Ken Tapping: One year on into the minimum
From John A’s solarscience.auditblogs.com
I’ve just been in e-mail correspondance with Dr Kenneth Tapping, asking him to comment on the progress of the solar minimum and his opinion on the likely size of SC24 when it does deign to appear.
Dear Dr Tapping
After you published your rebuke to Investor’s Business Daily, I put your entire reply onto my blog (see http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/2008/04/22/ken-tapping-the-current-solar-minimum/ ) which I notice is the second listing when anyone googles your name. I hope you didn’t mind.
Since that reply the Sun has appeared to have gone into an even deeper slumber than it was when you wrote your article, more than a year ago. You ended that article with a statement
AT THE MOMENT IT IS UNJUSTIFIED TO ASSUME THE SUN IS UNDERGOING A SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN BEHAVIOUR. ON THE BASIS OF SUNSPOT NUMBER DATA, WE CANNOT ASSUME ANYTHING ODD IS HAPPENING UNLESS THE NEXT CYCLE DELAYS ITS START INTO 2009 OR 2010
Well it’s now nearly mid-2009 and the only spots to be seen very very occasionally are SC23 polarity.
Do you have any further comment on the Sun’s (lack of) activity? Are we close to unusual times in solar activity? Is the sun undergoing a significant change in behaviour?
Best regards
John
He replied [with my emphasis]
Hi John,
I’ve just got back here from the Space Weather Workshop, which was held in Boulder, Colorado. The opinion there is that the next cycle is coming, although forecasts are for a low cycle with a late start.
Our radio telescopes have detected no sign of the new cycle yet. However a statistical study of indices that I have been doing suggests the Sun did show a significant change in behaviour over the last few years, but that things are starting to slip back towards the normal situation, which could suggest the Sun is at least showing signs of waking up again. It’s deciding to take an additional lie-in cannot be ruled out.
Activity is certainly very low.
Regards,
Ken
When I asked for that “statistical study of indices”, Dr Tapping replied that it was being submitted to a journal and he’d let me know when its in pre-print – which is fine by me.
I think it’s fair to say that all solar scientists have been caught out by the length of the solar minimum and the delay to SC24. In subsequent posts I’ll be reviewing the prognostications of solar models, in an effort to understand what exactly goes into predictions of solar cycles.
In other news, as reported on Watts Up With That:
NOAA/SWPC will be releasing an update to the Solar Cycle 24 Prediction on Friday, May 8, 2009 at noon Eastern Daylight Time (1600 UT) at a joint ESA/NASA/NOAA press conference
I can hardly wait.
[The wait is over, and the announcement was made Friday, which you can read here – Anthony]
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Time will learn who is right and who is wrong.
The tricks our solar scientists have learned obviously don’t apply to the current situation.
This means there is a lot to leran for everybody.
Well, I guess “no such luck”. Those Google ads appear when one wants to read the rest of a post.
Great photo and interesting exchange of emails. Is John A. for real?
The amateurs are equal or better than the experts on this minimum. We are all waiting and guessing.
Good graphic – we’ll see it on a billboard before anything shows on the sun the way things are going.
The second disturbed area on the sun has made its appearance and it too seems to be a plage. Perhaps this should be named the plage cycle.
Were approaching the time when all serous solar scientists will have to re-evaluate their data and come up with different solar cycle models.
There are enough ideas floating around about this. We will be witnesses to what theory prevails and how long the cycle really takes.
No possibility of invented data on this cycle, we can all go out in the backyard with a piece of smoked glass and look at the sun ourselves!
It’s deciding to take an additional lie-in cannot be ruled out.
Hmmm… The sun’s been looking a tad pale recently. Another case of swine flu?
One by one, the solar scientists admit something is up. Or down.
I meant to post this in one of the earlier threads about solar activity, but now is as good as any. When the statement is made, “the sun is acting normally”, how is that meaningful? Is it a scientific statement, or a SWAG to CYA? It seems to me the sun is going to do whatever the sun wants to do, and no matter what it does, all of it is “natural”.
Time to review Flare by Zelazny ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flare_(science_fiction_novel)
Seems sort of like observing a Walrus. We know that in the past he will jump into the pool at approximately 10 minute intervals. If we extrapolate this data, we can predict that he will jump into the pool again 10 minutes past his previous jump. However, if for some reason more than 10 minutes elapse with no signs of jumping, what indicators do we have to predict the next jump? A burp? A twitch of the whiskers? The data says there should be a jump coming, but if we don’t have any indications of a pending jump, then all we can do is observe. Perhaps there is another, unforeseen factor influencing the jumping, and since we’ve only been observing for about an hour, maybe we’re not seeing the whole picture.
Leon Brozyna (09:09:40) :
The Plage Cycle, I like that.
Whatever the Sun is doing, it’s doing it without spots.
If you go back over the past six to eight months the majority of the sunpot groups have been Cycle24 groups, not Cycle 23. But there has been a percentage shift during 2009 toward Cycle 23.
So we’re seeing small extended runs for each cycle instead of a slower cycle -cycle transition. Which is basically related to the magnetic field differences this go around.
Ron de Haan:The tricks our solar scientists have learned obviously don’t apply to the current situation.
May we translate “our solar scientists” as “NASA solar scientists”?
It seems others are about as cynical as I am. I am beginning to suspect Oliver Manuel is right; and if the solar models are not based on his ideas, then they are all wrong. Maybe my guess, based on absolutely nothing, could be as correct as any other “prediction”. I guess we will not see the start of SC 24 this year, and the maximum, if there is one, will not be until 2016. If Livingston and Penn are right, then we wont actually see any sunspots at this maximum, though there may be other ways of detecting them.
