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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I’d like to invite Neven to join in a Christmas cessation of hostilities and have a rhetoric free conversation about how we both see it.
I find it hard to agree that the solar pole strength is around normal or “understandable”
A quick look at the graph over a very short time frame shows the pattern has changed. http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Polar.gif
The last time we saw similar lack of strength was during SC20 when the instruments we now use were in their infancy. SC20 was affected by the same unmentionable force as we see today, only somewhat weaker. The last time this occurred was during the Dalton. But “modern” science tries to tell us different, which reminds me of other sheep herding exercises that have been in the news lately.
In the argument about correlation and causation, being an indicator of a real process, or being defined as the direct result, of a force in action. Where does the line get drawn, when the past cycles of correlation can be used to forecast the next cycle, then if that bears good results, something that then looks like causation, becomes a hypothesis, to be tested then the testing begins, such is Science.
Pseudoscience as you call it is those things which seem to be there, but the questions to form the hypothesis, and test it are not asked in the right way to get valid answers. More data and better testing methods is all that is needed to “settle” the questions asked Keeping what works and throwing out what is “proven” to not work, is called progress.
As long as no one asks the pertinent questions, the answers cannot be found. The limited funding available, should not be hoarded by those who would alter data sets, to use the fudged results to further a political agenda, but to seek the truth instead.
“Government interference should always be merely preventive, and should have as it’s sole aim, the establishment of public security and peace.” ~The I Ching 3000 years of Chinese wisdom.
Blogs and debates are the playing fields for kicking around new ideas, what is still standing after the dust settles, is the scoring method used.
Single team sports are boring, it takes two (or more) sides to make a good season worth watching. It also helps if all teams playing, are equally funded and trained.
odd how these solar threads always get so abusive. chill out. whos right and whos wrong will become clear enough in a few years.
Geoff Sharp (04:42:31) :
I find it hard to agree that the solar pole strength is around normal or “understandable”
You misunderstand the issue. The question was about the rate of decline of the polar fields, not about their strength. Their strength is about half of what they were at the previous minimum [and at the minimum prior to SC20 they were also weak as you point out – as far as we know]. Since the polar fields determine the size of the next cycle [as far as we know according to the Babcock model and some modern dynamo theories] we expect SC24 to be weak [and it has so far obliged]. The last three years the polar fields have decreased 25%. This is the normal bit, and is understandable as the fields are slowly being eroded by new cycle flux moving towards the poles. By the maximum in 2014 [or so], the polar fields go to zero and reverse, so the decrease will have to speed up a bit, as it will [compare with previous cycles and you can see that happen]. So what is there to not agree with? The total polar magnetic flux is actually very small [about 1/1000 of the total magnetic flux that has been ‘processed’ though a solar cycle – or the same as the flux in just a few active regions], and the random walk process that produces the polar fields can easily account for the variations in strength from cycle to cycle. All of this is ‘modern science’ as you call it.
Richard Holle (05:15:35) :
Pseudoscience as you call it is those things which seem to be there, but the questions to form the hypothesis, and test it are not asked in the right way to get valid answers.
No, pseudo-science is not just ‘unknown’ science that eventually will be vindicated. Pseudo-science is incorrect notions that violate physical law [as we know them] or postulate phenomena that do not occur.
phlogiston (06:49:22) :
odd how these solar threads always get so abusive.
There is only the same handful of abusers, but they can be counted on to come out of the woodwork.
@phlogiston (06:49:22) :
…odd how these solar threads always get so abusive …
I would name them so interesting.
I try to never miss to read them completely,
always like Leif’s comments,
(A very personal Merry Christmas to you, Leif.)
… and still do like to read the … unconventional, more exotic
opinions…
KlausB
Stephen Wilde
OT but since you’re on the thread, I had a question..
