I’ve mentioned this solar data on WUWT several times, it bears repeating again. Yesterday, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center released their latest data and graph of the interplanetary geomagnetic index (Ap) which is a proxy for the activity of the solar dynamo. Here is the data provided by SWPC. Note the graph, which I’ve annotated below.
At a time when many predicted a ramp up in solar activity, the sun remains in a funk, spotless and quiet. The Ap value, for the second straight month, is “3”. The blue line showing the smoothed value, suggests the trend continues downward. To get an idea of how significant this is in our history, take a look at this data (graph produced by me) from Dr. Leif Svalgaard back to the 1930’s.
The step change in October 2005 is still visible and the value of 3.9 that occurred in April of this year is the lowest for the entire dataset at that time. I’m hoping Dr. Svalgaard will have updated data for us soon.
Click for a larger image
Why is this important? Well, if Svensmark is right, and Galactic Cosmic Rays modulated by the sun’s magnetic field make a change in cloud cover on Earth, increasing it during low solar magnetic activity, we are in for some colder times.
There’s a presentation by Jasper Kirkby, CLOUD Spokesperson, CERN, which shows what we currently know about the correlations between Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR’s) and variations in the climate.
The CLOUD experiment uses a cloud chamber to study the theorized link between GCR’s and cloud formation in Earth’s atmosphere. Kirkby talks about the results from the first CLOUD experiment and the new CLOUD experiment and what it will deliver on the intrinsic connection between GCR’s and cloud formation. This is from the Cern, one of Europe’s most highly respected centers for scientific research.
Kirkby’s one hour video presentation is hosted here. It is well worth your time to view it.
h/t to Russ Steele
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AndyL (15:09:15) :
I don’t understand the point here.
If low solar activity = colder temperatures, and we now have warmer temperatures despite the low solar activity, doesn’t that make the argument for AGW stronger?
——————————————————
I don’t thinks so. First we don’t really have ‘warmer’ temps now. Second, weren’t the late 80’s through 2000 were a period of intense solar activity?
Plasma cosmologists believe the sun is not driven by fusion but is a electric ball of plasma with connections across space just like electric circuits. I wonder how many astrophysics scoff at them and don’t allow them to publish their theories and work? An electric universe makes for common sense but I really don’t know. I find dark matter and other such stuff hard to believe too. I also wonder what Dr Svalgaard and Dr Svensmark think about an electric universe and if true ,how could this have an effect on our weather?
Maybe I read too much for someone with just a science degree. But–Like I have said before-I did spend last night reading WUWT.
Roy Lofquist (16:07:19) :
Not if it has an odd number of poles!
DaveE.
AndyL (15:09:15) :
Does the water in your kettle immediately settle back to room temperature when you turn down the heat?
DaveE.
Click on Solarcycle 24 board under sceptic views above
could keep ya busy for years
very good site, knowledgeable people
Effects of the Sun on the Earth:
1. Day/night = warm/cool, with a lag of 2 1/2 hours.
2. Summer/winter = warm cool with a lag of 6 weeks.
So, we understand that solar effects are not directly noticable, but lag. Longer solar cycles will surely have longer lags, given the thermal mass of the oceans. What is that lag? perhaps 30-60 years?
“DaveF (11:08:00) :
Even a prolonged period of cooling will not put off the True Believers. They’ll just say that a cool sun is masking a runaway warming trend that’s all our fault, and it’ll shoot off again just as soon as the Scottish and Northern English ice-cap melts.”
Well that’s the whole idea isn’t it. There is a mad rush, as I see it, to have some sort of “carbon tax” in place before 2012-2015. I wonder why this is? My suspicions are that by this time the Earth will be in another cooling period similar to that experienced between ~1941-~1975, and while CO2 emissions may or may not be falling, the “carbon tax” policies will be touted as a success as the Earth will be cooler then than today.
AndyL (15:09:15) :
I don’t understand the point here.
If low solar activity = colder temperatures, and we now have warmer temperatures despite the low solar activity, doesn’t that make the argument for AGW stronger?
From the point of view of TSI the sun is getting more active!
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/ion-i.png
Dear DaveE,
There are three kinds of mathematicians – those who can add and those who can’t.
Let’s see. North Pole (yay Santa) and South Pole.
