I’ve looked at the Ap Index on a regular basis, as it is an indicator of how active the solar dynamo is. When we had sunspot 1029 recently, the largest in months, it gave hope to many that Solar cycle 24 had finally started to ramp up.
From the data provided by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) on November 2nd, you can see that October 2009 had little Ap magnetic activity. The value is now 3 for the month. Here’s my graph from October 2009 SWPC Ap data:
Leif Svalgaard points out to me another indicator of low solar magnetic activity. Bill Livingston was able to observe sunspot group 1029, and measure its magnetic field and contrast. Leif’s graph with my annotation for group 1029 is below. By itself, this one sunspot group isn’t significant, but it does fit into a prediction made by Livingston and Penn.
The measurement of sunspot group 1029 falls just where there should be on the Livingston and Penn predicted path to invisibility.
WUWT readers may recall this NASA News article in September about L&P’s predictions:
NASA: Are Sunspots Disappearing?
And this article:
Livingston and Penn in EOS: Are Sunspots Different During This Solar Minimum?
And finally this one, which talks about the progression of lower magnetic activity and increased contrast ratios of umbra’s in sunspots:
Livingston and Penn paper: “Sunspots may vanish by 2015″
Since we only have sunspot magnetic and contrast data for about 20 years, one can’t be too certain of the outcome just yet. However, if cycle 24 was indeed ramping up with increased magnetic activity, seeing a spot that was well above the magnetic value of the last couple would certainly be reassuring.
We live in interesting times.
George E. Smith (10:55:18) :
Speaking of funks, just get a load of what the DMI arctic temperature has gone and done in the last couple of days.
Anybody got any ideas about what causes these sudden up and down 5 deg C steps.
See this:
http://www.ncas.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=446&Itemid=249
For the first time, scientists have shown how this relationship can be used to identify weather events that occur very suddenly in the stratosphere during the Northern Hemisphere winter. These events can have a significant effect on the severity of winters we experience, and also on the amount of ozone over the poles – being able to identify them and understand their frequency is crucial for informing our current climate and weather-forecasting models to improve predictions.
George E. Smith (11:08:43) :
So a “dip”needle would stand vertically there ? Certainly makes sense to me; and is about what I’ve always been taught.
And that is correct.
A complication is that due to local ores etc near the surface the magnetic field can locally look confusing. As you ascend in altitude to where the particles from space approach the Earth, these local anomalies disappears. The cosmic rays don’t see the ‘double hump’ and there are not two auroral ovals, http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/pmap/pmapN.html
A hallmark of the pseudo-scientist is the stubborn disability to learn the facts.
Leif Svalgaard (11:15:42) :
Glenn (10:43:20) :
“As I said: “if things look wrong to you, it is because [99.99% of the time] you don’t understand what is going on”.”
That’s nuts.
“works for me.”
Sure doesn’t look that way. With any subject you participate.
“I would always assume that I’m at fault first. People with a different disposition apparently do otherwise.”
Sure doesn’t look that way. With any subject you participate.
Glenn (11:28:44) :
“I would always assume that I’m at fault first. People with a different disposition apparently do otherwise.”
Sure doesn’t look that way. With any subject you participate.
You just put yourself in that ‘otherwise’ category.
LEIF
The current science asumes that most of the solar heating is due incoming SW radiation of which about 30% are reflected by the clouds and from the earth’s surface back to space , 20% is absorbed by the clouds and re-emitted back to space as LW. The other 50% reaches the earth’s surface and provides the regular warming and which eventually makes its way back to space via .
My question ,is it possible that during significant solar wind ram pressure spikes , that UVB rays are also sent to the earth and absorbed by the Oceans and which create extra heat .These high solar wind pressure spike periods of warming have a different pattern to the regular solar wind which has been diminishing since 1990.Is there no extra heating being generated by these high velocity solar wind pressure spikes .
These UVB RADIATION are in addition to the regular SW radiation currently being monitored .Over a period of say the last 100 years , could they account for the 0.75C degree rise .
