I got a tip by email from JohnA who runs solarscience.auditblogs.com about this NASA press release. John’s skeptical about it. He makes some good points in this post here.
What I most agree with JohnA’s post is about sunspots. While we’ve seen some small rumblings that the solar dynamo might be on the upswing, such as watching Leif’s plot of the 10.7 CM solar radio flux, there just doesn’t appear to be much change in character of the sunspots during the last year. And the magnetic field strength just doesn’t seem to be ramping up much.
He writes:
“Let’s check out the window”
On Solarcycle24.com they’ve got yet another sun speck recorded yesterday, that by today had disappeared. Exactly the same behaviour we’ve been having for 12 months with no end in sight.
I agree with JohnA, it’s still a bit slow out there. Leif is at the conference in Boulder where NASA made this announcement below, so perhaps he’ll fill us in on the details.
Here is the NASA story:
Mystery of the Missing Sunspots, Solved?
June 17, 2009: The sun is in the pits of a century-class solar minimum, and sunspots have been puzzlingly scarce for more than two years. Now, for the first time, solar physicists might understand why.
At an American Astronomical Society press conference today in Boulder, Colorado, researchers announced that a jet stream deep inside the sun is migrating slower than usual through the star’s interior, giving rise to the current lack of sunspots.
Rachel Howe and Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona, used a technique called helioseismology to detect and track the jet stream down to depths of 7,000 km below the surface of the sun. The sun generates new jet streams near its poles every 11 years, they explained to a room full of reporters and fellow scientists. The streams migrate slowly from the poles to the equator and when a jet stream reaches the critical latitude of 22 degrees, new-cycle sunspots begin to appear.
Above: A helioseismic map of the solar interior. Tilted red-yellow bands trace solar jet streams. Black contours denote sunspot activity. When the jet streams reach a critical latitude around 22 degrees, sunspot activity intensifies. [larger image] [more graphics]
Howe and Hill found that the stream associated with the next solar cycle has moved sluggishly, taking three years to cover a 10 degree range in latitude compared to only two years for the previous solar cycle.
The jet stream is now, finally, reaching the critical latitude, heralding a return of solar activity in the months and years ahead.
“It is exciting to see”, says Hill, “that just as this sluggish stream reaches the usual active latitude of 22 degrees, a year late, we finally begin to see new groups of sunspots emerging.”
he current solar minimum has been so long and deep, it prompted some scientists to speculate that the sun might enter a long period with no sunspot activity at all, akin to the Maunder Minimum of the 17th century. This new result dispells those concerns. The sun’s internal magnetic dynamo is still operating, and the sunspot cycle is not “broken.”
Because it flows beneath the surface of the sun, the jet stream is not directly visible. Hill and Howe tracked its hidden motions via helioseismology. Shifting masses inside the sun send pressure waves rippling through the stellar interior. So-called “p modes” (p for pressure) bounce around the interior and cause the sun to ring like an enormous bell. By studying the vibrations of the sun’s surface, it is possible to figure out what is happening inside. Similar techniques are used by geologists to map the interior of our planet.
In this case, researchers combined data from GONG and SOHO. GONG, short for “Global Oscillation Network Group,” is an NSO-led network of telescopes that measures solar vibrations from various locations around Earth. SOHO, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, makes similar measurements from Earth orbit.
“This is an important discovery,” says Dean Pesnell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “It shows how flows inside the sun are tied to the creation of sunspots and how jet streams can affect the timing of the solar cycle.”
There is, however, much more to learn.
“We still don’t understand exactly how jet streams trigger sunspot production,” says Pesnell. “Nor do we fully understand how the jet streams themselves are generated.”
To solve these mysteries, and others, NASA plans to launch the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) later this year. SDO is equipped with sophisticated helioseismology sensors that will allow it to probe the solar interior better than ever before.
Right: An artist’s concept of the Solar Dynamics Observatory. [more]
“The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on SDO will improve our understanding of these jet streams and other internal flows by providing full disk images at ever-increasing depths in the sun,” says Pesnell.
Continued tracking and study of solar jet streams could help researchers do something unprecedented–accurately predict the unfolding of future solar cycles. Stay tuned for that!
