Guest post by David Archibald
Frank Hill’s summoning up of sunspots from the vasty deep of the Sun’s convection zone reminds me of some Shakespeare (Henry the Fourth):
Glendower:
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur:
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
Frank Hill says that his sunspots will be with us in three to six months. The Ap Index suggests otherwise. There is a correlation between the geomagnetic indices (aa Index and Ap Index) at minimum and the amplitude of the following solar cycle. Earlier this year I produced this graph of the Ap Index plotted against solar cycle maxima when I thought that the Ap Index would bottom out at three, giving a maximum amplitude of 25:
This is June and the monthly average of the Ap Index is 3.1. What is interesting from that graph is that there will be no sunspots if the monthly Ap Index goes below 2. The heliospheric current sheet is telling us that the month of minimum is possibly a year off and the Ap Index is showing no signs of pulling out of its glide slope of 0.28 per month, as shown in this graph:
The Ap Index enters the no sunspots zone in October at its current glide slope. Will it pull out in time? The Sun is bleeding magnetic flux (for a very good reason), so I don’t think so.
Frank Hill has shouted (his words) that there is no correlation between solar activity and climate. Back in a time when those who studied the Sun were armed with not much more than an enquiring mind, William Herschel in 1801 noted the relationship between the number of sunspots and wheat prices. When there were fewer spots, wheat prices were higher. To bring that up to the current day, when there are no spots at all, wheat prices will be the highest ever.
Back to Shakespeare: Hotspur has some good advice for those who study the Sun and draw implications for public policy:
Hotspur:
And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil—
By telling the truth. Tell truth and shame the devil.
Leif Svalgaard writes in with some graphs of his own:
Using Aa which goes much further back than Ap, the relationship between Aa and the size of the next cycle has been used by many people to forecast the next cycle. [one of the standard methods]. The data point with the red dot is the predicted Rmax for SC/24 using the polar fields and is plotted at the 2009 yearly average so far of Aa [9.1]
No spots for Aa = 2.4
Aa = 0.2318 (B Vo2)0.9478
Where B is the interplanetary magnetic field in nT and Vo is the solar wind speed in 100 km/s units. E.g. for B = 4 nT and V = 350 km/s, thus Vo = 3.5, we have Aa = 8.55 and Rmax = 57.
Ap is about half of Aa, but the relationship is not quite linear: Ap = 0.2925 Aa 1.204
So Aa = 8.55 corresponds to Ap = 3.87.
If we plot Rmax for the previous cycle (purple plusses) there is no correlation
MC (05:06:18) “Livingston/Penn predicted this based on barycenter analysis of the sun.
I am curious to know where you got this notion MC. My best guess, based on a google search, is BAUT – and that you reached this (perhaps speculative) viewpoint by merging different pieces of information that arose in different threads there.
Jim Hughes (14:50:42) :
is completely different than specifically calling for a June spike, and also saying it would be the highest since March 2008.
It is not a ‘June’ spike. It is a May-June spike. In May there were about 11 ‘region days’ and in June we have had 13 so far. A ‘region day’ is the number of days in the months there was a region on the disk. If there were two, the day would be counted twice, etc. As F10.7 already back in April was above the background level of a year ago, it was clear that something was coming. I don’t place much emphasis on such details as you clearly missed the Oct-Nov spike that was almost as big [combined count 20 – compared to March 2008 which was 26 (and that was SC23 spots) and to the May-Jun spike sitting at 24] . You can make it more impressing to show me where and when you predicted the June spike, and forgive me for not keeping track of everything.
Walter Dnes (15:19:45) :
…would it not be better to make predictions about 10.7 flux, or Aa, or Ap or *ANYTHING BUT SUNSPOT NUMBER*? A broken yardstick is worse than useless. Can you change your predictions to 10.7 flux or one of the A indices, or at least make parallel predictions for them?
As I already pointed out I predict a region number [namely 6]. That can be converted into equivalent sunspot, F10.7, whatever.
You other point is well taken. People will jump on this in ways that suit their own purposes. People predicting a Grand Minimum would say that the L&P deflated SSN is good because it agrees with their own views. Other groups would try to bend the numbers to whatever they and once you slide down that slope reason goes out eh door and politics takes over. I don’t see any solution yet, but the problem is one the solar physics community will have to come to grips with in the near future.
