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!
Yes, Gary… Let’s spot on ISG instead sunspots. I’ve made an extrapolation to the past; I went back to 11550 years ago and the Holocene Optimum appeared automatically; so it was for the MGW and the LIA. Unfortunately, my paper, already corrected, has not been sent back from reviewers. As soon it is approved, it will be published at biocab’s pages and Anthony and all of you will be the first in knowing it, That if you’re interested in my humble work. 🙂
I guess they at NASA are guessing… Some kind of desperate thinking. Anyway, two local newspapers feed the fire with the purpose of Mexican Fed. Government of starting, voluntarily, “the fight against GW and CC” (Sic). Obviously, radical environmentalists got excited by the news; however, there is not GW neither CC in any place of the mexican territory. That “analysis” on the adverse effects of CC in Guadalajara, Mexico, was a fake… It was pure speculation.
Anaconda (17:26:45) :
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.
1st: there is no such thing as “electromagnetically charged particles’. There are electrically charged particles [equal amount of both charges because the electric force is so much stronger than the gravitational that if there were the slightest difference, say more protons than electrons, the extra positive charge would simply pull the missing electrons up from the Sun.
2nd: There is a flow of electromagnetic energy [other than radiant energy] from the Sun. It is called the Poynting Vector flux and amounts to 0.000,006 W/m2 about 200,000,000 times smaller than the irradiance.
Anaconda (17:26:45) :
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.
1st: there is no such thing as “electromagnetically charged particles’. There are electrically charged particles [equal amount of both charges because the electric force is so much stronger than the gravitational that if there were the slightest difference, say more protons than electrons, the extra positive charge would simply pull the missing electrons up from the Sun.
2nd: There is a flow of electromagnetic energy [other than radiant energy] from the Sun. It is called the Poynting Vector flux and amounts to 0.000,006 W/m2, about 200,000,000 times smaller than the irradiance.
John W. (04:15:47) :
I realize you doubt the hypothesis that solar activity is the principal driver of climate variation.
Not quite my viewpoint, which is: “it has not been demonstrated to my satisfaction that the Sun is the [or even just a significant] principal driver of climate”. This is not the same as doubting such a connection, because such doubt would have to be based on evidence of the contrary [and as the old saying goes: ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’]. What I doubt is that the various pieces of ‘evidence’ that have been brought forward are compelling.
1. Is there any objective standard, such as seconds of subtended solid angle and duration, that is used to determine what constitutes a spot (based on observation in the visible spectrum)?
To a large degree, yes.
2. If not, why not?
moot
3. Could the historical record be examined to develop a lower boundary for observability?
The historical record is being re-examined and is found wanting. c.f. my poster at the SPD meeting just finished: http://www.leif.org/research/SPD-2009.pdf and other work that can be found on my website: http://www.leif.org/research/
4. Would that allow us to review current sunspot counts and address the concern that some parties may be “cooking the books?”
Yes, although I don’t think there is any cooking, except by the Sun in the sense that sunspots may not be very good proxies for solar activity at all times.
Howe and Hill wrote:
“The 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.”
Two questions for Howe and Hill:
Why should another Maunder Minimum be the cause of any “concerns?”
and
Who said anything was “broken?”
To paraphrase Herman Melvillle:
Solar science, like every other human science, is but a passing fable.
P. Hager (13:41:23) :
Rather than counting sunspots, would it make more sense to report and track the area of the sun covered by sun spots.
It would make more sense to report and track the total magnetic flux on the Sun, e.g. as done here: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/150_data.html#plots
vukcevic (14:11:51) :
For ‘misguided’ minority who happen to believe that magnetic field in plasma could only exist as a result of an electric current flow
The misguided are the ones that do not realize [and they might be excused because it is hard to visualize] that in a plasma the magnetic field generates a current that in turn sustains and maintain the magnetic field. There is a symmetry between the two: one creates the other that maintains the former.
