From NOAA news: NOAA Scientist Finds Clue to Predicting Solar Flares
Forecasters at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.
High resolution (Credit: NOAA)
For decades, experts have searched for signs in the sun that could lead to more accurate forecasts of solar flares — powerful blasts of energy that can supercharge Earth’s upper atmosphere and disrupt satellites and the land-based technologies on which modern societies depend. Now a scientist at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center and her colleagues have found a technique for predicting solar flares two to three days in advance with unprecedented accuracy.
The long-sought clue to prediction lies in changes in twisting magnetic fields beneath the surface of the sun in the days leading up to a flare, according to the authors. The findings will be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters next month.
“For the first time, we can tell two to three days in advance when and where a solar flare will occur and how large it will be,” said lead author Alysha Reinard, a solar physicist at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center and the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, a partnership between NOAA and the University of Colorado.
Twisting magnetic fields beneath the surface of the sun erupt into a large solar flare, as shown above.
High resolution (Credit: NSF)
The new technique is already twice as accurate as current methods, according to the authors, and that number is expected to improve as they refine their work over the next few years. With this technique, reliable watches and warnings should be possible before the next solar sunspot maximum, predicted to occur in 2013. Currently, forecasters see complex sunspot regions and issue alerts that a large flare may erupt, but the when-and-where eludes them.
Solar flares are sudden bursts of energy and light from sunspots’ magnetic fields. During a flare, photons travel at the speed of light in all directions through space, arriving at Earth’s upper atmosphere—93 million miles from the sun—in just eight minutes.
Almost instantly the photons can affect the high-orbiting satellites of the Global Positioning System, or GPS, creating timing delays and skewing positioning signals by as much as half a football field, risking high-precision agriculture, oil drilling, military and airline operations, financial transactions, navigation, disaster warnings, and other critical functions relying on GPS accuracy.
“Two or three days lead time can make the difference between safeguarding the advanced technologies we depend on every day for our livelihood and security, and the catastrophic loss of these capabilities and trillions of dollars in disrupted commerce,” said Thomas Bogdan, director of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
Reinard and NOAA intern Justin Henthorn of Ohio University pored over detailed maps of more than 1,000 sunspot groups, called active regions. The maps were constructed from solar sound-wave data from the National Science Foundation’s Global Oscillation Network Group.
Reinard and Henthorn found the same pattern in region after region: magnetic twisting that tightened to the breaking point, burst into a large flare, and vanished. They established that the pattern could be used as a reliable tool for predicting a solar flare.
“These recurring motions of the magnetic field, playing out unseen beneath the solar surface, are the clue we’ve needed to know that a large flare is coming—and when,” said Reinard.
Rudi Komm and Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory contributed to the research.
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Note to Editors: The paper has been accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters in February: “Evidence that temporal changes in solar subsurface helicity precede active region flaring,” by Alysha Reinard, Justin Henthorn, Rudi Komm, and Frank Hill.
Leif Svalgaard (17:51:08)
tallbloke (14:10:04) :
Bye Leif.
were it only true… 🙂
I had to step away before I said something intemperate. :o)
Informed speculation [or as Leif would have it, pseudo-science]:
There is an energy wave traveling around the sun created by the big players, primarily Jupiter and Saturn. It doesn’t show up much in oblateness studies because the high gravity on the sun keeps everything pulled pretty spherical, apart from the average oblateness due to rotation. This gravitational force transforms the wave into a longitudinally compressed wave which has sub eddys which stir up the matter between tachocline and solar surface, producing anomalies in the magnetic field which produces sunspots.
This low frequency, long lived wave is modulated by the shorter term stresses induced by the JEV cycle which beats with the long term wave to cause the main rise and fall of the ~11 year cycle and a ~105 year cycle. The ~172 yr interval where U and N conjoin, creates a period of time where the addition of all forces brings the centre of the sun very close to the centre of mass of the solar system. At these times, the angle of the Sun’s orbit about the centre of mass can change radically over a period of months, upsetting the latitudinal motion of the circulating pressure wave and causing a slowdown in sunspot production which can last for several solar cycles. (Maunder, Dalton, Now) This effect will not be regular each ~172 years because the relative positions of J and S, and the location of the peak compression areas in the circulating wave relative to the sudden inclination of the solar orbit will also modify the effect.
