From Spaceweather.com
The sun is showing signs of life. There are no fewer than five active regions on the sun’s surface, shown here in an extreme ultraviolet photo taken this morning by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO):
Each circle contains a sunspot or proto-sunspot belonging to new Solar Cycle 24. After two years of record-low sunspot numbers and many month-long stretches of utter quiet, this is a notable outbreak. Whether it heralds a genuine trend or merely marks a temporary, statistical uptick in activity remains to be seen.
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The only thing I see, as far as progress in the Solar Cycle 24 activity level goes, is that we have gone from scattered blinking Tiny Tims interspersed with a normal spot group to a consistent side of the Sun that displays concurrent blinking Tiny Tims and a normal sized spot group.
If there is concern about getting overexcited, I can see why.
After wandering in the Solar Activity Desert for nearly 2 years, anything consistent looks like a big deal. Just a little more ways to go, and the Tow Truck will have the cycle winched out of the ditch it slid into.
rhodeymark (07:46:54) :
”
“With the chaos of the last week can you imagine if the Thames froze over again?”
It’s my understanding that for that to happen, London would need to reclaim their original bridge from Lake Havasu AZ. The new bridge offers substantially less back pressure.”
The greatest extreme between high and low tide at Tower Bridge is 25 feet (7.62m). The strong tidal flow stops build up of ice. However, if the Thames barrier
http://www.earth-photography.com/photos/Countries/England/England_London_ThamesBarrier.jpg
is closed for some 24-48 hours we would have plenty of ice now.
Thanks a million, Leif! A great honor to get a reply from you.
Guys, it’s possible that the great blizzard of Dec 09 can be repeated next year. Over here in the tropics, Philippines, it’s possible we’ll have a wet Christmas, seldom happens, because of persistent monsoon and cold front blowing from the north-east. Cloudy skies everyday in a supposedly dry December in this part of the tropics.
Stacey:
Paul Hudson is my local television weather guy.
Over the last few years my father has took him to task on several occassions over some of his statements about AGW on the weather reports.
Paul dropped a lot of the propaganda on tv a while back.
I would like to think Paul Hudson is sincere and that he was ingesting the leaked e-mails rather than suppressing them for that six weeks.
He has always been well mannered and seems quite a genuine guy in his e-mails to my father.
But,who knows.
Mark (06:21:16) : There is no el Nino whatsoever. El Nino (The child) was named after the warm current that runs from north to south along the northern peruvian coast, where it was named by fishermen as such because it uses to appear around christmas, but as you can see in the next graph, 1+2 el nino regions appear blue, indicating that the usual cold Humboldt´s current is running from south to north along the same coasts, fueled by the south pacific anticyclone (counter clock wise):
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
And watch the -5°C anomalies. Neither is el Nino nor La Nina (el nino 3-4 still warm) so it´s el Nino in “intersting times”.
Chilly christmas and frozen new year….that I would call it the “Copenhagen Syndrome”
I think there were 17 days without sunspots before the recent outbreak of spots. They are still quite small.
So far sunspot activity in 2009, as measured by the number of sunspots, is down 18% from 2008 and is 87.32% below the expected. 2009 should have the third fewest days with sunspots since 1849.
Solar winds remain low. I would assume that the quiet Sun will soon return due to the low strength of the magnetic field as measured by the AP index.
Quote Leif Svalgaard (07:54:38) :
1. “Your ideas are just plain wacko, to be blunt but correct.”
Name calling has no place in real science, Leif.
Name calling, phony titles, research grants, and awards are the tool used by NAS, Al Gore, and the UN’s IPCC to keep fools herded into the pact of consensus “scientists.”
2. “What was the answer you received?”
I waited eight days for a reply, but none came. I will post it here if a reply is received.
My experience suggests that President Obama’s and Dr. Holdren “efforts to establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration” in science are mere window dressing – without substance.
How sad it is that federal tax funds – allocated to protect science as a resource that is vital to our national security – have corrupted science and destroyed its credibility.
