No we aren’t talking pianos, but Grand Solar Minimums. Today a new milestone was reached. As you can see below, we’ve been leading up to it for a few years.
(Update: based on comments, I’ve updated the graph above to show the 2004 solar max by sliding the view window to the left a bit compared to the previous graph. – Anthony)
A typical solar minimum lasts 485 days, based on an average of the last 10 solar minima. As of today we are at 638 spotless days in the current minimum. Also as of today, May 27th, 2009, there were no sunspots on 120 of this year’s (2009) 147 days to date (82%).
Paul Stanko writes:
Our spotless day count just reached 638.
What is so special about 638? We just overtook the original solar cycle, #1, so now the only cycles above this are: cycles of the Maunder minimum, cycles 5 to 7 (Dalton minimum), and cycles 10 + 12 to 15 (unnamed minimum).
Since the last one is unnamed, I’ve nicknamed it the “Baby Grand Minimum”, in much the same way that you can have a baby grand piano. We would now seem to have reached the same stature for this minimum. It will be interesting to see just how much longer deep minimum goes on.
Of course it depends on what data you look at. Solar Influences Data Center and NOAA differ by a few days. As WUWT readers may recall, last year in August, the SIDC reversed an initial count that would have led to the first spotless month since 1913:
NOAA did not count the sunspot, so at the end of the month, one agency said “spotless month” and the other did not.
From Spaceweather.com in an April 1st 2009 article:
The mother of all spotless runs was of course the Maunder Minimum. This was a period from October 15, 1661 to August 2, 1671.
It totaled 3579 consecutive spotless days. That puts our current run at 17.5% of that of the Maunder Minimum.
By the standard of spotless days, the ongoing solar minimum is the deepest in a century: NASA report. In 2008, no sunspots were observed on 266 of the year’s 366 days (73%). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days (85%):
The lack of sunspots in 2008, made it a century-level year in terms of solar quiet. Remarkably, sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower.
We do indeed live in interesting times.
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Perhaps Deborah Zabarenko is fond of environmental magic – the type you find in mushrooms?
Leif Svalgaard (19:10:18) :
“KBK (16:27:09) :
To me, the most remarkable thing is the decreasing variance in the magnetic field on your updating plot. What do you make of it? Is it unprecedented?”
The solar Mean Field [MF on the plot] is a measure of low-latitude coronal holes near the center of the disk. These usually disappear at of just after minimum as the active regions that keep them alive die out and instead begin to form at higher latitudes. So, this happened in the past as well, their magnitude perhaps a tad smaller, but that is in concert with the generally lower sunspot number this time around. When the MF begins to increase we know FOR SURE that the old cycle is dead, and that is why I have it on the plot. Solar minimum happens at different times for different measures of activity.
How is the split decided? high latitude and low latitude? last month there were coronal holes from the center up to high latitude. Is it instrumental or human decision?
repeat with correct italics. I had greek fonts on and the system does not recognize iota for i 🙂
Leif Svalgaard (19:10:18) :
“KBK (16:27:09) :
To me, the most remarkable thing is the decreasing variance in the magnetic field on your updating plot. What do you make of it? Is it unprecedented?”
The solar Mean Field [MF on the plot] is a measure of low-latitude coronal holes near the center of the disk. These usually disappear at of just after minimum as the active regions that keep them alive die out and instead begin to form at higher latitudes. So, this happened in the past as well, their magnitude perhaps a tad smaller, but that is in concert with the generally lower sunspot number this time around. When the MF begins to increase we know FOR SURE that the old cycle is dead, and that is why I have it on the plot. Solar minimum happens at different times for different measures of activity.
How is the split decided? high latitude and low latitude? last month there were coronal holes from the center up to high latitude. Is it instrumental or human decision?
Is it really wise to think that painting your roof white will change global temperatures?
Maybe some underestimate the size of the earth…..
DJ (14:38:12) :
Do you agree that it is most odd that we have such a significant solar minimum and yet the planet’s climate is so warm?
Define so warm?
I might well be that the optimal average temperature is still to low, periods of time in the past suggest so! Only a AGW believer who drank the coolaid will go with the claim that it is TO warm and that there is TO MUCH CO2 in the atmosphere.
