Cycle 24 spotless days keeps moving up the hill – now "competitive with the Baby Grand minimum"

Top chart omits the number of spotless days in the transit leading into cycle 4.

Gene Nemetz (14:31:47) :
carol smith (13:28:13) :
We could also consider there is a delay in reaction, like a delay in water in a freezer before it turns in to ice.
How come Piers Corbyn is able to base medium term weather forecasts on solar (or lack of ) activity, then? Surely this implies an immediate effect. So which is it?

Leif Svalgaard (17:14:31) :
Ron de Haan (16:58:53) :
“What then is the actual cause of sudden stratospheric warming?”
“Mountain ranges and land-sea temperature contrasts generate long (wavenumber 1 or 2) Rossby waves in the troposphere. These waves travel upward to the stratosphere and are dissipated there, producing the warming by decelerating the mean zonal flow. The Sun has nothing to do with this”.
Leif, is this event also related to Rossby waves?
The sudden stratospheric warming in the Arctic, January 2009
For a pictorial overview of the structure of a polar vortex and its interaction with the surrounding atmosphere see:
http://www.jhu.edu/~dwaugh1/gallery_stratosphere.html
The temperature of the atmosphere between the surface and the top of the stratosphere is shown in Figures 1 and 2. Figure 1 shows the Arctic and Figure 2 the equatorial region.
Figure 1 shows the sudden stratospheric warming in the Arctic that commenced 11th January 2009.
Vertical distribution of temperature 65-90°North
Figure 1 Vertical distribution of temperature 65-90°North
Figure 2 shows cooling in the stratosphere above the equator that occurred at exactly the same time. This is of great interest because it coincided with warming of parts of the ocean.
Vertical distribution of temperature 10°N to 10°S
Figure 2. Vertical distribution of temperature 10°N to 10°S
Source: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/
Sudden Stratospheric Warming 60-90N
Stratospheric Cooling 25N to 25S
The dynamics behind the stratospheric warming event can be followed via an animation at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/36000/36972/npole_gmao_200901-02.mov
“Here is my interpretation of what is happens: An increase in the solar wind occurs as a coronal hole appears on the surface of the sun in an Earth facing position accelerating the solar wind. The atmosphere inflates over the equator and is sucked back from the polar regions, in particular the night pole which faces away from the sun. This enhances the penetration of short wave radiation into the ozone rich stratosphere of the winter hemisphere causing it to warm. The density loss consequent on coronal hole activity reduces the supply of air feeding the polar night jet (the Arctic vortex). The vortex carries within it compounds from the mesosphere that erode ozone. As the vortex is weakened the ozone content of the stratosphere at high latitudes in the winter hemisphere dramatically increases. If the vortex is sufficiently weakened this warm air takes over its home, flooding into the night zone.
Change begins in the lower stratosphere in the Arctic at 70hPa on the 8th. It starts in the upper stratosphere at the equator about January 10th and in the Arctic stratosphere January 11th. The most intense change starts at the highest levels of the stratosphere working its way gradually downwards. This I believe reflects a gradual erosion of the width of the vortex at the highest altitude where solar radiation is most intense. As this happens the ocean starts to warm because a warming upper troposphere loses ice cloud.
An idea of the mechanism that is involved can be gleaned from the abstract of a very recent paper:
Crowley, G., A. Reynolds, J. P. Thayer, J. Lei, L. J. Paxton, A. B. Christensen, Y. Zhang, R. R. Meier, and D. J. Strickland (2008), Periodic modulations in thermospheric composition by solar wind high speed streams, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L21106, doi:10.1029/2008GL035745.
ΣO/N2 ratios in the Earth’s thermosphere are measured by the Global Ultraviolet Imager (GUVI) on the TIMED satellite, and demonstrate strong 9 and 7 day oscillations in 2005 and 2006, respectively, that are well correlated with the solar wind speed and Kp index. This work builds on the recently discovered connection between rotating solar coronal holes and thermospheric mass density variations. The work described here is the first description of geomagnetically forced periodicities in neutral composition. Furthermore, these observations provide the first definitive proof that the processes creating neutral composition changes during geomagnetic storms occur continuously at all activity levels and all over the world. The ΣO/N2 response versus the mass density response indicates the important role of vertical winds at high latitudes while thermal expansion dominates at lower latitudes”.

Spotless days records can be deceiving, for instance the Laymans’ Count that has a standard and ignores specks (which aligns it with past counting methods) between june 2008 and june 2009 has a spotless days number of 349. That only leaves 16 days in the year with a spot.
As far as the future is concerned there is good news, there are no chances of major grand minima for the next 1000 years at least, but we will still get the minor versions like we are experiencing now.

So what is the L&P effect….probably just a reduction in solar activity strength that we have been witnessing since SC21. Most of the L&P records are taken from the downslope of SC23 where a reduction would be expected. There are signs of a small recovery in the1026 and 1027 readings, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a leveling off or small gain as we head towards a weak SC24 max. Full recovery probably cannot be expected before SC26.
Sunspots may not appear under a certain Guass limit, but they would still appear on the magnetogram….this we are still not seeing.