Leif Svalgaard writes:
Some speculation that solar cycle 25 has already begun:
http://xrt.cfa.harvard.edu/resources/pubs/savc0707.pdf
Graph source: NASA News
This would be stunning, because it suggests that the sun has skipped a solar cycle (#24) . Researchers, three from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the other from Marshall Space Flight Center-NASA, have published a paper that suggests this possibility.
Does a polar coronal hole’s flux emergence follow a Hale-like law?
A. Savcheva1, J.W. Cirtain2, E.E. DeLuca1, L. Golub1
ABSTRACT
Recent increases in spatial and temporal resolution for solar telescopes sensitive to EUV and X-ray radiation have revealed the prevalence of transient jet events in polar coronal holes. Using data collected by the X-Ray Telescope on Hinode, Savcheva et al. (2007) confirmed the observation, made first by the Soft X-ray Telescope on Yohkoh, that some jets exhibit a motion transverse to the jet outflow direction.
The velocity of this transverse motion is, on average, 20 kms−1. The direction of the transverse motion, in combination with the standard reconnection model for jet production (e.g. Shibata et al. 1992), reflects the magnetic polarity orientation of the ephemeral active region at the base of the jet. From this signature, we find that during the present minimum phase of the solar cycle the jet-base ephemeral active regions in the polar coronal holes had a preferred east-west direction, and that this direction reversed during the cycle’s progression through minimum.
In late 2006 and early 2007, the preferred direction was that of the active regions of the coming sunspot cycle (Cycle 24), but in late 2008 and early 2009 the preferred direction has been that of the active regions of sunspot cycle 25. These findings are consistent with the results of Wilson et al. (1988) that there is a high latitude expansion of the solar activity
cycle.
Full paper here:
http://xrt.cfa.harvard.edu/resources/pubs/savc0707.pdf
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I really wish I understood this cycle thing………. surely a cycle can include a ‘blip’ as part of a numerical or statistical cycle. Or is a sun cycle similar to the moon cycle?
Maybe every 25 cycles an event occurs that is part of the cycle……….
Im bemused…..
Mike
Paul Coppin (08:31:05) :
I’d like to ask Leif the corrolative question: what happens at the end of of the cycle?
The old cycle just ‘peters out’. There can be occasional flare ups [last gasps]. On page 4 of http://www.leif.org/research/Most%20Recent%20IMF,%20SW,%20and%20Solar%20Data.pdf you can see how the last few cycles have fared.
I took away the idea that the sample size and results were decidedly equivocal; that the onset of cycle 25 is only weakly supported by the results.
This is fair, and the authors also expressed the need for more data. Something to watch for.
Ron de Haan (09:04:16) :
‘A link between the Sun, cosmic rays, aerosols, and liquid-water clouds appears to exist on a global scale,’ the report concludes.
I thought the mantra was that cosmic ray secondaries were the condensation nuclei, ah, well, now that one didn’t pan out, so it’s gotta be something else, clearly.
Stephen Wilde (09:38:31) :
So, at the bottom of an extended and weak cycle the magnetic polarity might stutter and switch about a few times before settling into the polarity of the next cycle.
Any comment, Leif ?
The Sun is messy, nothing is ever clean. There is no grand switch of ‘the magnetic polarity’, Each little speck has its own local field and is buffered by the roiling plasma and can easily be ‘bent out of shape’. Even big spots can. 3% of all spots are reversed.
_Jim (09:54:47) :
(2) – It’s number 2 – relaxation oscillatory behavior.
Even the sunspot cycle plots has a ’sawtooth’ look to it; it does *not* look like a half sinusoid.
The rapid up-shot of sunspot activity after a lull
Small cycle start out slowly. There is no rapid up-shoot for those. Here is a good example [and actually think that SC24 might look something like this]:
http://www.solen.info/solar/cycl14.html
Lubos Motl (12:01:46) :
Would you be able to count the “cycles” during the Maunder minimum? I guess that the answer is really “no”.
Cosmic ray proxies show that there were cycles even through the Maunder Minimum.
If someone offers me 1:1 odds, I am ready to bet that in 2015, most of the sunspots will carry the opposite magnetic signature than the SC23 that has probably ended.
No need to wait that long. This is already the case:
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
Look at the sunspot number count at the bottom [green]. If topped by a blue circle, the spot was SC23. If topped by a red circle it was SC24. The latter are clearly dominant now.
maksimovich (12:27:39) :
If the sun has been relatively “constant” in its cyclical Beauvoir and attenuation,since the MM why have we a negative trend in GCR both in proxies,in balloon data,and in satellite data ?