Vukcevic, thanks for making me aware of some interesting features of a time series which I have not previously been inspired to study carefully. Leif is right about edge-effects – if you are going to apply a filter, you should either snip the edges (my preference) or mark them clearly for your audience.
Hey, serious props to Frank Hill for making a prediction that can be tested in 6 months. That bears a suspicious resemblance to the scientific method, which all too many climatologists have not the least interest in.
> MattN (03:12:13) :
> Yes, June is shaping up to be a rather cool month
> (anomaly wise). I think it has a very decent chance
> of coming in under June ‘08. David may have only
> been 1 month off.
I follow it closely, and I don’t think so. The first 18 days of the month could support your conclusion, but during the 19th, 20th, 21st, and 22nd…
* the Lower Troposhere temperature has jumped 0.161 K (or C if you prefer)
* the Near Surface temperature has jumped 0.267 K (or C)
I’ve been sticking my neck out the past few months in another forum, trying a regression to project monthly temperatures based on UAH daily data (the Near Surface field, to be specific). “It has been a humbling experience”. What I’ve found so far is that…
* a straight projection from UAH daily to Hadley/GISS/USAH/RSS doesn’t work. Period. End of story.
* If I wait until RSS comes in, and adjust my Hadley and GISS projections based on the delta between RSS actual versus RSS, and the relative slopes of the regressions, the fit has been pretty good the past couple of months. Surprisingly, UAH daily to UAH monthly still doesn’t work. This month might break my Hadly+GISS projections, because it showed them almost identical before the temps picked up the past 4 days. Hadley temps do occasionly come in higher than GISS, but it’s not very common.
Leif Svalgaard ( 16:26:50)
It is not a June spike. It is a May-June spike. In May there were about 11 ‘region days’ and in June we have had 13 so far. A ‘region day’ is the number of days in the months there was a region on the disk. If there were two, the day would be counted twice, etc. As F10.7 already back in April was above the background level of a year ago, it was clear that something was coming. I don’t place much emphasis on such details as you clearly missed the Oct-Nov spike that was almost as big [combined count 20 – compared to March 2008 which was 26 (and that was SC23 spots) and to the May-Jun spike sitting at 24] . You can make it more impressing to show me where and when you predicted the June spike, and forgive me for not keeping track of everything.
Leif,
Your really spinning things with the May reference when we both know that June will easily end up with a higher International sunspot total. (Double or higher)
And it does not matter how many days May ended up anyway with just like it would not matter if a long range weather forecaster had forecasted “January” to be much colder than average, but the colder anomalies arrived slightly earlier. But December still ended up being warm or much less cool. So May is like December in this analogy.
As far as my prior forecast comments and you now forgetting….???. I know that we had an exchange about this when I first started posting around here, which I believe was late April. And I mentioned the June forecast that I had previously put out and many in the meteorological field knew about it.
And they were interested in this outlook because many are now starting to strongly consider the solar-ENSO connection as well as many other possible relationships. And I’ve got a proven track record over the years with my solar based ENSO calls. So they follow-monitor my forecasts.
Jim Hughes (19:25:41) :
As far as my prior forecast comments and you now forgetting….???.
Yeah, it didn’t seem important to remember.
exchange about this when I first started posting around here, which I believe was late April.
2008 or 2009? If 2009 I’m not impressed. I’ll predict right now that June 2010 will be twice that of June 2009.
Don’t you use the planets or something? I don’t remember what you use. Or maybe you never told anybody and that is why. So you should be able to do this thousands of years ahead, right.
According to this the spots will return soon. Mystery of the Missing Sunspots, Solved? http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/17jun_jetstream.htm
cableguy (21:26:07) :
According to this the spots will return soon.
Yes, during most of the solar cycle there are spots every day.
David Archibald (07:45:03) :
rbateman (05:39:48) :
Puttng the counting problem to one side, have you noticed any qualitative difference over time in the Solar Cycle 24 spots?
Over time, there are two periods: One is when they intitally appeared, grew more visible, then grew much less visible into most of 2009 so far, where it was hard to see any of them that were reported.
Now, we have 2 very good ones, but NO penumbras.
The day of May 16th, early in the morning, I saw the one and only penumbra for an SC24 spot.
So, I would say, for now, there is a possibility of growing visibility to a peak and back down again, and over time the spots themselves will grow larger.
