After an exciting encounter last week with some genuine sunspots that weren’t arguable as specks, pores, or pixels, the sun resumes its quiet state this week.
People send me things. Here’s the latest email from Paul Stanko, who has been following the solar cycle progression in comparison to previous ones.
Hi Anthony,
Out of the numbered solar cycles, #24 is now in 7th place. Only 5, 6, and 7 of the Dalton Minimum and cycles 12, 14, and 15 of the Baby Grand Minimum had more spotless days. Since we’ve now beaten cycle #13, we are clearly now competitive with the Baby Grand minimum.
Here’s a table of how the NOAA panel’s new SC#24 prediction is doing:
November 2008: predicted = 1.80, actual = 1.67 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 83.7)
December 2008: predicted = 1.80, actual = 1.69 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 84.7)
January 2009: predicted = 2.10, actual = 1.71 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 73.2)
February 2009: predicted = 2.70, actual = 1.67 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 55.6)
March 2009: predicted = 3.30, actual = 1.97 (predicted peak of 90 suggests an actual peak of 53.8)
April would require the October data which is still very incomplete. If this analysis intrigues you, I’d be happy to keep you updated on it. Please also find a couple of interesting graphs attached as images.
Paul Stanko
Here’s the graphs, the current cycle 24 and years of interest are marked with a red arrow:
And how 2008/2009 fit in:
The relatively inactive sun is yet more confirmation that solar irradiance is not a substantial factor
The question is what would happen if there was a seriously prolonged major minimum. That remains to be seen.
in this being the warmest decade since instrumental records began.
Another way of putting that is that since 1998 it has cooled at a slower rate than it warmed from 1979 – 1998. (There’s also the question of raw vs. “adjusted” temperatures.)
evanmjones (11:41:17) :
“The relatively inactive sun is yet more confirmation that solar irradiance is not a substantial factor”
All the other stuff we get from the Sun contains a million times less energy than the irradiance.
The question is what would happen if there was a seriously prolonged major minimum. That remains to be seen.
We have been there before: 1900-1935 and what happened? the temperature went up.
John Finn (10:48:49)
It took about 9 years for the peak of the long period of positive El Ninos during the late 20th Century (which peaked in 1998) to result in the peak Arctic ice melt of 2007.
However oceanic effects are quite seperate from solar effects and much more substantial.
As Leif Svalgaard keeps pointing out the size of the solar variations is very small and the real puzzle is as to why the observed climate changes are so large in proportion.
As is well known here and elsewhere I am closing in (I hope) on a sufficient explanation for all observed global and regional climate changes as having been caused by variations in both the speed of the supply of energy to the air by the oceans and the speed of the supply of energy to space by the air.
Co2 is apparently not needed and increasingly it seems that more substantial solar variation may not be needed either. There is now just a small gap to be bridged between the length of time solar effects need to become substantial enough to contribute to events such as the cycling of global air temperature from Roman Warm Period to Dark Ages to Mediaeval Warm Period to Little Ice Age to the recent Modern Maximum. In fact if we can identify an oceanic cycle of around 1000 years then that would do nicely to take us from one peak to another at 1000 year intervals. Interestingly the thermohaline is supposed to take about 1500 years to complete a circuit but there are different parts to it taking different periods of time.
Take into account the time lags involved in oceanic processes and your bleating about warmer years having occurred after 1998 becomes an irrelevance.
To keep it simple for you it may well be that solar changes take decades and possibly centuries to become noticeable with oceans taking 8 to 10 years but if both sun and oceans are in phase (both negative as they are now) then genarally any ocean induced changes that do occur in global air temperatures will be quicker and larger than if they were both in opposing phases as they were during the 70s cooling scare.
Thus only from about 2007 would it be likely for the peak of warming to have been properly reached and indeed in that year we did see a powerful La Nina and a sizeable if temporary drop in global air temperaures.
Things have recovered a bit now with a weak El Nino but it is spluttering and I think we are now over a peak and on a downward trend. No one knows how long or intense it will be but the available observational evidence certainly does not suggest that the next solar max will be strong nor are we likely to get another powerful El Nino for some time given the current and newly negative PDO phase.
John Finn (10:37:52) :
When is the downturn in temperatures expected?
You can check the data. You will see it.
John Finn (02:57:39) :
Piers Corbyn is not the first to do this. Harry Geiese was legendary in his time.
Weather, yes, that is what meteorologist do, short & long range. Climate is composed of weather accumulated events (instances), and you cannot take the weather out of climate.
As for the UAH and continued warming, stick your head out of the window, John.
I wonder sometimes if the satellite records suffer from foreshortening effects, or they are just plain being fiddled with. The real world is a far different place than what the Media is trying to paint it as.
The climate where I reside grows steadily cooler over the past 8 years.
How’s your climate?
John Finn (10:48:49) :
an anomalous spike
Temperature is temperature. If you want to pull out this ‘anomalous spike’ then you have to pull all of such out. Do you find that important?
John Finn (10:48:49) :
Did you adjust for UHI?
“……speed of the supply of energy to space by the air.”
Indeed. The equivalent of that “extra” 150 W/m^2 at the surface passes through the TOA every 0.625 seconds. Sounds like a razor-thin margin expressed in those terms, doesn’t it?
Leif Svalgaard (11:46:44) :
You spend all day stoking the stove to get the house warm, and then somone opens a window or door, forgets to shut it, and lets it all out.
The energy to heat the place is overwhelmed by the energy it took to open the window/door and leak out the stove heat. A lesser state wins in the moment of lapse.
Space/atmosphere is all too able to take energy and dissipate it.
Just because nobody in the house wants to admit thier lapse does not mean that the energy lost comes back, any more than not knowing how the Climate lost energy means that the energy did not escape.
And just because Eddy said we will not be able to sustain one for one MM to LIA on the current space data does not mean that the LIA or MM did not happen.
They most assuredly did.
The problem is that the Climate has noise called Weather.
The big headache is in trying to pin down the actual blow-by-blow energy loss when there is little in the way of a script. Nature moves things around. At what point in moving tropical heat to the poles does any specific mass of energy escape?
Invariant (10:31:50) :
T_est = 0.007640*cumsum(HMF_B-5.7848)-0.4470;
I have just completed a paper that determines HMF B back to1835. Here is the result when I apply your formula:
http://www.leif.org/research/junk1.png
I have extended the data past 2009 with the data from 1901 on as we seem to be down in the same neighborhood:
http://www.leif.org/research/junk1.png
dT marches off to infinity…
If I change your dividing value from 5.78.. to 7, I get:
http://www.leif.org/research/junk3.png
dT marhces off to minus infinity
A value of 6.4 gives:
http://www.leif.org/research/junk2.png
which is well-behaved with a total swing of 0.3K.
So, unless, you chose a very special value of Bo [the dividing field], namely the exact mean value of all the B-values, the temp will march off to +/- infinity. This shows that your model does not make physical sense.
evanmjones (11:41:17) :
(There’s also the question of raw vs. “adjusted” temperatures.)
Also UHI.
This warmest blah blah since blah blah could be from an AC vent. 😉
It would seem that the NOAA sunspot prediction panel is forever the optimist in making its predictions. Evidently there just might be a few things we do not fully understand about the sun and solar cycles … and with those two along, understandings of the ramifications on Earth’s weather and climate (past, present & future).
Sun big. Earth small.
Small change on big sun big change on small earth
about 1,000,000 Earths would fit inside the sun
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970518a.html
pictured together
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii57/vulken/Los%20Angeles/Sun_Earth_size_comparison_labeled.jpg
Eugene (12:30:31) :
Evidently there just might be a few things we do not fully understand about the sun and solar cycles … and with those two along, understandings of the ramifications on Earth’s weather and climate (past, present & future).
However, there are those ‘in the know’ who can predict thousands of years in advance and those who can achieve 85% accuracy, so the situation is not so grim, after all.
Dear Dr. Svalgaard,
Thanks for commenting my model in so much detail. Indeed it is a toy model, and not only HMF B influences our climate. In addition I suspect that there are a number of feedback mechanisms, some positive, but most of them negative, that prevents our planet to become one large desert or one large snowball. This means that heat added Qin may not alter the temperature only, but also alter the heat dissipated Qout,
m•cp•dT/dt = Qin – Qout
The Stefan Boltzmann power law is one case where Qin may increase T which would increase Qout. Another example is when increased Qin may lead to more clouds which may influence both Qin (less sunshine) and Qout (less radiation back to space). Also I would argue that the equilibrium value of HMF B equal to 5.7848 nT could also be subject to change dependent on the current state of the heat balance equation – it is all dependent on how much energy is stored in the oceans, in the air and in all the strange energy forms, see Feynman,
http://www.phy.davidson.edu/FacHome/swp/courses/PHY110/Feynman.htm
I do not regard the toy model as valid at all; it is way too simple and does not take into account anything but HMF B. So please regard it as one of many factors only. Still, I cannot see why variations in HMF B or TSI should not be one of the most important factors. Thus I still have the attitude that in the current situation and in the next 5 years (as long as HMF B is below 5.7848 nT) I would not be very surprised if the global temperature is continuing to go down.
Best Regards,
Invariant
Gene Nemetz (12:39:57) :
Sun big. Earth small.
Quote of the week !!!!
Leif Svalgaard (06:05:47) :
“Ron de Haan (00:24:40) :
“The end point of this essay is a realization that ENSO is not a tropical phenomenon at all. It is a driven by conditions at the poles”
” The forces that control the temperature of the stratosphere influence the flux in ice cloud cover in the subtropics and thereby the frequency and intensity of warming events in the tropics. ”
Erl is trying to say that the conditions at the poles drives conditions in the subtropics and thereby in the tropics. And that solar activity heating the poles drives the whole system. He has no physical theory for this, no calculations of the energies involved, no estimates of the time constants, no statistical analysis of the data, nothing except feeding on animosity towards IPCC”.
Leif,
I know, respect and value your views and your attitude towards science, especially in regard to the variable factor of our sun effecting our climate.
What Erl Happ has done is building quite a radical theory based on observation and data. In my humble opinion this is a serious attempt of “thinking out of the box” and I can only applaud him for that.
Sure, there is a lot of explaining to be done, questions to be answered but without a basic view how the climate system could work, none of those questions will be asked
and no progress will be made. I hope you at least can agree with that.
In regard to Erl’s alleged animosity towards the IPCC, I can only say that he isn’t the only one with these kind of feelings.
This organization and all the collaborating Government Institutions pushing the AGW hoax based on semi science and plain lies is an absolute disgrace.
Stephen Wilde (00:13:22) :
Leif,
If one assumes that the amount of energy emitted by the sun over each cycle is much the same (you can tell me whether it is or not)
It doesn’t need Leif to tell you; the idea is wildly(sorry) wrong. Since TSI is almost constant then the size of the “packet” of energy is proportional to the length of the cycle. There is not a ‘quantum’ of energy being spread over a longer period during a longer cycle..
Maybe it was a joke. No, MUST be a joke in which case congratulations, you got me; congratulations as I usually manage to pick up the subtlest(Leif’s).
Dear Dr. Svalgaard,
It is not necessary to denote your plots of my equations as “junk”. The word “toymodel” would be better. I suspect that you would not like to publish the new HMF B data here, instead I can forward the least squares Matlab program. You need two files “f.m” and “toymodel.m” – they are given below. It should be interesting to see what values of the two parameters that are found by the program with the new data.
Leif Svalgaard (12:20:15) : So, unless, you chose a very special value of Bo [the dividing field], namely the exact mean value of all the B-values, the temp will march off to +/- infinity. This shows that your model does not make physical sense.
Sometimes things are really sensitive, just as Lorenz (1963) once pointed out….
Best Regards,
Invariant
==================== function f.m ===================
function y = f(a, Data)
T_est = a(1)*cumsum(Data(:,3)-a(2)) + Data(1,2);
T = Data(:,2);
y = T-T_est;
end
=================================================
================== program toymodel.m =================
Data = [
1850 -0.447 6.22
1851 -0.292 6.21
1852 -0.294 5.31
1853 -0.337 5.86
1854 -0.307 4.97
1855 -0.321 4.71
1856 -0.406 5.48
1857 -0.503 5.86
1858 -0.513 7.14
1859 -0.349 8.73
1860 -0.372 8.29
1861 -0.412 7.73
1862 -0.540 7.04
1863 -0.315 6.37
1864 -0.516 5.82
1865 -0.297 5.55
1866 -0.303 5.38
1867 -0.334 5.24
1868 -0.291 6.03
1869 -0.313 7.46
1870 -0.302 9.60
1871 -0.344 8.99
1872 -0.255 8.67
1873 -0.331 7.28
1874 -0.397 6.12
1875 -0.418 5.40
1876 -0.403 5.50
1877 -0.091 5.28
1878 0.023 4.99
1879 -0.265 4.95
1880 -0.260 5.78
1881 -0.242 6.31
1882 -0.246 7.07
1883 -0.298 6.77
1884 -0.381 6.29
1885 -0.362 6.39
1886 -0.275 6.14
1887 -0.387 5.45
1888 -0.337 5.18
1889 -0.192 5.16
1890 -0.431 5.02
1891 -0.378 5.88
1892 -0.484 8.11
1893 -0.505 6.70
1894 -0.444 7.72
1895 -0.420 6.44
1896 -0.211 6.51
1897 -0.243 5.89
1898 -0.432 5.69
1899 -0.314 5.15
1900 -0.223 4.58
1901 -0.302 4.18
1902 -0.431 4.26
1903 -0.509 5.06
1904 -0.554 5.28
1905 -0.412 5.82
1906 -0.329 5.32
1907 -0.507 5.98
1908 -0.559 6.29
1909 -0.564 6.46
1910 -0.548 5.62
1911 -0.581 5.13
1912 -0.491 4.52
1913 -0.489 4.27
1914 -0.305 4.66
1915 -0.213 5.56
1916 -0.434 6.08
1917 -0.506 6.86
1918 -0.388 6.81
1919 -0.331 7.07
1920 -0.314 6.60
1921 -0.261 5.95
1922 -0.381 5.42
1923 -0.347 4.71
1924 -0.360 5.05
1925 -0.274 5.59
1926 -0.162 6.79
1927 -0.254 6.15
1928 -0.255 6.32
1929 -0.376 6.31
1930 -0.165 6.57
1931 -0.124 5.28
1932 -0.155 5.26
1933 -0.297 5.11
1934 -0.159 5.07
1935 -0.184 5.48
1936 -0.152 5.95
1937 -0.034 7.38
1938 0.009 8.14
1939 -0.001 7.60
1940 0.018 7.55
1941 0.077 7.42
1942 -0.031 6.26
1943 -0.028 6.06
1944 0.120 5.69
1945 -0.007 5.93
1946 -0.205 8.33
1947 -0.197 8.12
1948 -0.204 6.84
1949 -0.211 7.98
1950 -0.309 7.56
1951 -0.169 7.48
1952 -0.074 6.90
1953 -0.027 6.00
1954 -0.251 5.37
1955 -0.281 5.88
1956 -0.349 7.91
1957 -0.073 9.26
1958 -0.010 8.78
1959 -0.072 8.33
1960 -0.123 9.00
1961 -0.023 7.12
1962 -0.021 5.87
1963 0.002 5.63
1964 -0.295 5.23
1965 -0.216 5.12
1966 -0.147 5.55
1967 -0.149 6.62
1968 -0.159 6.25
1969 -0.010 6.22
1970 -0.067 6.54
1971 -0.190 5.98
1972 -0.056 6.27
1973 0.077 6.18
1974 -0.213 6.13
1975 -0.170 5.66
1976 -0.254 5.92
1977 0.019 6.02
1978 -0.063 7.48
1979 0.049 7.25
1980 0.077 6.71
1981 0.120 8.10
1982 0.011 8.71
1983 0.177 7.17
1984 -0.021 6.68
1985 -0.038 6.08
1986 0.029 5.96
1987 0.179 5.70
1988 0.180 6.59
1989 0.103 9.35
1990 0.254 7.70
1991 0.212 8.93
1992 0.061 7.73
1993 0.105 6.54
1994 0.171 6.08
1995 0.275 6.09
1996 0.137 5.04
1997 0.351 5.62
1998 0.546 6.65
1999 0.296 6.41
2000 0.270 7.93
2001 0.409 7.94
2002 0.464 6.89
2003 0.473 7.49
2004 0.447 6.22
2005 0.482 6.23
2006 0.422 5.26
2007 0.405 4.67
2008 0.327 4.35
2009 0.418 4.25];
c = lsqnonlin(‘f’,[1.0 1.0], [],[],[],Data)
t = Data(:,1);
T = Data(:,2);
T_est = c(1)*cumsum(Data(:,3)-c(2)) + Data(1,2);
plot(t,T,t,T_est);
================================================