Possibly because the interstellar flux has been slowly decreasing: e.g. http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/reprints/2007bieber.pdf
Stephen Wilde (09:38:31) :
“So, at the bottom of an extended and weak cycle the magnetic polarity might stutter and switch about a few times before settling into the polarity of the next cycle.
Any comment, Leif ?
The Sun is messy, nothing is ever clean. There is no grand switch of ‘the magnetic polarity’, Each little speck has its own local field and is buffered by the roiling plasma and can easily be ‘bent out of shape’. Even big spots can. 3% of all spots are reversed.”
I’ll take that as a ‘yes’ then.
Stephen Wilde (13:47:27) :
I’ll take that as a ‘yes’ then.
It was meant as a ‘no’. The problem being that there is not ‘one’ thing as ‘the magnetic field’. There are a whole bunch of disconnected little ones that live and die almost independently. It is not ‘the same one’ that ‘stutters’.
It seems that equation of our friend Vukcevic, though it could bother some, it may reflect what is happening and will happen in our very interesting future (in fact more interesting for gwrs.:-), as they will be changing “polarity” also )
http://www.geocities.com/vukcevicu/PolarField1Cr.gif
For those who think the sun is pregnant, I would say that perhaps it´s in love: it has not decided yet between cycle 23, 24 or, a new comer, the 25th.
Leif Svalgaard (13:34:38) :
Lubos Motl (12:01:46) :
Would you be able to count the “cycles” during the Maunder minimum? I guess that the answer is really “no”.
Cosmic ray proxies show that there were cycles even through the Maunder Minimum
We know you said there was not such a lost cycle (4/5) during the Dalton, as for the same proxies, being CR at maximum level, would it mean we are still at cycle 23 minimum?
Is it possible the polarity shifted to indicate cycle 25 and may shift back again to indicant we are still in cycle 24? Perhaps this is a precurser of a Maunder Minimum type of event. The Global Warming cabal would not be pleased.
Leif Svalgaard (13:06:54)
I didn’t mean to mention the magnetic field as a whole although my words could be read that way. I was referring to the observed magnetic polarity described in the initial article and you confirmed that it is variable from spot to spot and place to place on the sun.
Thus I am perfectly correct in pointing out that it ‘stutters’ (albeit locally).
Could the change in polarity fail so that two cycles of the same polarity could follow one another ?
“There is always something new out of Africa.”
Pliny The Elder
“There is always something new out of Sol”
Fox The Younger
As noted earlier … we do live in interesting times.
Mark your calendar two or three (five, ten?) years from now to see if this is a blip or a Nobel Prize entry.
Somewhat related. The human 24 hour rhythm internally is a 25 or so hour cycle. It is synchronized by the sun. If the human cycle was 23 hours our rhythm would be chaotic. Long cycles can be shortened. Short cycles get out of phase.
Speculation: suppose the sun’s rhythm was shorter than the things that trigger its 11 year cycle. You would expect periodic “chaotic” behavior. i.e. a resetting of the cycle clock in “anomalous” places in the cycle.
Now all we have to do is figure out what is causing the anomalous retriggering of the solar cycle. We know the base cycle is on the order of eleven years (plus or minus).
Of course the above is just a flight of fancy (except for the part about humans).
I would look for the anomalous triggering cycle to be on the order of 13 to 17 years.
Nogw (14:53:36) :
being CR at maximum level, would it mean we are still at cycle 23 minimum?
We are still at the minimum between SC23 and SC24.
Michael (15:04:12) :
Is it possible the polarity shifted to indicate cycle 25 and may shift back again to indicant we are still in cycle 24? Perhaps this is a precurser of a Maunder Minimum type of event. The Global Warming cabal would not be pleased.
Solar cycles do not change ‘on a dime’. The Sun is BIG.
Stephen Wilde (15:06:31) :
Could the change in polarity fail so that two cycles of the same polarity could follow one another ?
The reason that two cycles have different polarities is that the line connecting the two spots in an active region is tilted such that one spot is closer to the pole [in the hemisphere] than the other one, giving one polarity a better chance of reaching the pole than the other [being closer]. If this tilt [Joy’s law] was reversed the polar fields would not cancel and reverse and would grow stronger, so a very strong cycle would follow. There is no sign of this happening, so I would say there really is no chance of this. But remember that the paper did not talk about lost/missing/skipped cycles, but simply that the extended cycle may be 22 years long rather than 17 as believed until now. This does not seem to be such a big and qualitative change, should it turn out to hold up.
OK, whoever has been fooling around with the sun switches can just put them back in the default position, and we can get going on a sunspot cycle, whatever its number.