It’s been slow & painful to watch.
One thing seems to not change with this cycle: The Sun does not want to turn on a dime (read ramp). Present spots included.
The lack of Penumbra has been overwhelmingly strong and persistent.
Tomorrow, everything could change, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Make that the 17th of May for the penumbra seen.
Thanks to Dr Svalgaard, we have another measure of when the Sun enters the no sunspots zone. At its current decline rate, the aa Index will be there in February.
Walter Dnes (15:19:45) :
Good point. In the absence of sunspots, the real test of forecasting skill from here will be predicting the F 10.7 flux at solar maximum. Entries after ramp up begins will not be counted. The concept of counting plage areas in lieu of sunspots is hilarious
rbateman (21:51:59) :
Thankyou for that. If the data can be quantified, it would make a good post.
Paul Vaughan (16:39:34) :
Vukcevic, thanks for making me aware of some interesting features of a time series which I have not previously been inspired to study carefully. Leif is right about edge-effects – if you are going to apply a filter, you should either snip the edges (my preference) or mark them clearly for your audience.
Thanks for the note. Filtering of the data is done by the originator (Stanford University)
http://wso.stanford.edu/Polar.html
The ‘end effect’ is taken care of since data is 15 days behind the actual date (“Each 10 days the usable daily polar field measurements in a centered 30-day window are averaged.”) so last entry is for 6th of June:
2009:06:07_21h:07m:13s
-47N 52S -50Avg 20nhz filt: -34Nf 67Sf -51Avgf
It would seem that from these postings, that although Dr Svaalgard and D Archibald are competing beasts, BOTH their predictions were closer than those of the “official NASA etc”. IT seems that their reasoning is also closer. DR Svaalgards contributions are very enlightening and put a “hold” on overexcited amateurs such as myself. I admire D Archibalds bold statements which like mine are a bit over the top (ie -0.4C for May 2009). However its pretty close (see June 2009 AMSU trends, will be negative or 0, unless major satellite adjustments). The fact is its seems, that temps have stabilized and may be on the way down.. Whether this is due to solar activity remains to be seen. From what I gather Dr Svaalgard does not agree with the Solar-Temp connection, whereas D Archibald does? We should thank them both for the invaluable contributions.
LEIF Svalgaard (20:57:43)
2008 or 2009? If 2009 I’m not impressed. I’ll predict right now that June 2010 will be twice that of June 2009.
Don’t you use the planets or something? I don’t remember what you use. Or maybe you never told anybody and that is why. So you should be able to do this thousands of years ahead, right.
Leif,
It’s silly remarks like this that make me question what your true motive is around here sometimes. Because you have compared apples and oranges on more than one occasion to make a point.
But I’ve dealt with some of the elite long range weather forecasters in the past, about many different forecasting subject matters, so I’m not one of these individuals who is going to bow to someone because others have chosen them to be the “expert” on the subject matter.
And most of them have learned from experience that it’s just better to sit back then to be made a fool of. Because I have shown before that their prior beliefs of what is possible, long range wise, and with specifics, were dead wrong. And your belief system, or at least from what I have been reading from you, fit this criteria.
And like I have said before. Being able to forecast is much different than having specific knowledge of things. Much like a college professor would not necessarily be a great long range weather forecaster just because he or she teaches the science involved with meteorology.
Now you have downplayed this forecast which is your perogative. But if your going to do this then do it yourself. And if your going to make a silly analogy by going out 12-15 months, then tell me which one of these months will have the highest sunspot count. Or tell me which upcoming month will have the highest level between Aug-Oct. 2009
I think this should be a piece of cake for you since it’s only a few months out and we’re headed up, right? I look forward to hearing your forecast.
And yes I consider the planetary influence upon the sun as well as the cyclical nature of it with the Golden Section-harmonics.
Paul Vaughn (16:36:45)
Vukcevic, thanks for making me aware of some interesting features of a time series which I have not previously been inspired to study carefully. Leif is right about edge-effects – if you are going to apply a filter, you should either snip the edges (my preference) or mark them clearly for your audience.
I use to send out e-mail discussions many years back, and the list usually included dozens, from science writers, news contacts, editors-publishers who I had relationships with, and many within the meteorological and climatological field. (Many at TWC received some of these, like their “experts”, as well as a former AMS president)
What did I reference or talk about ? The importance of the waxing and waning of the poles and their differential values. But I included the qbo in all of this as well as the polarities. And FWIW , I used the filtered values.
