Leif Svalgaard writes in with a collection of points on the 10.7 cm solar radio flux. Being busy tonight, I’m happy to oblige posting them. – Anthony
Leif writes:
People often call out that F10.7 flux has now reached a new low, and that a Grand minimum is imminent.
Perhaps this graph would calm nerves a bit:
The blue curve is the current F10.7 flux [adjusted to 1 AU, of course] and the red curve is F10.7 back at the 1954 minimum. The D spike (in 1954) was due to an old cycle [18] region.
There is always the problem of how to align two such curves.. These two were aligned by eye to convey the general nature of the flux over a minimum. The peaks labeled B and C and the low part A were arbitrarily aligned, because peaks often influence the flux for several weeks so would form natural points of correspondence. The detailed similarity is, of course, of no significance. Note, however that because of the 27-day recurrence one some peaks are aligned others will be too. again, this has no further [deeper] significance. The next solar cycle is predicted to be quite low and the cycle following the 1954 minimum was one of the largest recorded. We will, of course, with excitement watch how the blue curve will fare over the next year or so, to see how the ‘ramp up’ will compare to the steep ramp up in 1955-1956.
Of course, as there was more activity before and after the minimum and even during [as cycles overlap]. For the very year of the minimum apart from the spike at D there is very little difference. The important issue [for me] is the absolute level, because that is a measure of the density and temperature of the lower corona, generated by the ‘network’ or background magnetic field, which seems very constant from minimum to minimum, and certainly does not portend an imminent Grand Minimum, which is not to say that such could not come, just that a low F10.7 is not an indicator for it.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
It is very interesting to keep following the sun to see if activity is picking up. If I had more time I would like to see more work on Svensmark’s theory and how it is doing as the sun idles. I just looked at the Oulu neutron monitor and it is historically high. Just a little downturn in the last month that correlates with a couple small sunspots.
How is the cloud cover doing? Has there been a increase over the last cycle? The area of most interest is the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone after Willis Eschenbach presented “The Thermostat Hypothesis” here.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/
Is there anyway a amateur can find a measure of cloud cover?
Thanks for the post Leif. To my untrained mind and eye it would appear the sun is still calm as we head towards the next NH winter. Even if a “ramp up” occurs I feel it will not have enough effect to counteract what currently looks like a cold winter again this year.
“certainly does not portend an imminent Grand Minimum, which is not to say that such could not come, just that a low F10.7 is not an indicator for it.”
I gather the purpose of the alignments on the graph was to specifically examine the question of an imminent Grand Minimum, and as such it accomplishes this purpose quite well. I echo earlier comments that it is refreshing to have a scientist who is objective and searching for the truth, regardless of where that truth leads.
It is so unfortunate that the term “objective scientist” has become an oxymoron.
Perhaps someday our society will return to core values and principals where the end does not justify the means and where logic and reason prevail over emotion and politics.
When and if this occurs, many of us will more readily accept the findings of the climate science establishment with which we are so skeptical of in today’s environment.
It will not occur however as long as the scientific community is guided by the concepts of political science as opposed to basic science.
It also will not occur while this community is led by advocates and demagogues who have set out such strong and unyielding positions that no amount of data or evidence to the contrary would ever be allowed to change the positions that they have staked their careers and self worth on preserving.
Thank you Dr. Svalgaard for you values, principals and objectivity. I hope it catches on.
Leif,
Fascinating stuff. Thanks for putting it out there. On a different topic, I went your website. That is a great looking family!!
I think the point Dr. Svalgaard is trying to make isn’t that the chart alignment leads to some predictive insight. We all want to draw that type of conclusion from any chart, even when it isn’t intended. I understood his point as being that the current 10.7 flux is at a long term low that the sun returns to repeatedly, which tells us something fascinating about the internal workings of the sun’s engine.
