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.
Geoff Sharp (21:50:40) :
its basically a slow ramp up of activity from a lowish base for around 60 years, followed by some kind of grand minimium (except for the MWP) which then slowly declines for another 60 or so years back down to the lowish base.
This is just the usual Gleissberg ‘cycle’ and is a natural occurrence in such chaotic systems. May even be like my Grow-n-Crash cycle 🙂
This trend has probably been happening for 4 billion years.
Very unlikely, as solar activity has changed enormously [decreased] since the Sun was young. You have to stop making such unfounded statements. It reflects badly on you.
Leif Svalgaard (22:18:26) :
This is just the usual Gleissberg ‘cycle’ and is a natural occurrence in such chaotic systems. May even be like my Grow-n-Crash cycle 🙂
Ah the Gleissberg cycle…another imaginary cycle to explain solar modulation. I have never seen a driver for the Gleissberg cycle, surely not another crap shoot? btw, my described cycle is longer than 80 or so years.
Very unlikely, as solar activity has changed enormously [decreased] since the Sun was young. You have to stop making such unfounded statements. It reflects badly on you.
Just because it was stronger doesnt mean the Sun wouldnt follow a similar pattern….both of us have no way of knowing?
Dr. Svalgaard
Usual Gleissberg ‘cycle’ as you describe is nothing of sort. It is precisely defined cycle controlling anomalies in the solar periodic activity.
http://www.geocities.com/vukcevicu/Anomalies.gif
http://www.geocities.com/vukcevicu/SSNanomaly1.gif
Geoff Sharp (02:15:37) :
Just because it was stronger doesnt mean the Sun wouldnt follow a similar pattern….both of us have no way of knowing?
But that does not prevent you from making wild statements about it. And
vukcevic (02:38:23) :
Usual Gleissberg ‘cycle’ as you describe is nothing of sort. It is precisely defined cycle controlling anomalies in the solar periodic activity.
That do not match up with the other cyclomaniac’s…
Leif Svalgaard (07:16:33) :
But that does not prevent you from making wild statements about it.
I did say “probably” has been happening……
Relax a little.
Geoff Sharp (07:27:19) :
“But that does not prevent you from making wild statements about it.”
I did say “probably” has been happening……
Probably has to be based on something, and since solar activity was MUCH higher when the Sun was young, it is more probable that the periods involved were very different. It is known [from observations of stars] that young stars [and the young Sun] rotate much faster than the Sun now does, hence solar activity would probably have proceeded to a different tune.
Hi all,
Just so there is no confusion, I do work for NOAA, but everything I post here is as an interested individual. I do not in any way speak for NOAA at this site. Hope you all understand,
Paul
Fascinating discussion. I have yet to understand the link with angular momentum though. I also don’t know if denoting the start of a new cycle at the point of field reversal is a sound idea. How does that set with historical data? Can I go back 250 years in the historical data and find out when the first cycle 5 spot appeared? I don’t think they were recording spot field reversals. If you apply the same demarcation point to modern data as historical data, (decreasing numbers, a low point, then increasing numbers) it seems that cycle 23 is still here, and has run for about 155 months. That’s a bit longer than the average 130.4 months that you get when you slice them like this. SIDC called the start of 24 on 12/13/2007. If you take the monthly SSN averages of a typical cycle, and compare them to the month by month numbers we are currently seeing, then we are out in 2 sd land. Month 15 of a typical cycle averages 24.3, and we are at 0.7 (Mar 2009) (mo 15 sd is 12.4)
(Note, do not put much stock in my data, I’m just some random idiot on the net)
Adam from Kansas : I misinformed you in my earlier reply. I misunderstood how the AMO was calculated. The correction is here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/04/atlantic-multidecadal-oscillation.html
It will answer all of your earlier AMO questions, plus provide more information.
Regards.
I do have a few questions about this method and its results – certainly not a critique of anything.
Is there a somewhat consistent lag time between the “impact” of cosmic rays in our upper atmosphere and the uptake of resultant C14 ions into tree rings? (a consensus on this?)
Is the shower of galactic cosmic rays consistent?
One solar physicist commented that the sun has “cycles” on every time scale, from millionths of a second up to and including the life of the sun itself, or billions of years.
SSam (08:22:06) :
Can I go back 250 years in the historical data and find out when the first cycle 5 spot appeared?
look at the top panel of the figure on page 10 of:
http://www.leif.org/research/Staudacher-2.pdf
A latitude of 20 degrees or more at the end of a cycle very likely means that the spot group belongs to the next cycle.
Jan Veizer, in an article today from the Australian, found at 11:56:01 in the Osgood thread talks of the radionucleide record for the last 10,000 years. I’d be interested in Leif’s comment on that record, and on that article.
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And what about that, that C14 levels seem to be a proxy for the minima? Is a tautology sucking someone like a maelström?
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Sun keeps amazing!
Space Tornado’s > 100.000 Amp. could “power” the Auroras!
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/04/23/new-finding-shows-super-huge-space-tornados-power-the-auroras/
Hi all,
Regarding the sunspot data from the 1600’s, particularly the data from 1661 to 1671 that I highlighted, Leif is correct that I got it from Hoyt. It might be a better and newer version as it is called the Hoyt reanalysis. As many years as possible are reconstructed from multiple observers, ostensibly to minimize problems such as those Leif pointed out. (Like turning a statement that no spots were observed that year into 365 days of spotless observations.)
Here are the number of observers used for each year in my spreadsheet:
1661: 5 observers
1662: 4 observers
1663: 7 observers
1664: 4 observers
1665: 4 observers
1666: 9 observers
1667: 8 observers
1668: 5 observers
1669: 6 observers
1670: 7 observers
1671: 9 observers
Now it doesn’t state where the observers were. I suppose it is possible they were all in London (for example) and therefore all subject to the same weather whims. Seems unlikely though. It seems to me Leif’s point is that the 3579 days is not worth its weight in gold the way our data is today, but it is the best we’ve got. If we end up with a grand minimum out of this, we can then compare and see how it looks. If we got a verified string of 1 or 2 or 3 thousand spotless days in a row, it would make this much easier to call confirmed.
Thanks all for the interesting discussions here,
Paul
There should be a way to filter today’s sunspot count to be more reflective or comparable to the 1600’s. Today’s greater sensitivity leads to more accurate data to be sure, but the historical significance of old data becomes marginalized. The only way to come to a general conclusion is to generalize the dataset, removing excessive digits of precision from recent data.
This leads to a less numerically significant number some would say, but leads us to a more accurate general conclusions. What we need is to see what is going on in a less exact but highly comparable way. I doubt seriously with the technology we apply today that we’ll ever see 3579 spotless days. It is doubtful that it was the case then (using today’s measurement standards), so why impose that restriction now?
The highly accurate data we have today will be useful in the future, but introduces noise when trying to do comparative analysis with old data.
I really enjoy this blog! Thanks!
AGW is BS of course. But if those idiots are gonna blame fat people, then what about blaming Governments who subsidise farmers to over-produce needless crops? As I say though, it’s all a complete scam. We get the governments we deserve, I’m sorry to say.