Both temperature and CO2 content have in my opinion not properly been measured in the past, still even if it was than it is still is no indicator if the current temperatures are to high, because periods of time in the past suggest the other thing, there have been times that the CO2 content and temperatures have been much higher than the present day, yet it did not cause a runaway effect because of passing a climate tipping point.
“” Mrs Whatsit (09:36:28) : Is there really enough roof surface on the planet that increasing their reflectivity could significantly affect global temperatures?””
I think of it this way :
No cities can be seen from space, let alone a house. Maybe if we put all the houses and buildings side by side in a giant square you may be able to see that from space, but it would just be a small square. To think that if that small square was white or black could alter global temperature is silly.
“If there’s a wind it must mean that someone is blowing.”
p.s. I’m not saying it couldn’t have a slight effect on UHI.
I still think that the name “Gore Minimum” has the best ironic ring to it!
I think we all can see that not enough thought by Steven Chu was put in to this white roof thing.
No one has mentioned that not all roofs are on an angle to catch direct sunshine. For example there are houses in the Arctic and Antarctic circle where sun light doesn’t hit at an angle to make as much a difference as roofs near the equator. My illustration of all roofs side by side in a square would have to take that in to account. Which means the square would have to be smaller than the actual size of all roofs on earth. Or, the size of the square could be actual size if you did the math and found the perfect location on earth to put it so the energy absorbed/reflected by it that would equal the energy absorbed/reflected by all roofs on earth in their current locations—either way you do it I think common sense will tell you that the color of your roof means nothing for global temperatures.
Video of sunlight striking the earth at different angles throughout the different times of the year :
Looks like what everyone suspected. Will Nature withdraw this paper now? or at least issue a “correction”. Otherwise it will remain as a “dark nail” in their coffin for time immemorial LOL. Thank you Ryan for your exhaustive analysis and effort put into this. Its the only way these guys are going to be convinced
By Ryan here
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/verification-of-the-improved-high-pc-reconstruction/
Ad verbatim conclusions
“This fits with the qualitative observation that the Steig method seemed to spread the Peninsula warming all over the continent, including into East Antarctica – which by most other accounts is cooling slightly, not warming.
CONCLUSION
With the exception of the RegEM verification, all of the verification statistics listed above were performed exactly (split reconstruction) or analogously (restricted 15 predictor reconstruction) by Steig in the Nature paper. In all cases, our reconstruction shows significantly more skill than the Steig reconstruction. So if these are the metrics by which we are to judge this type of reconstruction, ours is objectively superior.
As before, I would qualify this by saying that not all of the errors and uncertainties have been quantified yet, so I’m not comfortable putting a ton of stock into any of these reconstructions. However, I am perfectly comfortable saying that Steig’s reconstruction is not a faithful representation of Antarctic temperatures over the past 50 years and that ours is closer to the mark.”
I just found this on the Drudge Report and am terrified! AGW is killing people right now!!
http://www.forexyard.com/reuters/popup_reuters.php?action=2009-05-28T222242Z_01_LS1002309_RTRIDST_0_CLIMATE-HUMAN-EMBARGOED
What’s happening with the MDI Magnetogram? It has been two days that it is not changing when all the other images of the sun have changed? http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/realtime-update.html
No one has pointed this out yet, but Steven Chu is supposed to be concerned with ‘climate change’ not ‘global warming’. His ‘paint everything white’ could only help for global warming.
Chu is not up on the latest iteration.
He’s right—blackboard paint!!
O/T
From the UK telegraph
World’s leading scientists warn climate change is as great a threat as nuclear warfare
The threat of climate change is as severe as nuclear warfare, according to an emergency summit of the world’s Nobel Laureates.
The group of Nobel winners, together with Prince Charles, issued a memorandum which declared the best chance of stopping catastrophic climate change is to keep the predicted temperature rise at or below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/5401597/Worlds-leading-scientists-warn-climate-change-is-as-great-a-threat-as-nuclear-warfare.html
It’s probably just bad reporting but…I know this is pedantic but surely the easiest way to keep a predicted temperature down is to use a different method of prediction.