Frank Hll (06:52:18) :
Anna v – I have read some of the literature on CO2-caused global warming, but I am certainly not an expert. I personally am not sure what the overall cause is, but I am impressed by the observation of Casper Amman that the warming seems to be coming from the bottom and not from the top of the atmosphere. That seems to indicate that either the sea surface is somehow warming, or that human activity is playing a role. Also, the tight correlation between the rise in global temperatures and the advent of the industrial age is striking (but correlation does not prove causation). What area of physics do you work in?.
Climatology is way out of my field, (experimental particle physics, retired), and until about a year and half ago, I tended to believe what the “experts” were telling me, according to them the respect I would expect from them if I were telling them about the quark model.
I became gradually disillusioned, starting with their announcements of 6 meter floodings ( I have a holiday cottage by the sea) and the sudden disappearance of the warm middle ages ( I am a great fan of the monk Cadfael of Ellis Peter’s novels, who was brewing wine around 1000 ad in Wales).
So I started reading the last IPCC report, the physics justification of the claims. I have to tell you that while perusing part of that I had to walk around pulling my hair at the gross misuse of scientific methodology and language, talking to myself.
In a nutshell, there are no errors calculated for all those catastrophic plots. What seem to a normal scientist error bands, are variations of input parameters not according to errors but to the feelings of the modelers to test the stability of the solutions paying lip service to chaos. If one varies one crucial parameter by its error, albedo, the projections would move all over the temperature phasespace, from cooling to heating, but of course this is not shown.
I started looking in the so called General Circulation Models:
They are a disaster, well documented in this blog if you have the patience to go through.
1) They grid the planet in huge volumes that ignore clouds and albedo except as averages.
2) They use badly documented data, as this blog has amply shown
3) They use first order linear approximations for the fluid solutions at the grid boundaries , and all those mean values they use are also linear first order approximations in effect.
4) Then with a huge number of parameters they fit the temperature record. The cloud records and other records are a disaster that they try to hide by the sphaghetti graphs, a lot of models on the same plot making a cloud of nonsense around an average. Von Neuman is supposed to have said: with five parameters I can fit an elephant.
5) The predictions have been falsified by many data
a) the temperatures are in stasis since 1998. If we just started recording we would be talking of cooling
b) the tropical troposphere signature is not there , it is not warming at twice the rate of the surface as the IPCC models need
c) ditto for relative humidity that is crucial in the H2O feedback mechanism their models need , it is falling instead of rising
d) the oceans are also cooling, certainly since 2003
The higher previous temperatures could be the warm Pacific Decadal Oscillation that has now turned into a cool PDO possibly for the next thirty years. Certainly the ocean would heat from below, no?
Anyway Casper Amman is not of good standing in the skeptics blogs being involved in the tree ring mess trying to disappear the medieval warm period by tricks. Go to the CA blog for that ( link top right)
For example of the influence of currents etc on temperature:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/17/bob-tisdale-on-ncdcs-usgrp-report/#comment-146264
Please do not adopt, without digging further, claims made by people who have a great investment in global warming, from grants and funding (billions go to climate research because the sky is falling) to prestige, without spending some critical thought on their sayings.
There are people who take the NASA findings seriously and grab the opportunity to slab AGW deniers:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/06/18/national-solar-observatory-nasa-say-no-maunder-minimum-sorry-deniers-solar-cycle-24-poised-to-rev-up/
kuhnkat (20:08:13) :
[i] The reference you provide is to an artificial, externally forced, field. How does this compare to Nebulae or Jets seen by astronomers where there is no external containment equipment????[/i]
For possibility of plasma confinement see:
Self Generated “Bootstrap” Current Contains Magnetic Fusion Plasma
http://www.aps.org/meetings/unit/dpp/vpr2004/upload/politzer.pdf
Hi Bill —
The ACRIM instruments measures TSI, total solar irradiance. This is the total energy measured in watts per square meter. It is the power per unit area of the sun integrated over all spectral wavelengths. Another quantity is SSI, spectral solar irradiance, measured in watts per square meter per nanometer (a unit of wavelength of light). This is the power per unit area over a limited range of wavelengths, the range has to be specified for the measurement to be useful. TSI does not specify the wavelength range, because it covers all wavelengths from radio to x-rays. The TSI fluctuates much less than the SSI in some wavelengths, for example, the ultraviolet SSI fluctuates by 20% over the sunspot cycle while the TSI only changes by 0.1%.