Jim Hughes (04:08:28) :
I think this should be a piece of cake for you since it’s only a few months out and we’re headed up, right? I look forward to hearing your forecast.
I think it is not possible to forecast any of this except in a general sense. As you have not provided specifics [nor a skill score chart] your forecast cannot be evaluated. You talk about a June spike; this implies that you forecast that July and possibly August will have significantly smaller activity, otherwise you are just saying that the cycle is generally ramping up, which nobody would consider a specific forecast [F10.7 suggested several month ago that the minimum is past].
David Archibald (23:51:40) :
The concept of counting plage areas in lieu of sunspots is hilarious
A plage is the more fundamental phenomenon than a spot. The plage appears before the spot and endures after the spot, so is what we should count [and is what we would have counted in the past, if we just could]. That TSI has its 0.1% solar cycle variation with a maximum at solar maximum is because the plage positive contribution outweighs the sunspot negative contribution by a factor of two.
vukcevic (00:36:17) :
Filtering of the data is done by the originator (Stanford University) …
The ‘end effect’ is taken care of since data is 15 days behind the actual date
It doesn’t matter who does the filtering, and the end-effect is not taken care of correctly, as is evident from the data. The 15-day lag does nothing to cure a 182-day end-effect. To get rid of the annual variation simply compute the difference between unfiltered North and South, then you can see that there is no divergence. Please do that for us.
Dr. Svalgaard and Jim Hughes
I would like to hear your independent comments on this statement (from the New Scientist web issue):
“It is still a mystery how these disturbances light up aurora so quickly-about a minute after tail snaps.”
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2694/26941801.jpg
vukcevic (08:54:34) :
“It is still a mystery how these disturbances light up aurora so quickly-about a minute after tail snaps.”
We have made great strides in finding out how the aurora is produced. The more we know, the more questions we can ask. Once we explain the details of the acceleration process, there will be more details to explore. This is just one small step that awaits its elucidation. The reaction of the unwashed masses when they see a thing like this is often to say: “Ah, scientists don’t understand anything, maybe they are wrong about the whole thing, maybe aurora does not come from the tail, maybe new physics is involved, maybe strong currents directly from the galaxy or the Sun or an alien spacecraft are responsible, etc”
David Archibald (23:51:40) :
rbateman (21:51:59) :
Thankyou for that. If the data can be quantified, it would make a good post.
Therein lies the problem: The data has been collected, it just has been poorly quantified or passed off.
For a quick look, you’ll have to go to solarcycle24.com, in the website content selector box, choose ‘Cycle 24 Photo Tmeline’ and have a look around.
Look at http://www.vds-sonne.de/gem/res/rezahl/numbers09.lst and compare to the photo timeline: Whose List is accurately refecting the sunspot #?
The people with the official job title or volunteers?
This is every bit as bad as the temperature recording system that anthony has taken up cause to bring to the light of day.
Stephen Brown, it’s a good thing you are not a commercial farmer. Your reliance on what the Sun is doing to your fruit’s lack of growth is just incomprehensible to me. The weather drivers in your area will tell you why your fruit is not growing. And the drivers are best understood from the equatorial belt through the oceanic oscillations, into the atmosphere and then onto the jet stream, and finally at the regional front/pressure gradient behaviors. Your local weather pattern variation will most likely follow known geographic variables (IE North slope versus South slope, leeward versus windward, low versus high ground, etc).
A case in point. Less weather knowledgeable farmers in our area cut hay early last week because they thought it had grown enough and they wanted the second cutting to start growing. Besides, this first cutting has done well under good moisture. It will be a bumper crop. Made these newer farmers want to cut it so the next bumper crop can get going. The temptation was overwhelming. However, the old farmers held off because the unstable weather pattern was setting up for continued moist air, continued rain, and even downpours. The new farmers now have rotting hay. The old farmers are following weather charts to determine when it will be safe to cut, dry, and bail. They are NOT looking at the Sun. They could care less what the Sun is doing. The Pacific Ocean, jet stream and unstable air masses are telling them what to do. Which means that old farmers will get two cuttings. New farmers destroyed their first cutting.