Welcome Glenn to the “Otherwise”. Hmmmm…seems like there are a lot of people in here…
Ed (12:01:34) : Kind of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Other Gods”
There is much talk over at the Italian NIA blog about 1030, many dismiss the explanation that it is merely a reversed SC 24 spot. ( see 2 posts from 6 Nov)
http://translate.google.co.za/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://daltonsminima.wordpress.com/&ei=AHWVSrv_K5zLjAfom5zbDQ&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://daltonsminima.wordpress.com/%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG
http://www.spaceweather.com/
“A coronal mass ejection (CME) expected to deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field yesterday … did not. The cloud either missed Earth or its impact was too feeble to notice. Geomagnetic activity remains low.”
Spaceweather.com avoids mentioning which cycle 1030 belongs to.
The number assigned to it (15) is a joke, 1030 is barely breathing and completely opposite to 1029.
matt v. (11:55:12) :
My question ,is it possible that during significant solar wind ram pressure spikes , that UVB rays are also sent to the earth and absorbed by the Oceans and which create extra heat</i?
The pressure spikes and UVB are created by different processes and have nothing to do with each other. They even follow different solar cycle behavior: spikes peak just before solar minimum, while UVB peaks at solar maximum, so I would say: 'no'.
James Marusek on Solar Cycle 24
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/11/james-marusek-on-solar-cycle-24.html
Leif Svalgaard (13:17:43) :
matt v. (11:55:12) :
My question ,is it possible that during significant solar wind ram pressure spikes , that UVB rays are also sent to the earth and absorbed by the Oceans and which create extra heat
The pressure spikes and UVB are created by different processes and have nothing to do with each other. They even follow different solar cycle behavior: spikes peak just before solar minimum, while UVB peaks at solar maximum, so I would say: ‘no’.
Science progress does not come from endlessly ‘parroting’ what we know, but from challenging of that what we think we know.
radun (13:53:53) :
Science progress does not come from endlessly ‘parroting’ what we know, but from challenging of that what we think we know.
No, progress comes from presenting new evidence and new ideas. Education comes from explaining what we think we know.
Mr. Alex (12:39:34) :
There is much talk over at the Italian NIA blog about 1030, many dismiss the explanation that it is merely a reversed SC 24 spot.
some 3% of all spot groups are reversed.
Here is a graph of normal (crosses) and reversed (circles) polarity spots from 1975 to 1988. You can see for yourself that reversed spots can occur anywhere and at any time:
http://www.leif.org/research/Reverse-Polarity-Spots.png
The ones near the equator are probably not really reversed, but more a reflection of the equator being an ill-defined boundary between polarities.
The Figure is from Karen Harvey’s fined discussion of solar cycles:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/1992ASPC-Harvey.pdf
Various sources cite 290-320 nm for UVB dwon to 280-315 nm.
A table of standard solar spectrum bvalues (for a TSI of 1353 at AM0) says only 2.2188% of the solar spectrum energy remains below 320, and only 0.8109 remains below 290. That gives 1.4079 % of UVB for the longer numbers.
For 315 we have 1.9243% remaining, and 0.5644 belkow 280 so the lower range carries 1.3599% of the solar energy at air mass zero.
The atmospheric absorption including ozone whacks into that quite severely so very little solar energy in the UVB range survives to reach the ocean surface. The water absorption coefficient exceeds 0.01-0.03cm^-1 for all of that range, so most of that energy is absorbed in perhaps three metres of ocean water (95% of it).
leif
On checking the Omniweb I found that the distribution of solar wind ram pressure spikes 10nPa and greater was quite wide and peaked at solar Max and valleyed at solar min
# OF RAM
PRESS.
SPIKES
10nPa&>
YEAR
1989 32 max
90 19
91 26
92 23
93 14
94 13
95 18
96 5 min
97 18
98 22
99 17
2000 32 MAX
1 28
2 17
3 14
4 13
5 33
6 8
7 10
8 5[part only] min?
matt v. (16:32:48) :
On checking the Omniweb I found that the distribution of solar wind ram pressure spikes 10nPa and greater was quite wide and peaked at solar Max and valleyed at solar min
# OF RAM
PRESS.
SPIKES
10nPa&>
YEAR
1989 32 max
90 19
91 26
92 23
93 14
94 13
95 18
96 5 min
97 18
98 22
99 17
2000 32 MAX
1 28
2 17
3 14
4 13
5 33
6 8
7 10
8 5[part only] min?