Because of that, I understand Leif’s position as saying that the level of the flux is not surprising since we are in the depth of a minimum. The length of this stage will be what determines how unusual a minimum this is, and there is no data we have currently that can really give us any solid clues as to how that timing will play out. We just have to wait and see.
We have very limited knowledge of this. Frankly if the sun decides to do things like dim even a small percentage of its historic output, we will be looking at any possible data, while we are shivering and starving. I think Dr. Svalgaard is one of the honest brokers in this debate, He is seeking to find ways to correlate data sets, and is doing so openly. We are rapidly entering into unknown territory irt solar behavior. There is no proven answer yet, but we need honest brokers willing to examine what is happening in new ways.
No one knows. We’re in uncharted waters. It’s very clear something is up with our sun. We all know that reduced sun activity results in a cooler planet earth; we just don’t know the details and the timing with other natural “forcings”.
The big question is when will the media pick up on this? Someone needs to sound the alarm because we are changing our entire economic system because of a Chicken Little Al Gore. I’m going to home depot to buy a lifetime supply of light bulbs today.
Thanks Anthony: at least we’re getting some traction on the EPA smoking guy memo about suppressing the dissenting Scientists views. I thought there was consensus? Maybe that’s the big story here that this is evidence that there isn’t consensus? A quick check of cnn.com and no mention. Oh well we’re screwed.
Tony B:
That’s the $64 trillion question that no-one can answer with any certainty. That the coolest part of the Little Ice Age coincided with the Maunder Minimum could have been a coincidence. There are solar magnetic theories linking Earth’s climate with the behaviour of the Sun and even a long range weather forecasting service (http://www.weatheraction.com) based upon such a linkage.
Nobody really understand how or why Earth’s climate varies or even how to properly measure the climate of the Earth. Theories as to why the Earth warms and cools are as old as recorded human history.
And note: I attacked one graph of Dr Svalgaard, not the person. The graph is unhelpful and possibly misleading. I have seen so many wiggle-matches of proxies to temperature records on Climate Audit that I’m afraid I’ve become very cynical about them. Any two graphs of long term persistence or autocorrelation in the time series, when scaled correctly, can produce similar results to Dr Svalgaard’s chart – and are just as misleading.
As a final statement – I fear global cooling and not warming. Cold periods were very bad times for humans across the planet and I have no reason to believe that they will be bad again in the future.
Can someone point me to the definition of “F10.7” [I’m guessing this is 10.7 cm photon wavelength. ] and why we care about it? (i.e. what physical processes create it and why is it used as a standard measurement, etc.)
I’m a physicist, so I’m looking for more technical details and less fluffy stuff. 🙂
This is just plain wrong….Anthony needs to cross check his sources sometimes.
Along with the neutron counts and enhanced cloud cover question:
I read from several sites/blogs about aircraft contrails being a significant part of total cloud cover that can cause an increase in atmospheric heating due to back-reflected IR from the surface. The ‘theory’ is that a weaker global economy will reduce the amount of aircraft miles leading to reduced contrails leading to an enhanced cooling effect…
Anybody know whether there is any truth to this statement? Are several physical events (as discussed above) leading to larger than ‘expected’ cooling over the next years?
Jim
So, if I understand this correctly….the sunspots will be ramping up.
Hans,
As a lifelong amateur astronomer, science buff and communication engineer I really appreciate your scientific insights and posts in this intriguing forum. Thanks again and please keep posting.
-phil wilson
Sorry for the mixup on Dr Leif Svalgaard’s name in my quick post. Too bad I can’t edit.
Question, do we want a solar minimum and associated cooling to shut up the warmers? or do we not want it because the cooling will cause problems like failed crops? Either way it does not make any difference what we hope for because its out of our hands.
On this months national geographic the story of Angkor and how it failed during the little ice age due to late monsoons. More evidence if you need it that climate does a good job of changing with or without cars and power stations.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/featurehub
I don’t think we could measure 10.7 prior to the last Grand Minimum, so I’m not sure how we would know what the graph portends. (10.7 may be an effect rather than a cause?) And I am not sure how well our measurements in 1954 would match what we can see today. Instrumentation was not nearly as sophisticated 55 years ago.
