Many commenters have mentioned “The Watts Effect”, whereby within a short period of time after I do a post about the sun on WUWT mentioning the lack of sunspots, one appears.
I figured it was time to settle the issue with a test, a big one. The sun is blank, here is my post. We are about to break the monthly calendar record (again) for a calendar month without sunspots. Ironically this last occurred in August 2008. Depending on whether you believe NOAA or SIDC in Belgium about whether a sunspeck noted by one observatory (Catainia in Italy) was a valid sunspot or not determines if August 2008 was a sunspotless calender month or not. Let’s hope neither Catainia, SIDC, or my nefarious and dubious spot producing solar powers spoil this run.
But wait, there’s more.
This was in Spaceweather.com today:
Inspect the image below. It is a photo of the sun taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Can you guess what day it was taken? Scroll down for the answer.
August 28th, today. But it could have been taken on any day of the past seven weeks. For all that time, the face of the sun has looked exactly the same–utterly blank.
According to NOAA sunspot counts, the longest string of blank suns during the current solar minimum was 52 days back in July, Aug. and Sept. of 2008. If the current trend continues for only four more days, the record will shift to 2009. It’s likely to happen; the sun remains eerily quiet and there are no sunspots in the offing. Solar minimum is shaping up to be a big event indeed.
=========
Here’s the count as of August 30th:
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 51 days
2009 total: 193 days (80%)
Since 2004: 704 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days
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“Never make predictions, especially about the future.”
~Casey Stengel
I don’t think that there will be a sunspot in the near future. With solar flux at a steady 68 and A-Index around 2 – 4, we’ll see some more weeks (or months of a lazy sun).
Besides, that’s what my Tarot card reader told me… and she never misses.
We should buy a Tarot card set and send it to Hathaway and CRU. Much cheaper and much more accurate! 😉
It is; but our warmist friends will simply say that, by great good luck, thermal Armageddon has been averted by a few years.
If trillions of dollars were not riding on rather bad science all this would be hilarious; but, as it stands, we are going to be forced into measures, based on highly contestable science which will have real, negative effects in the real world.
An important corollary of Murhpy’s Law is that you cannot count on Murphy’s Law to be effective. So if you’re “expecting anything to go wrong” it won’t.
The same may hold with the Watt’s Effect – if you’re expecting to cause a sunspot, it won’t happen. Of course, if you’re expecting the Watt’s Effect to fail in this case, then we might get that ill-timed spot.
Only time will tell, and it won’t tell us much!
Oh dang, I misspelled Murphy. Completely unintentionally….
You see what you want to see……(Julius Caesar, 100-44 BC)
Just a joke.
Pardon my ignorance.
Can somebody please point me to a good read about what the impact of a spotless sun is?
So what if the sun has no spots?
If it’s one of those pesky single pixel spots, it will no doubt stir another controversy.
Kirk- keep looking Mr. Sulu. That Romulan ship is out there, I can feel it. But where?
Sulu: Captain, I’m picking up something on the screen.
A Romulan ship?
Sulu: A sunspot, Captain.
Now, we all know Spock would correct us and say “Not a spot, it has an area of 0.69730963 x10E6 hemispherical @ur momisugly .25 radius from the Stellar center, Captain. A pore”.
Kirk – .69730963 ?
Spock “Precisely, Captain”.
O – kay.
Watt an interesting minimum this is turning out to be. A brief uptick in July and now this period of inactivity. Let’s try for September and really make things interesting.
“Can somebody please point me to a good read about what the impact of a spotless sun is?”
‘Spotless’ is itself a symptom.