Very nice explanation of cosmoclimatology in this YouTube series :
Qt RealClimate found this:
“RealClimate is temporarily down for maintenance. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”
Maybe Lubos was right back in April:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/04/realclimate-abolished.html
May I suggest an examination of the CEOs of the major “White Roof Paint” manufacturers for their affilliations to members of government. [/cynicism]
VG, thanks for that 2006 Clilverd et al paper.
In 2006 the sun was behaving ‘normally’ and NASA’s preictions of a supercycle 24 were being issued to the public. Yet Clilverd et al, although going against consensus at the time, expected a cycle 24 of peak +- 50 ,now appear to be correct.
They must be doing something right!
*predictions
Clilverd et al are correct (so far) in that they expected a weak cycle 24 with a delayed start, which is exactly what is currently happening, and therefore their prediction of low sunspot max for sc24 is becoming a likely event to occur.
the answer would be in summer/winter is a sort of substance that once an electric current is passed through it it changes colour. 😉 in winter its dark to absorb what heats there, white to reflect it when its too hot..
why not put solar panels on the roof, get energy less use of coal power.. wouldnt be as obtrusive.
how much would that help?
Wow two stories make this a a big day (on this site) for death knell of AGW
1. Svensmark vidoes
2. Ryan debunking of modeled antarctic warming
Leif,
do you agree?
http://www.physorg.com/news162653480.html
“Go ahead and mark your calendar for May 2013,” says Pesnell. “But use a pencil.”
“Skeptic” commented above about this April being the 5th hottest ever. Some time ago I read an interesting statistic about record hot months, using GISS data, as I had got tired of hearing alarmist news about records actually NOT being broken (5th warmest means it is NOT the warmest). In my statistic, each month whose anomaly was bigger than those of the same months in the previous 10 years counted as +1, and when the opposite happened, i.e. the month being the coldest among the same months in the previous 10 years, they counted -1. I checked all anomalies since 1970. This is what I found out:
1) Before the 80’s, cold records were normal. However, during the 80’s (1981-1990) a huge warming seemed to take place. The decadal average was of 3 record hot months per year, i.e. months which would create news like “this April was the hottest April in the last 10 years”. There were zero 10-year-record-cold months.
2) In the 90’s (1991-2000) the average dropped to just 1.9 10-year-record-hot months per year, and the Pinatubo led to three 10-year-record-cold months in 1992.
3) Since 2001, the average has again dropped to only 1.25 10-year-record-hot months per year. It seems to me like there is still some warming, but the speed of the warming is every time SLOWER, NOT FASTER. Another proof of this is that, during all the 80’s and the 90’s, it took a Pinatubo event to create any 10-year-record-cold monthly temperature. However, since 2001, we have had 3 such record cold months, in August 2004 and in January and February 2008. Furthermore, with April 2009 we have been already 2 full years without getting ANY 10-year-record-hot month, and with two 10-year-record-cold months in the middle, which means that the average is negative for the last 2 years or more (actually, since February 2007). You can only compare the length of this (hot) recordless time with the huge La Niñas of 1999-2000 and with the Pinatubo itself, but at no other time since 1985 have we seen 2 full years without any 10-year-record-hot month. However this time we don’t have either huge volcanic eruptions or extremely long and strong la Niñas to prevent hot months from happening. And, in fact, CO2 is increasing faster than in the previous events.
I think this looks like the beginning of a cooling trend.
jeez (17:31:17) :
John Finn:
You do realize you’re posting temperatures from the 18th Century and early 19th with .01 degree precision?
Don’t you cringe at the thought?
I’m happy to use them to the nearest half a degree if you like in which case there is still no change as each decade averaged 9 deg C.
No matter how much those numbers have been massaged and corrected you’d be lucky if those numbers were accurate plus or minus several degrees.
Nonsense. The CET is a long standing record and from there is high confidence in it’s relative accuracy from ~1772.
This does not constitute evidence of anything except spurious accuracy.
It was good enough to be used by an earlier poster. It’s also good enough to be used by David Archibald – who also used the Armagh record. Are you somehow saying that Armagh is accurate but CET is not. What about Uppsala – and other similar long term records. If the long term records are in dispute – could you answer this:
What evidence is there that periods of low solar activity coincide with low global temperatures? Surely you’re not relying on paintings or literature or someone reporting that “it’s a bit parky this winter”.