UPDATE: The SWPC press conference audio is now available, hear it here
Shortly after SWPC dropped on their website their still invisible “press conference” ( I have yet to get the link to audio, even though requested twice from Doug Biesecker) Leif Svalgaard remarked that the 10.7 cm radio flux graph produced by SWPC in that announcement on their web page was “just wrong”.
After spending months as a regular supporting commenter, Leif asked if he could write a guest post about it. After several microseconds of uncertainty, I said “yes”. So for the first time ever on WUWT, I present Dr. Leif Svalgaard as guest author, rather than commenter. – Anthony
The Solar Radio Microwave Flux
Guest Post by Leif Svalgaard, May 2009
(A PDF of this essay is available here)
Since 1947 we have routinely measured the flux of microwaves from the Sun at wavelengths between 3 and 30 cm [frequencies between 10 and 1 GHz]. This emission comes from high in the Chromosphere and low in the Corona and has two different sources [although there is debate about their relative importance]: thermal bremsstrahlung [due to electrons radiating when changing direction by being deflected by other charged particles] and ‘gyro’-radiation [due to electrons radiating when changing direction by gyrating around magnetic field lines]. These mechanisms give rise to enhanced radiation when the temperature, density, and magnetic field are enhanced, so the microwave radiation is a good ‘measure’ of ‘general’ solar activity. As strong magnetic fields are located in specific regions that can live for weeks and often reoccur at or near the same location for months [perhaps even years], there is a strong rotational signal in the emission superposed on a solar cycle variation of a ‘background’ activity level. At solar minimum, especially a ‘deep’ one as we now experiencing, the effect of active regions largely disappears and we observe a sort of solar ‘ground state’.
As the radio flux measurements [as opposed to the sunspot number] are unaffected by changes of [human] observers and their observing techniques and instrumental and atmospheric differences they may be a ‘truer’ and more objective measure of solar activity [to the extent that we can reduce this complex concept to a single number per day] and the many decades-long flux record could throw light on the important issue of the long-term variation of solar activity. The solar microwave flux is nominally an absolute flux, one solar flux unit defined as [the very small amount of] 10-22 Watt per square meter per Hertz. Making an absolute measurement is always difficult and considerable uncertainty and debate surrounded these measurements early on, before being settled by international cooperative work in the late 1960s [Tanaka et al., Solar Phys. 29 (1973) p. 243-262; http://www.leif.org/research/Tanaka-Calibration-F107.pdf]. By observing the radio flux from supernova remnants [Cassiopeia-A, Cygnus-A, and Virgo-A] one can verify the constancy of the calibration.
The longest running series of observations is that of the 10.7 cm [2800 MHz] flux [often simply referred to as ‘F10.7’] started by Covington in Ottawa, Canada in April 1947 and maintained to this day[and hopefully much longer] at Penticton site in British Columbia [http://www.hia-iha.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/drao/solar_e.html]. The data is available from several sources, e.g. from the NGDC at http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/FLUX/flux.html, more timely at ftp://ftp.geolab.nrcan.gc.ca/data/solar_flux/daily_flux_values/current.txt. There are three measurements per day with small systematic [and poorly understood] differences. One can either average all three, or as in this work only use the noon value [for Penticton at 20:00 UT, since 1991].
As with all solar indices, there is the issue of the varying distance between the Earth and the Sun. For describing the effect on the Earth’s atmosphere and environment the proper values of the indices to use should, of course, be the ones observed at the Earth, but for studying the Sun, those values must be adjusted to the mean distance [at 1 astronomical unit]. This is not always appreciated and one sees endless discussions about F10.7 changes or flat-lining without the 7% change caused by the varying distance being taken into account. Needless to say, here we use the ‘adjusted flux’.
