Although we’ve been covering this quiet sun issue for over a year on WUWT, the light bulb seems to have gone on for mainstream media right about now.
There is growing press coverage about the current state of the sun, most recently from Charles Osgood of CBS News as well as the BBC and other major outlets. While the sun slumbers deeper and has missed its cyclic snooze alarm, our media is finally waking up to the solar somnolence.
Here is a short roundup of news articles on this subject today:
‘Still Sun’ baffling astronomers
Scientists warn sun has dimmed
Sun ‘at its quietest for 100 years’
Has the sun gone in? Earth’s closest star ‘dimmest it’s been for a century’
So the question arises, now that this has been identified, what should we call it?
There have been some good ideas, such as naming it after Jack Eddy, who coined the phrase “Maunder Minimum“. There’s been some discussion of a “Gore Minimum”, but I don’t like the idea of giving Gore credit for something he has nothing to do with, or even likely understands. There’s been suggestion of “The Hansen Minimum” which makes a little more sense, since he’s an astronomer by training. On that note, Leif Svalgaard predicted this, so maybe it should be his honor.
So, I’ve decided to have a poll, and I’ll take suggestions for other names than what I’ve listed.
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Not Gore!!! In the scientific arena, he is, was, and must remain an absolute nobody.
The first scientist to predict the minimum (and get the mechanism right) should get the credit, and from what I have read here, that is likely to make it the
Landscheidt Minimum.
Any takers for The Ironic Minimum
Perhaps an English motorcar company could use the occasion to promote their wares.
As the sun is viewed through the fog by an older lady, A young gent pulls alongside her in his convertible. As she carefully looks at the sun and shades her eyes she says,
“It’s spotless, I tell you, it’s spotless…” He says,
“Why of course…
It’s a Cooper Mini, Mum…”
Place Groan here_______________________
Name the current solar minimu “The Gorical Minimum”.
Just another offering- Ulysses Solar Cycle
The last report I can find on this magnificently successful scientific mission includes this comment
‘ (After more than 17 years…) The mission is expected to end by 1 July. Once it is clear that the fuel needed to keep the main antenna pointing towards Earth has started to freeze, ground controllers will put Ulysses into a stable configuration. It will continue to orbit the Sun indefinitely.’
See
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMUBG1A6BD_index_0.html
Andrew @16:41:35 said”
Most of the sun freckles that keep resetting the spotless days count are only visible from its images.
Good point. So-called SP 1015 was only visible in SOHO , optically and magnetically. This was not observed from Earth. It would not have been seen 300 years ago.
Leif, your thoughts?
I have a compromise lets call the double peak of the last maximum the gore whatever..and call the minimum by the guy who went against the masses and actually predicted the thing.
“What should we call the current solar minimum?”
How about the Gore-Hole
🙂
Speaking of solar mimima; the available satellite measurments of “The Solar Constant” or TSI, covering almost three sunspot cycles but unfortunately from several satellites; it is apparent, that over a typical sunspot cycle the TSI has a P-P amplitude cycle of about 0.1%; around 1 1/2 W/m^2, and many people think (including me) that that 0.1% doesn’t really have much temperature impact on earth climate.
But nevertheless it IS a 1.4-1.6 W/m^2 climate “forcing” to use that silly term from the climate cult lexicon.
It is interesting to ask what real down to earth effect could create some similar magnitude forcing.
I have often said that the whole GIStemp/HADcrut “anomaly average is a farce since the earth’s thermal infrared radiation is not a linear function of temperature, and therfore mean temperature means nothing. If one took the mean of the fourth power of temperature; that might relate to the total earth radiant emittance, since any surface element should follow a Black Body like function with some spectral emmissivity factor added.
So averaging the 4th power of temperature (K) makes more sense than averaging anomalies which mean nothing.
This leads further to the practice of ignoring cyclic changes in temperature.
If some station’s owl box reports a daily min max temp from which one takes the daily mean, and reports that (anomaly); how far wrong is that report. Well it is wrong because of the daily temperature cycling, and the non linear variation of radiant emittance with temperature.
