Back on December 12th 2009 I posted an article titled:
Solar geomagnetic activity is at an all time low – what does this mean for climate?
We then had a string of sunspots in December that marked what many saw as a rejuvenation of solar cycle 24 after a long period of inactivity. See December sunspots on the rise
It even prompted people like Joe Romm to claim:
But what Joe doesn’t understand is that sunspots are just one proxy, the simplest and most easily observed, for magnetic activity of the sun. It is the magnetic activity of the sun which is central to Svensmark’s theory of galactic cosmic ray modulation, which may affect cloud cover formation on earth, thus affecting global temperatures. As the theory goes, lower magnetic activity of the sun lets more GCR’s into our solar system, which produce microscopic cloud seed trails (like in a Wilson cloud chamber) in our atmosphere, resulting in more cloud cover, resulting in a cooler planet. Ric Werme has a nice pictorial here.
When I saw the SWPC Ap geomagnetic index for Dec 2009 posted yesterday, my heart sank. With the sunspot activity in December, I thought surely the Ap index would go up. Instead, it crashed.
Annotated version above – Source: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/weekly/Ap.gif
Source data: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/weekly/RecentIndices.txt
When you look at the Ap index on a larger scale, all the way back to 1844 when measurements first started, the significance of this value of “1” becomes evident. This graph from Dr. Leif Svalgaard shows where we are today in relation to the past 165 years.
Source: http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-Monthly-Averages-1844-Now.png
With apologies to Dr. Svalgaard, I’ve added the “1” line and the most current SWPC value of “1” for Dec 2009.
As you can see, we’ve never had such a low value before, and the only place lower to go is “zero”.
But this is only part of the story. With the Ap index dwindling to a wisp of magnetism, it bolsters the argument made by Livingston and Penn that sunspots may disappear altogether by 2015. See Livingston and Penn – Sunspots may vanish by 2015
Above: Sunspot magnetic fields measured by Livingston and Penn from 1992 – Feb. 2009 using an infrared Zeeman splitting technique. [more] from the WUWT article: NASA: Are Sunspots Disappearing?
The theory goes that once the magnetic strength falls below 1500 gauss, sunspots will become invisible to us.
Note where we are on this curve that Dr. Svalgaard also keeps of LP’s measurements:
Source: http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn.png
It appears that we are on track, and that’s a chilling thought.
NOTE TO COMMENTERS AND MODERATORS: No off-topic discussions of Landscheidt, “electric universe”, or “iron sun” will be permitted on this thread. All will be snipped. Stay on topic. – Anthony
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–I find Dr. Svalgaard’s attitude toward readers and commentators to be most inappropriate–
I think people who find his attitude inappropriate are the ones who are pushing the latest Lysenkoism and get called on it.
To those of us who aren’t his attitude seems fine.
brad tittle (10:49:15) :
It would be nice if the scientists i admire would stop using Chartmanship.
In principle I agree completely. There is a practical [even monetary] problem, namely that some plots would have excessive white space and take up costly Journal page space [which we pay dearly for – my last paper cost $11,000 to publish because of page charges]. So we often tend to remove the whitespace while retaining it in our mind. A good compromise is the leave a bit more whitespace above and below the highest and lowest data points.
I maintain a plot of TSI: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
Here is the version with TSI starting from zero:
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now-0.png
I find the Monthly Average Ap Index interesting in that the last time it was very cold in the Northern Hemisphere was 1911-1913. That part of the graph is very low as is the current period.
I assumed also that since the sunspots have been fairly active the past 4 weeks that the entire energy from the sun must also be on the rise.
The summer of 09 was very cool in Virginia and this winter is downright cold. I hope the sun’s energy picks up before we all suffer the impacts of a cooling climate.
RE: Mike Ramsey (19:13:10) & David Archibald (15:43:00) [re de Vries cycle]
My impression from (a) various analyses I’ve run on EOP (Earth orientation parameters) and (b) ideas I’ve picked up from the Russian literature on circulation regimes is that modulation at the EARTH-end should not be assumed irrelevant.
For example, on average the QBO aligns with the annual cycle to within ~1.5 days at 211 year intervals – that happens every single day (on average).
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/QBO-Year.png
Am I suggesting that the QBO & annual cycle combined drive the de Vries cycle? That would be a naive interpretation. Keep this in mind:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/QBO_fGLAAM_fLOD.png
Also: There are other terrestrial oscillations that show intermittent phase-coherence with QBO, so there is plenty of confounding to keep in mind. Until more is known, “related to” is more sensible than “driven by” or “caused by”.
I see on this plot that there is a recent Cycle 23 sunspot:
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
Cycle 23 apparently lingers on, but I suppose that is not surprising.