During some of the years up to 70% of the data is missing. Did you divide each yearly count by the number of hours with data then multiplying the result by the total number of hours in a year, in order to normalize to full data coverage?
Even so, you’ll see the peak I mentioned just before the minimum. Now, if you go to higher and higher spikes, the distribution shifts towards more at maximum, so we really have two peaks. But going to very high spikes reduces their number and their eventual impact. Even so there are only a couple of spikes per moths, so their climatic effect cannot be great. When I said that UV peaked at solar maximum, I interpreted your UVB as you meaning UV in general. this may be an incorrect assumption of my part. Perhaps you very specifically meant UVB and only UVB. If so, the situation is a bit different. It is generally believed that UVB follows the solar cycle [as total UV does], but it actually does not. As you can see here http://www.leif.org/research/Erl70.png UV in 242-310nm [about UVB] is smallest nearer solar maximum [left-hand side] and rises towards solar minimum. I have not brought this particular plot up to date, but the data so far just follows the rise. At any rate, the number of spikes per month is small and each spike short-lived so I would not expect much if any effect.
Leif
The average monthly temperature spike would also be very small.[ assuming a 0.75C /century.] This works out to 0.0075/year which translates to 0.000625 C /month. Could 1-3 very large solar wind spikesof 10 nPA & > per month have sauch a small warming effect on the Oceans which over a century adds up.?
matt v. (17:22:52) :
Could 1-3 very large solar wind spikesof 10 nPA & > per month have such a small warming effect on the Oceans which over a century adds up.?
What would that add up over a million years?
When you heat something up, it radiates away the heat again. The density spikes confer very little energy to the Earth in themselves. If you want to investigate this, make a ‘superposed epoch’ analysis using the spikes at key time: For each spike, take two weeks on either side and get the temperature for each of those 28 days. Then arrange the data in a large table where the rows are those 28 values and all the rows are lined up on the columns where the spike is. Add all the columns and see if there is increased temperature in the columns to the right of the middle columns where the spikes are. Makes sense?
George E. SMITH
What I was wondering about is the UVB rays that are primarly generated during significant solar wind storms and then carried to the earth by the strong ram pressure spikes often passing through the earth shield [ something like a major proton event which destroys the ozone and causes heating in the mesopsphere] . Could these UVB rays get right down to the oceans and slightly warm the ocean surfaces . This is not considered by IPCC to be part of their radiative forcing components . IPCC uses 0.12 W/Msquared for solar Irradiance only[ fig 2.4 under CAUSES OF CHANGE ]. I am not an expert in this field and only speculating why UBV is not considered more of a factor, small perhaps but which over a decade can become somewhat significant.
matt v. (17:59:14) :
What I was wondering about is the UVB rays that are primarly generated during significant solar wind storms and then carried to the earth by the strong ram pressure spikes often passing through the earth shield
They are not considered, because the UVB is not carried along with the density spikes. The UVB rays reach Earth 8 minutes after they are generated and have nothing to do with the spikes [those take 4 days to get here]. This is the disconnect you have here. Now, if we forget about the spikes, and only talk UVB, very little of those make it to the ground and their effect is minuscule.
Leif
As an individual i neither have the data nor the instruments to detect these small temperature changes not to talk about the UVB data. In addition there are so many other simultaneous natural variables which can distort the data. I was merely asking whether such an hypothesis made any sense at all. Thanks for your input.
Leif Svalgaard (11:35:50) :
Glenn (11:28:44) :
“I would always assume that I’m at fault first. People with a different disposition apparently do otherwise.”
Sure doesn’t look that way. With any subject you participate.
“You just put yourself in that ‘otherwise’ category.”
As did you. And this could go on and on, except I’m not the one that said you always assume that you’re at fault first. You didn’t.
matt v. (18:20:33) :
I was merely asking whether such an hypothesis made any sense at all.
I understand and appreciate the question. As I explained, the hypothesis does not seem very plausible, so there is at least my answer.
Glenn (18:23:26) :
except I’m not the one that said you always assume that you’re at fault first. You didn’t.
I did, and I do. What’s your problem, and why is that such a problem to you that you are mindful of it?