I would hate to be President Obama’s place and know that a large fraction of the scientific reports that I receive are purposeful distortions.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo
http://myprofile.cos.com/manuelo09
We know from Leif and other solar scientists that the variation in solar output during a single cycle and from cycle to cycle is too small to account for observed climate variation.
However we do have evidence from the SABER satellite that when the solar wind is more turbulent there is a faster rate of energy transfer from the upper atmosphere to space.
That would imply that the stratosphere should cool during a period of active sun and warm during a period of less active sun which is just what we have observed.
If that is the case we need to reconsider the effect of more sunspots since the turbulence of the solar wind is linked to overall solar activity.
What could be happening at present is that we have a negative PDO (despite the current El Nino conditions) holding energy back from the air over a timescale of 25 to 30 years PLUS an increasing level of solar activity from the recent minimum.
That means that for a while the air will generally be showing a net loss of energy to space because of the negative oceanic phase supplying less energy to the air and additionally for the rest of solar cycle 24 there will be a higher level of solar turbulence than at present which will be accelerating energy from stratosphere to space.
That is in fact a cool/cool scenario for the troposphere. Not only will there be less energy entering the troposphere from the oceans but there will be more energy being lost more quickly to space.
Thus my guess is that the slight solar revival is not going to help AGW theory one bit.
Yea….. but with a field strength of less than 3 nano Teslas this is why we often see it on the magnetogram and even at UV etc. Just that the visible range seems to have little variance. Why is this ? Nobody really knows. Th field strength has been falling dramatically over recent years and still the dynamo is practically at walking pace, and that is part of it. Who knows, it is just a big nuclear reactor, but still a pretty small star, as stars go……
Still this will cause some extreme weather events here on the globe, even if it isn’t “gloaah-bull waaarmingg” as the Rev. Al Gore would say. Remeber that even in vast ice ages in times past the Sun was still active. Other things affect the amount of radiation reaching Earth. It isn’t just sunspots.
All the other nearby planets, and the moon affect Earth’s tilt and precession, and the orbital ellipse of the Earth is constantly varying. Furthermore variations in teh Earths own magnetic field mean that the amount of radiation of all types reaching the Earth does vary with time and indeed move across the Earth and the poles are constantly changing thier geographic location.
Then there are the supernovae we don’t even know about yet, when we see one explode, it’s only then that the particles will be flooding through. but wait a shower of particles arriving now might be from a supernova that we haven’t even seen yet due to light bending and black holes, and dark matter, and the bleedin’ Higgs-Boson, flamin’ Hadron Collider sabotaging itself from the future or the gray goo will spread all round the globe and change the albedo which will cause the clouds to grow (or shrink) but then the sea, ah the sea. It is all very complex, and that aint the half of it.
And you lot thought it a few sunspots meant it would be getting warmer down here on the 3rd rock from the Sun. Oh no, it aint that simple.
Jus wait until we get a strike from a Near Earth Object or a Rogue Comet or a Giant Meteor. By the Gods Greek Chariots, then you WILL see “Climate Change” !
Leif, It would be a nice Christmas present if you would update the charts of the most recent IMF, SW and Solar Data. Hint, hint. 😉
I wonder if anyone has ever tried to visualize the Earth from space using IR wavelengths that are scaled by the ratio of the average typical absolute solar temperature to the typical average absolute surface temperature of the earth to form the primary color bands for ‘earth light.’ I think such pictures might show the absorptive shading that causes the greenhouse effect and where convective cloud-top heat transfer was occurring.
Such images might also illuminate effects due to changes in the intensity of solar activity. Just as our normal vision is tuned to the maximum energy radiated by the sun, these false-color images would be tuned to the maximum energy re-radiated by the earth.
Stephen Wilde (08:24:01) :
However we do have evidence from the SABER satellite that when the solar wind is more turbulent there is a faster rate of energy transfer from the upper atmosphere to space.
I don’t know what you are talking about: ‘solar wind more turbulent’. If you do, please explain.
