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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I see on Spaceweather.com and Solarcycle24.com that there has been a new sunspot numbered. ???
Well! Where is it??
Is this setting a new record for numbering a temporary spot?
Hi, I’d like to mention a thing or two:
If your prediction (facing colder times) is right, politicians and environmental activists will think THEY have saved the planet from the climate going wild…
Leif Svalgaard (23:04:06) :
I’m still unclear about this. Last time I asked you left me with the impression that only electrons are swept back and protons carry on by. Are protons also swept back? If so, do they get into the upper atmosphere and react with the ozone layer and are ions larger than H+ involved?
I have seen references to major flare events causing marked increases in the size of the ozone hole. If this is true, what is the mechanism in play, how well is the chemistry understood and has it been verified empirically?
Lastly, is there a bias of these events toward the north or south pole depending on the sun’s polarity at the time?
Anyone with knowledge of Norwegian language?
http://www.vg.no/nyheter/vaer/artikkel.php?artid=596385
Les Francis (02:44:05) :
Try the GONG link at the bottom of this page:
http://www.solarcycle24.com/
Then click on Magnetograms/Intensity
next page has 6 observatories. Click on the leftmost image in an observatory that has a green bar and in not presently cloudy.
The current spot flared into life on the 7th, out of sight behind the limb.
If you have even a pair of binoculars, project the Sun tomorrow onto a sheet of white paper. A small refractor is even better.
Good luck.
Andi Hasenkopf (03:13:10) :
They have pre-claimed this by stating that Global Warming causes Global Cooling. It’s nothing more than a rubber check written by political science.
We really do need empirical data.
We really do need it because:
1.) There’s too much polyscience-driven computer-model agenda out there.
2.) The hemispherical winters are starting to look like where the 70’s left off.
3.) Nature abhors a vacuum. Man will supply whatever he can find to stuff into the void to answer the question, come what may.
Would you rather it be some real hard scientific evidence, or the other stuff?
The trajedy here is that too much time & resource went into bad science.
Now that the pressure is on, we are forced to make do with what we have.
Does AP index help us?
Aligner (03:21:07) :
I’m still unclear about this. Last time I asked you left me with the impression that only electrons are swept back and protons carry on by. Are protons also swept back? If so, do they get into the upper atmosphere and react with the ozone layer and are ions larger than H+ involved?
The magnetic field is swept back. Particles attached to the field follow [both kinds]. In the Earth’s magnetosphere are also ions that come from the ionosphere [e.g. Oxygen]. All of these particles can be accelerated by reconnection in the tail and can then precipitate into the upper atmosphere. A very small fraction does manage to make it into the polar regions on reconnected field lines. These particles will prefer one or the other pole depending on the polarity of the field in the near-Earth solar wind.
I have seen references to major flare events causing marked increases in the size of the ozone hole. If this is true, what is the mechanism in play, how well is the chemistry understood and has it been verified empirically?
Cosmic rays destroy Ozone, and [rare] very energetic solar flares generate Solar Cosmic Rays which then helps to destroy the Ozone. This is well-understood and observed.
Lastly, is there a bias of these events toward the north or south pole depending on the sun’s polarity at the time?
See above
radun (04:14:10) :
Anyone with knowledge of Norwegian language?
Many of us. The article basically says that the Russians deny that the mysterious lights were due to a failed rocket, but they habitually deny failure or military tests.
rbateman (05:30:52) :
Andi Hasenkopf (03:13:10) :
“They have pre-claimed this by stating that Global Warming causes Global Cooling. It’s nothing more than a rubber check written by political science.
“We really do need empirical data.”
_______________
Sorry, political ‘science’? Unless Nazi and Communist propaganda is considered an advanced, special field in human psychology its more a scheister’s artform. Understand Ivy League and EU Law Schools have cornored the market and applied for patent protection. Its worth trillions.
Well, fair enough it is looking like a genuine sunspot now:
http://i50.tinypic.com/1zbtbpz.jpg
4 small flares associated with it in the last 24 hours, a coronal mass ejection most likely came from the region when it was pointing away from us last week.
From http://www.solarcycle24.com
“The Norwegian Space Center believes the mysterious giant spiral is a Russian rocket, lauched from a submarine in the White Sea. The Russian northern fleet denies that anything like that has happened.
The surprise was great from south in Trøndelag [near Trondheim, Norway] to Finnmark [far north, near Russian border] when a spiral of light spread across the sky. What many people ask is if this was a Russian rocket.
– We have no information about anything like that, and we have not seen what you describe, says an anonymous spokesperson from the Russian northern fleet to VG Nett.
This is in contradiction to the speculations of Pål Brekke [of SOHO fame] at the Norwegian Space Center, based on an earlier notification about a coming rocket launch via the maritime system Navtex Tuesday afternoon.
The probability that it was remains of that launch that people from Trøndelag and further north saw, is big, said Brekke ….”
It failed, so it didn’t happen I guess.
Same talk, but on the CERN servers.
This raises the question of whether cosmic rays may directly affect the climate, providing an effective indirect solar forcing mechanism. Indeed recent satellite observations – although disputed – suggest that cosmic rays may affect clouds. This talk presents an overview of the palaeoclimatic evidence for solar/cosmic ray forcing of the climate, and reviews the possible physical mechanisms. These will be investigated in the CLOUD experiment
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073/
Ps I am from Europe ( NL ) CERN is really one of the most important science centers. It’s the place of the Large Hadron Collider and they really invented the internet (al least the www part and html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee )
Leif Svalgaard (07:26:43) :
Thank you for the excellent clarrification.
Another different topic: If the sun’s magnetic field declines into a grand minimum, what is the generally accepted hypothesis for its recovery? I have come across suggestions like galactic EMF pulses/fields, residual cycles from the big bang, etc. none of which seem very credible. A pointer to a succinct but complete and unembellished description of current dynamo theory [difficult to find!] would be a big help.
Aligner (11:00:27) :
If the sun’s magnetic field declines into a grand minimum, what is the generally accepted hypothesis for its recovery?
There is none, but some thoughts may be found here:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0907/0907.3106v1.pdf
and here
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0801/0801.2156v1.pdf
Re: radun (04:14:10)
http://translate.google.com/#
rbateman (05:30:52) “The trajedy here is that too much time & resource went into bad science.”
Agree.
Leif Svalgaard (07:30:58) :
Tank you
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (09:41:30) :
Tanks for translating the article
Paul Vaughan (11:49:54) :
Thanks
Have traced a video of the event
REPLY: Probably the “bat signal” sent up by alarmists in trouble – Anthony
REPLY: Probably the “bat signal” sent up by alarmists in trouble – Anthony
Hehe. I could have sworn, though, that ‘the sign’ was a tree ring with Antarctica in the middle.
The amount of Ozone in our atmosphere in part is a result of the amount of UV produced from the Sun. TSI may vary by a small amount, but the UV variance can be much higher across different spectrums of the UV band during the 11 year solar cycle.
There have been reports on WUWT that this UV variance can influence the amount of low level cloud cover.
Jasper Kirkby is a superb scientist, but he has been a lousy politician. In 1998, anticipating he’d be leading a path-breaking experiment into the sun’s role in global warming, he made the mistake of stating that the sun and cosmic rays “will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century.” Global warming, he theorized, may be part of a natural cycle in the Earth’s temperature.
Dr. Kirkby was immediately condemned by climate scientists for minimizing the role of human beings in global warming. Stories in the media disparaged Dr. Kirkby by citing scientists who feared oil-industry lobbyists would use his statements to discredit the greenhouse effect. And the funding approval for Dr. Kirkby’s path-breaking experiment — seemingly a sure thing when he first announced his proposal– was put on ice.
Dr. Kirkby was stunned, and not just because the experiment he was about to run had support within his scientific institute, and was widely expected to have profound significance. Dr. Kirkby was also stunned because his institute is CERN, and science performed at CERN had never before seemed so vulnerable to whims of government funders.
CERN is no fringe laboratory pursuing crackpot theories at some remote backwater. CERN, based in Geneva, is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, a 50-yearold institution, originally founded by 12 countries and now counting 20 country-members. It services 6,500 particle physicists — half of the world’s total — in 500 institutes and universities around the world. It is building the $2.4-billion Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. And it is home to Jasper Kirkby’s long-languished CLOUD project, among the most significant scientific experiments to be proposed in our time. Finally, almost a decade after Dr. Kirkby’s proposal first saw the light of day, the funding is in place and the work has begun in earnest. more…. http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=975f250d-ca5d-4f40-b687-a1672ed1f684
Leif Svalgaard (23:04:06) :
The reconnected field is swept back into the magnetic tail where a second reconnection can accelerate particles onto the nightside of the Earth. The particles do not reach the surface, but the currents induced means that scores of Gigawatt are dumped into the high-altitude atmosphere. But even that is negligible compared to the amount of energy we get from ordinary sunlight on the dayside. Try to multiply 500 W/m2 by the area of the Earth’s dayside.
Hi Leif, I was struck by this quote:
“Most of the energy transfer to the Earth from the solar wind is accomplished electrically, and nearly the entire voltage associated with this process appears in the polar cap region, which extends typically less than 20° in latitude from the magnetic pole. The total voltage across the polar cap can be as large as 100,000 volts, rivaling that of thunderstorm electrification of the planet in magnitude. ”
http://www.arcus.org/logistics/svalbard/Svalbard.pdf
Is the thunderstorm electrification of the planet negligible too?
tallbloke (12:24:56) :
Is the thunderstorm electrification of the planet negligible too?
The polar cap electric field is horizontal and is really created by E = V x B, that is: plasma moving across a magnetic field, and is typically 50kV [varies].
There is a vertical electric field caused by thunderstorms. This field is about 300kV between the ground and the lower ionosphere.
Leif, many thanks for the clarification. Is this the stuff Brian Tinsley is working on?
I take it there is more energy required to create the vertical voltage across the atmospheric dielectric than across the ice cap?
Wibble. 🙂
tallbloke (13:09:40) :
Leif, many thanks for the clarification. Is this the stuff Brian Tinsley is working on?
Yes, this is Tinsley’s specialty, although the vertical ‘fair-weather’ electric field has been known for a long time [century?].
Leif,
Magnetic reversals have left a geologic record. I have read articles and books that offer differing opinions regarding the net effect of reversals on climate and geological processes. These opinions range from negligible to catastrophic. Could you share your ideas regarding this? I also remember that prior to a reversal the Earth’s magnetic field weakens and “wanders” to a large degree. Currently, magnetic North is situated above Canada, quite a way from the rotational pole. If you were a betting man, what are the odds of a reversal occurring near term?
Pressed Rat (14:39:15) :
If you were a betting man, what are the odds of a reversal occurring near term?
Magnetic reversals have happened tens of thousands of times and we are still here. The dipole moment has been declining lately [15% in the last couple of centuries] ans there may be a reversal in another, say, thousand year. Whether that is ‘near term’, is a matter of debate, perhaps. I don’t expect any significant change in climate or living conditions. A reversal could put some of our ideas on how things work to the test.