This might shed some light – so to speak
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm
The page http://daltonsminima.wordpress.com/dati-sole-in-diretta/ keeps a running update to the sunspotless-days count at http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html#Evolution The running update is in Italian, but with the help of Google, it’s simple. There are 2 counts, using NOAA and SIDC numbers, respectively…
GIORNI SPOTLESS NOAA: AGGIORNATI AL 28/8/2009
Updated NOAA spotless numbers as of 2009/08/28
GIORNI SPOTLESS DA INIZIO ANNO (2009): 193
Number of spotless days so far in 2009: 193
GIORNI SPOTLESS DA INIZIO MINIMO: 706
Number of spotless days since the start of the minimum: 706
GIORNI SPOTLESS DI FILA: 49
Number of consecutive spotless days as of this day: 49
GIORNI RIMANENTI AL RAGGIUNGIMENTO DEL CICLO 13: -30 (PREVISTO PER 27/9/2009)
Number of additional spotless days required to match cycle 13: 30
The corresponding SIDC numbers are 192, 701, 29, and 35
If the “dearth of sunspots” continues, the next 12 months will break a number of milestones in the cycle 10..15 group. The remaining lineup in cycles 10..15 is…
13 => 736 days which we should hit early October 2009
14 => 938 days (early May 2010?)
15 => 1019 days (early August 2010?)
12 => 1028 days (late August 2010? a year from now)
Then what?
This depressing note from Fox :
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/28/hold-breath-epa-expected-declare-carbon-dioxide-pollutant/
one, two or even three specs/spots every month or so is going to make any difference ??
“Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax.”
~William Thomson, Lord Kelvin English scientist, 1899
Ah but you are now observing the effect of the observation – a different experiment than before.
All those photons in the sun, they know you’re looking you know, quantum mechanics ‘n’ all that, simple.
Remember, as Neils Bohr once said, “We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough”
Cheers
Mark
Might even spell “Niels” correctly next time – doh!
Uh oh… a cycle 24 magnetic signature may be stirring on the northern hemisphere,,,
Gene Nemetz (22:23:37) :
“Never make predictions, especially about the future.”
~Casey Stengel
this prediction is ok., like a weather forecast for 5 days and they work usually quiet good…
You will be very lucky to get a spot right now Anthony….but you never know your luck.
* It’s simple. When the Sun has more spots, it is more active and a little warmer.
* It’s complicated. Our planet seems to warm more than the increased visible light during an active period.
* Search for “Solar cycle” for descriptions of what happens to the Sun during these periods.
Although the Sun is blank, there has been a subtle shift. New SC24 magnetic flux has arrived, and the F10.7 flux has gone up. For the first 28 days of August 2008, the flux was 67.96, for the first 28 days of August 2009, the flux is now 69.01. For July the numbers were: 2008 67.78, 2009 70.43.
“fred (22:48:23) :
Pardon my ignorance.
Can somebody please point me to a good read about what the impact of a spotless sun is?
So what if the sun has no spots?”
Given the fact that the Sun is the energy provider for the Earth, anything that might affect solar activity, and one idicator of low activity, is sun spots, may, and very likely will, affect climate.
Szerintem a SIDC valamelyik napra ebben a hónapban úgyis be fogja írni, hogy volt napfolt, nehogy 0,0 legyen 2009. augusztus.
Augusztus 28-ig: 191:240=79,58%
>>> amennyiben ez az érték megmarad év végéig, akkor a 2009-es várható napfoltmentes napok száma: 0,7958*365=290 nap
Így a TOP 5 év (1849-2009):
1. 1913. >>> 311 nap
2. 2009. >>> 290 nap
3. 1901. >>> 284 nap
4. 1878. >>> 278 nap
5. 2008. >>> 266 nap
Reply: The first line translates from Hungarian as:
so I approved the post. ~ ctm
Way OT – but there are interesting things happening on the DMI Arctic Ice curve over the last few days
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Note that DMI plots sea ice concentation of >30% (IARC-JAXA and NSIDC use >15%). The same phenomenon occurred last year for DMI – but could we have already reached the melt minimum? Wait and see…
It’ll remain blank a few more days according to STEREO behind. Of course, on might emerge before our very eyes as I type.