Paul Vaughan (12:31:59) :
“Vuk etc. (16:07:43) “[…] magnetic anomaly […] I have produced a unique diagram of evolution of the NH’s anomaly during last 400 years. http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NHMFevolution.gif “
“Interesting. I encourage you to expand this into a time series of hovmollers (which could be dropped into a folder and rolled-through as a mouse-wheeling movie – or stacked in a PowerPoint file to same effect). ”
Hi Paul,
Perhaps you could email with more details, time permiting.
Thanks
p.s. tried to use italics for quotes, no success.
Leif Svalgaard (19:39:56) “[…] what is behind the numbers […]”
Extremely valuable notes – thank you.
Gerry (13:13:09) :
Cycle 23 apparently lingers on, but I suppose that is not surprising.
It is not surprising as you point out. SC23 could linger on for another year. The full length of the solar cycle is something like 17 years with several years overhang on each side.
Paul Vaughan that is some fascinating work you’ve presented.
RR Kampen (01:32:47) “So 2009 must have been one of the coldest years in over a century, and 2010 will have us forget the LIA?”
If anyone around here is engaging in such simplistic reasoning, they aren’t likely to be getting much respect for it (…aside from, perhaps, a few political partisans who are not primarily interested in understanding complex relations between the natural phenomena discussed).
The common ground shared by alarmists & nonalarmists is the need to understand the complexities of natural variations. I again invite you to help out. If you are genuinely interested in knowing nature (as opposed to abstractions of nature), I look forward to collaboration.
REPLY: I can tell you from experience that Kampen’s only motive is trolling, he won’t even put his statements to test with a betting challenge made. Ignore him, he’s just noise. – Anthony
nice artikel
So is the Sun broken?
Al (16:01:36) :
So is the Sun broken?
Not, not at all. Our ‘measurements’ are not correct. See up-thread.
DirkH:
You need to reflect upon Wien’s Displacement Law:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/wien.html
I think you can soon realize that there is more energy in the incoming solar radiation at any specific wavelength than at any corresponding frequency emitted from any place else where the temperature is lower.
Perhaps his excuse was the “fraughtness” of setting up a large one-to-one bet online with a hostile stranger. All of that can be avoided by putting up a bid on one or more of the dozen or so climate-related bets at https://www.intrade.com
Has anyone considered the possibility of a solar cycle interruption brought about by SGR 1806-20’s explosion in 2004? According to Space.com (link below) said star (a magnetar by definition) cracked and “exploded” in an unimaginably large burst of energy from a starquake 50,000 light years away and as the burst hit Earth, it ionized the upper atmosphere. I postulate that our Sun has taken an unnerving knock from that blast, and the consequences are unknowable. Just a thought.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050927_star_cracked.html
And when I say 50,000 light years away, I mean it happened 50,000 years ago and the energy/flash finally reached Earth.
Toby (19:36:29) :
And what evidence do we see in the AP chart above for December, 2004?
Actually, the flash and energy was detected in September 🙂
Oh, my bad; was thinking the post date; I retract my previous statement.
For December 2004, the AP was declining already, but we can’t assume for even a moment that the trend was not in the least affected by an event that, thus far, we’ve never recorded or pre-2004 assumed was even possible.
Taking into account SGR 1806-20’s explosion arrival, that was the low of the year for monthly values. The proceeding month was a sharp rise, and the following 5 months followed a sharp loss. It appears as if the Sun’s activity did not recover from that, considering it was entering the active half of it’s cycle. The last recorded true activity was the x-28 class flare in 2003 and an M8.6/3B solar flare at 12:32 UTC (8:32 am EDT) on July 20th, 2004.
That was a seriously intense 16-17 months, ending with a bang from SGR 1806-20 before tapering off into smaller flares as the cycle wound down to it’s conclusion. I think the magnetar’s affect on our Sun is apparent now.
As an analogy, our Sun is an 8 year old child and SGR 1806-20 spanked him 😉
rbateman (19:44:58) :
Toby (19:36:29) :
And what evidence do we see in the AP chart above for December, 2004?
none, but there could be a short-lived enhancement of the ionization of the ionosphere, e.g. http://www.firstscience.com/home/articles/space/revenge-of-the-magnetar-page-2-1_1473.html
By definition such an effect is not considered something that makes a contribution to Ap. Solar flares also produce such effects and they are excluded also. Solar eclipses have the opposite effect and are also excluded. Ap is meant to measure only effects we with reasonable certainty can ascribe to the solar wind [possibly modulated by the tilt of the Earth’s magnetic axis].
Ah so you’re saying the magnetar’s effect on the Sun would not be a noticeable difference except over time?
Toby (20:53:16) :
Ah so you’re saying the magnetar’s effect on the Sun would not be a noticeable difference except over time?
Not even over time. It was hard enough to detect the small effect on the Earth, and that lasted for a very period of time. Now, if the magnetar was a lot closer, that would be another story entirely.