Another process takes place in an old-fashioned bicycle lamp dynamo: it consists of a conductor [a copper coil] and a magnet. If the two are at rest with respect to each other, the lamp does not give any light, but if the magnet is made to move [by friction with the wheel], a current is induced in the coil causing the lamp to emit light. So kinetic energy is converted into a current that is dissipated in a resistor and converted into radiant energy with the magnetic field as a mediator. A similar process takes place in many cosmical plasmas.
Why should another Maunder Minimum be the cause of any “concerns?”
and
Who said anything was “broken?”
1.) You don’t know exactly what you are getting or how long it will last
(the correlations (nix causations) are not strolls in the Garden. Minimum as far as we know come in unique flavors. No two alike.
But if you don’t place much weight in what writers in past time wrote, don’t sweat it.
2.) Murphy.
Leif Svalgaard (23:23:19) :
Another process takes place in an old-fashioned bicycle lamp dynamo: it consists of a conductor [a copper coil] and a magnet. If the two are at rest with respect to each other, the lamp does not give any light, but if the magnet is made to move [by friction with the wheel], a current is induced in the coil causing the lamp to emit light.
Fascinating ! Mystery resolved. Thanks, appreciate your valuable time.
Frank Hill, I have decided not to let the slur about gas guzzlers pass without comment. This is a war for the integrity of science, and it is a bitter one. Furthermore, if we are cooling long term as I suspect, we far more likely face a climate catastrophe from global cooling than from global warming. Mitigating a warming that isn’t happening instead of adapting to a cooling that is happening will be lethal for very many of the world’s poor, presently living on the margin. It is incumbent upon you to pay attention.
===========================================
kim (04:02:06) :
Frank Hill, I have decided not to let the slur about gas guzzlers pass
Interesting! Just how is driving a gas guzzler going to help the world’s poor. Are you suggesting that we all drive them to increase CO2 and warm the planet? Hmmm! but then that would mean you believing in AGW!
A european 7 seater car (Zafira) will give you neary 40mpg average.
Isn’t this achievable in the US? If not why not?
Round up of wheat yields so far for 2009. A combination of set-aside, credit-crunch reductions in fertiliser and pesticides, bio-fuel production and non-cost-effective harvesting, and climatic changes, cold and drought mainly. The warning is writ large and may extend not to the hungry billion in deprived situations but the developed world also. In 1816 during the Dalton Minimum late summer frosts devastated the agricultural output of North America. We were then still reliant on horse power and a largely rural populace maximising a poor harvest for food, perhaps we should reintroduce gleaning?
1) Romania = output wheat down -30%
2) Ukraine = output wheat down -27%
3) Hungary = output wheat down -28.5%
4) Czech = output wheat down -20%
5) Bulgaria = output wheat down -30%
6) Poland = output wheat down -10%
7) Spain = output wheat down -42%
8) Australia = output down -10-35%
9) Argentina = output down -34%
10) China = output down -20% or more
11) US = output down -20% or more
12) Canada = output down -12%
13) Russia = output wheat down -21.5%
@ur momisugly Leif Svalgaard:
Svalgaard wrote: “[I]n a plasma the magnetic field generates a current that in turn sustains and maintain the magnetic field. There is a symmetry between the two: one creates the other that maintains the former.”
No.
Maxwell’s equations are quite clear on the matter: Electric current generates a magnetic field. The electron movement is generated by the electromotive attraction between free electrons and positive ions. It is true that once electron flow (ordered electron movement) occurs and thus generates a magnetic field, that magnetic field can in turn effect and even cause electron movement (electric current).
But the first causation is electron movement as a result of the electromotive attraction force.
Your above statement is classic circular reasoning.
“[O]ne creates the other that maintains the former.”
Dr. Svalgaard, you have it backwards.
Another way to put it: Magnetic fields are creatures of electric currents.
In isolation, an electric current is necessary to cause a magnetic field. A magnetic field can not stand in isolation without an electric current (ordered electron movement) to sustain it.
kim (04:02:06) :
Frank Hill, I have decided not to let the slur about gas guzzlers pass
Interesting! Just how is driving a gas guzzler going to help the world’s poor. Are you suggesting that we all drive them to increase CO2 and warm the planet? Hmmm! but then that would mean you believing in AGW!