We should not expect therefore, that a nice easy correlation is going to be found between the JEV cycle and the amplitude of the sunspot cycles. But neither therefore, is this to be regarded as a reason for dismissing the correlation, which is clearly a good one, oscillating as it does in and out of phase, but never by a whole cycle. It just means we need to determine the additional modulating influences and model the Sun’s behaviour with these other factors included.
Clearly not an easy job, but if some additional human and computational resources were to be provided for this promising line of enquiry, it would get done more quickly and successfully. Once the model is working well, we will be in a better position to re-assess some bits of what we thought we knew about the interplanetary medium, and James F. Evans might be able to reduce the length of his posts, which would be a blessing to all. 😉
So come on Leif, start lobbying your institution on our behalf and join in yourself. Then we can all get called onto the stage together to receive the Nobel Prize, and you can stop calling us pseudo-scientists. 🙂
Paul Vaughan (23:18:54) :
I’ve had those graphs of Log2(R+1)’ on file for many months – there’s no deceitful scheming going on here.
Of course not. And 1 is sensible. Question: is it [Log2(R+1]’ or Log2[(R+1)’] or Log2(R’+1) ?
tallbloke (02:50:57) :
There is an energy wave traveling around the sun created by the big players, […] At these times, the angle of the Sun’s orbit about the centre of mass can change radically over a period of months, upsetting the latitudinal motion of the circulating pressure wave
‘Energy wave’? What is that? The Sun is in free fall within the solar system and feel no forces other that tidal ones and they are minuscule and don’t add up the way Paul assumes for the phase. The speculation fully qualifies as pseudo-science. The correlations are lousy and lack physical underpinning.
Clearly not an easy job, but if some additional human and computational resources were to be provided for this promising line of enquiry
Reminds me of the Monty Python skit about the Ministry of Silly Walks, with Michael Palin demonstrating his Silly Walk, and John Gliese commenting that ‘the walk is not particularly silly’ to which Palin retorts that “I’m sure that with government funding and backing my walk could be made very much more silly”.
tallbloke (02:50:57) :
For those unfamiliar with MoSW:
Just a brief remark regarding Earth and Venus: as many of you may be familiar with the fact that if one performs any of arithmetic calculations on periodic functions, you always end up with sums and differences (and their fractions) of frequencies/periods concerned.
Venus’s period of revolution is just over 0.6, Earth’s 1 & Jupiter’s 11.86 (all in years), you are bound to end up with lot of components around SS period which varies in the same band 10-13 years. This is nothing new, 160 years ago Wolf wrote to Carrington with calculations using inner planets masses and mean distances, which gave similar results.
Leif Svalgaard (04:10:49) :
The Sun is in free fall within the solar system and feel no forces
This is Newton’s assumption from a priori reasoning, like Einstein’s thought experiments with clocks (proved to be nonsense by Louis Essen), not the outcome of any practical empirical investigation. You know, the sort of thing employed by the scientific method?
The problem with Newton’s clockwork universe reasoning which you so unreflectingly parrot (Norwegian Blue, lovely bird!), is that the Sun is not a billiard ball of rigid matter which obeys his simple laws of motion, but has deep outer layers of magnetically active highly mobile plasma. As it moves in it’s highly eccentric planet determined ‘orbit’ (more a clover leaf shaped dance in fact), it swings through interplanetary space which contains magnetic fields. These will interact with the Sun’s own magnetic field and cause disturbances in the form of pressure waves.
Never mind, it was worth a try. I’ll leave you with your C17th Dead Parrot Newtonian thought experiment.
“This Newtonian Thought Experiment I bought from you is dead”
“No it’s not, it’s just resting”
It’s dead, kicked the bucket, defunct. It’s joined the choir invisible”
Obviously admirers of John Cleese, something in your dialog reminds me of JC with Marty Feldman
tallbloke (05:12:24) :
the Sun is not a billiard ball of rigid matter which obeys his simple laws of motion, but has deep outer layers of magnetically active highly mobile plasma. As it moves in it’s highly eccentric planet determined ‘orbit’ (more a clover leaf shaped dance in fact), it swings through interplanetary space which contains magnetic fields. These will interact with the Sun’s own magnetic field and cause disturbances in the form of pressure waves.
