David Archibald forwarded me this PowerPoint presentation from Jan Janssens which he presented on October 22nd. It has some very interesting slides and is a good summary of the current debate over solar cycle 24.
I’ve put the entire slide show online in the post below at 50% size, as the PDF download of the PowerPoint document is quite large. For those that want it, you’ll find it at the end of the post mirrored on WUWT’s file system so that better bandwidth can help out.
The PDF of the PowerPoint (with full sized graphs) is available here
Warning, large file 5.6MB
While the slides are good, it would help out a great deal if words describing the slides could be provided in text or mp3 format. I don’t understand what some of the slides are showing and would like to know more.
So we’re still in the foreplay mode, right? Well, that’s okay. The next few months should be interesting. Especially if it goes the way the author expects. That would drive Gore, et al, completely bonkers – oh wait. He’s already there.
Is there any text discussion that is supposed to go with this presentation, and make sense of these slides and put them in context? The power point is just a collection of random graphics with no context. For someone not deeply involved in solar cycle watching, a lot of those charts have very little meaning without some discussion of what they are showing and why it is important.
If Jan Janssen does not have such a text presentation to go with the slides perhaps one of our more experienced sun watchers could elaborate on what the charts show.
For example in the second page graphic the bottom of the image has a bar chart (or what appears to look like a bar chart) but I have no clue what it is trying to communicate. It was probably explained in a verbal presentation but without that elaboration it is just a visual noise to me.
Larry
I only really come here for discussions on mermaids.
But if I was of the gloom and doom, henny Penny and the sky is burning set I would call this bad news for their hysteria and hysterical destroy the economy to save the penguin children of planet no make that the universe. Children are children everywhere no matter how many tentacles or flippers.
But as a skeptic looking at science, I would ask the question where is the global response at a possible scenario more significant statistically of a cooling planet, to states that have seemed to occur from time to time.
World food production stalling and energy supplies crumbling thru inefficient bureacratic dismemeberment.
Much as I would like to stick a cooling scenario into the climate terrorists, a cooling planet means a lot of dead people, children and the elderly and those at the bottom rungs.
I concur with the need for some text. Some of the slides simply cannot be used without explanatory text. As a prime example, slide numbered 5. No legend. No labeling of X or Y axes. No context.
Slide 11 could use some over lay text with arrows to point to SC23 (presumably the red dot) and the two circled blue dots (presumably SC15 and SC 17) and also provide the dates for SC15 & SC17 (when presenting for a lay audience).
That said — obviously this presentation was made to be talked to, and not for a lay audience — overall I think it looks quite good!
Capn Jack Walker (11:29:01) :
“Much as I would like to stick a cooling scenario into the climate terrorists, a cooling planet means a lot of dead people, children and the elderly and those at the bottom rungs.”
Fear cold,warm no.History shows this but it seems few listen.
Split atoms,not Birds…
Many of these images have been shown before, but with the corresponding narration would form a nice summary for someone who hasn’t encountered the story in such detail. Of course, that’s just what the live presentation was for… until the last part, where it gets into detail of the study evidence.
Capn Jack Walker (11:29:01) : “I only really come here for discussions on mermaids.”
Arrrr! And instead, we show you yards and yards of fishy science.
That’s the problem with models and clusters of models… they all depend on the assumptions of the models.
Haven’t we gone through this issue with multiple models of “climate change” being used as “proof”? Models are guesses when they can’t be exactly backfit to history.
The longer the cycle, the less backfit.
Jan Janssen has a pretty nifty web page regarding spotless days. It might prove worthwhile to go check it out:
http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html
While it might not explain most of the graphs in the presentation, it does whet the appetite.
Looks suspiciously like the modern maxima is about the biggest amplitude we have ever been able to measure. Sure glad it has ended, and with it comes the snows to rian on Al Gore’s hoax.
Sure does show the problem with trying to predict when we have so little data.
I agree, a video of the slides being presented and the spoken words would be a huge benefit.
Banzai mode
Roll up Roll up ! It’s the Solar-cycle Sunspot Seeking Speculation Special !
Will there be…
More than 60 sunspots per month at solar maximum…?
Less than 60 sunspots per month at solar maximum…?
No sunspots at all…?
PLACE BETS NOW !
/Banzai mode
Very interesting… and challenging to comprehend… lots of technical buzz words that need to perculate through my brain and be illuminated by The Googler… good thing it’s been Sesame Street week at the Googler… maybe Grover can help me out… a video of the presentation to learn more about it from Jan Janssen himself (in English if possible) would be awesome!
Oh, his web site is pretty good. It will take time to digest just like a full thanksgiving turkey dinner does. Yum. [:)]
Some of these charts, with explanations can be found at http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html .
Now, I have a question about the last sunspot. It had reverse polarity, so, was it a late SC23( to high in latitude), an early SC25, or just a badly confused SC24 spot?
So when are our politicians going to take serious note of what is happening with the sun? As the are hiking up our energy and water prices as a response to global warming whilst the world cools then what of those who cant afford to eat or heat?
http://www.twawki.wordpress.com
I like the presentation because it presents “an open mind approach” towards the different theories. Thanks for posting this.
The essence of the message (consensus) to the general public and our Governments is the conclusion that if the current minimum lasts up to Juli 2010 (less than 8 months from now) we will be in Dalton like territory and if it persists for a longer period of a few more years, we will be in Maunder Minimum like territory.
This is a bomb under the AGW consensus and it should be pushed.
We should make preparations for either scenario.
Well, Cap’n Jack.
The answer, tis a simple one!
CO2 can be blamed for warming, we emit a lot of it during our activities, thus it’s a taxable commodity.
When global temps take a nose-dive, something we’re emitting can’t be blamed, thus no additional revenue to be blown on useless beaurocrats.
Admitting such, by preparing for what we’re going to do when things get a touch chilly, would be tantamount to admitting that any taxes on CO2 are simply revenue-raising schemes.
So, no preparations can be made.
An interesting question of what a “Dalton Scenario” might mean is raised in the historical context of the arctic warming which took place around 1815-1820. Large amounts of ice melted off Greenland and ships attempted the northwest passage. Could it be that cold visited on the temperate latitudes while the arctic warmed?
From ‘the Age of Wonder’ by Richard Holmes
“From further afield there came reports of climate change: huge sheets of thawing pack ice were sighted off Greenland, melting snowcaps seen in Alpine mountains, and unprecedented river spates and flooding were recorded throughout Europe. Banks (President of Royal Society) was not disposed to panic at these strange phenomena.’ Some of us flatter ourselves that our Climate will be improved and may be restored to its ancient state, when grapes ripened in Vineyards here’” [p383]
Then, polar explorer William Parry recorded a latter meeting with Banks before attempting the North West Passage: “…he opened the map which he had just constructed and in which the situation is shown, of that enormous mass of ice which has lately disappeared from the Eastern coast of Greenland…” [p395]
The first was in 1815, the second in 1819
H.T. to disremembered WUWT reader.
I am waiting for some fool to say it is anthropogenic and we should all feel guilty. Then the media will pick it up and demand action. Here in Australian we have had very severe fires in Victoria. The reason? Well some members of the state goverment worship satan and so they caused the fires. Obvious really! Perhaps a SCM could be developed to prove our guilt.
The Frost Spirit
HE comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
You may trace his footsteps now
On the naked woods and the blasted fields
And the brown hill’s withered brow.
He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees
Where their pleasant green came forth,
And the winds, which follow wherever he goes,
Have shaken them down to earth.
He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
From the frozen Labrador,
From the icy bridge of the northern seas,
Which the white bear wanders o’er,
Where the fisherman’s sail is stiff with ice,
And the luckless forms below
In the sunless cold of the lingering night
Into marble statues grow!
He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
On the rushing Northern blast,
And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed
As his fearful breath went past.
With an unscorched wing he has hurried on,
Where the fires of Hecla glow
On the darkly beautiful sky above
And the ancient ice below.
He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
And the quiet lake shall feel
The torpid touch of his glazing breath,
And ring to the skater’s heel;
And the streams which danced on the broken rocks,
Or sang to the leaning grass,
Shall bow again to their winter chain,
And in mournful silence pass.
He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
Let us meet him as we may,
And turn with the light of the parlor-fire
His evil power away;
And gather closer the circle ’round,
When the firelight dances high,
And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend
As his sounding wing goes by!
John Greenleaf Whittier
Livingstone experiment has number of uncertainties about it, but if all magnetic events are controlled by a single driver, then this graph showing the gradual decay in intensity of the Polar fields, leads to the same conclusion.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LP-project1.gif
@tallbloke (12:43:07) :
“More than 60 sunspots per month at solar maximum ?
Less than 60 sunspots per month at solar maximum ?
No sunspots at all ?”
Bonzai Mode
While I’m not a betting man, I will make a prediction that solar max will be lower than a SSN of 55. I don’t see SC24 peaking either. I make a bold prediction that SC24 will be ‘flat topped'(having no peak). You think minimum this go around is hard to determine, wait until SC24’s SSN hovers between 45-55 for 6 to 8 months. Won’t that be a doozie. Toss in some nice spotless days during that time and voila, you got spectacular written all over it.
/Bonzai
He doesn’t say anything about the correlation between solar cycle length and global temperature anomalies.
For the millions of warm years immediately before glaciation started, there were fifty species of great apes. The cold killed off all but us, the chimps, the gorillas, and the orangutan.
Btw, John Greenleaf Whittier was born at the beginning of the Dalton Minimum (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892)
Found this gem about Copenhagen in the Daily Telegraph’s Finance pages
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/edmundconway/100001825/the-real-story-at-the-g20/
and inside it was another gem from the UK Met Office
“Do global temperature trends over the last decade falsify climate predictions?”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/global_temperatures_09.pdf
Janssens starts his spotless day count at Rmax of prior cycle. The curve begun in “A looot of spotless days” has clearly been tracing out a 1000 plus count over the past 18 months.
An average cycle is 11 years long, weak cycles are longer than strong, weak cycles take longer to run to max than short cycles, QED, Rmax will not come before 2014. This means cycle 24 is not a repeat of the 10-15 sort, i.e., a Grand Minimum(as far as we know them).