Hi anna v —
Thanks for the info. I’ll take a look into the refereed papers. I do not place much faith in the accuracy of blogs.
Frank
Frank Hill 09:40:19
Heh, in this case, the blogs are getting the story a lot more accurately than the general climate models, which have failed dramatically. Check out lucia’s Blackboard for the disconfirmation at the 95% confidence level. Honestly, sir, it appears that the true effect of CO2 is so little that it cannot keep the earth warming. The globe is cooling whether it is the sun causing it or not. I second anna v’s comment. It is excellent.
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Hi Kim —
Thanks for the info. I’ll take a look into the refereed papers. I do not place much faith in the accuracy of blogs.
To Anna V,
The retracted paper was titled “Gravitomagnetic Fields in Rotating Superconductors due to Fractal Space-Time” (2004). The main experiment is seemingly live and well. fractal space time!?
To you and Frank Hill both; I’m glad that you two are around and express yourselves as you do. We can all learn from your methods and manners. GV
Frank Hill,
Thank you for your posting and good luck with your research.
In the mean time I will continue to watch the grain prices and attend WUWT to keep informed what’s up with our climate.
Truly the best science blog of the world.
Now generally about refereed papers and blogs one would expect the former to lead in accuracy. The truth is that blogs have found refereed papers to be dubious, to say the least. Exampe recently:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/18/note-to-ncdc-climate-report-authors-try-using-the-telephone-next-time/
All AGW is in refereed papers, but refereed by whom? It is more and more coming out that there is a clique that referees itself and corners the markets, in my not so humble opinion. From the moment that global warming became a political issue and a billions of euros/dollars issue, it stopped being science.
Thank God for blogs.
Frank Hll (09:35:37) :
The ACRIM instruments measures TSI, total solar irradiance. …TSI does not specify the wavelength range, because it covers all wavelengths from radio to x-rays. …
Thank you for that.
There are so many people here trying to prove a solar influence on Global warming/global cooling.
There main arguement is that there must be something coming from the sun that is not accounted for by TSI.
This leaves them with gravity and magnetism (I wonder how many perpetual motion machines are based on magnetism!!!!)
Geoff Sharp (08:05:25) :
No need for rude replies, Geoff. Try scientific debate instead. Simply work out the documentation to support your views, and let the world see it. What you have presented so far does not hold water (see links in my earlier reply).
Just need an answer, If it ain`t the sun wot caused the past coolings and warmings what was it.
rob (13:21:44) :
Just need an answer, If it ain`t the sun wot caused the past coolings and warmings what was it.
Milankovitch cycles. These are changes in the earth’s temperature caused by changes in the orbital eccentricity, precession, and tilt of the earth’s rotation axis. Here’s the wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
Why identify the “22 degrees” as a critical point, rather than some other feature of the graph at this point? It looks to me like the onset of sunspots coincides with the point at which there become two distinct “jet streams”. That might even make sense if the magnetic fields don’t start to twist and pop out until there are two “jet streams” driving them. No evidence in the graph that a second “jet stream” has started.
UN IPCC Scientist does not agree with Romm’a NASA assessment, stating that all NASA predictions untill today have been wrong.
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/1497/UN-IPCC-Scientist-Rejects-Romms-Claims-as-nonsense-on-all-countsNASAs-predictions-of-next-solar-cycle-have-all-been-wrong
@ur momisugly Frank Hll (06:52:18) :
Hill wrote: “The irradiance variations of 0.1% are too small to cause thermal changes that can affect our climate.”
The irradiance does not account for the total energy budget received from the Sun by the Earth. This is a fallacy that gets repeated by many heliographers.
No, I respectfully disagree with your assessment.
Hill wrote: “Sorry to shout but there is a hundred years of literature on the subject, which basically shows short-term correlations that disappear after a few solar cycles, along with a lack of plausible physical mechanisms that could link sunspots to climate.”
With the increase in sunspots there is an increase in solar energy output. The difference between solar maximum and solar minimum energy output is evident.
The mechanisms for transport of this increased energy output is by way of Birkeland currents directly from the Sun to the Earth as a result of Coronal Mass Ejections which impinge on the Earth’s magnetosphere and often do penetrate the magnetosphere as NASA has reported.