I am an amateur radio operator, and I just love to operate the 10 Meter band. However, without some sunspots it is a dead duck. So you have had your fun bloviating about what is going on, now let’s get the sunspot show on the road. I am 77 years old and can’t wait 70 years for another Maunder Minimum to pass.
{;~)
Just a little OT
Mambo Banana Patch — A mild correction if you will allow:
I think you may have misinterpreted rephelan’s post at 12:39:17: Maybe you realize this already, but Dr. Svalgaard was not complaining about the misspelling of his name, but rather rephelan (12:39:17) : was self correcting HIS [rephelan’s] mistake in his previous post [rephelan (12:38:02) :] in which he, rephelan, misspelled Dr. Svalgaard’s name.
Sorry if this is hard to follow, but that’s the English language for you.
On a personal level, I actually like the potpourri of names and their various spellings that gives spice to our ethnic and linguistic heritage.
And if I axidently mispelted any1’s name, u have mi advance appologies.
If someone offers me 1:1 odds, I am ready to bet that in 2015, most of the sunspots will carry the opposite magnetic signature than the SC23 that has probably ended.
No need to wait that long. This is already the case:
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
Look at the sunspot number count at the bottom [green]. If topped by a blue circle, the spot was SC23. If topped by a red circle it was SC24. The latter are clearly dominant now.
===
Ffrom that plot, the “purple plot” oscillations are ever decreasing in magnitude, though still recognizable now. (Is there a relationship, or a term I’m not familair with, that describes this decreasing magnitude (towards a minimum perhaps?) or, is that plot – because the oscillations are decreasing but not quite yet demonstrably becoming more distinct with a larger magnitudes each cycle – mean we not yet at a solar minimum between cycles?
Did you work any 10 today? Ohio was consistantly S7 – S9 down into 5-land today just in time for the “10-10” contest …
(Ham here too BTW)
.
.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10may_longrange.htm
More than three years Check out this link on the subject.
Jim,
Didn’t have the set turned on today. QTH is Cheyenne, WY. Solar flux index is 68, so not much motivation to try.
What’s wrong with the MDI Continuum and MDI Magnetogram? That huge magnetic fuzzy thing don’t match with the other images of the sun back on the SOHO images. Are they trying to hide a bif SC23 sunspot?
Leif Svalgaard (13:34:38) :
> Cosmic ray proxies show that there were cycles even
> through the Maunder Minimum.
plus http://www.leif.org/research/Extended-Cycle.png
plus Livingston & Penn
I’ve said this before, and it may seem repetitive, but here goes again…
Sunspots do *NOT* cause anything. They are, at best, half-decent proxies that allow us to infer what’s currently going on with the sun. Sunspots are currently either very small or non-existant, and appear to be dying out altogether (for the next several decades). In plain English, the correlation is breaking down (at least temporarily). I.e. sunspot cycle != solar activity cycle.
What we need is for someone of Dr. Svalgaard’s stature to do their cycle 24 forecasts in terms of 10.7 cm flux, and forget about spots altogether.
Having said that, the connection, or lack thereof, between lack of sunspots (Maunder Minimum) and climate (Little Ice Age) is a totally separate topic that is sure to be interesting.
Walter Dnes (21:30:56) :
What we need is for someone of Dr. Svalgaard’s stature to do their cycle 24 forecasts in terms of 10.7 cm flux, and forget about spots altogether.
Ken Schatten has always preferred predicting F10.7, and my own prediction can also be expressed in terms of F10.7, namely 120 sfu.
RACookPE1978 (19:31:17) :
From that plot, the “purple plot” oscillations are ever decreasing in magnitude, though still recognizable now.
the “purple plot” is the solar ‘mean field’, that is: the average field over the disk. It has been decreasing towards the minimum, but has now started it climb back up. One thing to understand is that different solar indices or measures show minimum at slightly different times.
Interesting article. It will be fun to see if the conclusions hold up with further development.
One thing that’s been largely unaddressed in this thread is the significant asymmetry between solar N-S hemispheres. Messy, indeed. This asymmetry also fluctuates over a long period (~12 solar cycles)–the N:S ratio of solar cycle activity is not a constant and can contribute to the apparent length of the cycle, if I understand correctly (which isn’t always the case.)
Speaking of which, thanks once again to Dr. Svalgaard for his patience and input. The cringe factor in this thread has been particularly high. Thanks also to all those who actually read the posts before replying.
See: http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1538-4357/554/1/L115/015115.text.html#tb1
well, this may prove the theory of a 4a and 4b cycles from 220 years ago,
Can I say ( or should I wait) to say I TOLD U SO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
any how, is interesting. is this a sign?
The honey bees are pissed off from this shift ( they were mad as h— this spring)
well , good post Leif !!!!!
Leif,
what is your prediction for cycle #25 ?