That’s the best straw man since Dorothy’s adventure in Technicolor, congratulations Bill.
bill (05:00:00) :
kim (04:02:06) :
Frank Hill, I have decided not to let the slur about gas guzzlers pass
Interesting! Just how is driving a gas guzzler going to help the world’s poor. Are you suggesting that we all drive them to increase CO2 and warm the planet? Hmmm! but then that would mean you believing in AGW!
A european 7 seater car (Zafira) will give you neary 40mpg average.
Isn’t this achievable in the US? If not why not?
Bill,
If you put 7 average Americans in an Opel Zafira, the car body will hit the street. I am affraid it can only can be done when the side windows are opened so they can stick their arms out.
You can’t compare a mini-mini-van with a mini-van or a van.
Americans buy their cars for loading space, towing capacity and comfort.
That is what determines the size and weight of the body and the power of the engine.
If you drive a Zafira, you can go shopping, but some family members have to stay at home.
You can tow a trailer, but not heavier than 1.200 kg.
You can drive 3000 miles, but not without regular stops to stretch your legs.
You can forgett about unpaved roads and heavy snow.
I wonder why anybody would like to drive such a car.
Chrysler was producing 40 mpg+ diesel cars already, which offer AWD, powerfull engines and towing capacity and more room than a Zafira.
I you still want to drive the big 8 cylinder gasoline engines, simply convert them to Liquid Petrol Gas. You save a bundle in fuel costs, you can fill them up using a big tank at your home and the exhaust emissions are clean (water and CO2).
If you want to drive clean diesel, with higher milage and more power, add a small LPG tank and a single injector that injects LPG into the fuel pump.
The LPG is mixed with the diesel. Due to this mix you will have a clean burning process without particles.
These are simple, effective, reliable and tested technologies to lower your fuel costs and promote clean driving.
Unfortunately the technology to combine LPG and Diesel (dual fuel) is forbidden in Europe, but the technology is available and allowed in the USA.
I have a question which might have been asked before:
Last year had the highest number of spotless days for a hundred years. But we seem to be counting micro spots that seem to just cover a few pixels on the full sized images of the sun. It seem logical to assume that these micro spots have only been detectable after we had space resident telescopes and as the poster above has found with his land based telescope, are impossible to see on earth.
So therefor, aren’t the sunspot and so spotfull days counts drastically over reported compared to historical data, and so now, when looking for trends, we should be only taking into accounts spots now that are big enough to have been seen a hundred years ago, and if this had been done, then there would have been many more spotless days, maybe even a whole spotless year.
Patrick
Patrick
Anaconda (05:45:28) :
“[O]ne creates the other that maintains the former.”
Dr. Svalgaard, you have it backwards.
Gene Parker describes it best in his delightful recent book:
“Conversations on Electric and Magnetic Fields in the Cosmos
Eugene N. Parker”
“Today’s standard textbooks treat the theoretical structure of electric and magnetic fields, but their emphasis is on electromagnetic radiation and static-electric and magnetic fields. In this book, Eugene Parker provides advanced graduate students and researchers with a much-needed complement to existing texts, one that discusses the dynamic electromagnetism of the cosmos–that is, the vast magnetic fields that are carried bodily in the swirling ionized gases of stars and galaxies and throughout intergalactic space.
Parker is arguably the world’s leading authority on solar wind and the effects of magnetic fields in the heliosphere, and his originality of thought and distinctive approach to physics are very much in evidence here. Seeking to enrich discussions in standard texts and correct misconceptions about the dynamics of these large-scale fields, Parker engages readers in a series of “conversations” that are at times anecdotal and even entertaining without ever sacrificing theoretical rigor. The dynamics he describes represents the Maxwell stresses of the magnetic field working against the pressure and inertia of the bulk motion of ionized gases, characterized in terms of the magnetic field and gas velocity. Parker shows how this dynamic interaction cannot be fully expressed in terms of the electric current and electric field.
Conversations on Electric and Magnetic Fields in the Cosmos goes back to basics to explain why classical hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics are inescapable, even in the deepest reaches of space.”