So, what does the record look like? Figure 1 shows the entire record up to date of writing [14 May, 2009], plotting the ~23,000 daily noon values [pink curve] and a running 27-day mean [black curve]:
The solar cycle variation is obvious, but so is another fact: [highlighted by the green box] that the flux at every minimum is very nearly the same. There has been no clear systematic variation or trend in the ‘ground state’. Figure 2 shows the 1954 minimum overlaid the current minimum, and is a rather dramatic demonstration of the constancy of the ground state (also shows nicely the 27-day recurrence tendency):
Other observatories have long and continuing series of measurements of the microwave flux. Of note is the long series from Japan (Toyokawa 1951 Nov – 1994 Apr; Nobeyama 1994 May – present) at several wavelengths around the 10.7 cm (e.g. 3.75 GHz = 8 cm; 2 GHz = 15 cm; and 1 GHz = 30 cm). The fluxes at these wavelengths are highly correlated with each other. Figure 3 shows the correlation of 3.75 GHz versus 2 GHz:
This means that we can use the regression equations to put all the measurements on the same scale, scaling [marked with an asterisk] them to 3.75 GHz (Figure 4):
This looks very much like Figure 1 [the coefficient of determination of the correlation with F10.7 is as high as R2 = 0.987, which is a welcome finding as one observatory series then supports the other, at least to the accuracy of the scatter plot]. Scaling the average of the Japanese [scaled] observations to F10.7 we obtain (Figure 5):
If you look very closely, you might see that the red curve (Japanese stations) lies a little bit below the green curve (Canadian stations) before 1991 and a little bit above the green curve thereafter. Here is a plot of the ratio of the flux values of the two series (Figure 6) with different colored symbol for the Ottawa and Penticton data:
. Figure 7, above. In any event, the change is but small.”]
Adding 3% to the Ottawa flux before 1991, rescaling the Japanese measurements to the thus corrected Canadian series, and computing the average flux from the two series gives us the composite series shown in Figure 8 below. All of these adjustments are very small, though, and do not substantially alter any conclusions drawn from the measurements. Although the microwave flux measurements are said to be absolute, a further correction [multiplication by the ‘URSI’-factor of 0.9] is required to get the ‘real flux’. We shall ignore that constant factor as only the relative variation is of interest here.
The red and green curves in the composite graph show the Canadian and [scaled] Japanese series going into the composite. On the whole, there is substantial agreement and the microwave flux seems well-determined.
One can now ask how this measure of solar activity compares to other measures, in particular the sunspot number [the Wolf Number]. Anticipating a finding described later, we correlate the sunspot number against the F10.7 flux (Figure 9) for the interval 1951-1988, and obtain a purely formal polynomial fit [as the relationship is not quite linear]:
The fit is good (R2 = 0.977) up until ~1989.0 after which time the observed sunspot number falls progressively below the fitted number (Figure 10):
To quantify the drift we divide the observed sunspot number by the fitted one. When the sunspot number is very low [near minimum, marked by m; worst case, zero] that quotient becomes very noisy or meaningless, so we plot only cases where the sunspot number was above 5 (Figure 11):
The progressive drift is much larger than the 3% correction and is therefore not due to the correction. It seems inescapable that the relation between the sunspot number and the microwave flux has changed significantly in recent years. Another way of showing this is Figure 12:
Ken Tapping has come to a similar conclusion (from the 2009 Space Weather Workshop: http://www.fin.ucar.edu/UCARVSP/spaceweather/abstract_view.php?recid=995):
“The Changing Relationship between Sunspot Number and F10.7”: Sunspot Number and the 10.7cm solar radio flux are the most widely-used indices of solar activity. Despite their differing nature and origins at different places in the Sun, these two indices are highly-correlated to the point where one can be used as a proxy for the other. However, during Solar Activity Cycle 23 we started to see a small but definite change in this relationship…”
So far we have been on the [relatively] firm ground of data analysis, but when it comes to an explanation of the changed relationship, we enter the realm of pure speculation [for now]. Three obvious hypotheses present themselves:
1) The sunspot counting procedure or observers have changed with resulting artificial changes of the sunspot number as they have in the past.
2) Changes in the Corona or Chromosphere accounting for additional F10.7 emission.