There is NO consistent correlation through minimum to maximum and back down again to weather pattern variation and subsequent agricultural productivity. Crops grow, fry, drown, or freeze because of endogenous variables. You should learn what they are and understand how they affect vegetation before trying any kind of commercial agricultural endeavor.
Another case in point. Someone should have told transplanted Californians about that tip before sinking money into vineyards above the 45th parallel. Vineyard creep to ever higher latitudes has followed the PDO warm phase over the past 50 years. Trouble is, the PDO flips back to its cold phase eventually. These phases can last up to 60 years. New farmers just haven’t a clue. They ain’t old enough to know “how does your garden grow”. But then again, for the uninitiated, we can tickle our tongues with over-priced tooth sweet ice wine and be led to think that all is well. By the way, grape seasons are based on number of grow days. As long as grapes have access to the Sun (in any of its phases cause it don’t matter) and above freezing temps at night, grapes will grow. Growers even clip off leaves to bring more Sun to the clusters. The fly in the ointment are the endogenous weather variables. That is what they watch and measure like a hawk if they know what they are doing. Ask them. They don’t care what the Sun is like. If it is shining on the clusters they are perfectly happy with just that single piece of knowledge about the Sun. They care a GREAT deal more about what the weather is like.
Here is one more example but from the oceans. Salmon fisheries are much more interested in SST than what the Sun is doing. They could care less about the Sun. It’s the PDO that tells them whether or not to fish in Alaska or off the coast of California. They have been recording ocean temperature for as long as they have been plying the seas for salmon. Why? Because they had discovered that sea temperatures tell them whether or not there will be salmon here versus there, or abundant versus scarce. The PDO was finally theorized based on ship logs. To this day, no one cares what the Sun is doing because it won’t predict salmon tonnage. Only the PDO can.
There are many more examples of the important correlations found between weather pattern variation and flora/fauna response that sit completely outside the Sun’s phases. Tree rings. Elk and deer population. Bat numbers. Insect oscillations. The list just goes on and on. Not one of these correlations follows Solar phases. Not one.
Good examples are 1878-1879, 1901-1902, and 1912-1913
I will simply point out that:
A) the last time “this” happened was almost 100 years ago.
2) the globe was much cooler then and
d) that’s a whole lot ‘o coincidence for me…
Pamela Gray (10:18:02) :
There are many more examples of the important correlations found between weather pattern variation and flora/fauna response that sit completely outside the Sun’s phases. Tree rings. Elk and deer population. Bat numbers. Insect oscillations. The list just goes on and on. Not one of these correlations follows Solar phases. Not one.
I do not know about the rest, but I have researched a bit on the tree rings. Actually the sun cycles were discovered in the counting of the thickness of tree rings, back last century, and I have been for a while now asking for chapter and verse where this “folk” science wisdom has been proven wrong.
As far as I can see from a google search , it is still going strong:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/j35016q4n335821p/
Chinese pine in the Qianshan mountains were also affected by climate changes on a hemispheric and global scale. There were 11-, 23-and 50-year-common periodicities between the chronology and solar activity and 10-, 20-and 45-year-common periodicities between the chronology and geomagnetic activity.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VHB-4NDDM72-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=938875737&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=8650898939705d3579c4c4fdb4f17b3c
The tree ring time series extended over a period of not, vert, similar400 yr. Spectral and wavelet analysis techniques were employed. We have found evidence for the presence of the solar activity Schwabe (not, vert, similar11 yr), Hale (not, vert, similar22 yr), fourth-harmonic of the 208-yr Suess cycle (not, vert, similar52 yr) and Gleissberg (not, vert, similar80 yr) cycles.
Pacific tree ring data correlates to PDO in near perfect synchrony and with a reasonable mechanism. It has therefore been used as a PDO proxy going back to the 17th century. China trees also correlate very well to oceanic oscillations. Again with the requisite mechanism. This is a stronger case than solar correlations that are not nearly as tightly correlated and with no mechanism. Therefore the strength of the validity between the two theories is on the side of oceanic oscillations.
Mark Wagner (10:19:52) :
“Good examples are 1878-1879, 1901-1902, and 1912-1913”
I will simply point out that:
A) the last time “this” happened was almost 100 years ago.
2) the globe was much cooler then
The sun has just reverted to where it was 100 years ago and we are are lot warmer, so it seems that the Sun has little to do with it.