You can read several of the important pages free here:
http://books.google.com/books/p/princeton?id=7gJ_i3CTcpQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI&hl=en
I extract the introduction here for your convenience:
1.1 General Remarks
The theoretical structure of electric and magnetic fields is presented in the standard textbooks, and one may ask why further conversation on the subject is useful or interesting. What is new that has not already been said many times before? The reply is that the emphasis in the usual formulation of electromagnetism is directed toward static electric and magnetic fields and then to electromagnetic radiation, whereas we are interested here in the electromagnetism of the cosmos – the large-scale magnetic fields that are transported bodily in the swirling ionized gases (plasmas) of planetary magnetospheres, stars, and galaxies, and, indeed, throughout intergalactic space. The plasma and the magnetic fields appear to be everywhere throughout the universe. The essential feature is that no significant electric field can arise in the frame of reference of the moving plasma. Hence, the large-scale dynamics of the magnetic field is tied to the hydrodynamics (HD) of the swirling plasma in the manner described by theoretical magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). So we shall have a fresh look at the theoretical foundations of both HD and MHD. The conventional derivations of the basic equations of HD and MHD are correct, of course, but the derivations ignore some fundamental questions, allowing a variety of misconceptions to flourish in the scientific community. We work out a minimal physical derivation, laying bare the simplicity of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the validity of HD and MHD to describe the large-scale bulk motion of plasma and fields. The magnetic field is transported bodily with the bulk motion of the plasma, and the dynamics is basically the mechanical interaction between the stresses in the magnetic field B and the pressure p and bulk momentum density NMv of the plasma velocity v. The associated electric current j and the electric field E in the laboratory frame of reference play no direct role in the dynamics. They are created and driven by the varying B and v. If needed for some purpose, they are readily computed once the dynamics has provided B and v.
It is here that a fundamental misunderstanding has become widely accepted, mistaking the electric current j and the electric field E (the E,j paradigm) to be the fundamental physical entities. Steady conditions often can be treated using the E.j paradigm, but the dynamics of time-dependent systems becomes difficult, if not impossible, because of the inability to express Newton’s equation in terms of E and j in a tractable form. That is to say, E and j are proxies for B and v, but too remote from B and v to handle the momentum equation. So it is not possible to construct a workable set of dynamic field equations in terms of j and E from the equations of Newton and Maxwell. The generalized Ohm’s law in often employed, but Ohm’s law does not control the large-scale dynamics. The tail does not wag the dog. This inadequacy has led to fantasy to complement the limited equations available in the E,j paradigm, attributing the leading dynamical role to an electric field E with unphysical properties. Magnetospheric physics has suffered severely from this misdirection, and we will come back to the specific aspects of the misunderstanding at appropriate places in the conversations.
The essential point is that we live in a magnetohydromagnetic universe in which the magnetic field B is responsible for the remarkable behavior of the gas velocity v, and vice versa. Then we must recognize that the large-scale magnetic stresses in the interlaced field line topologies created by the plasma motions have the peculiar property of causing the field gradients to increase without bound. The resulting thin layers of intense field shear and high current density “eat up” the magnetic fields at prodigious rates. The effect is commonly called rapid reconnection of the magnetic field because the field lines are cut and rejoined across the intense shear layer, and it is a universal consequence of the large-scale field line topology. Rapid reconnection is evidently responsible for such phenomena as the solar flare, the million degree temperature of the solar x-ray corona, and the terrestrial aurora. […]
In the absence of magnetic charges, magnetic fields appear only in association with electric currents and in association with time varying electric fields. In the laboratory we create static magnetic fields by driving an electric current though a coil of wire. The electromotive force driving the current is the source of energy that creates the magnetic field, so the emf and the current are clearly the cause of the magnetic field. On the other hand, in the cosmos the deformation of the magnetic field embedded in the swirling plasma causes the flow of electric current in the plasma in the manner described by equation 1.6, because the energy that drives the current comes from the magnetic field. That is to say, the current is driven to the required value by the change of B. So in the cosmos the large-scale currents are obliged to conform to Ampere’s law. In view of the small but non-vanishing friction between the relative motions of the electrons and ions, there is a continuing trickle of energy from the magnetic field to the current to maintain the flow of current required by ampere, from which it follows that the field is the continuing cause of the current and not vice versa.