3) Livingston & Penn’s observations [http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1538-4357/649/1/L45/20946.web.pdf?request-id=e22b7626-e93b-4ce3-b6f1-a999655b8888] that the sunspots are getting warmer during the last decade, leading to a decreased contrast with the surrounding photosphere and hence lessened visibility, possibly resulting in an undercount of sunspots.
There has been some criticism of SIDC and SWPC recently related to counting small pores, changing the count inexplicably, and various mistakes, but it seems to this writer that these problems would not be serious enough to account for the continuous and progressive drift shown in Figure 11. The near constancy of the flux at minima since 1954 argues against a change of the physical conditions at the source locations, leaving the exciting possibility that Livingston & Penn may be correct.
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Leif at his best, superior data analysis.
To WuWT; Say Anthony, if you hemmed and hawed for several microseconds before agreeing to let Dr Leif Svalgaard write an essay for us all here; you might want to consider a brain transplant; and get one of those newer high speed multicore models; so you can think quicker !
I was able to get the PDF file and print my self a nice clean copy of Leif’s Essay.
This is no small office memo that Dr Svalgaard has dashed off for us here; he has put a lot of work into this. It’s extremely readable; and oriented about at the right level for us lay folks; and yet with a proper level of rigor as well as caution.
I’m an old believer in the notion that there is no such thing as too much information; and it is always exciting to see stuff that is out of our normal range of experiences.
So I hope you will be more responsive in the future, and not dilly dally around next time Dr Svalgaard has something else interesting to pass on to us. what a nice way to head off into the weekend.
George
Thanks a lot Leif. All good evidence is grist to the mill.
I’d love to see a general piece from you about the Sun and everything it puts out, rays, particles, magnetic waves, whatever.
It looks to me as if the F10.7 curve is on a very slight uptick, as if it may have hit minimum around 2008.9. Any comments? Is this compatible with the sunspot record?
Lief, thanks for the posting. I am trying to remember another posting on WUWT several weeks ago . It showed sunspot numbers verses global temperature. The phasing changed the the 80s. The temperature lagged sunspot numbers and then changed and the temperature led sunspot numbers. It would seem unlikely that something on earth would cause this shift; particularly, since the change was most visible at the time of solar minimum. It is a pure guess;but, something basic may have changed in the sun.
Dr. Svaalgard,
Thank you so very much for your article. I have learned a lot in reading this concise article. I was most impressed that you included reference to the shift in F10.7 vs. SSN, to the observations of Penn and Livingston.
It is such a pleasure to learn from a scientist that explains not only what is known, but what is unknown. Many of todays “scientists” seem to go off in directions based on hypotheses stacked on hypotheses stacked on hypotheses, and in the end are certain of their conclusions (usually disastrous).
You, sir, are an example of the finest in Science. Again, thank you.
Gary Plyler
That’s all very interesting, but most of the article has not been connected to what parts of the prediction graph are “just wrong”.
* The starting point of the graph is below the latest measurement; is that starting point wrong because it is below all the measured minimums?
* Is the width of the prediction curve too wide or narrow?
* Is the leading edge of the wrong shape?
* Is the trailing edge of the wrong shape?
* Is the peak too low or too high?
Retired Engineer John (09:45:54) : The phasing changed the 80s
As you can read in James Shirley’s work, in 1989 the sun changed its path around the barycenter from counterclock wise to clockwise….
http://www.giurfa.com/james_shirley.pdf
FS: in 1989 the sun changed its path around the barycenter from left to right…as the Berlin’s wall fell down in that year, then left is anachronical 🙂
Leif, on your updating plot of solar indices, what is the new ‘MF’ data source?
The last point on your 10.7 cm plot appears to be about 77. Penticton noon ‘adjusted’ for the last three days was 75.5, 75.3, 75.5. Are you using Penticton data or something else?
Sorry if these are FAQs, but I haven’t seen the answers so far.
Leif,
Excellent piece.
As I understand it our star is a G2 class and there are 100 million similar stars in our galaxy.
Do we believe G2 stars behave broadly the same?
If they do is there a way to analyse the G2 stars and effectively use their distance from earth as a way to travel back in time and see similar data that would give us an opportunity to have a real time historical view of key data (such as radio microwave flux) over millenial timescales?