The sun will do what the sun will do,
and we will watch with amusement.
edt (06:17:25):
Can someone point me to the definition of “F10.7″ [I’m guessing this is 10.7 cm photon wavelength. ] and why we care about it? (i.e. what physical processes create it and why is it used as a standard measurement, etc.)
I’m a physicist, so I’m looking for more technical details and less fluffy stuff. 🙂
F10.7 is the solar flux of radio emission at a wavelength of 10.7 cm (2.8 GHz frequency). It influences the upper atmosphere and ionosphere of the Earth and is indicator of solar activity, especially in the fluctuations of the solar ultraviolet radiation.
Dear Jim (06:36:56),
I don’t know how much impact contrails really have, but there were some studies done of the air quality after so many flights were cancelled after 9/11. You might be able to find something from there that will give an answer.
I can’t see contrails having that much impact – they make up a really really small part of the surface area.
On a more general note to those who have voiced some criticism of Leif, I think he was making a very simple point – that 10.7 as a single value doesn’t mean very much. Many people are trying to read too much into one figure and I know we all want THE ANSWER, but I don’t there is one, certainly not yet (and Leif as a real scientist isn’t going to give you one that is not meticulously researched).
My counsel? Be patient and keep up our ability to adapt to whatever we get (i.e. don’t hamstring ourselves by focussing on a single factor such as CO2).
What are you people talking about, Leif has explained many times that the sun only has the effect of a light bulb on earth temperatures. Earth doesn’t get hotter or colder because the sun is active or inactive. The variation of TSI proves it, so forget your intuition. It is getting cooler because of the negative phase of PDO and possibly AMO, and the only thing that drives the oceans is the steadiness of the sun. Just because a million earths could fit inside the sun doesn’t mean it has any significant affect on us here. We are just spectators for a world far, far away. We can predict what we know for sure. Just ask David Hathaway and team at NASA.
I read and analyze the whole sun cycle a lot and would rather see our sun wake up soon, the alternative, is not going to be very pleasant for us or our children…
Leif, please keep sending us this info. I do read and check all counter information too, as I would rather see both sides of the ‘discussion’ to see how each scientist see what is coming or believe they see without the verbal or personal bashing that is not necessary.
Thanks for the post Leif.
Jim
I did some research work on contrails a while ago and came up wth several interesting items. This is a current version of evolving work
http://www-pm.larc.nasa.gov/sass/pub/journals/Duda.Controller.09.pdf
Looking at the source (nasa) I carried on looking and found the actual extra moisture being created by the burning of fuel was a tiny fraction of 1% (from memory around .001 of mositure already present)
As you say, various people claim all sorts of feedbacks but the real world impact seems insignificant. Might make a good article if anyone here has up to date knowledge of this.
Tonyb
Shaun (02:48:36) :
Leif, I check your website every morning. I noticed recently that you lowered the line (which I presume is hand drawn) that denotes (as I think you mean) the likely low extent of the 10.7. Not quite trending up as fast as previously thought?
On http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
the dashed line is a 3rd-degree polynomial fit to all the data, the full line is a 3rd-degree polynomial fit to the lowest two points in each solar rotation [so not quite by hand]. The trend has to follow what the Sun is telling us. The line in itself has no real physical meaning and is just shorthand for ‘if you only look at the lowest two values in each rotation and draw smooth a line between them this is what it looks like’.
The ‘true’ smoothed ramp-up is given by the dashed line. That the lowest points also ramp up a bit is interesting because it shows that the density and the temperature of the ‘background’ [i.e. not directly activity related] are also rising.
alexandriu doru (04:50:36) :
1.I did an ‘envelope back’ calculation of the flux 10.7cm from a black body at 1 au distance,radius 6.96e8 m , temperature 5780K.
