The sun is blank–no sunspots.
Several WUWT readers have inquired about why the SOHO MDI and magnetogram image has not been updated in several days. The last update was on July 28th.
Here is the reason:
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is having a minor problem. SOHO’s white light solar telescope is temporarily offline while new commands and data tables are uploaded to the spacecraft. Normal operations are expected to resume in a few days.
h/t to:
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
So? Did we miss a sunspot?
REPLY: not that I am aware of. We still have ground based telescopes – Anthony
Having taken Watts down, Sinclair takes on EPA’s Alan Carlin in his latest Crock of the Week video
http://climateprogress.org/
These guys could have damaged the SOHO MDI…they seem destructive, eh?
I check the images at STEREO daily anyway, we haven’t missed anything.
Consider me an illiterate if you must, but what does SOHO tell us that, say, Sac Peak doesn’t?
You can still see the Sun in other wavelengths on teh SOHO page; I always go as well to the STEREO web page, which shows the Sun some 30 degrees round each corner.
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 25 days
2009 total: 167 days (77%)
Since 2004: 678 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days
2009 just passed 1890 and could we be in for a repeat of the 1900’s?
2007 – 1911
2008 – 1912
2009 – 1913
Could be in the a spotless summer, and fall, and winter
WIth the current run of 25 spotless days, the sun seems quieter than it has been for some time. Can anyone tell me how this compares with the length of other spotless periods during the present minimum? I might be wrong, but I have the impression that this has been one of the longest spotless intervals so far.
This would be somewhat OT in most threads here (this one, hopefully not so much), but I have a rather fundamental question about the basic mechanics of AGW theory.
As I understand it, in oversimplified fashion, atmospheric CO2 absorbs certain wavelengths of EM radiation. Increasing the concentration of CO2 will thus increase the temp of the air by increasing the total radiation absorbed.
The NIPCC chart referenced in the earlier post by Ron House predicts the largest temp increase in the zone from 6 to 14 km altitude. The mythical ‘Red Spot’.
Even if this extra warming is taking place, wouldn’t it just all radiate to space every night as the atmosphere returns to an equilibrium in that area? With the exception of cirrus type clouds, pretty much everything else is below 6 km, so the heated air might be considered to be ‘outside the blanket’, so to speak.
As Ron House pointed out, analogies are never perfect, so here’s mine. If I leave a brick out on my porch in the sun for the day, it will grow warm. Overnight, it will cool to the ambient temperature. Take another brick and put it in the oven, and heat it to 400 degrees. At sunset put it outside with the sun warmed brick. By dawn, the two bricks will both be at the ambient temperature. In fact, I could have warmed the second brick in a kiln and it still wouldn’t have made any difference the next day. I would not have any residual Anthropogenic Backyard Warming by cooking the bricks, even if I did it every day.
What am I missing? At the end of the day (heh!) maybe the air is warmer. But certainly by astronomical dawn the next day any extra heat is long gone along with the normal energy release quota. Where I live, the air cools more on a cloudless night than on a cloudy one. As long as the extra heat is above any clouds, I’d think it’s likely gone a few hours after sunset.
Mike
A good source for spotless days info that I found is http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html
The table “Periods with spotless days (>20 days) since 1849” from that site give an overview of spotless periods.
SC 24 has had 8 spotless periods as of May 2009.
SC 24 has had 8 spotless periods “of 20 days or more” as of May 2009. My typing got ahead of my thinking.
Laurence Kirk, you are correct, it is one of the longest so far. It ranks as the 4th longest currently at 25 days. Longest this minimum was 31 days.
Longest spotless period among the modern cycles is 42 days during minimum 1996. It was the only 20+ days spotless period for that minimum. This one is counting 9 so far including the current unfinished spotless period.
Just as the sun looked like it was ramping up, it is getting closer and closer to set a new spotless period record while the solar flux seems to be dropping sligtly again.
For some sunspot statistics, check this page out:
http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html#Period
Thanks guys. Now I can pursue my occasional distraction by spaceweather.com even more indulgently! Every time they add another spotless day, I seem to get a little dopamine hit..
With regards,
Larry Kirk
Jerker Andersson (13:04:51) :
For some sunspot statistics, check this page out:
http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html#Period
It is an interesting page indeed. If the page is updated like the last couple of years, the next update should be early September, a month from now.
The blue spotless days graph is competing with ~1911
http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html#Wolf
Will the green curve of accumulated spotless days reach 700 before the next update of the spotless days page? Maybe 800 by new year?
http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html#Evolution
Laurence Kirk (12:45:11) :
25 days is a run, no doubt about it. There were 2 phantoms, but they can be ignored. SWPC/NOAA caught on, and ignored them.
I ignore them too. Credit Geoff Sharp for the idea and the energy to drive the project forward.