Someone posted on the blog “climate sanity” recently some anecdotal data suggesting a correlation between the rate of change of sea level, and global air temperatures. But with a time lag of a year or so. When rate of sea level rise dropped, global temps dropped a year later, in quite good apparent synchrony (albeit over a limited period). On climate4you the rate of sea level rise is shown going back a few decades and since 1998, despite oscillation, there is a significant declining trend of rate of sea level rise.
Is it plausible that rate of sea level change could be indicative of movement of energy into the upper layer of the ocean and thence to the atmosphere? Could it thus give us some kind of sneak preview of imminent global temperature trends?
KlausB (08:21:45) :
@phlogiston (06:49:22) :
…odd how these solar threads always get so abusive …
I would name them so interesting.
Yes, they have good entertainment value. People also like to watch the clowns at a circus.
Dr. Svalgaard, what do you think of the research of Dr. Jasper Kirkby of CERN and his CLOUD initiative? Did you see a recording of the presentation he gave a few months ago?
@Leif Svalgaard (08:32:00) :
Yeah, the sun and it’s behavior is one of humans biggest source of entertaining and puzzling over the last few thousand years. And still is.
Here in Germany, a few people are trying to make longer term weather predictions, one of them is (link to english version) :
http://www.langfristwetter.com/4411/105647.html
He added an experimental version of linking precipitation/air pressure patterns to sun spots to the german version of his site.
I did send him links to several of your last papers.
Rgds
KlausB
phlogiston (08:30:03)
Warmer sea surfaces represent faster energy loss from ocean to air.
If continued for long enough that would normally reduce total ocean energy content and slow down or stop sea level rise.
Once in the air the additional energy would take a while to leave the troposphere, possibly a year.
In my view climate change (global air temperatures) are a result of changing rates of energy flow from sun to sea then sea to troposphere then troposphere to stratosphere then stratosphere to space.
Differential changes in the rate of energy flow at each stage will result in temperature changes in each component of the system, sometimes together and sometimes separately.
Leif Svalgaard (08:32:00) :
KlausB (08:21:45) :
@phlogiston (06:49:22) :
…odd how these solar threads always get so abusive …
I would name them so interesting.
Yes, they have good entertainment value. People also like to watch the clowns at a circus.
Watching the clowns in the tree ring circus has been highly entertaining. It’s great when the grumpy know-it-all clown who beats the other clowns up get’s his come uppance at the end of the act when the portly lady steps up to the microphone.
David Corcoran (08:50:42) :
Dr. Svalgaard, what do you think of the research of Dr. Jasper Kirkby of CERN and his CLOUD initiative? Did you see a recording of the presentation he gave a few months ago?
Yes, I saw it. What might change hid own view could be the result of their experiments, but is it clear to me if the results would scale up. My personal opinion on the cosmic ray connection is negative at the moment, but is subject to change with the advent of new data.
Leif Svalgaard (19:47:58) :
Yes, I saw it. What might change his own view could be the result of their experiments, but is it not clear to me if the results would scale up.
In addition to becoming portly over the past fifty years, we helped generate data from precise measurements that required these modifications to the Standard Solar Model of a Hydrogen-filled Sun:
1. The Sun is the iron-rich remnant of a supernova that ejected all of the material now orbiting it ~5 Gy (5 billion or 5 x 10^9) years ago [“Elemental and isotopic inhomogeneities in noble gases: The case for local synthesis of the chemical elements”, Trans. Missouri Acad. Sci. 9 (1975) 104 122; “Strange xenon, extinct superheavy elements and the solar neutrino puzzle”, Science 195 (1977) 208-209 (1977); “Isotopes of tellurium, xenon and krypton in the Allende meteorite retain record of nucleosynthesis”, Nature 277 (1979) 615-620].
2. The top of the solar atmosphere is covered with Hydrogen – the lightest of all elements – but the Sun is NOT a ball of Hydrogen (H) [“Solar abundance of the elements”, Meteoritics (1983) 18, 209-222; “Solar abundance of elements from neutron-capture cross sections” 36th Lunar Science Conf. (2005) paper #1033].