Or am I being stupid?! [which I feel I probably am being 🙂 ]
Leif,
Thanks for the article. I always appreciate your clear, brief, logical writing, beautifully-constructed graphs, and simple argument. Over the months (has it been years now?), you’ve helped clarify many technical issues to this non-technical reader.
I second Bill Yarber’s question: is there a proxy suitable for extending the 10.7 cm radio flux record into the past? (I know, I know… another article. Well, I look forward to it.)
Adolfo Giurfa (10;07:24)
Thank You for the reference. It’s going to take a while to absorb it. It appears that James Shirley got the prediction right; he was just off a few years on the timing.
Excellent post. Thank you.
However, the article does not seem to shed any discernable light on the relationship between solar activity and terrestrial temperatures.
Solar activity appears in regular cycles, but earth temperatures do not seem, upon casual inspection, related. Logic would seem to indicate that the sun must be the primary driver of the earth’s climate, and yet we have no smoking gun, best I can tell.
Hmmm.
Leif:
“The near constancy of the flux at minima since 1954 argues against a change of the physical conditions at the source locations, leaving the exciting possibility that Livingston & Penn may be correct.”
I, for one, do consider it exciting to think that we will be getting a more accurate idea of how the sun operates. Methinks we need to correct some inaccurate concepts and assumptions.
In my work, I practically salivate when someone brings me a nice, juicy anomaly.
Steven Kopits (11:00:51) :
James Shirley approaches the relation:
http://www.giurfa.com/james_shirley.pdf
Thanks to Leif for an excellent article. Paradigm shift in progress apparently – “exciting”.
Too few spots now, or too many in past, or maybe just too much reliance on spots as indicator of solar state. Perhaps spots are just occasional phenomena on the solar surface, in line with the brief, 400yr, consistent observational record?
Plages still seem likely, or maybe even they may disappear too. If we redo the past record, ignoring individual spots, but counting groups and associated plages, what predictions can we come up with for the next cycle, and the projected TSI, and other radiation emission levels?
Thank you Dr Svaalgard.
Steven Kopits said :
My gut feeling is that the overall thermal energy of the Earth is high enough it does not respond to changes in input that quickly. The changes in input, however those changes occur, are simply taking place too fast for the earth to undergo much heating or cooling. It’s only when there are looong term changes/trends that we can perceive the impact here on the surface. By long I mean 30+ years.
If I had the time, and the math skills, I love to work out how long the Earth would take to reach equilibrium with it’s environment if the Sun’s output dropped 5%.
Anthony–
Nice to know you check the spam filter for inadvertent good-faith transgressions. 🙂 And, for the benefit of others, I of course realize you weren’t calling me a Spelling you-know-what upstream, you were simply referring to the phrase that got the original post kicked-out as I declaimed therein wanting to be seen as “one of those”. 😉
Great article … I look forward to your future efforts.
paul (03:34:42) :
Are sunspots tracked at a wavelength outside of visible light at all? IR, UV etc. If you compared those counts with visible light counts you could tell if there were “invisible” spots.
They are tracked in many wavelengths. In some they are dark, in others they are bright. Even within the visible band you see those differences. Look at the two ‘gray’ intensity images here: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/intro.html . The active region is bright in the green [5250] but dark in the yellow [5896]. Mix the two, and the region disappear…
Lindsay H (03:38:14) :
how much do we understand of the processes that create the variations in the magnetic field, and why the minimum flux seems to be a constant. could some error or factor in the distance adjustment of 7% contribute to the variance we are seeing?
We have a ‘gross’ understanding of how the magnetic field is generated [or rather ‘amplified’]. There are no errors in the distance adjustment.
Katherine (04:00:45) :
if the 10.7 cm radio flux graph produced by SWPC in that announcement on their web page was “just wrong,” what is the correct one supposed to look like?