Regards,
Roy
Phil.:
“From the point of view of TSI the sun is getting more active!”
So, how exactly is cloud cover affected by TSI? Use any model you like.
The Sun continues to stay under the monthly sunspot mean of 5. This has been going on for 20 months now, at this rate a solar grand minimum will be called perhaps in the next 12 months.
This of course is no surprise and the Sun is following the script written by the solar system.
Soon Climategate and the coming cooling will move the world away from the wasted funding in search of AGW. The Sun will be seen as our climate modulator and the necessary funds might start to appear.
Lets hope the funds go to a whole range of solar science and not just the existing science which has mostly failed us.
David Archibald (13:59:10)
You can get Ap data from here:
http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/cgi-bin/apindex
And of course WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/23/archibald-the-ap-index-says-there-will-be-no-sunspots/
Roy Lofquist (17:28:53) :
I was only making the point that perhaps the analogy you chose may not have been a good one.
DaveE.
Dear DaveE,
I made a good analogy once – think it was 1952. However, the mathematician joke has been good for many years and I slip it in whenever I can.
Regards,
Roy
If Svensmark is right, we should have been cooling since 2000, or if there is a time constant long enough to hide the solar cycle, we won’t see cooling for >40 years. If CO2 is causing warming to offset the cooling we should be seeing from the lack of sunspots and increased GCR, if the solar cycle starts up, then warming will take off like 1998.
Something else acts to melt all that ice in such a short period of time and I believe that something else is rain and quite a lot of it. You can melt back quite a lot of ice if you have rain practically every day for a month in the middle of summer. A very gradual increase in solar insolation is not going to cause a very fast collapse of the ice sheet in only a few decades time without some other trigger.
Crosspatch,
I think there is a bit more to it.
The oceans lose the very large quantities of heat they gain from solar radiation, by evaporation. That water vapor then gets transported by the atmosphere and falls as precipitation.
Basic physics tells us that the heat energy gained by the water vapor when it evaporates is lost when it condenses to water droplets and then precipitation. Hence, the proportion of the water vapor evaporated from the oceans that condenses over land is the proportion of the heat lost by the oceans that is transferred to the atmosphere over land.
That amount of heat is very large. My rough calculations says it is approximately equal to the total solar heating of the land surface (averaged across the globe).
When orbital changes increase solar isolation and thus cause ocean warming, atmospheric water vapor will increase, resulting in increased precipitation over land and increased atmospheric temperatures over land.
Precipitation falls disproportionately on land due to mountains. And it’s a peculiarity of the Earth’s topography that mountains are disproportionately on the western side of land masses. So increased precipitation causes a stronger fohn/chinook effect over land masses, such as your Chicago example.
So, while you are likely correct that rain causes rapid melting the ice, it is primarily due to warmer atmospheric temperatures warming the rain, rather than increased precipitation, or at least both effects will be at work.
BTW, some very interesting comments in this thread. The hydrological cycle is indeed the elephant in the climate that many are trying to claim is a rather small and insignificant elephant.
Invariant (15:55:01)
Elsewhere I have proposed at least three timescales for ocean cycles namely:
Interannual – ENSO
Multidecadal – PDO
Millennial – ? Yet to be named
I regard the signal of an oceanic oscillation to be a latitudinal shift in the positions of the air circulation systems so my evidence for the millennial cycle is the report that apparently the ITCZ was on the equator during the Little Ice Age.
That, conveniently, gives us a 1000 year cycle with 500 years from peak to trough and 500 back again thus Roman Warm Period, Dark Ages, MWP, LIA and Modern Maximum (which may or may not have recently peaked).
Against that we have the solar variability which appears to affect the rate of energy loss from upper air to space according to the observations of the SABER satellite.
At present the solar variability is timed with the oceanic variability so that they offset one another (stratosphere is warmed by low solar activity while the troposphere is cooled by low rates of energy emissions from the oceans and vice versa) and give us a relatively stable interglacial period.
I propose that in due course they will change their respective timings so that they will supplement each other and give us the large temperature variability observed during the glacial epochs. At such times the stratosphere would be warmed by periods of low solar activity at the same time as the troposhere is warmed by high rates of energy release from the oceans and vice versa).
