Guest post by Guillermo Gonzalez
I recently happened upon the SORCE/TIM website and decided to look up the plot of the full total solar irradiance (TSI) dataset (http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/data/tsi_data.htm#plots)
The SORCE mission began collecting TSI data in February 2003.
I was curious to see if the variations in the TSI had begun to rise yet, perhaps indicating a start to cycle 24. Visual inspection of the SORCE TSI plot showed just the opposite – variations continue to decline in amplitude. If cycle 24 has started, there are no signs of it in these data.
We can be a bit more quantitative if we examine, instead, a plot of TSI variance with time. I produced such a plot using the daily average TSI data provided on the SORCE web site.
The red data are variance values calculated at two-week intervals. The blue curve is the smoothed data calculated in the same way as smoothed sunspot numbers (basically a 12-month running average). Note, the vertical axis is plotted on a logarithmic scale.
To compare the recent TSI variance trend with the previous sunspot minimum, I looked up the ACRIM2 daily average TSI data at: http://www.acrim.com/Data%20Products.htm
These data are plotted on the same scale as the SORCE data. The smoothed data show a minimum TSI variance near the beginning of 1996, some months before sunspot minimum (October 1996). Notice that the minimum value for the variance during the 1996 minimum was about an order of magnitude larger than the present TSI variance.
The SORCE web site quotes long-term 1-sigma precision (relative accuracy) of their TSI measurements to be 0.001%/yr. This corresponds to a variance of 2 ´ 10-4 W2 m-4. However, the precision should be considerably better than this on the 2-week timescale that I selected for calculating the variance. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate a quote for the estimated precision of the ACRIM2 measurements. It would be worthwhile to know if the minimum TSI variance of the previous sunspot minimum measured by ACRIM2needs to be corrected for the instrumental precision.
Guillermo Gonzalez writes on his background:
I’m an astronomer, though my present title is associate professor of physics at Grove City College, PA. I wrote a paper (in Solar Physics) with Ken Schatten back in 1987 on predicting the next solar maximum with geomagnetic indices. That was my only contribution on anything having to do with the Sun-Earth connection, but I also got a letter published in Physics Today in 1997 wherein I urged readers to takethe Sun-Earth climate connection more seriously.
These days most of my research is on extrasolar planets.
UPDATE: I received a suggestion for an overlay via email from Terry Dunleavy and I’ve worked one up below. This was done graphically. I took great care to get the two lined up correctly. Note however that the datasets span different lengths of time, as you can note on the two timescales I’ve included on the combined graph. The vertical scale matches exactly between graphs though. – Anthony
UPDATE2: Here is another graphical comparison of the two TSI variance graphs, scaled to have a matching X-axis and appropriately aligned side by side. – Anthony
First factor: fluctuations decreasing, both the individual ones and the multiple ones. Second factor: the line is definitely levelling out very smoothly to horizontal, and has just about reached full horizontal, cannot get any more horizontal, so it might have reached nadir and is about to turn.
Third factor: could be wrong.
[snip posted on wrong thread, no politics allowed on the surface of the sun]
Here is a zoom-in of SORCE TSI over the past 9 months.
It seems that the lowest TSI recorded so far was July or August 2008 (which corresponds with the the lowest sunspot numbers as well).
But there has not been any kind of substantive up-tick since and both the TSI and sunspot numbers have threatened to go lower than the July-August minimum in the past few months. So, no minimum to declare yet.
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
Come on dark prophet!,
speak out again your lie,
tell us we are doomed,
tell us we will die,
of warm, heat, by our sins provoked,
old sun by your cry has been also scared
and caused a long and deep chill instead
Exaclty what would a 180 from Global Warming 24/7 media blitz succumb to?
Make that: Exactly what event would cause the Global Warming 24/7 media blitz to fall silent?
I can still see the pasty faces of Bush, Bernanke & Paulson as they stood before the media and explained the trouble we were in.
There certainly will come a day of blood-drained faces for AGW if the Sun continues to fizzle. You cannot hide it, you cannot slick-talk it into action.
Actually, the Mayan calendar does not end in 2012, as much as it simply cycles and starts over again, as it has done 14 previous times. Mayan’s understood natural cycles very well.
kim (17:02:56) :
So why is flux rising, and the TSI is just getting more still?
Yeah, What’s Up With That?
Watts = Volts x Amps.
Insufficient amperage or voltage might be a question to ask.
Shrunken or constricted flow. Line drop. Dying battery. Corroded armature of breaks in windings.
If the gauss values of the latest spots are any indication, there might be something up with that.
I think I must be missing something. TSI appears to be about 0.05% lower than it was 5 years ago – and this is supposed to cool the climate. How exactly?
Landscheidt Minimum? 😉
I believe TSI does not include the solar magnetic flux’s influence on the earth and this is also a critical factor. Tapping et al produced this paper in 2006
MODELLING SOLARMAGNETIC FLUX AND IRRADIANCE
DURING AND SINCE THE MAUNDER MINIMUM
which is worth a look
http://www.lps.umontreal.ca/~paquetteh/Maunder_SP.pdf
Nah, it’s gotta be “Ad Ho Minimum”.