3. Solar energy comes primarily from repulsive interactions between neutrons in the solar core – NOT from H-fusion [“Attraction and repulsion of nucleons: Sources of stellar energy”, Journal of Fusion Energy 19 (2001) 93-98].
4. Solar-wind Hydrogen pouring from the solar surface is a waste product (neutron-decay product) from the solar engine [“The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass”, Physics of Atomic Nuclei 69 (2006) 1847-1856].
5. Solar neutrinos do not oscillate away [“Is there a deficit of solar neutrinos”, Second NO-VE workshop on neutrino oscillation
http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0410460v1%5D
6. Earth’s climate is changing, has changed in the past, and will always change because our climate is controlled by a variable star that undergoes cycles of change as gravitational interactions cause its dense, energetic neutron core to move around inside the Sun [ “Earth’s Heat Source – The Sun”, Energy & Environment 20 (2009) 131-144
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.0704 ]
Otherwise I might still believe that the Sun is a ball of Hydrogen.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Leif,
Two day’s ago NASA came up with a “Great Interstellar Discovery” made by the Voyager satellite’s http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/23dec_voyager.htm
However, this so called “Great Interstellar Discovery was already made in 1978: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978ApJ…223..589V
Do you have any idea what could happen if our solar system travel through this cloud?
Thanks in advance for your answer.
Some more specifics in regard to my earlier posting:
Nir Shaviv writes the following about cosmic ray’s and climate at his blog:
“Cosmic Rays, at least at energies lower than 1015eV, are accelerated by supernova remnants. In our galaxy, most supernovae are the result of the death of massive stars. In spiral galaxies like our own, most of the star formation takes place in the spiral arms. These are waves which revolve around the galaxy at a speed different than the stars. Each time the wave passes (or is passed through), interstellar gas is shocked and forms new stars. Massive stars that end their lives with a supernova explosion, live a relatively short life of at most 30 million years, thus, they die not far form the spiral arms where they were born. As a consequence, most cosmic rays are accelerated in the vicinity of spiral arms. The solar system, however, has a much longer life span such that it periodically crosses the spiral arms of the Milky Way. Each time it does so, it should witness an elevated level of cosmic rays. In fact, the cosmic ray flux variations arising from our galactic journey are ten times larger than the cosmic ray flux variations due to solar activity modulations, at the energies responsible for the tropospheric ionization (of order 10 GeV). If the latter is responsible for a 1°K effect, spiral arm passages should be responsible for a 10°K effect—more than enough to change the state of earth from a hothouse, with temperate climates extending to the polar regions, to an ice house, with ice-caps on its poles, as Earth is today. In fact, it is expected to be the most dominant climate driver on the 108 to 109 yr time scale.
http://www.sciencebits.com/CosmicRaysClimate”
Yesterday Nasa came up with a “Great Interstellar discovery” made by the Voyager satellite http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/23dec_voyager.htm
However, this so called “Great Interstellar Discovery was already made in 1978: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978ApJ…223..589V
It’s about our solar system entering an interstellar cloud with a high magnetic field and a temperature of over 6000 degree Celsius.
These clouds are remnants from Super Nova’s.
When we pass through such a cloud, according to NASA the following will happen: “the fact that the Fluff is strongly magnetized means that other clouds in the galactic neighborhood could be, too. Eventually, the solar system will run into some of them, and their strong magnetic fields could compress the heliosphere even more than it is compressed now. Additional compression could allow more cosmic rays to reach the inner solar system, possibly affecting terrestrial climate.
The 1978 report states that this cloud “might have a drastic influence on terrestrial climate”.
My question, who has any idea what will happen?
Not entirely of topic in regard to my question is this well written article from Howard bloom that was published in WSJ:
Climate Change Is Nature’s Way
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004574599981936018834.html
Oliver K. Manuel (20:27:19) :
that required these modifications to the Standard Solar Model of a Hydrogen-filled Sun
This is what I meant by pseudo-science with entertainment value.