I apologize for not really addressing this yet. Based on the behavior of the F10.7-SSN relationship up to 1991 [which has been adopted by many ‘official’ agencies] you can calculate the F10.7 flux from the SSN [and the other way too]. According to that formula, the SWPC curve is simply wrong [I’ll later on make a graph that compares those curves]. On the other hand, if that relationship itself is changing, then it is hard [impossible?] to say what it ‘really’ look like… [this was the real real for my post].
Tim Groves (04:09:11) :
if we are seeing very few sunspots at present, this means that very few magnetic flux tubes are emerging through the surface. But does this mean that there is any less magnetic flux activity or merely that the regions of magnetic flux remain below the visible surface?
The picture is a bit more complex than that [to say the least 🙂 ]. I think about the same amount of magnetic flux is erupting as earlier, but that the flux is not being ‘compacted’ enough to form the strong fields [flux per unit area] that manifests themselves as sunspots.
Since sunspots are cooler than the rest of the surface, does their absence make a measurable difference to the observable temperature of the surface, or would this difference be so small that it would be swamped by other variations?
The area covered by spots is so small that it makes very little difference, hardly measurable in TSI.
Can differential rotation of the sun at different lattitudes account adequately for the waxing and waning of sunspots over the circa 11-year solar cycle?
It has something to do with the generation of spots, but is not the whole story. One can construct models that can reproduce the solar cycle [note: this is descriptive, not necessarily predictive].
but is there any chance that planetary motion is involved? Or could the sun be “breathing” as in going through a cycle that repeats over a timescale on the order of centuries due to its internal dynamics.
Just as the Earth’s climate has cycles of internal origin, so may the Sun’s. Planetary motions have always fascinated solar researchers and the idea surfaces from time to time. The problem is that the tidal forces involved are so small [Jupiter’s tide on the Sun is half a millimeter high] and that the planetary motions cannot explain the most important aspect of the solar cycle: the reversal of the magnetic field.
kim (05:21:42) :
Leif, does your prediction for the sunspots in the coming cycle account for the invisibility of some of them? In other words, will you have to change your estimate because some of what you expected will only be plage areas?
My prediction is rooted in the polar magnetic field and strictly speaking only pertains to the amount of magnetic flux, not really the SSN. Under the usual assumption that there is simple proportionality between the magnetic flux and the SSN, then one can use either one. If this relationship breaks down [as L&P suggest], then the prediction is for flux, not SSN. If we take my prediction to be SSN = 72, and use the ‘classical’ relationship between SSN and number of Groups [or active regions, AR], namely AR = SSN / 12, the I predict 6 ARs, whether or not their spots are visible.
Peter Taylor (05:42:54) :
5. Thus, when we consider the Maunder Minimum, we should be thinking of the CUMULATIVE effect of all those years at the minimum – whether it be 3% more cloud, 0.1% less TSI and 8% less UV………….and given that the MM was only 0.5C lower globally, it is not that hard to imagine these changes being enough – espcially if there are shifts in the jetstream, polar vortex, Arctic oscillation and the storm tracks across the Pacific and Atlantic.
It has not been shown that any of these changes have anything to do with climate, and the CUMULATIVE effects even less so. When you heat something up, it starts to radiate more and cools down again. But why is everybody so snookered by the idea that these solar effects MUST be important, SOMEHOW?
David Holliday (05:45:23) :
Is 38 years enough to say there is a correlation between Sunspot Number and F10.7? How do we know those 38 years weren’t the anomaly? Maybe when F10.7 flux and sunspot activity align it creates a forcing effect. Are scientists confident enough to say that variations in F10.7 are the result of sunspot activity?
We have 62 years of data, not 38. Sunspot activity itself is not important, but the magnetic active regions are, and for those we are very confident about the effect on F10.7.
If the correlation is correct but sunspots are getting warmer and decreased contrast is leading to undercounting, what does that mean? Is it the same thing that happened in previous minimums?
It means that the Sun is as active as before [in terms of magnetic flux], but the flux is a bit more spread out, so doesn’t show itself as spots anymore, so we counf fewer spots, but we see the same activity.
Bottom line, are we getting warmer or colder?
Solar activity has little to do with the climate.