So let’s assume some mean station temperature (To) Kelvins and assume a daily sinusoidal temperature cycle of amplitude (t) deg,
So we can write the instantaneous Temperature as T = To + t sin (a) where (a) goes from zero to 2pi radians or equivalently zero to 24 hours cycle period.
We want to take T^4 as a function of 9a) and integrate it over the complete cycle.
So T^4 = {To + t sin (a)}^4 = To^4 + 4To^3 tsin (a) + 6To^2 t^2 sin^2 (a) + 4 To t^3 sin^3(a) + t^4 sin^4 (a) ; and we want to integrate that from
0<(a)<2pi radians or 24 hours if we want to use time instead.
Now we know that odd powers of sin integrate to zero over a full cycle, so the second and fourth terms disappear. Also (To) is say +15 deg C or 288.15K and (t) is maybe a few degrees, so the last 4th power term is going to be negligible compared to the squared term.
So we have; Integral (T^4) d(a) = integral To^4 [1 + (t/To)^2 sin^2 (a) ] d(a) which comes out to 2pi To^4 [1 + 3(t/To)^2] for (a) = 0 to 2pi or simply
To^4 x period [ 1 + 3 (t/To)^2 ] where period is the total integration period which is also the period (P) of the sinusoidal cycle or for that matter, any number of full cycles.\
It is left as an exercise for the reader to show that we get essentially the same result for ANY cyclic function, so long as we integrate over an integral number of complete cycles; and of course (To) has to be the real average value of (T) over any such cyclic variation.
So if there is no cyclic variation, then the integral is simply:
P x T^4 = P x To^4
BUT if (t) has any non zero value, then the integral has an always positive increase over the integral of the average, and so the total emitted radiant energy over such a cycle will be under-reported if you simply take the average temperature.
So how much of a daily temperature cycle does it take to under-report the “forcing” by the same 0.1% that we get from the solar sunspot cycle variation of TSI.
We simply have to put 3(t/To)^2 = 0.001, giving (t/To) = 0.01826 .
Since To is say 288.15 K (15 C) then (t) is 5.26 deg C.
Remember this is the amplitude of the temperature cycle, so the peak to peak temperature change is 10.52 deg C to get the same “forcing” as the sunspot cycle TSI variation. That’s about 19 deg F, which is certainly in the range of ordinary day/night temperature cycles almost anywhere on earth; and in the hotter dry desert regions, you can easily see 60 deg F overnight temperature drops and more, which is three times as high.
Don’t forget the “forcing” goes as the temperature cycle squared so suddenly we have a 1% effect over dry desert areas.
Don’t forget, that over a longer cycle, namely a full seasonal cycle, the total (t/To) range is now much bigger, and the effect of the standard practice of ignoring cycles and simply averaging the anomalies, is to grossly underreport the total radiation energy emitted from the planet, which translates into overestimating the mean equilibrium global temperature.
Like I have said before GISStemp is nonsense.
Those cycles are important. I forgot to say, that when the periodic temperature cycling is not sinusoidal, the (3) factor in the 3(t/To)^2 term will change to some other value.
George
The anthropogeneousorbiscaloraphobia minimum
(i.e. the sun got disgusted and went to sleep)
Very interesting to see how many people mentioned Landscheidt, but didnt have a chance to vote on it. Personally I think Jose will go down in history as the man who truly discovered the recurring grand minima pattern…his time will come.
I know this is just fun, but cant understand why Svalgaard would rate a mention. He has only predicted one low cycle 24 at about 72 SSN. That is not anywhere near a grand minimum. My definition of a grand minimum is at least 2 very low cycles that occur between high cycles, the early 1900’s type event does not qualify.
Leif gets my vote. I think it should stand alone as a minimum in its own right and not be connected to arguments, one side or the other, about Earth’s temperature. It should be purely about the Sun.
In terms of how the current low solar activity has affected temperatures so far – it is probably closing in on -0.1C now.
Total Solar Irradiance (from the SORCE solar instrument) has declined from 1361.8 Watts/m^2 (solar max) to 1360.8 Watts/m^2 (current).
In the short-term, this would translate into 0.3C per W/m^2 * -1.0 W/m^2/4 = -0.1C.