Ron de Haan (21:28:54) :
Two day’s ago NASA came up with a “Great Interstellar Discovery”
However, this so called “Great Interstellar Discovery was already made in 1978:
We have seen so many of these ‘new discoveries’ from NASA that were discovered decades ago.
Additional compression could allow more cosmic rays to reach the inner solar system, possibly affecting terrestrial climate.
I don’t think that additional compression will allow more cosmic rays to reach the Earth, rather the opposite, as it is the compression regions that scatter away the cosmic rays.
Already the magnetic field in interstellar space is 100 times stronger than in the outer heliosphere. It is not the magnetic fields that determine the size of the heliosphere, but rather the pressure balance between the solar wind particle flow and the interstellar gas.
NASA Publication: Quiet Sun Means Cooling of Earth’s Upper Atmosphere
From this publication:
“While this warming has no implications for climate change in the troposphere, a fundamental prediction of climate change theory is that the upper atmosphere will cool in response to increasing carbon dioxide”.
Yes, another confirmation, NASA works for the Democratic Party and the UN IPCC!
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=42048&src=eorss-nnews
Stephen Wilde (10:06:52)
Isn’t there one other route of energy transfer – deeper ocean to upper ocean or surface?
[snip]
Leif Svalgaard (05:47:00) :
rbateman (22:41:06) :
Would you say that the decrease rate in the Polar Fields is a bit slow or normal?
You can compare with other cycles here:
http://www.leif.org/research/Solar%20Polar%20Fields.png
Since the polar fields are only half of what they used to be, their rate of decline down to zero should only be about half, too. Or perhaps even shallower since the cycle is drawn out, so I’m not surprised. This looks quite normal or, at last, understandable.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thank you Leif for that update and comment.
Leif Svalgaard (19:47:58) :
My personal opinion on the cosmic ray connection is negative at the moment, but is subject to change with the advent of new data.
Leif Svalgaard (22:18:58) :
I don’t think that additional compression will allow more cosmic rays to reach the Earth, rather the opposite, as it is the compression regions that scatter away the cosmic rays.
Already the magnetic field in interstellar space is 100 times stronger than in the outer heliosphere. It is not the magnetic fields that determine the size of the heliosphere, but rather the pressure balance between the solar wind particle flow and the interstellar gas.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yust keeps ‘blowing me away’ how out of all the matter that makes up the universe and interstellar regions that the only interstellar space weather factor that keeps getting talked about as being responsible for climate change is GCR.
~Spiderwoman~
Tallbloke, want a song, try “Elevation” by U2.
phlogiston (02:30:15)
Of course. That internal ocean movement may well be what causes the variability in the rate at which the oceans release energy to the air.
To my mind there is evidence of cycling on at least 3 timescales.
Quote: Oliver K. Manuel (09:59:24) :
[snip]
Sorry that I lost my temper with Leif’s earlier suggestion that modifications to the Standard Solar Model of a Hydrogen-filled Sun are “pseudo-science with entertainment value.”
Could I invite him to address the experimental data published in: “Isotopes of tellurium, xenon and krypton in the Allende meteorite retain record of nucleosynthesis”, Nature 277, 615-620 (1979); doi:10.1038/277615a0
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v277/n5698/abs/277615a0.html
Isotopes of Kr, Te, and Xe that were made by slow neutron capture (the s-process) were enriched in silicon carbide (SiC) inclusions of a meteorite.
Isotopes of Kr, Te, and Xe that were made by rapid neutron capture (the r-process) were enriched in diamond (C) inclusions of the same meteorite, together with all of its primordial He.
In 1993 Professor F. Begemann of the Max-Planck Institut fuer Chemie in Mainz reported a similar separation of Ba, Nd, and Sm isotopes [“Isotopic abundance anomalies and the early solar system” in Origin and Evolution of the Elements (ed. Prantos, N., Vangioni-Flam, E. and Cassé, M., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1993) 518-527].
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1993Data.htm
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel