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:
Michael (12:47:34) :
Thanks for correcting my error. I was confused because they only have 300 and something comments on their last topic.
That’s because they have alienated so many people with their ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude and draconian filtering policy that there’s not that many who stop over at RC anymore. Also, if you did a print out of any one of the RC postings and removed all comments by “dhogaza” you’d not have much left to wipe with.
Cheers
Mark.
>>Edward Maunder’s second original paper … Unfortunately
>>I have no way of quoting from the actual paper, unless I
>>type out the whole thing.
Any interesting quotes?
Phillip Bratby (11:51:10) :
Fred from Canuckistan . . . (10:52:41) :
“Buy long underwear”.
Log store full, oil tank full, food store full. Anything else we should do?
Water tank full. Lots of places get droughts when it gets cold…
>>Robert E. Phelan (18:08:46) :
>>ralph (11:17:55) :
>>What could be the causal factor? Anything we have missed?
>>CO2? ;^}
Ah, yes, I forgot. The Great Green CO2 Devouring Machine came along in the early 19th century (just at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution), and caused the Dalton Minimum. 😉
Must have been one of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s early inventions.
.
>> savethesharks (23:44:00) :
>>Most of its drivers are internally driven, without a doubt.
In terms of weather, if you disregard a few volcanic hotspots, are not ALL of climate drivers externally driven? There would be NO temperature, nor resultant weather and climate systems, were it not for the output of the Sun.
This is why I continue to believe that the primary driver for Earth climate will be found to be an external factor.
.
Leif:
Ok yes that particular hypothesis may be wrong, but the graph shows cosmic ray intensity over time, alongside temperature – and there is a very clear correlation. At the very least I would be asking myself the question, “why?”, rather than dismissing it out of hand.
rbateman (18:12:13) :
John Finn (17:52:17) :
If Piers Corbyn has figured out how much effect and how long of a lagtime for sunspots to affect weather, he probably has a comfortable margin with which to work with.
i notice you use the term ‘weather’ and not ‘climate’. Are the effects of sunspots immediate (or more immediate) on weather? I’m confused. I’d really like to know what the ‘climate lag’ is. Someone, in an earlier post, said that solar activity had been decreasing since SC21 which ended ~23 years ago. SC 22 was still pretty ‘active’ but that ended in 1996. For the past 3 years we’ve had a very long and deep solar minimum.
Whatever anyone says about temperatures peaking in 1998 (they didn’t), the last 5 years (2004-2008) are warmer than the previous 5 years (1999-2003) and those 5 years were warmer than the 5 years before that and so on. Currently, global temperatures in 2009 are still at the elevated levels of 2004-2008 (all using UAH satelllite record).
I don’t detect the hint of a downturn. There might be a subtle shift in the oceans which has slowed the warming rate. The trend may have even flattened, but there is no sign that temperatures are falling or about to fall off the edge of a cliff.
So – about this lag? How long?
Leif Svalgaard (22:40:41): A 0.1% decrease in solar output causes a 0.1%/4 percent decrease in temperature because radiation goes with the fourth power of the temperature, so 0.07K.
Robert Wood (17:37:44): Now, many are thinking we should be seeing reduced temps. Not necessarily immediately. My view is that the oceans heat more rapidly than they cool.
To me it seems that Dr. Svalgaard almost exclusively argues along the lines of the instant Stefan Boltzmann power law,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan–Boltzmann_law
However, I would argue that this law is insufficient to understand the transient dynamics of our planets overall temperature. Indeed, it seems reasonable to think that Robert Wood is correct when he states that oceans heat more rapidly than they cool. This seems very natural as heated surface sea water may circulate down to very deep waters and hide it from the instant Stefan Boltzmann power law for a long time. Again, please take a look at the thermal time constant,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_time_constant#Thermal_time_constant
Although the mechanism is not yet discovered, I suspect that tiny variations in solar cycle length and amplitude may have a dramatic impact on our climate along the lines of sensitive dependency on initial conditions explained in the classical Lorenz (1963) paper that has been cited 5772 times in the peer reviewed literature. In fact, if we assume an ad-hoc relationship between HMF B and global temperature, we only need to fit two parameters to see a relationship,
http://i25.tinypic.com/fb97ph.jpg
Although this is a trivial example only, I argue that we cannot say that there are no such extreme sensitivities in our climate, there are many possibilities that have not been investigated and we understand so little. So, I expect that we may roughly see a global cooling as we saw about 100 years ago.
Anyway, I cannot understand why Dr. Svalgaard always argues along the lines of the instant Stefan Boltzmann power law, and never discusses in terms of the thermal mass and thermal time constant of our planet. For example, I cannot see that he has commented my point that the time integrated HMF B [indirectly] may influence global temperature as displayed in the figure above. Please comment.
savethesharks (23:07:36) : The Earth and its solar system is rotating around the Milky Way about once every 250 MM years. Previous Ice Ages have occured when we pass through more dense arms.