Our radio telescopes have detected no sign of the new cycle yet
In what wavelength or frequency would show up such a sign?
Adolfo Giurfa (10:10:44) :
“Our radio telescopes have detected no sign of the new cycle yet”
In what wavelength or frequency would show up such a sign?
Tapping is observing at 10.7 cm wavelength. I don’t know what he has been smoking 🙂 perhaps he is looking at the ‘observed’ values which indeed do not show anything [uptick compensated for by increasing distance to the Sun]. The F10.7 flux adjusted to 1 AU [i.e. corrected for distance] shows a clear sign of the new cycle: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
REPLY: Leif, if you look at photos of the Canadian 10.7cm observing station,
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/files/2009/05/nrc.jpg
I’d say that qualifies as something that looks like a “radio telescope” – Anthony
Regarding not knowing all there is to know about a star (our sun), an excellent sci-fi novel comes to mind, Beowulf’s Children by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
The plot involves a star undergoing unexpected changes that cause serious problems for humans who colonized a planet orbiting that star. The star had been studied for a hundred years or so, and was thought to be stable.
That novel led me to wonder just how much we know about our Sun, given that if an 11 year cycle is observed, are there yet longer cycles? Perhaps some on the order of thousands of years? Are we in for a big surprise?
Leif 10:18:13
I noticed that statement of Tapping’s also, because I’d seen your graph with a clear rise in the 10.7 flux. One thing I don’t understand about your graph is the slight upslope of the little blue dots. The amplitude of the blue graph is narrowing, but only the bottom is rising; it seems that the top is dropping also, so it seems that the little blue dots should be level, not slightly rising.
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Leif Svalgaard (10:18:13) :
REPLY: Leif, if you look at photos of the Canadian 10.7cm observing station,
I’d say that qualifies as something that looks like a “radio telescope” – Anthony
There is no doubt that they measure the radio flux from the Sun, it is just the interpretation one has to be a bit careful with. I plot their data.
kim (10:31:43) :
I noticed that statement of Tapping’s also, because I’d seen your graph with a clear rise in the 10.7 flux. One thing I don’t understand about your graph is the slight upslope of the little blue dots.
The blue dots is TSI [not F10.7] and may follow slightly different rules. TSI comes from the photosphere, while F10.7 comes from the corona. For each quantity there are two smooth curves. A dashed one which is an honest fit to all the data, and a full one which is my eyeball fit to the bottom envelope of the data. One of the research projects I’m engage in right now is to try and understand what we see, so perhaps I can give an answer sometime down the road. Right now would only be speculation 🙂
“…things are starting to slip back towards the normal situation, which could suggest the Sun is at least showing signs of waking up again.”
Is this the same way that our economy is waking up: we’re not bleeding job and money or accumulating debt as quickly as before?
Listening to scientists downplay the Sun’s current lull reminds me of Monty Python’s Black Knight:
“It’s only a flesh wound…”
Leif, 10:40:19
Thanks, and thanks for not speculating. Can anyone correct Tapping? It seems he is clearly wrong.
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Instead of continuing to embarrass themselves, they should instead withdraw all predictions with the statement that a new prediction will not be forthcoming until the sun gives significant evidence of waking up.
With the increased activity among solar scientists and the reduced activity in their subject I thought it worthwhile to review David Archibalds 2006 paper: http://www.davidarchibald.info/papers/Solar%20Cycles%2024%20and%2025%20and%20Predicted%20Climate%20Response.pdf
If only all climate forecasts were this prescient!
Adolfo Giurfa (09:53:34) :
“Ron de Haan:The tricks our solar scientists have learned obviously don’t apply to the current situation.
May we translate “our solar scientists” as “NASA solar scientists”?”
Adolfo, I said ALL SCIENTISTS.
The latest NOAA prediction published at WUWT was an assessment based on consensus to fulfill Government obligations for satellite insurance estimations.
So much for the “official” science in regard to that.
We have a prediction from Leif which is contradicted by people who state that this minimum will continue much longer and a whole list of predictions from the passed that obviously have been wrong.
All the other stories have one ting in common. They are either in contradiction with each other, disputed, or based on guess work and they exclude the The Old Farmer’s Almanac (which by the way made a most accurate winter weather forecast thanks to the contribution of Joseph D’Aleo)
So, let’s wait and see who’s right.
The opportunity we now have is tremendous. With so much technology, computing power and sensors out in space, there is a lot to learn and understand.
Another Pournelle and NIven’s “Fallen Angles” is another great novel-and reads like today’s headlines.-except we don’t have quite the space presence….
Leif Svalgaard (10:18:13) :
Adolfo Giurfa (10:10:44) :
“Our radio telescopes have detected no sign of the new cycle yet”
In what wavelength or frequency would show up such a sign?
Tapping is observing at 10.7 cm wavelength. I don’t know what he has been smoking 🙂 perhaps he is looking at the ‘observed’ values which indeed do not show anything [uptick compensated for by increasing distance to the Sun]. The F10.7 flux adjusted to 1 AU [i.e. corrected for distance] shows a clear sign of the new cycle: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
REPLY: Leif, if you look at photos of the Canadian 10.7cm observing station,
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/files/2009/05/nrc.jpg
I’d say that qualifies as something that looks like a “radio telescope” – Anthony”
Leif, it’s possible Tapping referred to earlier data.