Leif, the question that has been puzzling me is whether you believe that there is a correlation between the Maunder and Dalton Minimums and what appear to be recorded drops in temperatures during those Minimums.
If you believe that there is a correlation, is this just a statistical aberation – a coincidnece? Or is there some causation somehow at play?
Curiously yours,
Craig
Ron de Haan (13:14:13) :
Leif Svalgaard (06:05:47) :
Ron de Haan (00:24:40) :
What Erl Happ has done is building quite a radical theory based on observation and data. In my humble opinion this is a serious attempt of “thinking out of the box” and I can only applaud him for that.
I have followed that from the beginning and I’ll venture to estimate that nobody else has spent as time as I have studying his writings. The problem is that it is ‘too much out of the box’. It doesn’t hang together and it not supported by the data. These are harsh words, I know, but they are my honest and professional assessment. What more can I say? I’ll challenge anybody, Erl and you for that matter, to state in a single paragraph the basic idea. You might say that that is impossible, but I have yet in my life to see a physical theory that is so complicated that the core, the essence, the crux cannot be expressed clearly and with the brevity necessary for grokking the idea [if I may use that wonderful term]. And if you cannot state clearly what the idea is, you don’t have it.
In regard to Erl’s alleged animosity towards the IPCC, I can only say that he isn’t the only one with these kind of feelings.
But he uses it as part of the evaluation of his ideas: they go against IPCC and are thus, by definition good.
Invariant (13:35:30) :
It is not necessary to denote your plots of my equations as “junk”.
There is a practical reason for it: they have only a short lifetime as I’m going to delete them soon [can’t have my space fill up with stuff], and mark them as ‘junk’ to remind me that they are doomed.
I suspect that you would not like to publish the new HMF B data here
All my work is fully public and the data can be found at http://www.leif.org/research/IDV09HMF.xls and IDV09HMF.txt [for a text version].
Madman (13:42:39) :
correlation between the Maunder and Dalton Minimums and what appear to be recorded drops in temperatures during those Minimums.
There are really no ‘recorded’ temperatures to speak off. The temperature record, such as it is, is severely ‘contaminated’ by several large volcanic eruption in the decade 1810-1820 and it is hard to untangle solar [if any] and volcanic contributions. For the Maunder Minimum, the situation is better: temperatures and sunspot count were both low. I personally would not discount coincidence, especially since the temperatures were low for much longer than the Maunder Minimum.
Gene Nemetz (12:00:01) :
John Finn (10:37:52) :
When is the downturn in temperatures expected?
You can check the data. You will see it.
Sorry I can’t. I take it you can’t either. It’s ok to admit you don’t know something.
Gene Nemetz (12:09:16) :
John Finn (10:48:49) :
Did you adjust for UHI?
What ?? UHI in the satellite record??
Madman (13:42:39) :
Leif, the question that has been puzzling me is whether you believe that there is a correlation between the Maunder and Dalton Minimums and what appear to be recorded drops in temperatures during those Minimums.