Daryl M (08:32:02) :
Leif, It would be a nice Christmas present if you would update the charts of the most recent IMF, SW and Solar Data. Hint, hint. 😉
Check out this blog and topic on Xmas morning 🙂
Oliver K. Manuel (08:22:55) :
1. “Your ideas are just plain wacko, to be blunt but correct.”
Name calling has no place in real science, Leif.
You have to learn the difference between the man and the idea.
Honorable men can have wacko ideas. Yours are very high on that scale.
Time for another Bagdad Bob quote:
“Search for the truth. I tell you things and I always ask you to verify what I say.”
Applies to all scientists.
vukcevic (07:16:50) :
Oliver K. Manuel (08:22:55) :
It is wonderful to have here so egregious iconoclasts.
It´s my intuitive knowledge that all these new theories have a place in Alfven´s electrical universe, just making some adaptations, like removing the theory of internal solar fusion.
Table Tennis Balls & Current Buns
See these images from the “GONG”
The Magnetograms are pretty convincing,
but again the visible disc is a ping-pong ball,
with maybe a suggestion of a few pin holes.
This room is freezing by the way !
I am away for a heat at the nuclear reactor #2.
http://gong2.nso.edu/dailyimages/
Leif Svalgaard:(08:44:36)
Stephen Wilde (08:24:01) :
However we do have evidence from the SABER satellite that when the solar wind is more turbulent there is a faster rate of energy transfer from the upper atmosphere to space.
Leif Svalgaard:
I don’t know what you are talking about: ’solar wind more turbulent’. If you do, please explain
Reply:
I don’t understand why you have a problem with that. Perhaps another word would be better such as ‘irregular’ or ‘lumpy’.
Or do you contend that the flow of energy from the sun is smooth and constant whether the sun be active or inactive ?
Please explain.
Stephen Wilde (09:09:01) :
Or do you contend that the flow of energy from the sun is smooth and constant whether the sun be active or inactive ?
It is your notion of ‘flow of energy from the sun’ that is strange and perhaps misunderstood. The total energy varies extremely little and is for all practically purposes very smooth.
tallbloke (06:23:53) :
It’s the surface temperature record which is becoming increasingly less believable IMO.
I wasn’t referring to the surface record. I was referring to the UAH satellite record. It is it the UAH record which has the November anomaly of +0.50. A record for November.
Hey, Anthony, Moderators, and readers, I have a question. Our knowledge of sunspot cycles depends a lot on the centuries of data gathered on the subject. However, there are many sunspots that we can see today that we could not see with the technology with which we started. Since we still have that old technology and could compare observations with it with observations with SOHO, could we make an algorithm that accounts for the percentage of sunspots too small to see and adjust the old sunspot records accordingly?
Wondering Aloud (06:16:09) :
John Finn
Perhaps you didn’t notice that October was very near the coldest ever and if not for the wildly inflated corrupted surface records would have been colder?
No I didn’t notice that. I think you may be referring to the US which contrary to the views of a number of posters is not the world.
I seriously think there is a warming bias even in the UAH record aren’t they standardized using ground stations that we know have a bias?
Of course, that must be what’s happening. UAH has developed a bias which presunmably kicked in around June time. And how many more times is someone going to make this completely false claim about UAH calibration to the surface record.
Leif Svalgaard (09:14:01) :
Stephen Wilde (09:09:01) :
Yes, please settle this issue. What do you mean by “turbulent”? Are there whirles and eddies?
Too bad. I had hoped for several years of little solar activity.
That should help separate the effects of the sunspot cycle from other drivers of climate.
JonesII (09:00:08) :
“vukcevic (07:16:50) :
Oliver K. Manuel (08:22:55) :
It is wonderful to have here so egregious iconoclasts…..”
Had to look up “egregious”, it doesn’t sound too good.
Iconoclast, yes from age of five, in an legaly atheist society, my granddad had an orthodox icon on the living room wall, which occasionally had to be hidden, if a ‘pc’ visitor was coming. At one of those occasions I did some minor damage, so I suppose I must be an “iconoclast”.
Alfven is fine, the electric universe is far too extreme for my understanding, I just tread mine own ‘wacko’ path.