Note cycles 5-7(Dalton) were reversed in proportion of their rise to max versus fall from, normally 0.382:0.618, meaning Rmax could well be 2015 or 2016. Cycles 5 & 6 had a max of about 50.
Thanks Paul James 14:38 for the link.
Trend for 1999 to 2008 after removing the impact of the ENSO – 0.00C per decade.
Now we’ll have to wait for the adjustments from the AMO and other ocean cycles as well. The 2007-08 La Nina just woke up a few climate scientists to the impact of the ENSO again and now they have to account for it. If the AMO goes down in the near future as forecast, then they will be forced to incorporate it as well and then there will be soul-searching.
Phil Jones just did a pre-emptive strike on the AMO in his latest co-authored paper. They changed it into a white noise series – lol.
http://www.atmos.colostate.edu/ao/ThompsonPapers/TWJK_JClimate2009_revised.pdf
We may not have to wait long for the temperatures to change. Here is what happened fairly recently after extended solar minimum kind of periods
When ever we have had at least 3 years of low solar activity [sunspot #5-10 or less]
1797 -1799 Dalton Minimum cold period
1888-1890 followed by 3- 5 years of cooling weather
1900-1902 followed by 10 years of cold weather [AMO and winter NAO negative too]
2007-2009 ?
For 4 years of little or no solar sunspot activity
1821 -1824 Dalton period
1911-1914 part of one of the coldest periods this century [AMO negative]
I am not saying that the low temperatures are the result of low solar activity primarily since the natural cycles like AMO and NAO were clearly also in cool modes for some of the above dates, but there does seem to be some association
Boy that metoffice paper does a great job of obfuscating the sorry state of global (non)warming over the last decade.
It took me a while to figure out what they were plotting on Figure 2.8b. It’s basically a control chart telling how well actual temperatures conform to their marketbasket of climate simulations (black line). The actual changes plot below the model line every year since 1994!
GISS and NCDC temps have been flat or negative since 2004, HadCRUT3 even longer.
In chemistry, when you get three or so points falling on the same side of the trend line in a control chart, you become suspicious of your calibration. If you have four points in a row falling near 2 SD off (the 90% line) as HadCRUT3 from 1998 thru 2001, something is seriously wrong!
Paul James
The article you quoted
“Do global temperature trends over the last decade falsify climate predictions?”
The Met Office used 1999 to 2008 temperature anomaly rise and used .07C per decade rise for their comments. Had they looked at 2001-2009[to date] ,they would have said -0.009C per year. It would have made the case much worse. They clearly expect warming to resume in the next few years based on some near-term forecasts . We will have to see how good these near term forecasts really are?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/to:2010/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/to:2010/trend
Thanks Bill
I owe a sincere if belated hat tip to Daily Telegraph poster Catweazle for the Met Office link.
I follow Catweazles posts in the DT and always enjoy reading his jousts with the warmist poster Slioch.
Nicely spotted Catweazle Sir !
It is much worse then we thought. Nasa no longer has the soho video or anything available. I frequently use the little icon in the left margin and watch the movie of the last month or so. Hasn’t been available in about 10 days.
Add to those slides the last month, where spots have formed from N-S aligned magnetics which fail quickly. This is 90 degrees out from where a spot is most likely to thrive, and that would be E-W.
You could say the Sun is not getting wound up as much as it is being short-circuited.
More of the N-S anomaly appears with spots material flows connecting directly to the poles, as seen best in SOHO EIT 195 or STEREO EUVI 195. Watch for them. Whether such connections are normal or at a greater pace I don’t know.
twawki (12:48:38) :
So when are our politicians going to take serious note of what is happening with the sun?
The majority of them are not paying attention to much of anything going on outside, let alone the sun.
matt v. (16:11:27) :
To that end, it’s much easier to make the case that solar activity lull and cooler climate are associated somehow, than that they are not.
Safe to say that they go together like soup & sandwhich.
To be expected. The normal happenstance.
Has anyone tried to determine what the spotless days would be at the ability to detect sunspots that existed in 1909, or in 1810? How many of the “tiny tims” should not be counted to get an apples to apples comparison?
If Tallbloke’s theory is correct than because of the quiet sun we should see some rather cool SST’s after El Modoki ends, considering they have dropped while El Modoki rose to its current peak, and Tallbloke having predicted El Modoki and how it would be now himself.
Also, does Leif not check solar threads on Sundays I thought he’d be all over this thread by now?
What they thought was CO2 signal is just solar noise.
Paul James,
This was interesting in your link: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/global_temperatures_09.pdf
“The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate. ”
I assume that this implies that another 4 years of global cooling will force the IPCC and the world’s pollies to eat humble pie !?
It is more likely our pollies will then claim that their carbon taxes have been a dramatic success in preventing warming.
I don’t believe it will be a Maunder Minimum-style collapse, but the nearest I can think of would be the Spoerer Minimum that preceded it.
Dr David Hathaway (to his great credit, I might add) has come clean and admitted that his predictions were wholly wrong and that the solar science community has no real visibility as to what will happen next with SC24.
Apart from Leif Svalgaard who predicted a low peak of for SC24 but (wisely) neglected to predict WHEN. So his prediction has yet to be falsified.
And the late Theodor Landscheidt who predicted the appearance of the last three solar maxima and predicted six years in advance that SC24 would be very quiet on the basis of the Sun’s motion about the barycentre of the solar system – but of course that would be pseudoscience wouldn’t it, Dr Svalgaard?
I think it is clear this sunspot activity is because of CO2
Murray (17:52:15) :
Yes, and the follwing days in bold would NOT be counted
2009 10 20 71 11 10 1 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 10 21 71 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 10 22 72 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 10 23 73 30 60 1 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 10 24 76 21 120 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 10 25 76 28 130 0 -999 A1.2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 10 26 81 29 190 0 -999 A6.2 3 0 0 4 0 0 0
2009 10 27 82 29 260 0 -999 A4.2 5 0 0 3 0 0 0
2009 10 28 80 26 340 0 -999 A4.4 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
2009 10 29 77 19 380 0 -999 A2.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 10 30 75 13 320 0 -999 A2.8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 10 31 75 0 0 0 -999 A7.5 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 11 01 72 0 0 0 -999 A1.4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 11 02 71 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 11 03 72 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 11 04 71 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 11 05 71 15 50 1 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 11 06 71 16 10 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 11 07 71 11 10 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2009 11 08 71 0 0 0 -999 A0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
John A (18:57:56) :
Dr Svalgaard, even if I finally disagree with him, makes me think. I could think and be wrong. [snip]
REPLY: Dr Svalgaard probably won’t be back, he was insulted one too many times and got tired of it. I’m tired of it too. You know who you are. – Anthony
Awwww… I don’t even remember the [snip] part. I value Dr. Svalgaard. Please don’t go away. You’re a better man that.
Wondering Aloud (17:23:53) :
Bookmark this page:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin9.htm
The color composite images are intended to show the active regions that don’t produce sunspots as well as those that do. I try to keep it current.
Leif has made available an archive for all the STEREO images Ahead & Behind that I can produce. The Active Regions are what he bases his predictions on, and if L&P effect continues, one of the last places we can turn to see what’s under the hood of spotlessness.
“Dr Svalgaard probably won’t be back,…”
That will be a shame. Just yesterday (I think) he answered Ted Annonnson’s @ 12:47:22 question about the last sunspot. And, of course, he could add the text for the images now before us. I think it is extraordinary that he has coached us along for so long. Amazing, really.
The reason why the alarmists and the media do not freak out equally at the risk of a new Maunder Minimum is that it is something we cannot pass a law to change. It also ‘detracts from the message’ and portrays CO2 pollution as a good thing in case a maunder minimum is at hand. You would think they’d get the point that they could still make many millions of dollars in research grants trying to predict how bad it will be and when it will end, but most of them will have to go back to school to get a solar astronomy degree to qualify…
Frankly, Anthony, you should have banned that guy, he was way over the top in his rudeness to Dr. Svalgaard. Svalgaard has a right to be pissed.
REPLY: Its a catch-22, banning people. But we are going to be more vigilant now with everybody in snipping. We often get over 1000 comments a day, reading and deciding each one we invariably make mistakes. -A
“Dr Svalgaard probably won’t be back,…”
I would like to thank Leif for donating his time and knowledge to discussions on this board.
rbateman: “To that end, it’s much easier to make the case that solar activity lull and cooler climate are associated somehow, than that they are not.
Safe to say that they go together like soup & sandwhich.
To be expected. The normal happenstance.”
Yes. The answer has been staring us in the face….even if remotely….
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Mike Lorrey (22:15:57) :
The reason why the alarmists and the media do not freak out equally at the risk of a new Maunder Minimum is that it is something we cannot pass a law to change.
Bingo. Eventually they will admit (if their egos will permit it) that they were confusing two separate arguments:
(1) Homo Sapiens are polluting the planet…and they (we) have to do something about it.
(2) Homo Sapiens are changing the climate.
The first one is true….the second one, is, by and large, FALSE.
Two separate arguments.
It is not Anthropogenic Global Warming. It is merely Anthropogenic Global Pollution.
(The Texas-sized trash gyre in the Pacific, being one example).
But the climate alarmists have burned their reputation through Al Gore, as opposed to addressing ACTUAL….and SOLVABLE pollution issues.
This is so simple….yet you will never EVER hear this argument in the media or anywhere else.
I. Stop polluting, mate. Your trash is a horrible legacy to your offspring and theirs.
II. Beyond that….learn to ADAPT to the natural cycles….be them 11 years or 100,000 years.
It is up to us to figure it out.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
“REPLY: Dr Svalgaard probably won’t be back, he was insulted one too many times and got tired of it. I’m tired of it too… – Anthony”
And we, the readers of WUWT, will be the poorer for it if this proves so.
My admiration for Leif’s patience is unbounded. Perhaps he suffered fools a little too gladly. but one could not see this as a fault.