John (05:53:16) :
If sunspots are a bit warmer, does it follow that the sun as a whole will also be warmer? Or could warm sunspots indicate a sun that overall is less active?
The effect on the Sun overall is very small.
We presently think of the Maunder minimum as a time when the sun was cooler, as marked by Be10 and C14 proxies, vs. the Medieval Warm period. Should we revise our thinking? Are the Be and C proxies no longer valid for some reason?
You should revise your thinking about the Sun [and us] being cooler. The other proxies are still OK, if calibrated correctly, which some of them are not.
realitycheck (05:53:35) :
angular momentum of the Sun (my naive thinking using a convection analogy: hotter=lower density). That is, would it be reflected in a higher/lower rotation rate of the outer layers – can we measure this?
The rotational angular momentum [AM] of the Sun cannot change [excpept by very slow tidal and magnetic braking over eons]. The moment of inertia [IM] can change by moving stuff around. When an ice skater slows down by stretching her arms out, she changes her moment of inertia, and since her angular momentum does not change, the speed of her spin slows down: AM = IM * Speed.
Adolfo Giurfa (06:07:10) :
through the years 1989 to 1991, the Sun’s motion will be retrograde relative to the solar system mass center.
And I thought I was speculating…
Jim Hughes (06:14:27) :
The descending part of Cycle 23 was clearly telling us that we were headed toward a quieter Cycle 24 which many of us, or at least the planetary relationship believers, already knew about.
The weak polar fields told us that several years ago. The planets have nothing to do with that. The rest of your comment is ‘not even wrong’.
layne Blanchard (06:16:56) :
Does a summary of your view of cause for the warming/cooling of climate exist, or will you post it here?
I may have posted that [in fragments, perhaps] on several occasions, and the viewpoints are so political that my opinion can hardly make a dent in people’s entrenched views.
SSSailor (06:27:36) :
Fig 11 composite. Fig. 10, perhaps?
Are these type of metrics considered for measurements of solar systemic parameters?
The ‘noise’ and variability is highly variable themselves 🙂 and do not seem to have any stable relationship to anything.
pyromancer76 (06:28:48) :
This idea points us more towards rethinking the TSI during the Maunder Minimum–and, even better, suggests more articles on the complexity of our climate system. What does Earth do with all that TSI?
What comes in, must go out. The Earth radiates away the TSI, unless something [temporarily] holds on to the heat [clouds, CO2?, oceans, magic]
Leon Brozyna (06:30:11) :
I mean that in SC24 the values in F10.7 could be much higher than (observed) sunspots.
That is what it looks like, so far.
David L. Hagen (06:53:14) :
Does the integral of F10.7 above your green minimum line to F10.7 correlate with corresponding integrated thermal changes in earth’s ocean and atmosphere about the average?
Some people think so, other do not. My own opinion is that it does, but in a very small amount [less that 0.1C for a cycle].
Nicola Scafetta proposes a model of solar activity on earth’s climate/ temperature driven by variations in the sun’s motion around the solar system center of mass.
People seem to ‘rediscover’ [or trip over] that seductive idea from time to time. At least Scafetta is scientifically honest and ascribes any planetary influences to tidal forces. There forces are there [do not violate physical laws], but are VERY, VERY small. Then one can discuss forever if there are amplifying factors or ‘feedbacks’ or trigger effects, or whatever. That discussion is legit and can be kept within science. The planetary nonsense begins when people realize that tidal forces are too small and invoke unphysical mechanisms to bypass that problem. Even Shirley [who was referred to] warns his followers not to invoke the unphysical spin-orbit coupling.
Basil (07:15:43) :
Which is the better indicator of natural variation in TSI — SSN or 10.7 cm flux?
10.7 flux, of course.
Or what about CR flux?
CR flux is a second order effect of solar activity and is smoothed over the whole heliosphere.
your historical TSI series is based, if I’m not mistaken, upon SSN. Now I know you’ve adjusted historical SSN’s
F10.7 is a good proxy for the EUV [another article on that may be in cards], and EUV determines the conductivity of the ionosphere which we can infer back to 1722, hence we can ‘correct’ the SSN to match under the assumption that the correlation in Figure 9 holds true, and from that reconstruct TSI. If L&P are correct, the correlation may not hold true at all times, and I speculate that it does not now and did not before ~1710 [hence the Maunder minimum in observed spots, but not in the solar wind].