The curious popular notion that the electric current causes the magnetic fields in the cosmos has led to the even more curious notion that the electric current is the more fundamental dynamical variable, but the current is dynamically passive, consisting of no more that the tiny inertia of the electron conduction velocity, while, as we shall see, the stresses in the electric field are small to second order in v/c and quite negligible. The dynamics of the plasma is driven by the magnetic stress and the inertia and pressure of the plasma and not by electric currents.
———–
I can recommend the book for everybody confused by the discussion of the primacy of the magnetic field and the secondary role of electric currents in our cosmos. Of course, if you are an avid ‘Electric Universe’ cult-follower, the reading will be a depressing experience, so perhaps you should not even try.
Johnson Space Center —
crackle…static…”Houston, we have a problem…”
There are numerous records that reflect temperature being effected by sun spots (associated with solar maximum) and prolonged absence of sunspots corollates to prolonged cold spells in the climate record. Yet, we have scientists that insist their mathematical equations say that solar variations aren’t responsible.
crackle…static…”Houston, the craft’s mathematical flight instruments indicate our orbit is steady, but looking out the window, shows we are falling out of orbit… What should we do, Houston?”
crackle…static…”This is Houston…all ground computers indicate there is no malfunction in your flight instruments…shut your window screens and keep your eyes on the flight instruments…”
crackle…static…”Houston… Are you sure about that?”
crackle…static…”This is Houston… Yes, we are very sure about that.”
crackle…static…”Roger that…Houston.”
Ground tracking to Command Center: “Space craft has fallen below radar.”
Command Center to ground tracking…”Keep looking, all ground computers indicate craft still in orbit…”
Such is the high priesthood of mathematics: Trust the mathematical equations and not the empirical experience.
Anaconda (09:50:03) :
Such is the high priesthood of mathematics: Trust the mathematical equations and not the empirical experience.
You clearly mean the mathematical Maxwell equations?
Personally I think Anaconda’s message is poorly worded. I think he means computer programming of equations and not the actual mathematics. Mathematics tend to be well researched, challenged and defended, whereas programming (like the GISTEMP FORTRAN code) tends to be subjective and sloppy. For example another NASA programming folly caused the loss of the Mars orbiter in 1999
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/
Perhaps it is as simple as the other way around. Meaning, that the lack of sunspots is the reason why the jetstream is slower!
Anaconda, are you referring to the loss of orbit in your analogy being the observed change in Earth’s temperature? If you are, you have not assigned cause, just that the temperature variation is not what the models say it should be. This I have no quarrel with. Temperatures are not acting according to the CO2 models. But if you insist on a solar driven model (indeed if one can be constructed without exaggerating solar measures), then observed temperatures are also not acting according to such a model. So it would seem that solar and anthropogenic drivers are sitting in the same boat. The instruments say one thing, but the observation says another. Why the insistence on undefined solar drivers of variation when a much more plausible mechanism that shows very high correlation is at hand?
It seems that when talking to folks who insist on solar mechanisms, all that needs to be done is to change terminology from a debate script meant for AGW believers. That said, I have much more faith in greenhouse gas drivers than I do solar drivers when examining potential drivers of weather pattern variations.
But as I said above, there are much more plausible mechanisms that show very high correlation to both short (from days to months to a few years ) and long (from years to decades to a century) local, regional, and global weather pattern variation. I leave out ice ages as these are thought to be due to our Earth’s gyroscope-like axial tilt changes.
It is rather clear if one were to work backward from geological sources of local weather pattern variation, regional weather pattern variation, oceanic weather pattern variation, to equatorial weather pattern variation. These links are known and can be modeled, all with endogenous natural variables, and without the help of some unknown yet thought to be significant solar variable or increasing human emissions.
It would clear the discussion up tremendously if we were to examine plausible causes of equatorial atmospheric weather pattern variation drivers.
This has probably already been brought up, but a little observation.
1) Aside from the markings of the sunspots, is it just me, or is the northern hemisphere, per se (positive latitude) an almost-perfect mirror image of the southern hemisphere (negative latitude)?
