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.
Leif
Are you saying that the UVB rays that get through after an ozone depletion[ after a solar storm or/and proton event] have a miscule effect on the planet? All i am asking is could UvB rays do some heating when they get to the surface of the earth?
matt v. (18:32:58) :
All i am asking is could UVB rays do some heating when they get to the surface of the earth?
If enough rays did, yes, but there simply isn’t much heat to be had there. Now, ozone is a strong greenhouse gas, so if you destroy ozone you would actually cool down the planet. In any event, the analysis I describe would answer these questions. I have not seen a study of this [obvious] test, so make the [perhaps unwarranted] assumption that people have do this and not found anything, as I assume that they would publish a positive result. Personally, I don’t think there is much going for the hypothesis.
Leif Svalgaard (18:30:10) :
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?”
Doesn’t sound like you assume you are wrong about my being mindful of a “problem”.
I don’t have a problem, Leif. But I could ask you the same thing about what you regularly throw at others without a blink, but apparently can’t take. A parting thought, “always” is a long time.
Stop. You know who you are.
vukcevic (11:21:02) :
“See this:
http://www.ncas.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=446&Itemid=249”
Fascinating video V. Watching the video in your link really illustrates how complex the climate system really is (at least to my layman eyeballs).
Does anyone know of any good tools whereby one could watch historic weather patterns develop and disperse on a global scale?
Leif Svalgaard (14:28:57) :
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.”
Leif Svalgaard (14:28:57
“No, progress comes from presenting new evidence and new ideas. Education comes from explaining what we think we know.”
If you work for a university, government or private research institution, with financial and other backing, than you are certainly expected to bring new evidence.
If you are an amateur, deprived of all the above, than only hope is to challenge areas where there are uncertainties.
Here, in particular I have in mind mr. vuckevic, whose contributions here and elsewhere, I have followed during several months. He has come up with number of interesting ideas, e.g. sunspot cycles and polar fields formulae, and now a new view of the Earth’s magnetism. He may be totally wrong, but that is not a point, he persists with ideas, despite with all the flak and occasional insult, which appears that he takes in his stride and good humor. Science needs amateurs who put their time and effort in exposing gaps, and on a rare occasions may or may not come up with goods. People like that should be applauded.
Now that we have had 2 years of SC24 kicking around, I thought it interesting to compare the Sun today on the STEREO views with 1 year ago.
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin9.htm
So, below each of the latest color EUVI’s (Nov 4) are the images from 1 year ago.
16 today? Does anyone have an image of 1030 on the 7th of November?
Continuum has not been updated and it is not visible on the GONG Images, flux has not budged, solar wind has dropped and yet today we see 16?
Why are they so adamant to skew the sunspot number so much? Why has 1030 recieved 16 today? This is getting ridiculous.
Mr. Alex (07:06:42) :
16 today? Does anyone have an image of 1030 on the 7th of November?
Continuum has not been updated and it is not visible on the GONG Images, flux has not budged, solar wind has dropped and yet today we see 16?
Why are they so adamant to skew the sunspot number so much? Why has 1030 recieved 16 today? This is getting ridiculous.
Hopefully we will get some continuum images to cover 1030, if not the Layman’s Count might have to fall back onto the grey scale images from GONG etc. NOAA’s daily sunspot count and Sunspot numbering system is meaningless really. SIDC who is taken as the world authority are much more conservative in their assessments and wait to the end of the month to put out their report. The Layman’s Count further processes the SIDC count to bring it back to something we can compare with the past.
matt v. (18:32:58) :
Are you saying that the UVB rays that get through after an ozone depletion[ after a solar storm or/and proton event] have a minuscule effect on the planet? All i am asking is could UvB rays do some heating when they get to the surface of the earth?
Perhaps they dont need to get to the surface. Other atmosphere effects and cloud formation as a result of UV could be all we need to regulate TSI.
http://www.spaceweather.com/
cut the sunspot number to 11, I noticed just after midnight Sunday morning.
Dr. Svalgaard: “…progress comes from presenting new evidence and new ideas.”
“The size of the breach took researchers by surprise. ‘We’ve seen things like this before,’ says Raeder, ‘but never on such a large scale. The entire day-side of the magnetosphere was open to the solar wind.'”
“To the lay person, this may sound like a quibble, but to a space physicist, it is almost seismic,” says Sibeck. “When I tell my colleagues, most react with skepticism, as if I’m trying to convince them that the sun rises in the west.”