George E. Smith (08:51:48) :
The cyclic curves such as your figure 1 show a lot of “fur” on the tops of the peaks, which seems to diminish with signal amplitude. Whenever I see such signals; I am always curious as to how much is “noise” and how much is real signal. So is the 27 day running average the “real” signal, and the fur just measurement or instrumental noise; or is the fur real data too ?
It is a common property of many ‘natural’ time series that the variation increases with the level itself, and in this case that is so. The ‘fur’ is not noise, but real solar variability [e.g. recurs every 27 days, see the spikes in Figure 2.
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (07:29:36) :
if Livingston & Penn are correct. If so, are there any theories at all as to how long the effect will last?
Last time it lasted 70 years, perhaps.
Lucy Skywalker (09:34:16) :
I’d love to see a general piece from you about the Sun and everything it puts out, rays, particles, magnetic waves, whatever.
I’m working on the 2000 page short description…
It looks to me as if the F10.7 curve is on a very slight uptick, as if it may have hit minimum around 2008.9. Any comments? Is this compatible with the sunspot record?
Judge for yourself: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
I would say it fits, so far.
Retired Engineer John (09:45:54) :
it is a pure guess;but, something basic may have changed in the sun.
A more prosaic explanation when a ‘relationship’ stops working is often that it was coincidence in the first place…
” NoAstronomer (11:16:41) :
Thank you Dr Svaalgard.
Steven Kopits said :
Solar activity appears in regular cycles, but earth temperatures do not seem, upon casual inspection, related.
My gut feeling is that the overall thermal energy of the Earth is high enough it does not respond to changes in input that quickly. The changes in input, however those changes occur, are simply taking place too fast for the earth to undergo much heating or cooling. It’s only when there are looong term changes/trends that we can perceive the impact here on the surface. By long I mean 30+ years.
If I had the time, and the math skills, I love to work out how long the Earth would take to reach equilibrium with it’s environment if the Sun’s output dropped 5%.”
There are basically 2 views of the earth – it is an engine, driven by solar energy, or it is a growing baby, feeding off a rather neurotic and stressed mother.
Another way of putting this is that we live in a lawful universe, that is predictable on the basis of the prior condition of the universe, or that we have an infinite universe with infinitely variable local conditions that therefore have no predictive ability over anything in time or space.
One of these views says God cannot exist, and the other says that science will ultimately tell us nothing.
The conclusion I am coming to is that the sentence above is the truth.
AnonyMoose (10:06:32) :
That’s all very interesting, but most of the article has not been connected to what parts of the prediction graph are “just wrong”.
The present posting is a prelude to a posting that explains where the SWPC goes wrong.
KBK (10:33:56) :
Leif, on your updating plot of solar indices, what is the new ‘MF’ data source?
That is the Sun’s Mean magnetic Field [in arbitrary units]. The MF is a measure of the average magnetic field near the central part [about 20% of the area] of the solar disk. Its sign matches very well the sign of the interplanetary magnetic field at the Earth 4 1/2 days later, and is some kind of measure of the ‘strength’ of the coronal holes near disk center. It has been steadily decreasing as yo can see.
The last point on your 10.7 cm plot appears to be about 77. Penticton noon ‘adjusted’ for the last three days was 75.5, 75.3, 75.5. Are you using Penticton data or something else?
The plot will always be about a day behind. The last point is often an estimate based on the 1700 UT value and on values for several other observatories around the world. When I get the official Pentiction value I adjust my estimate accordingly. So, don’t take the last data point as Gospel truth.
PaulHClark (10:38:24) :
If they do is there a way to analyse the G2 stars and effectively use their distance from earth as a way to travel back in time and see similar data that would give us an opportunity to have a real time historical view of key data (such as radio microwave flux) over millenial timescales?
