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.
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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
The Solar Flux appears to be in a decline since May of 2009.
Summary of Adjusted Flux Density Values for the year 2009
Space Weather Canada
http://www.spaceweather.ca/sx-11-eng.php
ftp://ftp.geolab.nrcan.gc.ca/data/solar_flux/daily_flux_values/current.txt
Month Count Mean Median Min Max
Jan 93 67.4817 67.60 64.9 70.3
Feb 84 68.1655 68.25 65.8 70.1
Mar 93 68.4161 68.20 65.7 71.9
Apr 90 70.1133 70.10 68.6 71.9
May 93 71.9118 71.80 68.4 75.8
Jun 90 70.7400 70.30 68.8 74.8
Jul 93 70.4118 70.10 67.9 74.2
Aug 84 69.0202 68.90 67.2 71.3
Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, Penticton, British Columbia,
http://www.spaceweather.ca/sx-3-eng.php
The database available here comprises two components: measurements of the 10.7cm Flux and daily records of flux monitor output. Each measurement of the 10.7cm Solar Flux is expressed in three values: the “observed”, “adjusted” and “URSI Series D.” values.
When the Sun is being studied, the annual modulation of the 10.7cm Solar Flux by the changing distance between the Earth and Sun is undesirable. However, one byproduct of the ephemeris calculations needed for the solar flux monitors to properly acquire and track the Sun is the distance between the Sun and the Earth. We therefore produce an additional quantity, corrected for variations in the Earth-Sun distance, and given for the average distance. This is called the “Adjusted” value.
Mike McMillan (23:58:08) :
Most depressing, but more expected from Aliens wishing to sterilize Earth, prior to colonizing it, of dangerous Carbon-based lifeforms.
Someone should gently break the news to the EPA that life on Earth is primarily carbon-based.
Who let the dogs out of Area 51? It was supposed to be secure.
Anthony
On “The Watts Effect”, what is the projected probability distribution of sunspots with time after posting? How many measurements will be needed to achieve statistically significant evidence thereof?
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?
I would recomend this paper as a primer :
http://www.scribd.com/doc/338170/svensmark-2007cosmoclimatology
and if you find that interesting the theory is expanded in the book “The Chilling Stars” and there was recently a paper that was posted on this site with some newer evidence.
I think we are due for a solar update from the luminaries at NASA. I went back through their archives for the last 6 years and put together a reasonably comprehensive summary of the observations and predictions that they’ve bestowed upon us over the last six years:
Nov 12, 2003: “The Sun Goes Haywire – Solar maximum is years past, yet the sun has been remarkably active lately. Is the sunspot cycle broken?”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/12nov_haywire.htm
Oct 18, 2004: “Something strange happened on the sun last week: all the sunspots vanished. This is a sign, say scientists, that solar minimum is coming sooner than expected.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/18oct_solarminimum.htm
May 5, 2005: “Solar Myth – With solar minimum near, the sun continues to be surprisingly active.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/05may_solarmyth.htm
Sept 15, 2005: “Solar Minimum Explodes – Solar minimum is looking strangely like Solar Max.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/15sep_solarminexplodes.htm
Aug 15th, 2006: “Backward Sunspot – A strange little sunspot may herald the coming of one of the stormiest solar cycles in decades.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/15aug_backwards.htm
Dec 21, 2006 “Scientists Predict Big Solar Cycle – Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/21dec_cycle24.htm
Dec 14, 2007 “Is a New Solar Cycle Beginning? – The solar physics community is abuzz this week. ”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/14dec_excitement.htm
Jan 10, 2008: “Solar Cycle 24 – Hang on to your cell phone, a new solar cycle has just begun.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/10jan_solarcycle24.htm
March 28, 2008: “Old Solar Cycle Returns – Barely three months after forecasters announced the beginning of new Solar Cycle 24, old Solar Cycle 23 has returned.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/28mar_oldcycle.htm
July 11, 2008: “What’s Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing) – Stop the presses! The sun is behaving normally.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/11jul_solarcycleupdate.htm
Sept. 30, 2008: “Spotless Sun: Blankest Year of the Space Age
– Sunspot counts are at a 50-year low – We’re experiencing a deep minimum of the solar cycle.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/30sep_blankyear.htm
Nov. 7, 2008: The Sun Shows Signs of Life – I think solar minimum is behind us”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008
/07nov_signsoflife.htm
April 1, 2009: Deep Solar Minimum – We’re experiencing a very deep solar minimum – This is the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm
May 29, 2009: “If our prediction is correct, Solar Cycle 24 will have a peak sunspot number of 90, the lowest of any cycle since 1928 when Solar Cycle 16 peaked at 78,”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/29may_noaaprediction.htm
June 17, 2009: “Mystery of the Missing Sunspots, Solved? The sun is in the pits of a century-class solar minimum, and sunspots have been puzzlingly scarce for more than two years.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/17jun_jetstream.htm
What a joke. I can’t believe that I’m paying for this crap…
All right Anthony!!!
