disclaimer so will have to form their own rules reguarding the use of this particular phase.
Again thank you for listining to the management in reguards to not using the word barycenter here}
When I mentioned UV, I wasn’t thinking about heat. If ups and downs in UV levels caused warming or cooling, we would see an 11 year pattern in SST’s (or anything warmed/cooled). But we don’t. If there is an effect, I suspect it is very long term. Omit the weed killer and you don’t get weeds the next day. Plankton, bacteria, whatever. Go a lot longer than 11 years with less of the magic wavelength, and what happens? I don’t know.
It may not be a big thing. And it doesn’t happen often enough to have much historical data. Magnetic fields and GCR’s may play a much bigger role.
In any case, we live in interesting times.
JimB (07:42:12) :
“Hello.
My name is Jim, and I’m fat. I cause global warming.”
I thought we sequestered carbon, I was looking forward to getting carbon credits. I mean, the stuff we consume has already been produced, if we don’t eat it, that stuff spoil and the carbon is released into the air. Blame us for the coming ice age please, not global warming.
Leif,
When TSI is reported, does it include “ultraviolet light” energy?
Mark (15:31:43) :
When TSI is reported, does it include “ultraviolet light” energy?
Yes. The ‘T’ stands for ‘Total’. But the UV is but a small part of the total, and the part that varies in phase with the solar cycle and even smaller part. In Watt per square meter we are talking but a small fraction of a single Watt, compared to the 1361 W/m2 we get all the time.
It has been many years since I had any science class and this whole debate about AGW and climate has been very confusing. Now it seems that if it’s really warm, that’s climate and if it’s really cold, that’s weather. But my understanding from the old days is that “climate” is a just collection of “weathers” averaged out over time, and that the sun has at least a little to do with both. Does anyone have a definition of climate that will help me better understand the debate?
Anthony, please?
Leif, are you suggesting that men of the past were incapable of recognizing that their inability to monitor the sun would not affect their data acquisition? Just so you know, the Hudson Bay Company was mapping the transit of Venus in 1769. This was a globally coordinated effort that included the likes of Capt. James Cook, and Mason-Dixon. Most people in the world today could not tell you what the transit of Venus is. A disingenuous dismissal of men of history if I may say so.
pft wrote:
“I thought we sequestered carbon, I was looking forward to getting carbon credits. I mean, the stuff we consume has already been produced, if we don’t eat it, that stuff spoil and the carbon is released into the air. Blame us for the coming ice age please, not global warming.”
Excellent!
We know there were a dearth of sunspots during the Maunder Minimum. Quibbling over whether there were only a few or none probably isn’t very important. The real question is whether there is real global cooling along with the dearth of sunspots, and whether there is a causal link. We may get to see about that.
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Bob Tisdale: what spot in the Atlantic is the actual AMO spot, because the North Atlantic seems to have a positive anomaly in a large area, is it not in that part?
Peter (09:31:20) :
Yes, I do. Yes, it does.
“granny-great (15:58:37) :
Does anyone have a definition of climate that will help me better understand the debate?
Anthony, please?”
Granny it sounds like you already have it just right. Just remember that if anyone tries to scare you about climate they are lying. That is not the way that people of integrity deal with each other.
Hang around and read the articles and comments, then make up your own mind. There is also a Global Warming Primer online that might help you. It is here:
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm
dennis ward,
The HadSST and HadCRU indices are in temperature C. The slope of the two lines you show plotted at Wood for Trees indicate that temperatures have been cooling since 2001. Temperature anomalies represent temperature differences from am arbitrary baseline. Where the zero value is on the left axis is dependent on the baseline chosen, such as the 1979-2000 average or some other reference. Changing the baseline would have the effect of sliding the plots up or down. The fact that both indices have negative slopes for the best fit line since 2001 indicate that temperatures now are cooler than they were in 2001.
Innocentious (08:58:11) :
Go read Henrik Svensmarks “The Chilling Stars”, and you will get a glimpse of how complex the interaction of sun on climate is, as well as that there are far more than just “one” set of data points.
Mark (10:16:59) :
If Svensmark is right, the real measure of what may be impacting the earth’s climate is the level of cosmic rays and the story there is very interesting.
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could you take pity on a layman whose eyes go buggy at a page full of numbers, and just give a quick summary?
thank you
Mark:
Follow-up. I’ve read Svensmarks theories, so, just the paper on cosmic rays were making me buggy.
thanks
David Ball (16:21:30) :
Leif, are you suggesting that men of the past were incapable of recognizing that their inability to monitor the sun would not affect their data acquisition?
Men of the past were probably better than we are in doing science (and in many other things as well). But we today are reading too much into their simple statements of fact: “I have not seen a spot all year”. This does not mean that they observed every day. As simple as that.
AEGeneral (10:05:57) :
JimB (07:42:12) :
Hello.
My name is Jim, and I’m fat. I cause global warming.
I disagree. If Jim is casting a big shadow, then he must absorbing all the UV that would normally strike the earths surface. Without Bill, convection would carry the converted UV to IR up to higher altitudes and eventually it would be lost to space. As he is a greater density than the surrounding atmosphere he is having the effect of delaying the IR longer in the lower troposphere leading global warming.
He needs to change his albedo. Wearing white clothing will reflect some of the UV back into space but ideally he should wear a polished tin foil hat.
This will also protect him from lightning.