At the very least he was a litmus test of new stories and both old and new theories.
He permitted us entry into what would normally be closed bodies of science; closed for the simple reason that many, perhaps even most of us, simply did not have the dedication to search out.
At a time of wild claim and irrational science, Leif is steadying benchmark.
…and if this sounds something like a eulogy, it kinda is.
I have a question on the aloooot of spotless days chart.
Is there any significance to the angle of rise of SC24 for spotless days? It seems steeper than the SC10-15 average and looks like it is closing in on the slope/rate of rise on SC15 itself.
thanks
I doubt that a grand minimum will be acknowledged in the future, not because SC 24 will strengthen, but because the official data will be skewed (with non-existent spots being counted) to the extent that it just won’t be allowed.
The sunspot-climate connection has both strong support and strong opposition, and since we have much to learn we can only wait and observe.
Great Stuff, many thanks.
I too hope Dr Svalgaard comes back he has helped me understand the sun a little better, maybe taking a break from small minds is a good thing but please Leif come back when you are refreshed we need you here to help us understand things even if we disagree.
Mr. Alex (00:47:47) :
I doubt that a grand minimum will be acknowledged in the future, not because SC 24 will strengthen, but because the official data will be skewed (with non-existent spots being counted) to the extent that it just won’t be allowed.
In what way does that help the AGWers. Reporting more spots isn’t going to alter the climate. If anything, AGW supporters should welcome a “grand minimum”. If we still have relatively low solar activity and global temperatures don’t fall in the next few years their argument will be all the stronger. As it is things are looking pretty good for them. The solar peak occurred in the early 1990s. Just from the reduced TSI (solar max -> min) effect we ought to be ~0.1 deg cooler than we were back then. Needless to say – we aren’t. Despite the protracted minimum, 2009 is likely to be warmer than any year in the 1990s apart from 1998.
Meanwhile we (the readers of this blog) appear to have lost the contributions of the one person who was able to provide some perspective on the issue.
“Dr A Burns (18:38:02) :
It is more likely our pollies will then claim that their carbon taxes have been a dramatic success in preventing warming.”
This is the crux of the matter. There, appears to me anyway, a real “rush” on the part of pollies to have “some system” in place to control emissions in the circa 2010-2015 timeframe. My gut feeling is that we are heading towards a cooling, much like the 1940’s – 1970’s NH as I recall well, which will be the “vehicle” used to peddal energy rationing (For the west only it apperas, energy rationing, lower CO2 emisisons = lower temps) while in the face of rising CO2 emissions and falling temperatures. Signed, sealed and set in concrete, a tax on the air we breathe by 2015.
“REPLY: Dr Svalgaard probably won’t be back, he was insulted one too many times and got tired of it. I’m tired of it too. You know who you are. – Anthony”
Seriously hope not, but I do understand the reasons why. I knwo blogs like this are imposrtant in providing a space to debate topics openly. It’s a shame some try to “lock it down”. Reminds me of what happned in Grenada and Toledo.
I actually hope that the next two cycles are quite quiet, because then, for the first time since satellites and automatic temperature measurement on land, sea and in the air have been taken, there will be the chance to discern, via direct temperature measurement, the effect of a Hale cycle with weaker solar output.
Let the AGW vs solar output experiment begin!
Dr. Svalgaard probably won’t be back;
This to me is a disaster, where else can one ask a question and be replied by one of the worlds foremost authorities on the subject, questions by the well informed, and those by the ignorant such as myself, I have learned about the sun from Dr. Svalgaard and that has made me THINK !
please come back.
The Sunspot/Climate relationship rests largely upon Henrik Svensmark’s hypothesis on the seeding of lower cloud cover by Cosmic Radiation and It does fit nicely in with the Stefan- Boltzmann equation. Hopefully the impending research to be undertaken by CERN will confirm this. Otherwise we have a problem.
Sunspots, however only indirectly influence cloud cover by altering the Heliosphere and thereby affecting the incidence of both the solar and galactic cosmic rays with the latter sadly interfering with attempts to establish close correlations.
It appears that we have a magnetic climate to consider just as complex as our earthly equivalent. All intensely interesting; but way above those with CO2 addled brains.
We are slowly slipping in to a new Dalton or Maunder minimum, although this is not official yet. We have to wait a few months more, it seems.
Personally I believe that because of the solar barycenter’s effect on the Sun that this has a strong effect on the difference in solar rotation deep down in the Sun’s interior. This differential rotational speed deep down is blocking and unblocking the solar activity depending on the state of the Sun which in turn is caused by its movement around the barycenter. It is the torque forces which causes this.
I expect that the result from the current slowdown will be something between Dalton and Maunder minimum. Most likely it will be a repeat of the Wolf or Spörer Minimum. This is my bet.
When will the mass media start to talk about this? So far there has been a total censorship caused by the journalists’ ignorance of science and caused by their promotional belief in the CAGW religion.
Will it be after the The UN’s Global Warming Flying Circus in Copenhagen or have the temperature really start to dive deep before anything happens.
Dr. Svalgaard has my highest respect. He is source of knowledge on solar data and solar measurement. However on the impact from the variation of solar activity on the Earth’s climate and on importance of the solar barycenter movements and its effect solar activity he is wrong, in my opinion.
And that the way it is!
I noted earlier the cool weather that followed after 3 or 4 years of low solar activity. Just to close , the weather after 5 years [two more years of current low solar activity] was cooler still.
1708-1713 Maunder minimum[also 1709, the coldest European Winter]
1808-1812 Dalton Minimum
The current warmer oceans may moderate the current situation in the earlier years but most natural cycles like AMO, PDO and NAO are heading for 30 year cool cycles. Recently many Ocean SST ‘s have been dropping ,especially SH-SST.
REPLY: Dr Svalgaard probably won’t be back, he was insulted one too many times and got tired of it. I’m tired of it too. You know who you are. – Anthony
Scientific debates have no call for insult or emotion. If someone has a greater knowledge and understanding of a phenomenon than others, that is a good reason to pay attention. On the other hand, if someone has a better knowledge and understanding then they might be in a position to throw around a few corrections. My chemistry professors chided me for my ignorance, which looked personal, but in retrospect, it was they who were in the right, and they must have thought me the fool.
Dr Svalgaard has been the only contributor here who has openly admitted of a mistake – apart from George E Smith of course, who also seems like a bright chap
“John Finn (02:11:13) :
In what way does that help the AGWers. Reporting more spots isn’t going to alter the climate. If anything, AGW supporters should welcome a “grand minimum”. If we still have relatively low solar activity and global temperatures don’t fall in the next few years their argument will be all the stronger.”
This is not about helping the “AGWers” or proving them wrong, this is about obtaining recordings which can be compared with past data from 400 or 200 years ago when there were no massive telescopes. It’s about fairness and uniformity.
Sunspot data may hold clues to solar mechanisms we don’t yet know of.
The “AGWers” don’t have an argument, at least not a scientific one.
“Just from the reduced TSI (solar max -> min) effect we ought to be ~0.1 deg cooler than we were back then.”
Surely that is just one theory, not law.
“As it is things are looking pretty good for them.”
Really… Is the earth on fire?
Patience. It’s all about cycles, what goes up must come down.
“Despite the protracted minimum, 2009 is likely to be warmer than any year in the 1990s apart from 1998.”
That may be true, but this doesn’t mean we are heading for catastrophic warming. A concrete example of this is if one climbs to the top of a hill, and after reaching peak, descent begins, you are initially still near the peak even though you are descending.
The duration of this ‘near the peak’ situation obviously depends on the slope. Remember the system is complex, so the effect (if any) will only become visible in a few years time, not instantly.
Anthony, please pass on to Dr. Svalgaard the appreciation most of us had for his comments and explanations, and for his disagreements with some theories which we hold.
Mr. Alex (04:33:18) :
“John Finn (02:11:13) :
That may be true, but this doesn’t mean we are heading for catastrophic warming.
Perhaps – but it doesn’t look like cooling either.
A concrete example of this is if one climbs to the top of a hill, and after reaching peak, descent begins, you are initially still near the peak even though you are descending.
The duration of this ‘near the peak’ situation obviously depends on the slope. Remember the system is complex, so the effect (if any) will only become visible in a few years time, not instantly
I’m not expecting an sudden plunge in temperatures, but I don’t buy into this unquantified lag business. If there is a correlation between solar activity and climate then the lag should be identifiable. Lassen and Friis Christensen produced a plot which suggested that the temperature response to solar cycle length was fairly immediate. What about the Dalton Minimum? If you examine any of the long term temperature records closely you will notice that any drop in temperatures started at least a decade before the Dalton Minimum cycles. There was actually very little cooling during the DM itself (apart from that following volcanic eruptions).
What about the early 20th century warming? where is the lag there?
The 1940s cooling? That didn’t hang about too long – yet solar activity was still increasing. Since ~1980, there is a significant divergence between the expected temperature if solar activity is the main driver and what is being observed. It is adivergence that is growing all the time.
Climate fluctuations over the past ~100 years cannot be explained by solar activity.
rbateman (17:29:01) :
Add to those slides the last month, where spots have formed from N-S aligned magnetics which fail quickly. This is 90 degrees out from where a spot is most likely to thrive, and that would be E-W.
You could say the Sun is not getting wound up as much as it is being short-circuited.
More of the N-S anomaly appears with spots material flows connecting directly to the poles, as seen best in SOHO EIT 195 or STEREO EUVI 195. Watch for them. Whether such connections are normal or at a greater pace I don’t know.
Thanks…..
Leif will be back, just needs time away to be with the Sweet or go shopping and clear his head. Sometimes we just need a break from the lunatic fringe.
Dr. Svalgaard shouldn’t be the focus here. I doubt Leif would leave.
Leave the one credible forum, in which to engage in the field of science, he is so knowledgeable of? I seriously doubt that.
Someone must be joking, because it aint me.
When you get get banged up by trolls, it takes time to recover from the bashing.
All joking aside, we shouldn’t worry. Our focus should be to forever fight the frivolous foes of fanaticism.