Yes an no. We are looking at other ‘sun-like’ stars and they do show similar variations as the Sun [~10 year period etc]. But we only see each star at a moment in time, so we have to look at very many stars to get a good sample, and there are simply not enough sun-like stars close enough [and hence bright enough] to get a good reading. So we only have a handful such cases [and it takes decades of tracking to get the time history]. Some time ago we thought we had located a good sample of such stars, but they turned out to be a bit more evolved in their life and not sun-like ‘enough’.
Bill P (10:50:48) :
is there a proxy suitable for extending the 10.7 cm radio flux record into the past? (I know, I know… another article. Well, I look forward to it.)
http://www.leif.org/research/CAWSES%20-%20Sunspots.pdf
The table on page 8 already shows that cycle 23 was beginning to deviate… I didn’t know then what I know today, so could only assume it was just a statistical fluctuation [that do happen]…
Steven Kopits (11:00:51) :
However, the article does not seem to shed any discernable light on the relationship between solar activity and terrestrial temperatures.
Perhaps there isn’t any of note.
Chris Knight (11:16:30) :
If we redo the past record
Still in the works…
Chris Knight (11:54:05) :
“Solar activity appears in regular cycles, but earth temperatures do not seem, upon casual inspection, related.”
The conclusion I am coming to is that the sentence above is the truth.
Is this what you meant?
Leif Svalgaard (11:46:20) :
But why is everybody so snookered by the idea that these solar effects MUST be important, SOMEHOW?
Atavism.
From webster.com
Function:
noun
Etymology:
French atavisme, from Latin atavus ancestor, from at- (probably akin to atta daddy) + avus grandfather — more at uncle
Date:
1833
1 a: recurrence in an organism of a trait or character typical of an ancestral form and usually due to genetic recombination b: recurrence of or reversion to a past style, manner, outlook, approach, or activity 2: one that manifests atavism : throwback
The sun god was the main god of all our root cultures, and this is carried through with our myths and our fairy tales and childrens’s songs.
It is the sun that ripens the wheat, that chases the night, that nurtures. Thus people who have not delved in the subject, unconsciously need it to be central in any discussion of weather and climate.
Great article! The Livingston and Penn paper, for one reason or another, made one of the strongest impressions I have had here on WUWT. It seemed to me that the authors had become aware of something, thought through what the implications of the findings were, and published the results.
Perhaps the impact of the paper (on me) was due to the fact that authors weren’t trying to prove they were right about something, they didn’t seem to be doing a one up or that they had some agenda or anything like that. I was left with the feeling that, although the reasoning from observations to implications appeared sound and straight forward, the authors themselves were somewhat skeptical about the conclusions that were logical based on the measurements they had made. I guess that it created a disconcerting credibility in my mind, as I am more used to those who take a stand and defend it, regardless of any evidence that may seem to contradict their position.
Lief,
If I understood the L&P findings correctly, they had measurements of several attributes of sunspots, which over the course of two solar cycles, had seemed to show that they were not related to the level of sunspot activity. In addition, those attributes influenced the visability of sunspots, and the measurement trends (if continued) seemed to suggest that sunspots would cease to be visible sometime during cycle 24.
I was left with the impression there would still be “cycles” occuring, but that you wouldn’t see visible sunspots that would mark the progress of the cycles. The phenomena they were measuring wasn’t suggesting that the cycles were getting weaker or longer or stalling or anything like that, just that the spots themselves were becoming steadily less detectable. I am trying to fit that in with your observation that the correlation between sunspot number and F10.7 seems to be shifting. The time period that the correlation seems to have started drifting matchs the period of L&P observations, so the SSN undercount theory makes sense. It is unfortunate that L&P don’t have any baseline data that preceeds the SSN/F10.7 correlation drift.
This leaves me with several questions, perhaps there aren’t answers. First, how does this relate to the late start of cycle 24? Perhaps cycle 24 has really already started, we just can’t tell that because we are seeing fewer sunspots, but shouldn’t F10.7 be rising regardless? What am I missing here?