The corona is at a million degrees, but the F10.7 radio flux is not black body radiation but rather what is called ‘bremsstrahlung’. It comes about because electrons as they flit around at high speed in the million degree corona are deflected by electric forces by other electrons and ions. Each deflection is a change of direction, thus an acceleration, and accelerated electric charges radiate.
David Holliday (04:10:37) :
If you compressed the timescale on the current data would you get a curve that more closely matched the data around and including the 1954 minimum?
No, as compressing the timescale [a dubious procedure in itself] does not increase the amplitude.
vukcevic (04:46:06) :
When I mach my polar fields equation
http://www.geocities.com/vukcevicu/PolarField1.gif
to the actual measurements for a period extending to 30 years, you kindly describe it as ‘GARBAGE’.
May I return compliment in regards to the chart above.
The actual measurements [polar fields and F10.7] are not garbage, only your curve and your interpretation.
edt (06:17:25) :
Can someone point me to the definition of “F10.7″ [I’m guessing this is 10.7 cm photon wavelength. ] and why we care about it? (i.e. what physical processes create it and why is it used as a standard measurement, etc.)
See above, and is it used simply because it has been measured for a long time [since 1947], and has been found to correlate well with many ionospheric parameters, e.g. satellite drag and radio communication quality. One could use other frequencies in the microwave region as well, as here: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/alerts/solar_indices.html
John A (06:12:36) :
The graph is unhelpful and possibly misleading.
The graph simply shows that F10.7 during the current minimum is not all that different from every other minimum, in particular the 1954 minimum that preceded the very large solar cycle 19, hence that F10.7 at minimum is not a predictor for the next cycle. That the curves line up occasionally is purely coincidental and that nothing to do with the point of the plot, namely that the values over the year around the minimum [from 2008.4 to 2009.4] are so very close.
I have seen so many wiggle-matches of proxies to temperature records
You seem to labor under the misconception that one of the curves shows temperature. They both show a solar property: the microwave flux at a wavelength of 10.7 cm [2800 MHz], and are not scaled to each other. The flux has an eleven-year variation with a ‘bottom’ every ~11 years [the bottoms for 1954 and 2008 were shown – with data from before and after], and also a 27-day variation unrelated to the 11-year variation.
Geoff Sharp (06:34:14) :
This is just plain wrong
Perhaps elaborate on why you think so.
John A
I plotted sun spot activity once and came up with this
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/sunspots_mencken.xls
It seemed to me the correlation ranged from very good, through reasonable, to barely any, so was not perfect by any means. (But much better than co2!)
Someone then told me it was the magnetic flux that was of real significance which I don’t have the means to plot.
I certainly believe the variability of the sun has an effect, but whether that means we are able to relate climate changes to sunspot/magnetic flux etc I simply don’t know.
As regards virtually any aspect of climate, I long ago came to the realisation that we know far less than we think we do, but few scientists are prepared to admit when they are wrong
Tonyb
Given that the two are a tiny bit different in strength, it would appear to me that the difference would be negligible in terms of this measure doing something entirely different in ’55-56 compared to ’08-09. I think the graph simply says that we have been here before.
Some think that we will soon freeze to death. I was born in ’56. Didn’t freeze. Some say that if this cookie sheet turns into a long roll of cookie sheets, we will freeze to death. That could happen. If you watch a clock for 24 hrs, you will eventually see a correlation to when you first started watching it. A classic example of correlation is not causation. Yes, we had a cold spell during the Maunder Minimum. But not during the whole thing. While watching grass grow on the Sun, the Earth probably cycled into and out of some cold phase of some ocean somewhere. And they may have even cycled together. It could happen. When I watch a clock for 24 hrs, several things happen to me that happen again in the next 24 hrs, and around the same time. In face, the correlations would amaze you. But the clock on the wall didn’t cause those things to happen.
So I think of Leif’s graph simply as a way of demonstrating that nothing too unusual is happening here.