I suspect if we fight loud enough, hard enough and brave enough, our deeds will encourage him to rejoin us.
Or is it, ‘forever fight our frivolous foes of fanaticism’ ?
That sounds better I think.
Ya get my point. 🙂
Sunspots are an indicator. The “very poorly modeled internal physical events” cause the magnetic field, which then causes the sunspots. A model of anything is worthless until it is verified with “all the data” at “all frequencies”.
Oh, by the way, this entire discussion reminds me of the following:
a) the earth is the center of the universe!
b) the earth is flat!
c) the earth is static, there is no plate tectonics!
Religious link intended.
Are all scientists afraid for their [political] research funding?
I just wanted to second those expressing their support for Dr. Svalgaard. I have always found it a great opportunity to be able to read comments and articles from someone of his stature, and I do fully understand why he would get tired of getting sniped out. Life’s too short, you know?
Still, I do very sincerely hope that he would reconsider after some time has passed.
RE: John Finn (05:18:03) :
If there is a correlation between solar activity and climate then the lag should be identifiable.
Schatten (I think) finds the highest correlation at 3 years. Soon calls it a “decade.” A number of studies put the ocean thermal inertia lag at 7-12 years.
Ted Annonson (12:47:22) :
Now, I have a question about the last sunspot. It had reverse polarity, so, was it a late SC23( to high in latitude), an early SC25, or just a badly confused SC24 spot?
According to Leif on a solarcycle24.com thread, 3% on average of spots display the wrong polarity magnetic signature. He has copied on his site a paper which shows data that for small magnetic disturbances that could be up to 40%, figure 4 in
http://www.leif.org/EOS/1992ASPC-Harvey.pdf.
John A (18:57:56) :
And the late Theodor Landscheidt who predicted the appearance of the last three solar maxima and predicted six years in advance that SC24 would be very quiet on the basis of the Sun’s motion about the barycentre of the solar system – but of course that would be pseudoscience wouldn’t it, Dr Svalgaard?
Yes, the pseudo comes from the disconnect between physics and predictions. People who have never solved a gravitational problem think they know the secrets of the universe.
Don’t get me wrong, I would accept it if a psychic had predicted the tsunami, or the 9/11 tragedy unequivocally. I would not call it science.
Gypsies reading palms will say ” you will meet a handsome man in three “terms” ” and “term” can be a week, a month, a year, an 11 year cycle.
In chaotic systems with oscillating behavior is is easy to find correlations that are not connected by causality. Cyclomania as Leif would say. It is how Casinos make a good living.
I have to say that as a physicist I felt protected by the way Leif champions the correct physics, particularly whenever the barycenter business raises its head. I hope he comes back, because I will feel forced to take up the battle for physics.
Once and for all barycenters are mathematical points, useful for calculations when a system is viewed as a whole from outside, for example the sun system as a part of the galaxy. Otherwise they are just red herrings in discussions about the sun, they can stir nothing and do nothing more than the tides, and the planetary tides are tiny on the sun ( 1mm disturbances).
Experimental fact, the barycenter of the earth moon system ploughs through the mantle of the earth at 1707 km depth, 24 hours a day, and nothing happens. It should raise earthquakes galore right in the middle of the mantle as it is, and it does not. Why? Because it is a mathematical point with zero mass.
It is the gravitational mass of the moon that raises the tides and not the zero mass barycenter.
I also find the prospect that Dr. Svalgaard might choose to not return as a very sad and unfortunate situation. As posted above by several, I find his input highly valuable and would like to see him return to the forum. I do understand how sometimes the constant flogging by idiots gets tiresome and a break is needed. I myself have abandoned a few web forums for the same reason.
Dr. Svalgaard I for one highly value your input and hope you return as your discussions are always very interesting, and I have learned a lot about solar science through your discussions.
Larry
I’d like to add my support for Dr. Svalgaard. He’s generally been very patient when answering the same questions over and over (maybe there should be a FAQ portion somewhere on the WUWT website). I, for one, have learned a lot reading his comments on the sun’s activity, and visit his website almost daily to check for updates on the sun.
David Alan 06:53:15
can I put a ; Fred Lightfoot in front of your ‘forever fighting our frivolous foes of fanaticism’ ?
Fred Lightfoot (02:55:13) : Dr. Svalgaard probably won’t be back; This to me is a disaster.
Unless he intends to join IPCC as the main expert on the sun/climate connection, this surely is a disaster. For me this forum is the most civilised place for unbiased and true knowledge seeking in possibly one of the most interesting periods in our time – deep solar minimum.
Indeed, I sincerely hope that he will be back, who is going to explain the impact of deep solar minimum to ordinary people now? While some of us may have peculiar viewpoints, we all understand that he is really helping us to reason and think in a clear, pragmatic and scientific way:
“If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
– Isaac Newton
John Finn (05:18:03) :
Climate fluctuations over the last 100 years can be explained through many factors. High solar activity can cause cooling by heating oceans that give greater cloud cover, whilst less solar energy can give to a lower cloud cover and more direct sun hitting the earth. Its a not so straightforward effect of the Sun on oceans, which include PDO’s ENSO etc There are quite a few correlations between PDO’s and temperature.
McLean, J. D., C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter (2009), Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature, Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D14104, doi:10.1029/2008JD011637.
The time series shows that mean monthly global temperature (MSU GTTA) corresponds in general terms with the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) of seven months earlier.
“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely” says corresponding author de Freitas.
REPLY: Dr Svalgaard probably won’t be back, he was insulted one too many times and got tired of it. I’m tired of it too. You know who you are. – Anthony
This is not good. We shall be short of Dr. Svalgaard’s advice in the time coming. Perhaps would have been better if this information was kept private by WUWT, in order to give time to Dr. S to have a break, and in due course reconsider, which I hope he may do anyway.
I only scrolled to the bottom of the comments to see what Dr. Svalgaard had to say. Quite a shame, really. Best wishes.
anna v, thank you for your clear and concise explanation of barycenters. You’re off to a good start!
Add please add my voice to those who hope Dr. Svalgaard returns.
Add please add my voice to those who hope Dr. Svalgaard returns.
Mine, too.
anna v (08:28:04) :
Experimental fact, the barycenter of the earth moon system ploughs through the mantle of the earth at 1707 km depth, 24 hours a day, and nothing happens. It should raise earthquakes galore right in the middle of the mantle as it is, and it does not. Why? Because it is a mathematical point with zero mass.
Another experimental fact, the relative motion between the solar system barycenter and the solar equatorial plane correlates strongly with lagged changes in Earth’s length of day.
Landscheidt offered a couple of ideas about the way the suns activity might be affected by it’s motion about the barycentre. These remain untested, but the correlations look promising, despite the fact that the exact nature of the causal mechanism remains elusive for now,
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
-Hamlet Act 1, scene 5-
In deference to Anthony I shall drop the subject now, provided those who deny the importance of these correlations do the same. If they raise the matter first I will reply, for the sake of balance.
I’m sorry Leif has gone too. His undisputed expertise in many areas of solar physics was a boon to the board, and it outweighs the occasionally bombastic way he treated people on other matters when he maybe shouldn’t have. There have been times when I have defended him against accusations and insults, and other times when I have had sharply worded exchanges with him myself. Given the way he liked to disparage ideas and hurl insults himself, I’m surprised he has decided to withdraw because of things said by others, and I hope he comes back to rejoin the fray soon.
anna v (08:28:04) : multi topic comment
Thanks for the comments. Well done. Clear and succinct.
Zero has been a problem for human minds for thousands of years.
Some might enjoy Seife’s “Zero: the Biography of a Dangerous Idea”
http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Biography-Dangerous-Charles-Seife/dp/0140296476
I agreed with the first poster, it is hard to make sense of some of those slides. The presentation made a lot more sense, I am sure.
I hope Dr. Svaalgard enjoys the extra time he will have with his grandchildren. I can understand why he would decide to stop taking the abuse, he was usually very patient with questions. Vale Dr. Svaalgard. Hopefully, temporary.
anna v (08:28:04) :
And so, for SC24 misaligned spots, the question is which came first, the misaligned spots >3% or the weak magnetic field which makes victims out of spots?
The hard things about this cycle seems to be deciding how unusual it is.
The exception is a weak cycle the way some (including me) look at it, where others would say it has to a needle-in-a-haystack rare in order to be labeled unusual.
The argument, then, is about the definition of unusual. The really confounding part is that statistics alone won’t tell us what the Sun is apt to do next. It’s riding on the very edge, so unusual may have to wait for further clarification from the Solarian itself.
I know this is off topic,but golly I am ANGRY!
I valued Dr. Svalgaard’s input and his tireless patience and willingness to provide many answers to questions along with links in thread after thread after thread.And he gets insulted and whatever else for it?
PATHETIC!
I did not always understand or agree with his replies and thought he was unfair in a couple of areas,but I respect the man who went out of his way to spend a LOT OF TIME in a public blog,to help educate us on Solar research.He did not have to do that,and most busy scientists does very little of that outside of their communication circles.
Kudos for Anthony and his team of Moderators who try to snip out the unnecessary and nasty words,but still some come through because of the flood of comments that come here.They should not have to be so busy cleaning up the comments or simply block them because they are so absurd.
It is the rarity of someone who is a proven world class scientist,who goes well outside of the common communication and science circles,to interact with the “average joe’s” of the world in a popular blog,that gave a boost to solar science being sent directly into the homes of the world.
Now if it is true that he will stay away from this blog,to avoid the insults and whatever that he has had to put up with,then we should be ashamed for it.
I am for one currently sick with the Flu and being unhappy to learn that a prominent solar scientist,who for a time put up with the snark finally chose to leave.In my forum I have a scientist who comes from time to time to make a post on something,and I will darn well make sure he is treated respectfully there!
I hope this is a lesson for everyone that HIS respect was long well earned and yet he was being mistreated anyway,because some people fail to realize that being a nasty person does not create a better understanding,just division and ultimately a loss of a resource in the public community.
I found Jan Janssen’s presentation a useful and well balanced summary of what is happening to our sun at the moment, even though I found a few of the charts hard to fathom.