“So, you can imagine our surprise when a northern IMF came along and shields went down instead,” says Sibeck. “This completely overturns our understanding of things.”
“The opening was huge—four times wider than Earth itself,” says Wenhui Li, a space physicist at the University of New Hampshire who has been analyzing the data. Li’s colleague Jimmy Raeder, also of New Hampshire, says “1027 particles per second were flowing into the magnetosphere—that’s a 1 followed by 27 zeros. This kind of influx is an order of magnitude greater than what we thought was possible.”
“Like an octopus wrapping its tentacles around a big clam, solar magnetic fields draped themselves around the magnetosphere and cracked it open. The cracking was accomplished by means of a process called “magnetic reconnection.” High above Earth’s poles, solar and terrestrial magnetic fields linked up (reconnected) to form conduits for solar wind. Conduits over the Arctic and Antarctic quickly expanded; within minutes they overlapped over Earth’s equator to create the biggest magnetic breach ever recorded by Earth-orbiting spacecraft.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16dec_giantbreach.htm
These statements are all based on observation & measurement on a high order of resolution.
And they are “new evidence and new ideas”.
This evidence was recorded June 3, 2007, new in science terms.
It is not NASA hype or exaggeration.
A breach in the Earth’s magnetic field “four times wider than Earth itself”.
And some, here, claim models from the 1930’s, before the space age, are still correct…go figure?
Leif,
NASA, Are Sunspots Disappearing? (3 September 2009):
The “firmament” of a sunspot is not matter but rather a strong magnetic field that appears dark because it blocks the upflow of heat from the sun’s
interior. If Earth lost its magnetic field, the solid planet would remain intact, but if a sunspot loses its magnetism, it ceases to exist.
“According to our measurements, sunspots seem to form only if the magnetic field is stronger than about 1500 gauss,” says Livingston. “If the current trend continues, we’ll hit that threshold in the near future, and solar
magnetic fields would become too weak to form sunspots.”
Your interpretation:
The spots will still be there except they will be invisible. The reason for this is that as the magnetic field decreases, the plasma heats up [rather it is the strong field that inhibits convection and cools the spot]. As the spot heats up, the temperature difference between the spot and the surrounding photosphere becomes smaller and the contrast decreases with the result that it becomes more difficult to see the spot. So, the spot is still there, the magnetic region is still there, …”
I find it rather difficult to describe precisely the L&P effect. The NASA interpretation seems to state that the sunspots cannot form if the magnetic field is lower than 1500 gauss.
Your interpretation is that the sunspots will still be there, but they will be less visible. And they will be very clear on the magnetograms.
The sunspot 1029 has surprised me. I thought that this was a very clear
sunspot with a dark umbra. Livingston has proved that this sunspot has much less contrast than other sunspots several years ago.
– Can we see with our eyes the decrease of contrast in the sunspot 1029 (in comparison with others)?
– What is the gain of saying: “the sunspot is still there but we cannot see it”? Why not say: “There are no sunspots anymore”?
– How can you say that we see on the sun the same activity if the magnetic field if the umbra has decreased from 3000 gauss to 1500 gauss? Is the only explanation that one visible sunspot with an umbra of 3000 gauss has now changed in one or two sunspots with the same area with an umbra of 1500 gauss (not visible to our eyes)?
– I think that even on the magnetograms, we should see a difference. Because the magetogram is sensitive to magnetism, it wil show a clear difference between an umbra of 3500 gauss and an other of 1500 gauss. Will it be possible to say e.g. : We see here [on the magnetogram] a large sunspot but due to the low magnetism of 1500 gauss, we cannot see it in the visible light?
Suggestion: If the L&P trend will become true, it should be very interesting you write a short article for journalists with a clear and instructive explanation of the L&P effect. Otherwise, very unscientific enunciations will be launched and nobody will understand what is happening exactly on the sun.
Geoff Sharp (17:45:47) :
“…Perhaps they don’t need to get to the surface. Other atmosphere effects and cloud formation as a result of UV could be all we need to regulate TSI…”
A small amount of UV does get to the surface and this can be a hazard to both animal and plant life.
The majority of UV effect atmospheric chemistry and, for example, different wavelengths of UV are involved with the production or destruction of ozone. There is still much to be learned about what happens in the upper atmosphere.
SIGNATURE OF ANTIMATTER DETECTED IN LIGHTNING
Fermi telescope finds evidence that positrons, not just electrons, are in storms on Earth
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/49288/title/Signature_of_antimatter_detected_in_lightning
An interesting development !