The sun needs a nudge to wake up
As long as you are going to flex your Watts affect muscles could I put in a request for an itsy bitsy solar flare. Nothing big, maybe a baby X1. It has been awhile since the last X class flare.
So is it Catainia…or perhaps Catania?
Why are the current SOHO images almost 20 hours old. Does it take off for the weekend or what?
Leif Svalgaard (04:24:33) :
AndrewWH (03:38:32) :
This solar activity, or lack of it, is happening on their watch
———
But is not unexpected. We predicted a small cycle to come and such a cycle is always slow in starting. We even held out the possibility of a Maunder type minimum: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003SPD….34.0603S
Personally I don’t think it’ll get that low, unless Livingston & Penn are correct and sunspots will become invisible soon.
You said only a few weeks ago we were not heading for a grand minimum….you have predicted a medium SC24 cycle of 72. Talk about having your cake and eating it too. It may be time to get off the L&P bandwagon as they have nothing except good observations of the start of a grand minimum, that you did NOT predict.
Plea for help. A while back Dr Svalgaard posted some information about an idea that sunspots could be there but we cannot see them due one part of the background energy reaching 15. I know it’s not much, but that’s all I recall. I failed to note it and have searched the archieves but cannot find it. Dr?
@Leif,
where are the current 7,000 km deep lying jet streams currently at. Are they anywhere near the 22nd to push more spots up?
thanks
“May you live in interesting times” might be a curse instead of a proverb.
i believe this streak is happening is because cycle 23 has completly finished so there will be no more sunspecks form that old cycle interupting. now its all cycle 24. Im suprised that since this new cycle is behaving like cycles 10-15 that solar predictiors are using the last 10 cycles to predict how this new one will turn out. it doesnt make since to me.
It is probably coincidental but the number of spotless days for the past two years has occurred with much lower temperatures occurring in the northern latitudes this summer in the states. As I recall, I don’t believe the summer after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo was as cool. Could the shift in the PDO along with a spotless sun and a rather low solar wind be responsible for this abrupt change?
From U2: “There’s a little blackspot on the sun today… the same little blackspot as yesterday…” Oh! wait… it’s a burnt pixel!
Whjat every happened to that deep solar conveyor that showed the sun picking up activity and was supposed to produce tonnes of sunspots?
Why do you think no sunspots is a good thing? Having another ice age doesn’t appeal to me?
Do you think the greenhouse theory is accurate, and we need the sun to tamp down warming?
“What a joke. I can’t believe that I’m paying for this crap…”
Here’s the Bsubz you just sold me. It’s dead, I want my money back.
Well, it most certainly is dead. It’s not breathing for God’s sake.
Its in rigor! There, see?
I demand you return the money I paid you!! It was likely dead when you sold it to me!
What? You heard it? Just now?
But that’s ridiculous, it’s DEAD!
Dead, Dead, DEAD!!!
Aiiyyeee!!!
dearieme (06:03:03) :
Gene, you may farly blame the great Lord Kelvin for his errors, but not for being English.
It’s his title. What can I do?
If the sun continues its less-active state and the period begins to look like a minimum of sorts, would it be incorrect to imply the climate will behave exactly as it did during previous minimums? Don’t other things — Milankovitch kinds of things — come into play, such as obliquity, eccentricity, and precession? Has sufficient time passed that the difference in these relative conditions, though small, will be meaningful in comparing the Maunder Minimum to what might be expected now? Just wonderin’.