The main message I took from it was that these events were not expected and that even the experts were at a loss to give accurate estimates of what the sun will do next, or what will happen to Earth’s climate.
Like many here I will be sorry if Leif decides to stay away, as he was a staunch defender of the mainstream solar model, and it would be good to hear his views as future events unfold in these uncertain times.
John A (18:57:56) :
“Apart from Leif Svalgaard who predicted a low peak of for SC24 but (wisely) neglected to predict WHEN. So his prediction has yet to be falsified.”
Dr. Svalgaard Rmax predictions (as we know) are based on the strength of polar fields at previous minimum. I also believe there is strong link between two.
Two studies from well known solar scientists and equally well known research institutions have produced important theoretical works on the subject of evolution of the Sun’s Polar Fields’.
Y.-M. Wang , J. Lean , and N. R. Sheeley, Jr
‘Role of Meridional Flow in the Evolution of the Sun’s Polar Fields’ from
Hulburt Center for Space Research, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1538-4357/577/1/L53/16614.text.html
and
S. K. Solanki et al
‘Evolution of the large-scale magnetic field on the solar surface’ from:
Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Germany
http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/aa/full/2004/42/aa1024/aa1024.right.html
It is possible that the meridional flow is the key to the understanding of solar cycle
tallbloke (10:06:55) :
Another experimental fact, the relative motion between the solar system barycenter and the solar equatorial plane correlates strongly with lagged changes in Earth’s length of day.
Lets clear the scientific terms. A correlation is a fact, not an experimental fact. That the earth moon barycenter does not create earthquakes is an experimental fact.
Correlations are facts in the sense that, if proven, there is a coincidence, but not an experiment.
Example is the recent observation about the lightning storms in Africa having a 27 day correlation. The moon has a 27.x day cycle, and the sun has a 27.y rotation about itself. Both are facts. But one, if the correlation is correct, will provide a physical mechanism, maybe.
Landscheidt offered a couple of ideas about the way the suns activity might be affected by it’s motion about the barycentre.
Well he is wrong, because the earth moon experiment shows that the barycenter does not affect/move/swirl the mass in the mantle, and the sun is made of similar mass too.
Let me talk again about clocks and correlations. All clocks on earth are correlated, with a lag of an hour to 24 hours.
Nobody can have a doubt of that. They are not following the Big Ben because it is Big.
What people do not realize is that all the heavenly bodies are in reality huge clocks, they measure time in their revolutions as surely as our windup or cesium clocks do, in a complicated manner. In this sense, the barycenter is a clock too, with the combined motion of all the heavenly bodies.
A gedanken experiment: Suppose that the sun boils the way a pot boils, because of the chaotic way the fusion reactions add up in its center, plop, plop, plop plop, and it has a cycle, dictated by this chaotic boiling 180 years, pop goes the lid, it subsides again until it builds up in another180 years, etc., with an oscillating behavior. This will be correlated with the barycenter motion, because the barycenter also as a giant clock measures time, even though we know that it is the fusion that creates the chaotic oscillating behavior.( in this gedanken experiment).
,
Anthony and Moderators, if you would not mind allowing me to switch a little OT for this post as I need to address some comments on this thread where I apparently am involved, and offer a solution. I will attempt to keep concise and short.
Apparently, I am being singled out as “that guy”….that is, the one who became the “tipping point” for Leif.
What is great about the written word and blogs is that one always has a transcript to which to refer.
What is not so great…actually….VERY not so great about blogs and the written word, is that it takes away from personal, face-to-face discourse.
What is even greater than the written word, however, is that we have a tool called the Scientific Method and its close friend, Truth, to help us take a few breaths, stand back, and look at the body of evidence, and not focus on one lone Yamal tree.
And the body of evidence points to, just as Leif always likes to say “The sun is a messy place”, that the quest for truth is also a messy place.
Just because discerning the truth is “messy” and sometimes (rather, “often”) sparks fly in the process, does not mean it should ever turn into a personal battle.
Please look at the body of evidence and in the context of what was said.
Leif quipped that WUWT “did not deserve the WebBlog award nomination.”
He said, point blank, that on here there were many “peddlers of pseudoscience” and compared WUWT to Oprah (the last comment showing his sense of humor which I appreciate lol).
I ran to the defense of WUWT because this indeed IS a science blog, and a damn good one, and went overboard in that defense. For that I am sorry.
But that being said…even on here, there is way too much emotion and tendency to call people “peddlers” on here, or “trolls” or “idiots.” There are some great, great, GREAT minds on this site, and this amateur has learned much from them.
For all my aggressiveness, when something is right and true, I make an effort to chime in with an affirmation, as some of the absolutely brilliant posters on here such as rbateman, crosspatch, anna v, pamela gray, stephen wilde, hotrod, et. al….AND Leif, can attest.
(You may recall the thread where I told Leif that he would be the first adjunct professor I would like to have when I establish a private science academy I am trying to cook up).
And Leif truly IS one of the best scientific authorities on the planet. On the other hand (and as I am sure he of all people would agree the most), he does NOT want to be deified.
So this problem here is a two-way street. We are all adults here, and we all need to stick to science, and there is no reason just because Leif and I don’t seem to get along, that he should “punish” the rest of us with his absence.
This is my solution: Although we have never met or talked, I am going to try and contact Leif personally with a phone call or a personal letter with the ole’ hat in the hand, because personal discourse is better than just posting something.
Maybe I’ll get somewhere.
Anthony I sincerely appreciate your fairness on this blog and commitment to excellence. WUWT absolutely has my vote this year. Carry on everyone, and thanks.
Christopher “Chris” Malendoski
Norfolk, VA
PS If I could ask a favor of the moderators, I would like to post my email address, and for those that would like to contact me personally, I will try to respond thoughtfully: sharkhearted@gmail.com
And please, in an effort to not get this thread off-track anymore, please if you have comments on this issue, address me personally, and I will respond.
Back to topic: This Janssen powerpoint is one of the best apologias yet on what’s going on with the sun.
The use of VISUALS and graphs, some of them rather irrefutable, makes a very strong case.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Co-sign on respect for Dr. Svalgaard. His comments were a big part of why I constantly check this blog. Many threads here seem to degrade into the typical “warmie vs. skeptic” battles, with both sides offering unprovable explanations of why they are right. The refreshing thing about Svalgaard is he posted not for political reasons, but purely for the science, agree or disagree. A pure scientist is an observer and a recorder, something the good Dr. has done very well over the years.
David Alan (14:07:21) :
Bonzai Mode
While I’m not a betting man, I will make a prediction that solar max will be lower than a SSN of 55. I don’t see SC24 peaking either. I make a bold prediction that SC24 will be ‘flat topped’(having no peak). You think minimum this go around is hard to determine, wait until SC24’s SSN hovers between 45-55 for 6 to 8 months. Won’t that be a doozie. Toss in some nice spotless days during that time and voila, you got spectacular written all over it.
/Bonzai
Seems realistic, do you take into account the heliospheres location in interstellar space?
There will still be light in this “new dark age,” ..
anna v (10:54:55) :
tallbloke (10:06:55) :
Landscheidt offered a couple of ideas about the way the suns activity might be affected by it’s motion about the barycentre.
Well he is wrong, because the earth moon experiment shows that the barycenter does not affect/move/swirl the mass in the mantle, and the sun is made of similar mass too.
Apart from the sun’s composition as a highly charged highly fluid molten body and plasma being very different from Earth, the nature of it’s motion about the solar system barycentre is utterly, utterly different to the regular circular motion of the Earth and Moon about their common barycentre.
For example, at the onset of the Dalton minimum, the sun performed a very tight and swift loop de loop WRT the barycentre and briefly went retrograde. Coincidentally, the solar cycles took around 30 years to recover and get going again properly afterwards. I have personally downloaded the data from JPL and graphed this in some detail.
“I have studied it. You sir, have not”
-Sir Edmund Halley-
rbateman (10:17:19) :
The hard things about this cycle seems to be deciding how unusual it is.
The exception is a weak cycle the way some (including me) look at it, where others would say it has to a needle-in-a-haystack rare in order to be labeled unusual.
The argument, then, is about the definition of unusual. The really confounding part is that statistics alone won’t tell us what the Sun is apt to do next. It’s riding on the very edge, so unusual may have to wait for further clarification from the Solarian itself.
“Living On the Edge”, with the technology to actually see the edge.
Aye, aye Rob. ps aerosmith song, sometimes just can’t help it. oh my
“Landscheidt offered a couple of ideas about the way the suns activity might be affected by it’s motion about the barycentre.
Well he is wrong”
I could be wrong as well but I think a careful reading would prove Landscheidt to have supposed that a change in the rate of change in solar angular momentum was associated with a change in SS frequencies.
That being said, I think it fair to say his interest was solar activity and SS frequency but a humble proxy.
IMO, Bateman’s faculae are a better proxy and worthy of more discussion than we are prone to give.
Out, out damned spot!
No more discussion of Landscheidt here, the topic is Jan Janssen’s presentation – Anthony
savethesharks (11:11:38) :
Apparently, I am being singled out as “that guy”….that is, the one who became the “tipping point” for Leif.
It seems that anyone who challenged Dr. S is “that guy” as I have also been made to feel that way by Anthony. I agree with your comments Chris and also with tallblokes, but I think we need to get some perspective. I also do not wish to see Dr. S disappear, but I would certainly like to see more balance in this forum, in the past any scientist who has had a different view to Dr. S has been severely chastised in a manner that is far from acceptable.
A top science blog needs balance and it would be better to protect all scientists that honor us with their presence, so that a fair debate can take place. Lately it has been one sided.
What I particularly appreciate about Jan’s work counting spots, presenting their spatial distribution(Meeus), etc., is that his schemas maintain continuity with past investigators.
We’ve been told by the data revisionists that the investigators’ methods have changed, but revisions need to be made by the investigators themselves, as Hansen and Mann have evinced, contrary to their purpose.