As for runs minus the phantom spot counts, 2008 had 60+ spotless day run and 2009 has had a 60+ day run.
Knowing that spots in this minimum can grow out of nothing, you might as well flip a coin to say whether we’ll get another 60+ day spotless run minus the phantom spots. The way it looks right now, there’s nothing going on.
SOHO is a great tool in space. It will be back. I wouldn’t mind if NASA ordered a dozen of them for backups and to keep a SOHO eye on the backside of the Sun. There’s nothing like consistency, and SOHO has given it to us.
MikeW (12:54:45) :
In your analogy, the brick does cool but the AGW theory is that a part of the heat is trapped by the green house gasses.
I would refer you to Dr. Spencer’s blog at:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
Click on “Global Warming 101”.
It is well written so that even a humble red-neck from Texas (like me) can understand it.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack
Laurence Kirk (12:45:11) :
WIth the current run of 25 spotless days, the sun seems quieter than it has been for some time. Can anyone tell me how this compares with the length of other spotless periods during the present minimum? I might be wrong, but I have the impression that this has been one of the longest spotless intervals so far.
~~~~
You may find this trend graph over at Solarcycle24 interesting. It hasn’t been updated yet for July, and it doesn’t tell you the length of spotless intervals. It does give the number of spotless days in any given month and contrasts those with the SC23 minimum.
http://www.solarcycle24.com/graphs/sunspotgraph.gif
I would put the brick in the greenhouse, not on the doorstep! But then take the roof off the greenhouse, to allow for natural convection..
(after which, if we’re having a cold snap, even the greenhouse won’t save the tomatoes)
Leif, what is your take on what they call faculae regions (FR)?
The Australians have an interesting explanation… http://www.sydneyobservatory.com.au/blog/?p=2260
… and they seems to say that there was a very small sunspot (very hard to see through) this week.
The Hathaway August 2009 Sunspot Number Prediction has been released… Looking at the curve, Maximum is now expected to be in early 2013 with a sunspot number +- 82.
Flux is pretty low today (unadjusted of course!) at 66.
jon Jewett (13:50:33) :
In order to get warmer, you have to trap more of the outgoing than at present.
That was predicted to occur in the tropics. Didn’t happen.
We’re leaking heat like a sieve.
Kind of like your monthly balance: You have to spend less than you earn in order to save up.
We’re losing jobs faster than they are created. It’s called an unemployment rate. Makes pay rates go down, and makes it harder to save. We’re leaking jobs like a sieve too.
The spotless days page was updated 2nd of May. There was a long spotless period still underway as of the 2nd of May and is not yet counted on the charts – longer the 31 days.
If the current spotless period extends longer than J.Jansens update of the 2nd of September then it will not be counted until his December update.
It’s also possible that the total solar cycle 24 spotless days count will surpass cycle 15’s. – just over 25 odd days to go.
Meanwhile there is a Volcano with a remote potential of a St Helen’s sized eruption being monitored on the Kamchatka peninsula.
When do you think the next La Nina will come around? How long do you think this El Nino event will hang around? (Assuming it develops into an established event)
Hi Mike, I am a believer in ‘outer envelope’ type calculations. What this means is, to use a simple example, if I have a full bucker of water and there’s a hole in the bottom of the bucket, I predict the bucket will soon be empty. I could have analysed the details of fluid flow through a narrow opening, but all that would do is give me a better estimate of what I can predict anyway. Now CO2 has one significant absorption band in the infrared region, which is used by most of the heat radiated from the surface. So that reduces the total ‘power envelope’ of the planet’s radiation. So the surface must heat up by just enough that the rest of the power envelope adjusts for the missing bit absorbed by CO2.
The reason the molecules heated by day don’t simply reradiate at night is that they indeed do, but the photons radiated will hit another CO2 molecule in short order and get absorbed again. In fact the hot air rises, and only molecules high enough to have a ‘clear line of sight’ to outer space will succeed in radiating their energy away. Whatever the temperature of that layer, that is the effective temperature at which the Earth radiates in the CO2 absorption band.
I think the main thing is that solid objects tend to absorb and radiate at almost any wavelength, whereas the atmosphere only does do at certain wavelengths. Most of the contents of the air (N2, O2) cannot radiate or absorb at all in the relevant range, so unless they can get rid of heat by convection or conduction or giving the heat to a CO2 molecule, say, that can radiate, they just keep their heat. (In fact, the air as a whole convects nicely and cools as it rises.)
“In your analogy, the brick does cool but the AGW theory is that a part of the heat is trapped by the green house gasses.”
In my simple way of thinking, we’re looking at 3-4% CO2 in the atmosphere. Imagine a blanket 4′ x 8′ – with only 1 square foot of material spread out over the 32 square feet of the blanket. Pretty crappy blanket – so what’s the real theory on AGW?