Have you any data which shows the “recorded drops in temperature ” during the Dalton Minimum.
Ed (09:54:00) :
Any ideas on the source of the 6200yr cycle recorded in 10be, C14 and the temp record? Hit a minimum at the LIA, also at 6200yrs ago…
Good question ED, the LIA and the period around 6000 years ago have a lot in common. The Sun goes through what I call golden periods which is actually a period of very high disturbance that shuts down the sun for extended periods of time. Leif will scoff at the evidence but both periods have one thing in common, they both are subject to a high degree of movement by the sun from the SSB on a continual basis. This is not something dreamed up and is provable via JPL etc. These correlations can be ignored but never falsified….the data is good.
Dont be fooled by Leif’s response about the Earth’s varying geomagnetic field having an impact on the solar proxy records. This is once again not telling the whole truth. Both the 14C and 10Be records have had adjustments made to compensate for the geomagnetic field changes over time.
I have overlaid both proxy records and there is an outstanding match, I have also contacted Steinhilber who produced the latest 10Be report and he has given me a link for the raw data which I will plot directly against the Solanki raw data. He also stated to me the geomagnetic compensations had been applied.
I have an article on the project here: http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/51
Stephen Wilde (11:50:19) :
John Finn (10:48:49)
It took about 9 years for the peak of the long period of positive El Ninos during the late 20th Century (which peaked in 1998) to result in the peak Arctic ice melt of 2007.
However oceanic effects are quite seperate from solar effects and much more substantial.
Quite possible – but I was referring quite specifically to the solar – not ocean effects.
As Leif Svalgaard keeps pointing out the size of the solar variations is very small and the real puzzle is as to why the observed climate changes are so large in proportion.
Wihout an additional mechanism then solar variations are as Leif says too small.
As is well known here and elsewhere I am closing in (I hope) on a sufficient explanation for all observed global and regional climate changes as having been caused by variations in both the speed of the supply of energy to the air by the oceans and the speed of the supply of energy to space by the air.
Co2 is apparently not needed and increasingly it seems that more substantial solar variation may not be needed either. There is now just a small gap to be bridged between the length of time solar effects need to become substantial enough to contribute to events such as the cycling of global air temperature from Roman Warm Period to Dark Ages to Mediaeval Warm Period to Little Ice Age to the recent Modern Maximum. In fact if we can identify an oceanic cycle of around 1000 years then that would do nicely to take us from one peak to another at 1000 year intervals. Interestingly the thermohaline is supposed to take about 1500 years to complete a circuit but there are different parts to it taking different periods of time.
Hmmm.
Take into account the time lags involved in oceanic processes and your bleating about warmer years having occurred after 1998 becomes an irrelevance.
I’m sorry but my “bleating” is relevant. Temperature responses to significant changes in solar irradiance are usually fairly rapid. Think day/night or winter/summer. You seem to have some vague idea about climate being influenced by multi-centennial/millenial shifts in ocean circulation – presumably because the MWP was ~1000 years ago. This is completely at odds with all the solar theorists which claim there is a clear correlation between solar activity and climate.
To keep it simple for you it may well be that solar changes take decades and possibly centuries..
Thanks for keeping it “simple for me” but you seem to be hedging your bets somewhat. It cannot be “centuries” because, as I wrote above, we would not see any correlation. By saying it might be “decades and possibly centuries” you are virtually admitting that there is no correlation. I happen to agree with you on this. Any correlation is desperately weak.
…to become noticeable with oceans taking 8 to 10 years but if both sun and oceans are in phase (both negative as they are now) then genarally any ocean induced changes that do occur in global air temperatures will be quicker and larger than if they were both in opposing phases as they were during the 70s cooling scare.
1. The cooling did not take 8 to 10 years in the 1940s. Most of the cooling had taken place by the early 1950s.
2. There might have been a “70s cooling scare” but there was no cooling in the 1970s. In fact the climate shifted to warming during the 1970s. The weak solar cycle, i.e. SC20, ran from 1964 til 1976 during which time global temperatures were essentially flat.