Janssens referred to the Maunder minimum
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/janssens21.jpg
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/janssens22.jpg
However, up to date no convincing scientific explanation for the phenomena, including the latest L&P measurements.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/janssens25.jpg
Whatever happened, it is obvious that it was a magnetism of one kind or another involved.
Was this just limited to the Sun only?
There is a strong possibility that the event was widespread through at least the inner solar system if not further.
Using data from the Institute of Geophysics at the ETH Zurich, one of leading research centres for geomagnetism, I compiled this composite graph:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EMF85N.gif
It shows complete 360deg sweep of the Earth’s magnetic field along 85degN parallel, at steps of 10deg with time intervals of 10 years. Data accuracy has been confirmed.
The peak is coincident with the Maunder minimum, followed by sudden drop with a ring reminiscent of a dumped oscillation of a resonant system hit by an impulse (a physicist or an engineer would understand what I have in mind).
I am tempted to conclude that inner or the entire solar system suffered a severe magnetic shock in mid 1600’s .
I am unable to come up with a credible explanation for the underlining mechanism, but coincidence is far too strong to be ignored.
vukcevic (14:00:32) :
I am tempted to conclude that inner or the entire solar system suffered a severe magnetic shock in mid 1600’s .
I am unable to come up with a credible explanation for the underlining mechanism, but coincidence is far too strong to be ignored.
Interesting post Vuk. Cassiopeia A around 1670AD?
http://www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/observers/cassA.html
A bit late and too far away maybe.
A new slant on the discussion from an observer: Hope this is not too off topic.
I am an engineer, but my brother trod a classicist route followed by economics and hence IT and particularly the logic of computer programming.
Amongst our friends we both find a peculiar intellectual apathy regarding the Climate Change Debate. These are intelligent people in often responsible positions; but their lack of scientific ethos appears to render them diffident in expressing any meaningful views.
Usually they resort to the “Precautionary Principle” as a means to close any debate.
Whilst you scientists debate the intricacies, you appear to just assume the logic which although endemic for you is alien to others.
However from our two perspectives both my brother and I have concluded that the AGW hypothesis, now marketed as ‘Consensus’, is based on fundamentally flawed logic. I in engineering thermodynamic terms and my brother in fundamentally logical terms.
Here I cite but one simple example:
It is true that CO2 exhibits greenhouse warming characteristics. The IPCC has quantified this; but has only done so on the assumption of ‘Ceteris Paribus’ [other things being equal], which is manifestly untrue except at an instant of time.
Transposing this into a 100 year prediction is therefore grossly flawed. It is just not logical.
Put simply; the question that should be put to the IPCC is: “If global Albedo cannot be predicted over a 100 years time span, how can global temperature be predicted”? [Here Sunspots could replace global Albedo]
The Sunspot scenario is typical of the consequences, boxed in as it is in a state of “paribus” and the media should be made well aware of this flawed stance of the IPCC.
The battle may best be fought upon matters of logic and methodology rather than upon the details of the science.
Meanwhile I remain fascinated by Sunspots and this WUWT site.
Carla(11:59:49):
“Seems realistic, do you take into account the heliospheres location in interstellar space?”
The location of our solar system in interstellar space has little to no impact on solar cycles. Timing and intervals about the galaxy might trigger an event in the course of thousands of years and therefore incapable of regulating at smaller harmonics.
The heliosphere is a product of solar wind and the pressure forced on it from the LISM. If the heliosphere plays any role in solar cycle variability, we would have to find some correlation between up stream and down stream magnetic fields and the plasma it carries with it. Investigation is needed.
I think any impacts from heliospheric harmonics are more likely to play a greater role on the planets than on the Sun itself.
The Suns’ hydromagnetic dynamo has been considered the highest probable factor in cyclicity. The investigations of modern science suggests that variables in solar convection is causitive , but as of yet, quantum mechanics has yet to reveal the source of that variable.
Other factors need to be considered. Angular momentum? Rate of change around SSB? Differential rotation? All of the above? All evidence is still inconclusive. But I think we are on the right track.
Landshiedts’ theories may produce insight to the harmonics of solar cyclicity, but only as a ‘trigger’. If supporters of Landshiedts’ theories can narrow the timing of that ‘trigger’, the field of science would be forever changed.
That being said, I only based my prediction from the close relationship between SC 4-5 to SC 23 and the upcoming solar cycle, as pointed out by Jan Janssen. The only striking difference I could see, is the SSN between 4-5 and 23-24 during minima. The current minima is far lower and could play a greater role in global temperatures. Colder to be precise.
p.s. Those of you from the Landshiedt camp need not feel singled out. The probability of any of you responsible for Svalgaards hiatus is about on order to a million to one. So relax !
Cognog2 (14:51:34) :
Put simply; the question that should be put to the IPCC is: “If global Albedo cannot be predicted over a 100 years time span, how can global temperature be predicted”? [Here Sunspots could replace global Albedo]
The Sunspot scenario is typical of the consequences, boxed in as it is in a state of “paribus” and the media should be made well aware of this flawed stance of the IPCC.
Ah but the IPCC have determined that the sun’s variation has much less impact on our climate than a trace gas occupying 0.039% of the atmosphere dontcha know.
Except natural variation has come back to bite them on the arse. Not that they ever seem willing to specify which natural variations they are. Maybe we could tell from the teeth marks.
David Alan (15:08:47) :
Carla(11:59:49):
“Seems realistic, do you take into account the heliospheres location in interstellar space?”
The location of our solar system in interstellar space has little to no impact on solar cycles. Timing and intervals about the galaxy might trigger an event in the course of thousands of years and therefore incapable of regulating at smaller harmonics.
The heliosphere is a product of solar wind and the pressure forced on it from the LISM. If the heliosphere plays any role in solar cycle variability, we would have to find some correlation between up stream and down stream magnetic fields and the plasma it carries with it. Investigation is needed.
I think any impacts from heliospheric harmonics are more likely to play a greater role on the planets than on the Sun itself.
The Suns’ hydromagnetic dynamo has been considered the highest probable factor in cyclicity. The investigations of modern science suggests that variables in solar convection is causitive , but as of yet, quantum mechanics has yet to reveal the source of that variable.
______-___________—_________—–____——________——–______
Yeah, sure ok ….
Ah, then are you able to tell us where the heliosphere is currently located with respect to the nearest, adjacent interstellar cloud? Could you also tell us what makes the adjacent cloud different than the one we are now exiting?
@ Fred Lightfoot:
“can I put a ; Fred Lightfoot in front of your forever fighting our frivolous foes of fanaticism ?”
But of course. Its just a shame your last name isn’t Footlight. Would have had a stronger appeal. 🙂
I’ll take that as a “NO,” David Alan. You may just want to check into it. Seth Readfield and David Linsky were involved in quite an extensive mapping study.
_____——__-___—-_—_-_–__-_–_–_—_-_-_—_—_-_-_—————-_—-___—-_-_—___—-_—_—-_———-_-___—–
Carla(16:13:33):
“Yeah, sure ok .
Ah, then are you able to tell us where the heliosphere is currently located with respect to the nearest, adjacent interstellar cloud? Could you also tell us what makes the adjacent cloud different than the one we are now exiting?”
Our sun is currently passing through the Local Interstellar Cloud that resides, currently, in the Local Bubble. One of the differences in these two clouds is the temperature and their size. Our LIC is quite cooler than the Local Bubble, and among other differences, the size of the LIC can be measured in hundreds of light years and the LB even larger.
Wiki has some information on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/local_bubble
The Suns’ current location in the LIC is on order of a few light years from its edge. Even if we were exiting the LIC, at the Suns’ current orbital velocity of roughly 25km/s, makes the time to travel that distance staggering.
@Carla
I might have exaggerated the size of the local fluff, but I still fail to comprehend the significance of your point.
Could you be more specific?
Leif Svalgaard (15:14:38) :
First, it is not clear when a minimum should be called a Grand Minimum. Solar activity 100 years ago was low too and we are likely to get down to at least that low level of activity. The Dalton minimum was perhaps [although our data is poor] a tad deeper, and may be called a Grand minimum too, but I personally think that we should reserve ‘Grand Minimum’ for the ones that are REALLY deep like the Maunder. Perhaps one can still name some minima without requiring them to be ‘Grand’, so we could still have a Dalton Minimum [1810], a Gleissberg minimum [1910] , an Eddy Minimum [for the coming one, 2020]. Since these minima have come about every 100 years for a while now, it is no big feat to ‘predict’ one [my little grandson Peter did that several years ago just by looking at http://sidc.oma.be/html/wolfaml.html ].
In his honor.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE LOCAL INTERSTELLAR
@David alan
Article released last summer.
Cloud Tripping Through the Milky Ways
The solar system is currently in between the LIC and G clouds, which cover about 70% of the sky around the Earth. A collision between these two clouds is producing the filamentary Mic cloud,
http://jilawww.colorado.edu/research/highlights_archive/2009_summer/cloudTripping.html
MEDIUM IV: DYNAMICS, MORPHOLOGY, PHYSICAL
PROPERTIES, AND IMPLICATIONS OF CLOUD-CLOUD
INTERACTIONS1
Seth Redfield2,3 and Jeffrey L. Linsky4
65pages 27-September 2007
Abstract
…Contrary to previous claims, the Sun appears to be located in the
transition zone between the LIC and G Clouds.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0709/0709.4480v1.pdf
Quote Rosine Lallement, when asked what her first reaction to the IBEX data was.
Quote Rosine
Very shortly my first reaction was, wrong!
I thought we were seeing something I’ve worked on. We know that the sun will leave our small cloud and there is a next cloud it will enter soon, it should enter one day.
We don’t know if the two clouds are touching each other. If they do, one is faster than our cloud, there must be an interstellar shock. So when I saw that, maybe we ah see some feature of this interstellar shock, but that was for 5 minutes only…………hee hee wink. End quote.
There’s more…
New solar Spin Orbit Coupling: presentation available for download
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-solar-spin-orbit-coupling.html
Sun, comic rays and earths cloud cover:
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/11/sun-cosmic-rays-and-earths-cloud.html
@Carla
I have yet to see how this information, about adjacent warm clouds and their relation to the LIC and effects on the heliosphere, contradict anything I’ve said.