Also, electromagnetic energy that is deflected over the magnetosphere gets stored in the magneto tail and is refularly released in the form of electromagnetic “magnetic tornadoes” with 100,000 amps of electrical energy to the atmosphere around the poles.
Also, when the Sun is at solar minimum the solar wind tends to “slow down” and have less “pressure”, electrical energy, this tends to effect the hight and thickness of the ionosphere by lowering it in hight from the surface by a significant degree. In essence, this brings the “icy cold of space” closer to the surface and allows more radiation of energy away from the Earth.
Until heliographers compute the total difference in energy output (all energy types combined in a total figure) between solar maximum and solar minimum there doesn’t seem much possibility in producing accurate climate models.
Also getting a handle on total energy of all types recieved by the Earth from the Sun over the course of a solar cycle is vital.
Confining yourself and other scientists to irradiance is not presenting the total picture of the Sun’s energy output.
That is a necessary prerequisite to accurate climate modelling and understanding and knowledge of the Sun.
Frank Hll (13:56:37) :
rob (13:21:44) :
Just need an answer, If it ain`t the sun wot caused the past coolings and warmings what was it.
Milankovitch cycles. These are changes in the earth’s temperature caused by changes in the orbital eccentricity, precession, and tilt of the earth’s rotation axis. Here’s the wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
I thought Milankovic cycles handles longer durations fairly well, in the order of 10,000 years. Do they really explain 200 year cycles? The wikipedia article is pretty vague there.
Are there some good reference to show how Milankovic cycles would explain the Maunder, Sporer, Dalton minimums, and the Medieval, Roman etc. optimums?
thanks,
Robert
Gee Wizz, I use to think highly of NASA, NASA was something to be proud of. NASA was an ICON of USA. Now it’s a just sad reminder of just how sick politics can create lies and deception. Now even NASA is crooked and pathetic. I will steer my 8 and 5 year olds away from wanting to work there.
WOW is this correct you think? I saw this above.
1410-1500 cold (Sporer minimum)
1510-1600 warm
1610-1700 cold (Maunder minimum)
1710-1800 warm
1810-1900 cold (Dalton minimum)
1910-2000 warm
2010-2100 (cold???)
If so, it’s not going to be a pretty site for the world. Many of AGW people (and the rest of us) are all going die in the coming years.
I can see it now, CO2 warm up caused us to reach the tipping point and froze us all to death by stravation
rbateman (08:41:21) :
kuhnkat (20:00:33) :
Geoff Sharp (23:45:07) :
MattB (03:30:35) :
Yes, before things get too far out of hand.
The image below is my best attempt so far to quantify the issue:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/f_ssn2008-9a.JPG
I’ll start a thread on solarcycle24.com…lets see if we can come up with a standard.
It’s really kind of sad…oh look at that tiny spot over there, see it? Oh woohoo, the sun is back to normal and the earth can start heating up again soon. We can tax everyone so the Government can play rollerball with all of the people.
Of course the Birkeland of the current is also he of the Birkeland Eyde process for fixing nitrogen although I had not made the connection until now.
Amazing what you learn on this blog.
Now when I was a young student back in the 60’s the Milankovic cycle was largely discredited because it does not fit the onset of ice ages very well.
The albedo effect was well understood so the idea that cloud formation with increasing ocean surface temperature acted as thermostat to prevent overheating, as discussed in another post, was generally accepted.
As was the idea that ice ages were fairly stable because the increased albedo of the ice rereflected muh sunlight but that the equatorial extent of the ice was limited by the shape of the land mass and the warmth of the tropical seas.
Why the climate flipped between glacial and interglacial states was not understood but it was known that ‘Global’ temperature in either state fluctuated over relatively short periods of centuries. Both the LIA and the MWP warm period, then called the Medieval Climatic Optimum were well known as was the Cold Dark Ages and the Roman Warm Period. After all how do you think Hannibal got his elephants over the Alps unless the passes were open in the winter? As we know they were from written accounts of the time which is how Transalpine Gaul came to be a Roman province.
This smaller and more frequent variation led people to suppose that it was variation in solar activity that drove climatic changes and the connection with sunspots was well known if not codified.