It may still take a little longer for the full effect of this to occur since it is thought there is some lag before the surface oceans and the land surface cools down etc. If it continued for several more years, the effect might bump up to 0.2C or so.
So, it isn’t much unless it lasts much longer or solar activity falls even farther.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/cgi-bin/ion-p?ION__E1=PLOT%3Aplot_tsi_data.ion&ION__E2=PRINT%3Aprint_tsi_data.ion&ION__E3=BOTH%3Aplot_and_print_tsi_data.ion&START_DATE=1950&STOP_DATE=2500&TIME_SPAN=6&PLOT=Plot+Data
I prefer the Grand Minimum. They’ve been calling the recent ‘hot’ sun the “Grand Maximum,” so that seems the proper title to me. On the other hand, I’m all for giving Leif some credit
Geoff Sharp (17:31:07) :
My definition of a grand minimum is at least 2 very low cycles that occur between high cycles, the early 1900’s type event does not qualify
By that definition 1831 was not during the Dalton Minimum…
Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the great province of British Columbia, I cast all one of my delegates, to the next great minimum of the whole world, for Dr. Svalgaard!
Cheers!
Landscheidt-Fairbridge Minimum. They were the original predictors. But probably it’ll be called the Eddy minimum, or if we’re lucky, the Eddy-Svalgaard minimum. I guess the official namers won’t even know Svensmark let alone Landscheidt or Fairbridge.
Unexpected Minimum, Unwelcome Minimum, Unpredicted Minimum, Unpredictable Minimum, Unstoppable Minimum, Unalterable Minimum, Unimaginable Minimum, Untaxable Minimum.
Inappropriate Minimum, Inconvenient Minimum, Invincible Minimum, Indefensible Minimum, Incognito Minimum, Indolent Minimum.
Eeny minimummy mo
Catch a warmist by his toe
If he hollers let him go
Eeny minimummu mo.
Gore-Hansen Minimum
Al Gore was overheard recently as he was talking on the phone…
“Man, if old man sun don’t wake up pretty soon, it’s gonna cost us a whole lotta money… Do you hear what I’m saying? Get with your scientist buddies right away and let’s get a bunch of studies coming out!!… Ya, like maybe thirty, studies… I want four or five of them things coming out every week for the next six or eight weeks… I don’t CARE what it’ll cost… Get it done NOW. And when are those Catlin guys gonna make a splash… We can’t just lollygag along here… Let’s get this show on the road…”
Because of the sensitive nature of this material I am not at liberty to discuss how it was acquired, however IF I was at liberty, I would say that I just made it up…
Do scientist know for sure that the sun is not dying?
Suppose the dimming continues?
That can’t be good.
Will NASA and NOAA try to re-ignite it?
Or do we all have to relocate to that new planet that was found?
Will be on one of the first escape spaceships?
Folks will figure it was named after some guy named Eddy Svalgaard! LOL
Leif Svalgaard (17:45:09) :
By that definition 1831 was not during the Dalton Minimum…
It was the tail end. SC5 & SC6 are a product of SC4 and are considered in my book true grand minimum. SC7 was more like a weak SC20 and contributed to the cooling in a similar fashion as SC20. For those who dont understand what causes a grand minimum this might seem hard to grasp, but there are very good reasons, that I wont go into here.
So do you think you should have your name on the upcoming grand minimum?
How about “The Kyoto Diminution”
I suggest:
“The Gavin Schmidt Minimum”
“The Team MiniMann”
“The Concensus Minimum”
“The Settled Science Minimum”
“The Debate is Over minimum”
“The Denialist Minimum”
“The WUWT Minimum”
Thanks
Herbert
Endorse
Mark (11:58:10) :
Landscheidt minimum after Theodore Landscheidt.
http://itsonlysteam.com/articles/landscheidt_minimum_part2.html
(Strongly VETO Gore Minimum or Hansen Minimum as they have not done anything deserving of being honored by a notable Solar cycle.
However you are welcome to call record COLD or Precipitation records by gore/hansen which are associated with the Landscheidt Minimum.)