If anything, I agree with that paticular field of science.
Maybe we don’t understand one another properly. My post regarding the heliosphere was that, in all likelihood, had little to do with solar cyclicity. Without clear probability, GCRs have very little to do with the hydromagnetic dynamo and has more probable causitive effect on planets.
The HCS modulates GCRs quite effectively, and thusly limits any amplification beyond the norm, in increasing or decreasing order. Without it, we wouldn’t exist.
So, two thing comes to mind:
(1)We can both agree that interactions impinging on the heliosphere has little to do with solar cyclicity and more about geo-thermal interactions, or
(2) New discoveries regarding adjacent warm clouds and the LIC effect the solar cyclicity and/or the rest of the solar system.
I’m picking #1.
I read this site every nite….and all the comments. I am a big fan of Dr. Svalgaard and have learned a great deal about the sun from his comments! Please come back with your Knowledge and wit and help us to greater understanding
Ron de Haan (18:44:41) :
Ron de Haan (18:47:59) :
Excellent ! Thanks for the linkage.
Now only if we could get that data to correspond over several hundred years and show correlation to temperature. That would be a neat trick.
Some background about this would be nice. Who is Jan Janssen? Where was this presented? What is “VSW Urania”?
@Fabius Maximus
I don’t know the man personally, but to find out about his personal views regarding climate change, goto:
http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/climate.html
to find out more about VSW Urania, goto:
http://www.urania.be/english/index.php
Not sure where it was presented. Leave it to an economist to ask the really hard questions.
Good luck on your sleuthing.
Ron de Haan (18:44:41) :
New solar Spin Orbit Coupling: presentation available for download
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-solar-spin-orbit-coupling.html
So what?
Gedanken experiment:
I plot the cycle of the moon around the earth the past 100 years.
I plot the cycle of the sun turning around itself the past 100 years.
With a bit of lag, a shift of start of the plots , great correlation.
So what?
Can I conclude that the sun’s rotation is rotating the moon around the earth?
That the moon is controlling the sun’s rotation?
The physical mechanism is important and it is missing in the link you gave. The tides are not enough, have not enough energy .
Lets put it another way, maybe in the millions of years that the solar system exists the solar tides even if small would make the moon’s rotations rate similar to the sun’s rotation rate by the small tidal differences of the far side and close side of the moon to the sun. At present it is just synchronized clocks, not causative of the moon’s current motion .
In the PPpresentation your link gave, a synchrony of two giant clocks is shown, planetary tides and the SS cycle. It could be coincidence, once you have 11 year cycles in two independent time sequences the clocks are correlated by construction.
It could be that in the millions of years that the solar system exists the tidal forces have synchronized the internal rotations of the sun, but the record is too short, and in any case it would be irrelevant to the physics of the sun spot creation and group size. IMO.
anna v (22:14:21) :
The physical mechanism is important and it is missing in the link you gave. The tides are not enough, have not enough energy .
The link is wrong as I have tried to point out, but my comments dont seem to be getting through. We also have the missing physical link? I am sure Janssen himself might be interested in this.
anna v (22:14:21) :
It could be coincidence
Various very intelligent people have done probability calculations on this stuff. It could be coincidence, but the likelihood that it is, is very very very very small.
Don’t underestimate resonance as an amplifying force. Our measurement of the solar system might not have been going on long enough to be certain about things, but the solar system has been going on long enough for resonances to be humming away with effects beyond the apparent causative strengths.
Ron de Haan (18:47:59) :
Sun, comic rays and earths cloud cover:
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/11/sun-cosmic-rays-and-earths-cloud.html
I have an open mind about the galactic cosmic ray and climate connection. The link gives a correlation with low cloud cover. This is good and I hope will be verified. I am a great believer in albedo being the moderator of climate :).
Of course you must realize that the planets have nothing to do with this physical mechanism except counting like a clock the sun spot sequences.
here is a link to a Palle Bago &Butler paper
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Solar_Changes_and_the_Climate.pdf
with the crucial plots.
tallbloke (14:41:08) :
“Cassiopeia A around 1670AD?
http://www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/observers/cassA.html
A bit late and too far away maybe.”
It is more likely something within the Sun. According to L&P to suppress sunspot visibility a drop of 1000-1500 Gauss is required. It can be estimated that the Earth’s field of 0.5 Gauss ‘suffered’ an enhancement of about 20%, since disturbance appear to be of the same polarity. Two major planets would have very tiny reduction (they have opposite polarity to the Earth’s). Interesting would be the case of Mars (only magnetic exception beyond Venus) if it had magnetic field of same polarity as J&S but of strength below 0.05 Gauss, it would be ‘degaussed’ i.e. lost its permanent magnetic field.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EMF85N.gif
tallbloke (15.36.33)
Re: Question to IPCC: Put simply; the question that should be put to the IPCC is: “If global Albedo cannot be predicted over a 100 years time span, how can global temperature be predicted”? [Here Sunspots could replace global Albedo]
Yes indeed. The IPCC logic and methods leave much to be desired. The current attacks on Henrik Svensmark and his hypothesis on cosmic influence on low cloud cover is evidence of this.
However with Albedo the matter is more difficult to refute as the Stefan equation reveals that a mere 0.000025 increase in earth’s Albedo offsets any global warming due to a 1ppmv increase in CO2 concentration. This only requires Albedo to increase to 0.30845 to offset a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. So the IPCC assumption of constant Albedo looks decidedly shaky.
[I would be grateful if some one would check this figure as I am only a mere engineer.]
Thus if the ‘Sunspot – Cosmic Ray – Low Cloud – Albedo’ correlation can be verified it would comprise a nice hefty spanner in the IPCC works. I can’t wait!
If anyone is interested, Svensmark’s book “The Chilling Stars” is an excellent read. [No vested interest] and deserves a few twittery comments here.
anna v (23:18:47) :
Of course you must realize that the planets have nothing to do with this physical mechanism except counting like a clock the sun spot sequences.
You state this as if it a self evidential or well known truth, yet you offer nothing to support it, and feign an ignorance of the research which shows otherwise even though you’ve been pointed to it.
Ray Tomes uses a numerical planetary model to successfully account for sunspot numbers over hundreds of years with above 60% accuracy.
Can the dynamo theory do that?
tallbloke (03:00:57) :
anna v (23:18:47) :
“Of course you must realize that the planets have nothing to do with this physical mechanism except counting like a clock the sun spot sequences.”
You state this as if it a self evidential or well known truth, yet you offer nothing to support it, and feign an ignorance of the research which shows otherwise even though you’ve been pointed to it.
It is self evident to anybody with a scientific training. Correlations are not causations and in previous posts, which you must have read with half your attention, I have given concrete examples why this is so.
The existing physics framework supports it, and your cyclical correlations offered as a predictive tool are in the same spot as AGW or now morphed into CC, the proof should be on your side. Correlations are not proof of dynamical mechanisms.
Ray Tomes uses a numerical planetary model to successfully account for sunspot numbers over hundreds of years with above 60% accuracy.
I do not know the model, but if it has as many parameters as the IPCC GCMs there should not be much trouble in hindcasting the sunspots either.
Dynamo theories try to bring out the physics dynamics behind the spot manifestation.
David Alan (19:22:40) :
@Carla
So, two thing comes to mind:
(1)We can both agree that interactions impinging on the heliosphere has little to do with solar cyclicity and more about geo-thermal interactions, or
(2) New discoveries regarding adjacent warm clouds and the LIC effect the solar cyclicity and/or the rest of the solar system.
I’m picking #1.
As, you will.
The heliosphere has been located in a WARM interstellar cloud for approx. 14,000 years. The heliosphere is now in a transition zone between a warm cloud and a cooler cloud. The transition zone is called a micro interstellar cloud (MIC). This is the shock zone where the two clouds collide, the flow between them has been identified as coming from the direction of Sco. Cen. association. IMHO In the last 50 years the heliosphere just traversed the shock (MIC) zone. The heliosphere is now entering the cooler, faster, denser G cloud.
What would the consequences to the heliosphere be when encountering a cooler, faster, denser interstellar cloud? Why does the science community believe that ice ages occur when the solar system is located in COLD interstellar clouds?
My choice is the second one you have listed, David Alan. Keeping in mind also that magnetic fields are everywhere.
Fanatiscism, said the Earth was flat.
Fanatiscism now is telling us that the sun is flat and will not acknowledge that the sun is a part of a galaxy and that the galaxy does not revolve around the sun.
Missing Leif, over on SS24. Sure hope he changes his mind.
anna v (04:55:06) :
Of course you must realize that the planets have nothing to do with this physical mechanism…
It is self evident to anybody with a scientific training. Correlations are not causations
False. The fact that correlataions are not causations does not logically lead to the necessary rejection of a correlation as an indicator of a causal relationship.
Correlations are not proof of dynamical mechanisms.
True, but when the probability of their not being connected becomes as vanishingly small as it does in the case of planetary relations to solar activity, rejecting them rather than accepting the possibility is foolish.
Dynamo theories try to bring out the physics dynamics behind the spot manifestation.
How well is it going at the moment?
“True, but when the probability of their not being connected becomes as vanishingly small as it does in the case of planetary relations to solar activity, rejecting them rather than accepting the possibility is foolish.”
Eh??
The sun’s atmosphere is vastly more energetic than ours and its gravity higher, so planetary influences would control our weather before they could influence solar weather??
Carla (04:59:37) :
Missing Leif, over on SS24. Sure hope he changes his mind.
Carla
Dr. Svalgaard possibly needs some rest, but a I am sure he will be back in his time, and on his terms to keep informing, educating and dealing with few ‘raskolniks’, including myself.
As far as SC24 is concerned, in recent weeks, a moderator has banned number of people (justifiably or not), also issued this warning to Dr. Svalgaard:
“Leif…..You are not to address anything that Vukcevic says. If he attempts to engage you you are to inform one of the Mods or the Administrator immediately. We need your cooperation in this matter.”