The term “ice age” in common usage has two different meanings that are often confounded. I generally try to use “ice Epoch” and “glaciation” to distinguish them.
We are presently in an “Ice Epoch” of very long duration. We have had several cycles of “glaciation” (that folks often call an Ice age, but sometimes they call ice epochs and ice age too…) and are presently in an “interglacial” inside our present ice epoch.
What causes glaciation / interglacial cycling appears to be orbital mechanics (after Milankovitch ) but what causes Ice Epochs to come and go is less clear. There appears to be a necessary pre-condition of a lot of land at the poles (so ice can build up) which means position of the continents and plate tectonics matter a lot. There also might be some galactic position pixie dust effect too. And some folks have posited an impact from atmospheric composition. No unicorns, though, as near as I can tell…
But it really is important to understanding this to keep clear the distinction between an Ice Epoch that comes around in the hundreds of millions of years range, and the glaciation / interglacial cycles inside of that that happen on 100,000 year type time scales (sometimes 40,000 – though folks don’t know why sometimes it’s 100,000 and sometimes 40,000…)
Hope I helped … I know I made it more confusing…
With respect to the Maunder paper, all I have is a photocopy. Let me type
“Thus, for close upon 70 years, the ordinary progress of the solar cycle, as we have been accustomed to it, was in abeyance – in abeyance to such a degree that the entire records of those 70 years combined together would scarcely supply sufficient observations of sunspots to equal one average year of an ordinary minimum such as we have been accustomed to during the past century.
It may be objected that, bearing in mind the feeble instruments of the seventeenth century, and the paucity of observers, it may well have happened that many spots passed unnoticed. But no great power is needed to detect the presence of a sunspot…”
“It ought not to be overlookecd that, prolonged as this inactivity of the Sun certainly was, yet a few stray spots noted during “the seventy year dearth” – 1660,1671,1684,1695,1707,1718 – correspond, as nearly as can expect, to the theoretical dates of maximum… “just as in a deeply inundated country, the loftiest objects will still raise their heads above the flood, and a spire here,a hill, a tower, a tree there, enable one to trace out the congiguration of the submerged champaign” so the above-mentioned years seem to be marked as the crests of a sunken spot-curve.”
erlhapp (00:10:13) :
Ron de Haan, Save the Sharks and Leif
“The universe is WAY to big and old a place, though, to rule out, external influences on little old Earth”.
“I agree.
I think it is time for Leif to show us how he can turn on a sixpence.
There is a new post at: http://climatechange1.wordpress.com”
Erlhapp,
I have read your latest publication and posted a link at this threat.
The solar link is a hot item at this blog.
I am confident there will be an interesting discussion here as more posters here take notice of your work.
It’s great to have your comments first hand.
Thank you for “thinking out of the box”.
Leif Svalgaard (14:52:37) :
Gene Nemetz (14:22:23) :
I wasn’t agreeing with you Leif. Did you imagine I was??
Don’t care much either way.
You don’t seem to be acting that way.
Ron,
You’re welcome. Thanks for your support. Climate science is in a parlous state. The general assumption that carbon is important is holding us back. It’s effect is three fifths of five eighths of FA. The atmosphere is first and foremost a very effective medium for the transport of energy away from the surface.
Let me say that the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data at http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl is a fantastic resource. In that data base all the answers lie. They are there waiting to be picked up. All the properties of the atmosphere are expressed in that database.
As Kim is wont to remind us repeatedly, the answer lies in the clouds.
John Finn (17:52:17) :
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?
I think Carol was asking about how a Little Ice Age could happen over years. I didn’t think she was asking about specific weather events that happen for a day or days, or about a general trend for a given winter or summer, etc.
Also, I think there are elements in activity from the sun that Corbyn uses that are unrelated to sun spots. He also has said something to the effect he doesn’t rely on the 11 year cycle.
He has said that he will make known key elements to his method on October 28th. You can see him say it in this video :
John Finn (17:52:17) :
Surely this implies an immediate effect. So which is it?
Just to make it clearer : there are sun spots, there are solar flares, there is the 11 year cycle. There is a focus on these. But these are not the whole picture. There are other things happening on the sun.
The immediate effect you are talking about is found in a view of the big picture—which includes the moon, cosmic rays, etc.— i.e., not just the traditional idea of solar activity.
evanmjones (22:14:43) :
(”I don’t know,” is an acceptable and perhaps very wise answer.)
But apparently hard to admit to for some….
