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
True. Growing food to provide for draught animals in Britain took over a third of production until the steam hauled raiway. But at the advent of the motor car it still took up a quarter of agriultural production: hence the famous forecast that if London kept growing the production of horse dung was going to be almost impossible to clear.
And the gentleman didn’t even have a computer model, he did it with pencil and paper.
Add to that fact that until coal burning for heat took over from wood the amount of woodland needed to supply the fuel occupied about one fifth of the area of tilled land. This figure increased dramatically as the Little Ice Age set in and despite the reduced population, caused by the Black Death, forced Parliament to limit woodutting and allow the burning of coal, then called sea coal since it came down in colliers from the North East.
It is also why the great rebuilding began because if you burn a lot of fuel you need a chimney of brick or stone rather than hole in the roof, and by putting a second storey on your building the chimney heats the upper storey for free as it were. In the classic English timber framed hovel this was done simply by building the upper storey on the original frame so it actually extends out slightly over the ground floor, a technique called jetting, and many fine examples can still be seen today.
It is also also why London became the city of smokes, and is still called the Big Smoke, today. And Edinburgh of course became Auld Reekie.
Kindest Regards
Dave The Engineer (04:48:40) :
Jay Currie (22:25:52) :
Mike McMillan (23:58:08) :
Roger Carr (04:16:25) :
Patrick Davis (04:40:16) :
Dave The Engineer (04:48:40) :
The Engineer (05:09:31) :
40 Shades of Green (06:00:12)
SSSailor (06:16:04) :
Anthropogenic Solar Chaos (07:11:35) :
Ron de Haan (08:50:49) :
Deborah (10:40:03) :
Squidly (10:57:46) :
And anyone else who brought up Cap N Trade / politics :
Swedish proverb: “If you kick mother natures dog, prepare to be frost bitten”.
Politicians take note.
There’s going to be a Obamacare protest in Washington on September 12. Cap N Trade is on the agenda too.
Apparently much of America is concerned about the direction of the country : 100,000+ are projected to be there. We’ll have to wait and see if that size crowd pans out.
fred (22:48:23) : So what if the sun has no spots?
I have put this video up maybe 6 times in the past 5 to 6 months when a post about the sun came up. I thought that everyone had a chance to see it. But maybe some didn’t.
It’s a documentary about the sun and it’s potential effect on climate/ weather on earth. It also talks about the effect of the Milky Way’s spiral arm’s on earth’s climate/ weather.
YouTube video in 5 parts :
Just The Facts (07:29:14) :
Good post! The lesson: one should always wait until an event has happened before predicting it.
The Engineer (05:09:31) : “Saturday 29 th August 2009 14.08 CET. Just thought I let you know – Hail storm here in Copenhagen. Not often you see that in august.”
It’s worse than they thought!
Eric (11:54:30),
Was that meant to be satire?
Slightly off topic but maybe tied up with lack of sunspots.
“Ken Ring, a long-term forecaster with unorthodox methods but a surprisingly accurate track record, has predicted next year’s weather (New Zealand) to be “disappointing”, with wet and cooler summer months, followed by a winter that lasts a month longer than this year, with record-breaking cold snaps.”
“Ring’s methods of using the moon and tides to forecast well beyond the timelines of MetService or NIWA have raised eyebrows in the scientific community for years, but the Kiwi weather watcher has been largely on the mark in New Zealand and overseas.”
“In 2008, he predicted the Shotover River in Queenstown would freeze over in July and that we would experience colder than average winter months – both predictions rang true.
Even the Irish are applauding him for accurately predicting the country’s mini-heatwave in June and the wettest July on record, completely contradicting the UK Met Office which said it would be a “barbecue summer”.
His weather predictions are laid out in the latest Ken Ring’s Predict Weather Almanac 2010, to be released this Friday.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10593960
“It is also also why London became the city of smokes, and is still called the Big Smoke, today. And Edinburgh of course became Auld Reekie.”
Your post reminds me of the famous glass paintings done for Disney’s rednition of Mary Poppins (http://www.alexross.com/practically%20perfect.html). Alex Ross did the cityscapes on glass in order to add realism.
John (11:25:28) — Yes, that’s why I did not say that spots are hotter nor cooler. The spots are an indicator of the increased heat.
Don’t tempt Mother Nature, Anthony! 😉
Some excerpts from Ken Ring’s “METEOROLOGY’S WRONG TURNING”
“…Meteorologists are trained only to study the properties of the atmosphere. In doing so they believe they can detect changes which will culminate in weather events..
If you studied the properties of seawater could you predict tides? A basic point of logic is at stake, so simple a point it is missed. The atmosphere cannot create weather – weather is the atmosphere just as tides are not produced by the sea – the tides are the sea. One simply means the other….
Putting seawater under a microscope cannot detect coming tidal action, and there is nothing about the properties of air that can possibly generate a weather event,…
..over recent decades how it has been politically advantageous for weather scientists to build a case for climate-change by describing how weather does come from air. They can then claim that something put into air, like CO2, can upset air-composition balance which would thereby change weather patterns now, as in more severe cyclones, and later, as in climate, hence ‘climate change’…”
Sorry here’s the link
https://www.predictweather.co.nz/assets/articles/article_home.php?id=73
edcon (08:03:59) :
‘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?’
edcon,
Joseph D’Aleo from icecap.us has written several articles and he refers to the cold US summer as a “volcanic summer”, as they occurred frequently during the LIA.
Besides Redoubt we had three other “medium sized” volcano’s erupting during this summer (Kamchatka) and last year we had the eruption of Shiveluch, releasing a considerable amount of SO2.