(That definitely gets my vote for best so far.)
Looks like it’s flatlining to me.
(Shouldn’t a frantic beeping be going on in some solar hospital somewhere?)
John Finn 17:25:56
Interesting that you ask how such a small deviation in TSI can have large climatic effects. That is the most important question, if, in fact, the sun directs the climate. We don’t know the answer and great prizes await those who figure it out. Leif is dubious about the connection because if the connection is through TSI then the magnifying effect of whatever is the connecting mechanism would introduce an unstable climate sensitivity, which we do not see.
So, instead of being apparently dismissive, start getting curious. What is the solution to this great question?
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“John Finn (17:25:56) : How exactly?”
Don’t look for exact John. Even Einstein wasn’t exact.
[snip – wrong thread on this – this is a political comment intended for Waxman thread]
I have speculated spectral shift of TSI, but that got me nowhere, and for good reason. Amplitude is the behavior of the day, so I’ll now defer to Amps.
Ain’t got no flow. Too contricted. Valve is jammed slighty ajar from closed.
In financial charting terms the TSI ‘flatlining’ with lower peaks and higher troughs is moving into a wedge pattern and suggests a breakout, in either direction.
I certainly don’t know if this applies to TSI pattern but time will tell.
I must be looking at too many charts
kim (17:37:34) :
John Finn 17:25:56
Interesting that you ask how such a small deviation in TSI can have large climatic effects. That is the most important question, if, in fact, the sun directs the climate. We don’t know the answer and great prizes await those who figure it out. Leif is dubious about the connection because if the connection is through TSI then the magnifying effect of whatever is the connecting mechanism would introduce an unstable climate sensitivity, which we do not see.
So, instead of being apparently dismissive, start getting curious. What is the solution to this great question?
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Yes and in the mean time low temp records from 1880 are broken today.
So what is happening?
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/Record+cold+temperatures+Saskatchewan/1531746/story.html
Adam from Kansas says:
I don’t really see how your last statement follows from the rest. Whether or not the sun has enough of an effect on climate that climate varies detectably with the solar cycle does not really address the fundamental question of what has caused the general warming over the last 30+ years. In fact, as kim noted above, one of the reasons that Leif is skeptical of the solar connection is that it would seem to imply a high climate sensitivity.
Last summer Alaska was quite cool. Here are two articles from the Anchorage paper.
http://www.adn.com/626/story/473786.html
http://www.adn.com/front/story/518517.html
It seldom rose above 60, and there was still a lot of snow visible on the Kenai mountains when I left mid September. The propane man noted in July that we were having a nice mild winter.
With the sun going quieter and the PDO cooler, I expect an even cooler summer this year.
OK it’s anecdotal and only one place, but it does offer a glimpse of the effects in the area they should be most pronounced.
The good news is this should offer an observational opportunity to vastly improve our understanding of the climate and the effects of the sun.
As the light of freedom fades and dims
So does the sun.
As the mind of science reels and swims
So sinks the sun.
Have mankind’s failing works and sins
Brought down the sun?
Have the proud who think they’ve won
Who’ve made our science come undone
Who’ve put our offspring in a hole
Have they assassinated Sol?
The sun has drifted off to sleep
Sol cares not if we pray or weep
He’s shut his eyes in slumber deep
Life’s promises only our’s to keep.
“These data are plotted on the same scale as the SORCE data.”
Am I missing something? The horizontal scale sure looks different on the graphs for the two cycles.
The x-axis covers six years in the present cycle but ten years in the previous one.
Joel Shore (18:00:34) :So somebody or something (Most sacred Al´s CO2 perhaps) heated the pacific ocean temperatures to the 97-98 El Nino heights?
Keith Minto (17:53:57) : In financial charting terms the TSI ‘flatlining’ with lower peaks and higher troughs is moving into a wedge pattern and suggests a breakout, in either direction.
I certainly don’t know if this applies to TSI pattern but time will tell.
I must be looking at too many charts
Or a stock with no earnings, making losses, and not much prospect, in that slow decay to the flat line “take out” price in bankruptcy… You know, like GM, Freddie Mac FRE, AIG, City Group C all ending up near $1.x and flat lined…
Yeah, I been looking at too many charts too 😉 but the parallels are useful!
Joel 18:00:34
Easy answer to the warming of the last quarter of the last century. It was the PDO in its warming phase. Tsonis et al have a nice study explaining the temperature variations around the steady rise from the end of the Little Ice Age by the coupling and uncoupling of natural cycles, mostly the oceanic oscillations. What we don’t know is what is causing the steady rise in temperature from the end of the Little Ice Age. What we do know is that it is not from CO2 because the rise in CO2 curve doesn’t match the underlying rise.
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