John Finn (02:57:39) :
Whatever anyone says about temperatures peaking in 1998 (they didn’t)
I guess all them thar dad gum thermometers was wrong! 😉
Robinson (02:42:08) :
Ok yes that particular hypothesis may be wrong, but the graph shows cosmic ray intensity over time, alongside temperature –
The ‘cosmic ray intensity’ hundred of millions of years ago is not known but was estimated based on the configuration of the spiral arms. BTW, one might ponder how we can say much about the temperature hundreds of millions of years ago, when we cannot even agree on whether there was or was not a MWP a thousand years ago.
Stephen Wilde (00:13:22) :
Consequently the longer the cycle the more the thermostat is turned down and the cooler the Earth system becomes over time.
Well, the basic premise [that TSI integrated over a cycle is constant] is wrong. Every second we get 1361 J/m2 no matter how long the cycle is. During a few years we might get 1362 W/m2. That heats up the system by 0.07K which is then lost during the next few years when we are back to 1361 W/m2. If we don’t fall back to 1361 the 0.07K stays, but no more, it does keep going up 0.07K every decade for all eternity.
rbateman (01:10:00) :
But we don’t know how many of those days were cloudy.
Suffice to say we lack sufficent data.
Yet, it does not keep Paul Stanko from saying that during cycle 6 when ‘we lack sufficient data’ there were precisely 2236 spotless days. I want to know how [considering all that missing data] that number was arrived at.
Invariant (03:16:39) :
I cannot see that he has commented my point that the time integrated HMF B [indirectly] may influence global temperature as displayed in the figure above. Please comment.
Suppose HMF B was absolutely constant at all times [then it would be hard to say that climate variations are due the unvarying HMF]. Now, integrate that constant HMF over time and you’ll find that it goes up, up, up, indefinitely, accounting for the rise in your Figure.
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.
Geoff Sharp (01:16:37) :
The only other activity on the magnetogram has been whats associated with the specks that have been coming through, no convenient missing spots to speak off.
An example was the active region so clearly defined by in the magnetograms for several days around April 1st, 2009. Yet there were no spots.
To do a proper analysis, every day of every spot needs to be recorded.
No, it is enough that there be an unbiased selection of a subset of the data.
Looking at these factors I can see “signs of a small recovery” in the Gauss measurements.
People ‘see’ what they want to see. The number tell a different story. The last batch of measurements had 12 values for a mean of 1917. The 12 measurements before that had a mean of 2098, the 12 before that was 2213. No ‘small recovery’.
As for your ‘prediction’ out to 3000, that is just pseudo-scientific cyclomania as we have discussed so many times. There is no evidence for any of this.
Invariant (03:16:39) :
Anyway, I cannot understand why Dr. Svalgaard always argues along the lines of the instant Stefan Boltzmann power law, and never discusses in terms of the thermal mass and thermal time constant of our planet…..Please comment.
Ummm… maybe because he’s a troll in sheep’s clothing…but that couldn’t be…. could it?
Gene Nemetz (04:57:13) :
I wasn’t agreeing with you Leif. Did you imagine I was??
“Don’t care much either way.”
You don’t seem to be acting that way.
I care about the folks getting the science right, not about what you agree on or not.
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.
Voici un site qui parle d’un refroidissement climatique en France et qui vous suit de très pret. Nous sommes totalement en accord avec ce que vous dites. Bravo continuez comme ça.
http://www.laterredufutur.com/html/
pwl (12:14:06) :
they accept without question the doom-saying scenarios of extreme long range weather forecasting that the climate will implode on us.
The nightmare scenarios from warming described by Al Gore have not happened on earth previously (that I know of). So that may be why ‘skeptics’ aren’t really worried about warming, if it does happen. In fact times of warming were good for people.
But nightmare scenarios from cooling have happened. And according to some scientists, based on previous patterns, a time of cooling is coming.
Here is one description of a nightmare scenario caused by cooling on earth that really did happen :
>>Keep clear the distinction between an Ice Epoch that comes around
>> in the hundreds of millions of years range, and the glaciation…
>>that happens on 100,000 year type time scales
Ice Epoch = long wavelength cooling period over millions of years.
Ice Age = shorter wavelength cooling periods within the above
Job done.
.
Leif Svalgaard (06:10:16) :
“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.”
Must have trouble reading.
In 1991 Friis-Christenssen and Larsen showed a very strong correlation between length of the sun-spot cycle and temperature. Later, they noted that the correlation did not continue into the latter part of last century, and so stepped back from their earlier hypothesis – showing their scientific integrity. However, in looking at the temperature data upon which they changed their minds, in the light of recent information regarding the warming bias in the data, it seems to me that their original hypothesis was correct.
To put it another way, the correllation that they found in 1991 – one that had held true for hundreds of year – is also evidence suggesting that the recent temperature history put out in line with the IPCC info has a strong warming error.