If they declare CO2 a pollutant, I wonder what new regulations there will be on sports…football, soccer, basketball, and especially running…these all cause a huge increase in respiration.
On a happy note for our children, schools will have to ban Phys Ed to reduce these harmful emissions.
@Tom
It should be here as that is discussing the reduction in contrast http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/15/livingston-and-penn-in-eos-are-sunspots-different-during-this-solar-minimum/
David L. Hagen (07:17:31) :
Anthony
On “The Watts Effect”, what is the projected probability distribution of sunspots with time after posting? How many measurements will be needed to achieve statistically significant evidence thereof?
Dear David,
The data is quite robust, so you needn’t worry.
The current solar minimum is real and the tiny specs detected represent nothing more but irrelevant statistics.
We now have the opportunity to observe the current phase of our sun with modern observation technology and the current knowledge, not available to humanity during the previous comparable solar minimum 200 to 400 years ago.
All direct observations from that time, reports of meteorological events and records
from Europe and the USA and modern studies and climate reconstructions confirm a clear relation between deep solar minimum conditions and extreme cold weather events, droughts, extreme rain and hail storms, a decline of the treeline, an advance of glaciers, frequent crop failures, famine and disease.
But also with increased seismic and volcanic activity, the wild card in our climate system.
Therefore it is more than worrying that our current scientific and political establishment continues to push for the political hoax of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
This despite the fact that the first signs of a cooling climate, a World Wide reduction in crop yields and record breaking cold weather events during the NH summer, which followed an extreme winter that covered the entire Northern part of the US Continent in snow from the East Coast to the West Coast and froze all the Big Lakes.
The time has come for the “Warmists” to wake up to the reality of the current state of our sun and drop all the political plans aimed at a reduction of CO2 emissions.
Instead we should prepare for a long period of extreme weather events that have the potential to endanger the world’s agricultural output, which inevitably will result in mass starvation caused by famine and disease.
It simply does not make any sense for any political establishment to make an effort to gain control over that what can not be controlled by humans.
This is true for our climate as well as for angry masses marching towards the centers of Government, because they are starving from hunger or simply raving mad because they no longer take the political abuse and deceit.
That’s what history teaches us.
Unfortunately our history also tells us that greed, lust for power, plain stupidity and deceitful and evil minds have a tendency to repeat the mistakes made in the past as if they never happened.
I must often think about that when people make a big deal out of a tiny sunspot and tell us “It’s not the sun stupid” or when I hear the current President of the USA repeat the deceitful arguments about the coming Climate Armageddon which were presented by Al Gore, who will become the World’s first Carbon Billionaire if the Cap & Trade bill is accepted by the US Senate.
All this despite the fact that all those arguments have been debunked by peer reviewed scientific research.
People like Obama and Gore represent a bigger danger to humanity than a Maunder Minimum because they deceive the people with the promise of “Hope and Change”, but suck your blood to achieve their objectives.
One time in history the promise of “Change” resulted in World War II and the first industrialized genocide.
When that War ended, the entire population of Germany denied the horrible facts.
“Wir haben es nicht gewüsst!” We did not know what was happening!”.
Well, thanks a.o of this blog and the people involved, we know exactly what is happening and hopefully we find the courage to act and stop the current Administration in it’s pursuit for Madness.
Madness, because they intend to cut and tax our energy in times we need more.
Madness, because they intend to derail our economy so they gain more.
madness because they aim for unlimited power and Global Governance at the costs of our legal rights, our existence and our personal freedom.
Madness, because they make us believe they are able to control our climate.
We can confront them based on the same arguments we engaged in WW II and the Cold War and we will.
Why?
Because History tells us we will.
re: climate and Sun
I wonder what the outcome would be if solar/climate enthusiasts were to go head to head with that MET computer. As a control, I would use some old cranky seaman from Alaska who has spent his entire life in search of Pacific Salmon.
Pictorial essay on the Evolution of SC23-24 by Color-compositing EIT images from SOHO:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin8.htm
Please be patient, there are 59 images in the sequence roughly 2 weeks apart
2007/03/12 to 2009/08/25