That process not only accounts for the observed three main non seasonal timescales in climate variability but also the large differences in climate stability between interglacials and glacial epochs whilst simultaneously explaining why the climate can change so much despite small changes in the power of the solar output. It also fits the SABER observation that increased turbulence in the flow of energy from the sun increases the rate of energy loss from stratosphere and upper atmosphere to space.
We have four sets of apparently contradictory observational data duly resolved by that scenario.
As Leif has conceded, the current timing of an inactive sun with colder periods may just be coincidental and arising from the current interglacial timing of the solar and oceanic variability.
Ultimately the solar variability will be the source of the ocean variability but modulated through the fluid dynamics of the oceans.
I suggest that the ice build up during periods of high variability is a consequence of the current landmass distribution.
“twawki (12:31:41) :
In Australia record cold is being experienced.”
Not heard anything about this in the MSM here in Sydney, but that would not surprise me at all. We have had a couple of warm days, which have been hyped out of all proportion and called “Scorchers” LOL, but today and the last almost week now, is certainly not December weather at all.
I’m a bit confused. If a low AP index means cooler weather, then why weren’t the 1930s cold? According to the second graphic above, the AP index was low then as well.
If solar activity, or lack thereof, can influence climate on earth in meaningful ways over periods of years and decades (I’m not discounting the possibility), then shouldn’t there be a different indicator of that activity than the AP index? Wouldn’t sunspots be better? They were reasonably high in the 1930s, and very low for the 70 years of the Maunder minimum, in the LIttle Ice Age.
kevin roche (13:08:44) :
A couple of weeks ago Science daily reported on a study using lake sediments in the tropics which showed a perfect correlation of climate change with orbital dynamics affecting solar radiation reaching the earth. … If it affects climate in the tropics shouldn’t it also affect it elsewhere on earth, either directly on mediated through the effects on the tropics.
The tropics are different, because the atmosphere is saturated with vapor all the time (over short timescales – less than a day – any humidity gain is rapidly lost as precipitation). Hence, humidity can’t increase in the tropics to the extent it can at higher lattitudes.
Increased solar heating of the oceans will be largely released to the atmosphere toward the poles, which obviously takes time to be transported poleward.
Hence, increased solar heating of the oceans will be disroportionately released to the atmosphere toward the poles, with a time lag increasing as you go poleward.
I’m hoping Dr. Svalgaard will have updated data for us soon.
Here is the Ap-index [monthly values] since 1844:
http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-Monthly-Averages-1844-Now.png
The data includes November. December is not done yet.
Ap is now down to where it was in 1901 and 1879. Sharp drops [like in Oct. 2005] occur frequently, e.g. 1873, 1900, 1911, 1022, 1961, 2005.
Many of the comments border on nonsense [sorry to call it for it is]. Running the gamut from astrology to electric universes.
Does anyone know where to find the powerpoint originals or a pdf of the powerpoint originals of his slides (Jasper Kirkby, CLOUD Spokesperson, CERN). All I was able to find was his presentation from last year which only includes about a third of the slides
Oops, I was able to find it – I searched for him at CERN not for his presentation and then looked for it after finding the CERN links for him
for downloading the video in various qualities
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073?ln=en
for downloading the presentation slides in pdf
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=52576
He raises more questions then he answers.
A true researcher at heart 🙂
enjoy,
David Gibson
Thank you
Leif Svalgaard (19:12:25) :
Sharp drops [like in Oct. 2005] occur frequently, e.g. 1873, 1900, 1911, 1922, 1961, 2005.
Most of the high-frequency signal is due to the semiannual variation of geomagnetic activity that makes solstices ~25% more quiet than equinoxes [part of the explanation for low December values]. This variation is largely terrestrial and not due to the Sun.
Ap [and Aa] can be calculated from solar wind data. Let B be magnetic field strength [at Earth] in nanoTesla, and Vo be solar wind speed in units of 100 km/s [so that Vo=4 means solar wind speed at 400 km/s]. The Aa is given by Aa = (1/6)*B*Vo^2, and Ap = 0.2854 Aa^1.2131. Example: B = 4 nT, Vo = 3, then Aa = 6.0 and Ap = 2.5.
The formula are for mean values over a day or more.
John (19:02:55) :
I’m a bit confused. If a low AP index means cooler weather, then why weren’t the 1930s cold?
PDO warm and Sunspots high. And whatever else there is to toss in there.