You find the relevant links here:
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/big_apples_cold_summer/
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/sarychev_peak_volcano_eruption_earlier_this_month_affecting_sunsets/
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/how_volcanism_affects_climate/
Scientist are investigating the possibility of a link between a deep solar minimum and increased seismic and volcanic activity.
One possible explanation could be that due to reduced solar wind flow pressure (solar wind causes drag on satellites, forcing them into a lower orbit more quickly) Reduced solar wind pressures could slightly increase the speed of the earth’s rotation resulting in higher stress at the eart’s surface. Increased surface stress could promote the occurrence and frequency of seismic events and volcanic eruptions.
During the LIA the Earth experienced an average of five VEI 5 volcanic eruptions per Century.
http://blog.chess.com/Rickj/volcanoesearthquakesmagnetic-fields-and-climatric-impacts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age#Volcanic_activity
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/09/solar-wind-flow-pressure-another-indication-of-solar-downtrend/
SC24 is in a rut. It’s going to stay in that rut until the day comes when something happens to get it out of that deep rut.
That day is NOT yet today, and the link below is the SOHO EIT that says it ain’t so.
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin9.htm
In the meantime, the sunspot records of the past are piling up like DNF’s on a bad day at the NASCAR track.
Gene Nemetz (12:23:14) : “100,000+ are projected to be there.”
I recently read that they expect 10,000+ in Ft. Worth on 9/12.
Thanks for the links Anna V and Oldjim. Thanks to Dr Svalgaard for reposting the info on the 1500 gauss level.
If the Watts effect works, that´s OK, but who can tell us what cycle that Watt´s spot will be, 23rd, 24th or 25th. cycle?.
Hope the consequences will freez that cap & trade you are so scare of.
The reason for all the worldwide globalwarming/climate change propaganda is the following:
Carbon Credits offer to SA natives for 01 hectare of amazon forest/year: 1.30 Euros
Price carbon share per ton of CO2:15.50 Euros
Tons of CO2 capture per hectare:5500
Carbon share per hectare, to be paid by the 1st. world polluter/buyer:5500 x 15.50=85250 Euros.
Gross Profit=85250-1.3=85248.7 Euros. per forest hectare/year
It will be VERY, but very difficult, to stop that propaganda.
Lee (11:40:09) :
I am curious to know if the trend lines are recalculated every time a point is added.
There are two lines – the dashed lines is recalculated every time a point is added [every day – and no data is omitted]. The full line is calculated on fitting to only the lowest point each month as it is meant to show the ‘bottom’ activity. In any case, the lines have no real significance. They are only indicative [and poor ones, at that].
Suppose F10.7 peaks at 90 or 100, would that mean something special or bad?
Not quite sure what you mean,. F10.7 can go as high as 350.
Gene Nemetz (12:23:14) :
I hope “we the people” show up in the hundreds of thousands. The more the better.
Obama is planning marches as well (at least 500) in support of the Bills he can’t get through the Senate by vote.
It doesn’t appear to matter what happens to sun-spots as global temperatures are still breaking records – as June and July ocean surface temperatures, as measured by satellites, have shown.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090717_juneglobalstats.html
Separately, the global ocean surface temperature for June 2009 was the warmest on record, 1.06 degrees F (0.59 degree C) above the 20th century average of 61.5 degrees F (16.4 degrees C).
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090814_julyglobalstats.html
The global ocean surface temperature for July 2009 was the warmest on record, 1.06 degrees F (0.59 degree C) above the 20th century average of 61.5 degrees F (16.4 degrees C). This broke the previous July record set in 1998. The July ocean surface temperature departure of 1.06 degrees F from the long-term average equals last month’s value, which was also a record.
The weather business is good business to be in nowadays
“Despite the recent dodgy prediction of a barbecue summer, the Met Office is paying bonuses to staff for the accuracy of their forecasts. More than 1,700 staff are getting a “forecast accuracy” bonus of about £650 each — after a series of bungled predictions..”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6788803.ece
Ian (09:36:13) :
Anthony:
Minor issue: there’s something funny in your transcription of the data from spaceweather.com – they show it as 80% spotless for the year, not 79%.
REPLY: Edited, thanks. I may have grabbed it in mid edit there late last night. – A
Funny, two weeks ago I was complaining here that Space Weather was rounding their percents up as soon as they exceeded a full percent and I opined that rounding at .5 would be more acceptable. This week, that’s just what they did. Do you suppose someone is paying attention…..?
Patrick (08:46:27) :
Re David L. Hagen (07:17:31) :
“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.”
That must settle it. We have an acknowledged authority on the subject!
We also need only 26 more spotless days to exceed Spaceweather’s typical solar minimum by a full 50%. That could happen around Sept 23…. uhhh, Dr. Svalgaard, does this stretch mean that we will be moving the actual minimum forward again? This spotless period is on track to be the longest of this minimum.
Nogw (13:51:10) :
“If the Watts effect works, that´s OK, but who can tell us what cycle that Watt´s spot will be, 23rd, 24th or 25th. cycle?.
Hope the consequences will freez that cap & trade you are so scare of.
The reason for all the worldwide globalwarming/climate change propaganda is the following:
Carbon Credits offer to SA natives for 01 hectare of amazon forest/year: 1.30 Euros
Price carbon share per ton of CO2:15.50 Euros
Tons of CO2 capture per hectare:5500
Carbon share per hectare, to be paid by the 1st. world polluter/buyer:5500 x 15.50=85250 Euros.
Gross Profit=85250-1.3=85248.7 Euros. per forest hectare/year
It will be VERY, but very difficult, to stop that propaganda”.
Nogw,
It looks like a waterproof plan but it won’t work. Why?
You need a strong enough economy to bear those costs.
This scheme will destroy our economies and put millions out of a job.
It’s “Madness”.
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE57R4JJ20090828?sp=true