I could not believe that such request could be issued to Dr.S!!
Btw, explanation for my ban: “You’ve drawn the wrong type of attention. You are not to engage in discussion with Leif Svalgaard in any forum.”
Discussion forums and blogs, of course are free to set their terms and conditions.
Without Dr Svaalgard how are we mortals to know what is and what isn’t voodo science?
tallbloke (05:24:37) :
anna v (04:55:06) :
“Of course you must realize that the planets have nothing to do with this physical mechanism…
It is self evident to anybody with a scientific training. Correlations are not causations”
False. The fact that correlataions are not causations does not logically lead to the necessary rejection of a correlation as an indicator of a causal relationship.
Do you know the difference between necessary and suficient conditions in proving scientific statements?
Correlations are necessary but not sufficient to prove a causal relationship within systems dominated by physics’ mathematical laws.
“Correlations are not proof of dynamical mechanisms.”
True, but when the probability of their not being connected becomes as vanishingly small as it does in the case of planetary relations to solar activity, rejecting them rather than accepting the possibility is foolish.
I am becoming boring, but there is a very good correlation between the rate of the moon’s rotation about the earth and the rate of the sun’s rotation about its axis, that would give the same vanishingly small probability I am sure.
It is not possible to accept the possibility that the moon turns the sun ( as the planets turn the sun according to planetary suggestions).
It is possible to think that in the millions of years that the solar system exists, the tides working like the mills of God slowly synchornized the moon to the Sun’s clock.
It is equally probable that the 11 year cycle appearing mainly through Jupiter is due to this also, the tides of the sun on Jupiter synchronizing it , as the sun is so much more massive than Jupiter after all, and it is not the tail that wags the dog, even as slowly as the mills of God.
anna v (07:08:04) :
“Correlations are necessary but not sufficient to prove a causal relationship within systems dominated by physics’ mathematical laws.”
There is more to the movement of solar plasma than ‘tidal force’. In my post
vukcevic (10:51:26) : there are two references to studies from well known solar scientists and equally well known research institutions, perhaps you care to take a look, it might broaden your horizons.
anna v (07:08:04) :
Do you know the difference between necessary and suficient conditions in proving scientific statements?
Yes Ma’am, I studied logic at university.
Correlations are necessary but not sufficient to prove a causal relationship within systems dominated by physics’ mathematical laws.
Do you think this is incompatible with my statement? Or is it just a non sequiteur?
vukcevic (07:43:36) :
anna v (07:08:04) :
“Correlations are necessary but not sufficient to prove a causal relationship within systems dominated by physics’ mathematical laws.”
There is more to the movement of solar plasma than ‘tidal force’. In my post
vukcevic (10:51:26) : there are two references to studies from well known solar scientists and equally well known research institutions, perhaps you care to take a look, it might broaden your horizons.
??
What do these links have to do with the price of tea in China?
In other words, of course there are other internal dynamics that govern the solar cycles. I am sure that I gave no reasons for people to think otherwise.
I have been occupied by more down-to-earth issues and haven’t had time to read all the threads. Now that I realize Leif has taken leave, I doubt it was because he was insulted. I would rather think that he just got tired of rehashing the same subject with people far less educated on the central solar issues. I would have tired of it far before he did. Fortunately, he has a web site that I visit often. And without the unrelenting banter and cacophony of the notion that the moon is in the Seventh House and Jupiter aligns with Mars…
tallbloke (08:18:49) :
Anna:
Correlations are necessary but not sufficient to prove a causal relationship within systems dominated by physics’ mathematical laws.
tallbloke: Do you think this is incompatible with my statement? Or is it just a non sequiteur?
You had said:
“False. The fact that correlations are not causations does not logically lead to the necessary rejection of a correlation as an indicator of a causal relationship.”
In the sense that a correlation is not sufficient to prove a dynamical causation one should reject treating it as if there is a causal link, if no dynamical mechanism exists.
So yes, it should be rejected unless a dynamical mechanism is proposed. As I have said there exist very many correlations that are trivial in the cosmic clocks that the solar system provides.
anna v (09:03:10) :
You had said:
“False. The fact that correlations are not causations does not logically lead to the necessary rejection of a correlation as an indicator of a causal relationship.”
In the sense that a correlation is not sufficient to prove a dynamical causation one should reject treating it as if there is a causal link, if no dynamical mechanism exists.
So yes, it should be rejected unless a dynamical mechanism is proposed.
I feel a bit hamstrung answering this. I have named the author of the dynamical mechanism proposed, but our host has asked us not to discuss it. I will respect his wishes.
My point is that logically speaking, the fact that correlation is not causation is not a sufficent condition to reject the possibility that the discovered correlation is connected with the uninvestigated potential cause.
vukcevic (06:24:58) :
As far as SC24 is concerned, in recent weeks, a moderator has banned number of people (justifiably or not), also issued this warning to Dr. Svalgaard:..
..Btw, explanation for my ban: “You’ve drawn the wrong type of attention. You are not to engage in discussion with Leif Svalgaard in any forum.”
Discussion forums and blogs, of course are free to set their terms and conditions.
Didn’t get that moderators motivation the first time I heard this and still don’t get it. There are those that should be moderators and then there are those that should not be. Maybe his sweet is washing his drawers in too hot of water. LOL
Possible “shock wave,” around the Maunder, that was interesting Vuk.
Carla (16:32:21) :
I have found it interesting since the moderators on SC24.com expressed their views on the world, very firmly in the AGW camp and not liking to diverge from the NASA view of solar activity. I had no option but to fall on my sword, I wont be a part of it.
Look Tallbloke, we are talking at cross purposes.
One can examine an infinity of dynamical possibilities for correlations.
Those possibilities have to be within the physics of the dynamical system. For example Svenmark’s hypothesis is a wholly legal hypothesis within the physics dynamics of the sun and earth system to give the cause for a correlation between sun activities and the earth weather. There is no violation of energy or angular momentum conservation or anything like that in the hypothesis of the galactic cosmic rays proposal.
Suppositions of planetary influences on the mass of the sun violate energy conservation (not enough energy in the tides) and angular momentum conservation (virtual points have zero mass and thus no angular momentum) so cannot be rational/acceptable as a suggestion for explaining “observed” correlations . The hypothesis is outside the dynamics of known physics and on the other hand there are ways that known physics could create in these giant clocks over the millenia the correlations seen, without violating the known laws of physics. So these possibilities have to be rejected from first principles.
A viable, but not provable, hypothesis for a causal path of the planet/sun correlations would be postulating new physics , to be found sometime in the future. Not to use angular momentum wrongly. It is like all those people who tried to make their fortune with a perpetual motion machine made of gears and gyroscopes.
Remember, in our reality, the tail does not wag the dog ( that is energy conservation and angular momentum conservation ).
I close on correlations in remembering that my little brother, scared by the noise of a large eucalyptus tree in our back yard during wind storms, urged my father to cut it down, so that the wind would stop. He did believe that the tree was making the wind.
And I think have explained as best as I could so this is my last on the subject for the nonce.
Where are the Sunspots?
They are under the influence of L&P. The progression of that effect has reached the point where a percentage (15-25%) of sunspots are already dimmed out of existence. The rest that do appear are faded examples where umbras are no darker than penumbras, and penumras are ??
Maunder possible? Sure it is. All that has to happen now is for the Sun to ramp into an appearance of a normal cycle, then plunge down to zero. That’ll sure fit the opening act.
Dalton possible? Very. Again, all that has to happen is for the same lackadaisacal slope of increase to continue 3 more years.
Less than a Dalton? Seems to be on the outside probability now. Too much ground has been lost, too many false starts have backed the the QB into the endzone.
Why is all this happening? That’s the provence of theory, and I’m no good at that. But I can point you to occurences like this:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/LastYear_B.jpg
where indications of N-S magnetic lines are overriding the E-W flows (Coriolis) and we see a tad too many spots form twisted more N-S than we should.
So, I just keep digging around, looking for events or sequences of things that might tattle on what’s going on under the smoking hood of the Sun.
To my eye, the Sun ramped Jan 2008 in a squelched state. What’s the difference between an SC24 that started up too late and an SC24 that started life crippled? They both are going to be lazy dogs.
rbateman (06:24:36) :
“Where are the Sunspots? ”
Hi Bob
I still look regularly at your SC24 contribution, and admire you patient systematic approach, which I am sure researchers of the future will find useful.
We can only sit and wait to see what happens. It looks to me lot of theories will have to be reassessed, and in hindsight some will tell us they new it all along.
My approach to these maters is purely numerical, I made attempt to link past, present and future with a formula, with an associated graph for visualising, which can always be tested (so no backing out if wrong). Unfortunately they disappeared overnight with a rather popular thread, but if anyone whish to go back, some of the graphs and formulae can be found here:
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/GandF.htm
The interesting slide on Janssens presentation is the Dr.Howe image of the Doppler image showing the torsional oscillation flows. The butterfly pattern of sunspots has been overlaid similar to when I first did it back in February. Janssen and Hill show a similar outcome which shows the spots occurring on the slow moving parts of the flow which is not how it was perceived in the past. More research needs to be done in this area, the flow holds many of the answers I believe, especially how they are created and how each flow affects the cycle. The SC24 flow is long and slow.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/2009/02/25/latest-solar-differential-rotation-information/
******************
Geoff Sharp (13:21:08) :
The interesting slide on Janssens presentation is the Dr.Howe image of the Doppler image showing the torsional oscillation flows. The butterfly pattern of sunspots has been overlaid similar to when I first did it back in February. Janssen and Hill show a similar outcome which shows the spots occurring on the slow moving parts of the flow which is not how it was perceived in the past.
****************
I guess it would be hard to depict, but has anyone done a 3-D model of the flow patterns? Does anyone even have the data to do such a thing? I guess one of the newer visual data mining methods where one can “walk” or “fly” through the data might be interesting.
Jim (14:33:29) :
There is a link to Dr.Howe’s extensive paper on my previous post, where there is some work on how the flows look to be generated at the Tachocline where the Suns own angular spin momentum looks to be involved.