And there the matter rested. It was of limited academic interest but little more.
Until of course the current AGW confloption.
Now consider the alternative arguments.
A] says that variations in the Sun drive observed climate changes by a mechanism [a] only imperfectly understood.
B] says that by calculation the variation in insolation cannot be sufficient to cause these observed changes and THEREFORE some other mechanism [b] is responsible. It also asserts that [b] is due to GHGs.
But B by its own calculation says [b] is insufficient to cause the observed changes so it is argued a further mechanism [c] amplifies the changes: and [c] is said to be the increase in water vapour in the atmosphere due to the warming of the oceans.
Note [1] the first fallacy. If [c] exists it is independent of [b] because it does not matter how or why the oceans warm only that they do. So [c], if it exists, could be driven by either [b] or [a] or posssibly both or indeed some other mechanism we know nothing of, let us all it [d]. And we might, for example, postulate that [d] is due to the efforts of the stokers in the Infernal Regions who often work overtime but sometimes skive off. It does not matter what [d] might be.
Now note [2] that the effects [b] and [c], if it exists, are predicted by making calculations on as yet unproven assumptions as to the nature of the exact processes which produce these mechanisms. It might be that the figures produced for the effects of the atmosphere and so called atmospheric forcings are broadly correct or it might be they are gravely in error. We have no way to know.
Furthermore note [3] that that it the calculations as per [2] that are used to suggest that [a] cannot be a suffiient mechanism of itself.
What a mess.
In science we always prefer the simpler explanation which fits the observations to the more complex one.
Yet here we have two competing hypotheses neither of which according to calculations based on unproven assumptions as per 2 can account for the observed changes in climate.
So we are asked to accept that B which by its own calculations necessarily depends on some other mechanism [c], which may or may not exist, is a simpler and better hypothesis than A on the basis of the selfsame calulations whih do not include the unknown effects of A on climate such as variations in spectrum, solar wind etc.
Moreover we are asked to accept that whilst B necessarily by its own calulation depends on [c], which may or may not exist, to amplify [b], somehow [c] could not amplify [a].
It is indeed a mad, mad world my masters.
Kindest Regards
Frank Hll (09:35:37) wrote: “The ACRIM instruments measures TSI, total solar irradiance. This is the total energy measured in watts per square meter. It is the power per unit area of the sun integrated over all spectral wavelengths.”
bill (12:16:51) wrote : “There are so many people here trying to prove a solar influence on Global warming/global cooling. There main arguement is that there must be something coming from the sun that is not accounted for by TSI.”
TSI measures the electromagnetic spectrum of electromagnetic radiation(photons). This covers radio, microwaves, infrared, visible, ultraviolet light, X-rays, and Gamma rays.
It does not measure energy output of the Sun conveyed by electromagnetically charged particles (energized electrons and ions), this energy is related, but distinct from photon energy. The electrical attractive force is 10^36 more powerful than the attractive force of gravity.
The energy of electromagnetically charged particles emitted by the Sun is the principle reason for the difference in the Sun’s energy output at solar maximum and solar minumum. Whatever the cause for solar maximums and minimums, this variance in output of charged particles and consequent electrical energy is the reason for the evident visual difference between a solar maximum and solar minimum.
There is also the question whether the Sun’s electromagnetic output (charged particles) is more energetic per electron and ion at solar maximum than at solar minimum?
This whole source of energy is omitted by “black squares” that measure irradiance of the Sun.
It is a significant and measurable amount of energy that the Earth receives from the Sun.
It is real and it is not counted.
Steven Hill (17:13:11) :
It’s really kind of sad…oh look at that tiny spot over there, see it? Oh woohoo, the sun is back to normal and the earth can start heating up again soon. We can tax everyone so the Government can play rollerball with all of the people.
Yes Steven, that was my first thought when I read the article.
They (the warmists) don’t want the solar influence on either side of the equation.
The solar minimum triggering a cooling as recently portrailed in the media, could be questioning the concept of CO2 driven warming, right?
So let’s bring out an ‘Eureka’ publication on the sun before the votes are taken.
We have to be absolutely sure CO2 is the culprit, CO2 and CO2 only, what else can we tax, right?
Well, the cat is in the bag when it’s in the bag.
But for now, the cat is still on the loose.
No sunspots today.