2) If a sunspot cycle is based on the blue vertical longitude line (approximately mid-January, 1997) and intersects a critical point of 22 degrees and also shows the torsional oscillation at beginning or “elbow” points 52 degrees and -52 degrees, then the second “beginning” blue line (mid-June, 2006), should also reflect a beginning or an “elbow” of the next torsional oscillation flow, or am I missing something here?
Based on my extremely limited scientific knowledge (I’m an IT guy), I see sunspot activity where two flows parallel.
To add on 2), I would think that if 22 was the magic number then the blue line would be at the very end (far right) of the image, rather than the mid-June 2006 position, unless they meant for that to be the bulk of the sunspots (confused). Either way, even if it is at the very right, where I would assume it would be, based on my limited knowledge, we should still be seeing the torsional oscillation start at 52 and -52 degrees.
Just a thought. Maybe I’ve got this whole thing backwards – but ever since I saw this graph, it just bothered me.
@ur momisugly Leif Svalgaard:
You know what the difference is?
Maxwell’s equations were developed as a result of repeated experimentation in the laboratory. Yes, empirical observation & measurement where mathematical equations were strictly the servants of observation & measurement, not the master.
The problem starts when mathematical theories (read equations) control the assumptions of what is expected to be detected. When that starts to happen data gets ignored in order to fit the facts into the theory.
And, when you dig into it, the supposed rigorous and consistent application of terms is not as rigorous and consistent as advertised.
Just one example: What is the mathematical definition of a point?
There is more than one, or a mathematician might even tell you there is no definition at all — it’s an undefined term.
Go figure?
Anaconda (11:27:20) :
You know what the difference is?
Did you read and study and understand Parker’s penetrating analysis of the magnetic field/electric current issue?
Don’t hide behind your ignorance of what a mathematical point is. There are real physical issues at stake.
wattsupwiththat (10:45:52)
“For example another NASA programming folly caused the loss of the Mars orbiter in 1999”
That is an application of an incorrect metric( or more correctly,imperial instead of metrics).
This is no small problem,and there are numerous examples of incorrect methodology, say the application of the SB equation with TSI and Spectral SI, which then equates to the reception on a flat horizontal surface,This is reasonable for a gross macroscopic description,but inappropriate for photochemical descriptions at the molecular level.
eg
“The challenges of measuring solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation have received considerable attention since recognition of stratospheric ozone depletion, with a resulting increase in availability and quality of UV data. Spectral measurements allow the data to be applied to any biological or chemical photoreaction with a known action spectrum. However, the standard UV measurement is of irradiance incident on a flat horizontal surface. This single geometry is not applicable to all the targets that may be affected by the radiation. One important example is the atmospheric chemistry of the boundary layer, which is strongly dependent on the UV radiation but where the spherical target molecules are subject to radiation from all directions.”
http://www.ist-world.org/ProjectDetails.aspx?ProjectId=81e2d1da8a3b48fa9c2e17d9757f2d20
Spectral spheradiance (actinc flux ) is the “gold standard”
http://goldbook.iupac.org/A00086.html
REPLY: It was still programming. They had no mechanism or error trap to catch such a problem. – Anthony
@Anaconda (05:45:28) wrote:
“In isolation, an electric current is necessary to cause a magnetic field. A magnetic field can not stand in isolation without an electric current (ordered electron movement) to sustain it.”
I don’t recall ever hearing before that a moving charge is necessary to the existence of a magnetic field. If it were, how could electromagnetic waves propagate through free space?
(By the way, an electric current does not require electrons: any net movement of one or more charges is a current. Hole flow in semiconductors is an interesting practical example.)
From Wikipedia* — noting especially the first sentence:
“According to Maxwell’s equations, a time-varying electric field generates a magnetic field and vice versa. Therefore, as an oscillating electric field generates an oscillating magnetic field, the magnetic field in turn generates an oscillating electric field, and so on. These oscillating fields together form an electromagnetic wave.”
This agrees with what I remember from school. Perhaps you can quote something which contradicts this?
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_wave