[sigh]. The interplanetary magnetic field is the Sun’s own magnetic field and is now much too weak to cause anything in the Sun. You should join forces with Evans and postulate some double layers pushed around by the planets or by intense magnetic fields at the center of the Galaxy. It is a hallmark of a pseudo-scientist to believe in unphysical speculation without taking the trouble maybe he can’t] to investigate the magnitudes of the forces involved. Once down that road, everything else unravels: relativity, astronomy, cosmology, evolution, everything becoming nonsense perpetuated by dishonest scientists engaged in a vast conspiracy: ScienceGate.
tallbloke (05:12:24) :
the Sun is not a billiard ball of rigid matter which obeys his simple laws of motion, but has deep outer layers of magnetically active highly mobile plasma. As it moves in it’s highly eccentric planet determined ‘orbit’ (more a clover leaf shaped dance in fact), it swings through interplanetary space which contains magnetic fields. These will interact with the Sun’s own magnetic field and cause disturbances in the form of pressure waves.
[sigh]. The interplanetary magnetic field is the Sun’s own magnetic field and is now much too weak to cause anything in the Sun. You should join forces with Evans and postulate some double layers pushed around by the planets or by intense magnetic fields at the center of the Galaxy. It is a hallmark of a pseudo-scientist to believe in unphysical speculation without taking the trouble maybe he can’t] to investigate the magnitudes of the forces involved. Once down that road, everything else unravels: relativity, astronomy, cosmology, evolution, everything becoming nonsense perpetuated by dishonest scientists engaged in a vast conspiracy: ScienceGate.
tallbloke (05:12:24) :
Leif Svalgaard (04:10:49) :
The Sun is in free fall within the solar system and feel no forces
This is Newton’s assumption from a priori reasoning, like Einstein’s thought experiments with clocks (proved to be nonsense by Louis Essen), not the outcome of any practical empirical investigation. You know, the sort of thing employed by the scientific method?
Leif Svalgaard (07:40:35) :
It is a hallmark of a pseudo-scientist to believe in unphysical speculation without taking the trouble to investigate the magnitudes of the forces involved
I knew we’d reach agreement in the end
tallbloke (08:05:54) :
“The Sun is in free fall within the solar system and feels no forces”
This is Newton’s assumption from a priori reasoning
Newton never thought of this. You really should study the modern experiments that prove Einstein correct [much to the chagrin of all the physicists trying to prove him wrong]. Here is a good place to start http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0506/0506168v1.pdf
The results of Gravity B also bears studying, as well as the ever increasing precision confirmation by the binary pulsar, etc etc etc.
I knew we’d reach agreement in the end
Good that you in the end recognize the errors of your ways. What took you so long?
tallbloke (08:05:54) : | Reply w/ Link
tallbloke (05:12:24) :
“Leif Svalgaard (04:10:49) :
The Sun is in free fall within the solar system and feel no forces”
This is Newton’s assumption from a priori reasoning, like Einstein’s thought experiments with clocks (proved to be nonsense by Louis Essen), not the outcome of any practical empirical investigation. You know, the sort of thing employed by the scientific method?
Whether you like it or not, the scientific method does not end with practical empirical investigation. Not in physics . It requires the full panoply of solving differential equations and applying boundary conditions, ever since Newton’s time.
It is tiresome that you keep coming up trying to “show up” Leif, thinking I guess that you are “showing up standard model physics”. Well, you are not. I do not want to apply the pseudo science label, but am tempted. Standard model physics will not be changed to a new paradigm except by a lot of elbow grease in solving differential equations of some kind or another applying boundary conditions and showing better fit to the empirical data than the previous paradigm as well as new predictions. Pontificating will not do it.
pseudo-science…. conspiracy… sciencegate…. Blimey!
In the context of solar flare prediction, I’m interested in NASA scientist Ching Cheh Hung’s success, and the consequences for what we know about the interplanetary medium. That in turn raises interesting questions about the well correlated (whatever you say) links between planetary motion, solar activity, and the potential physical mechanisms which link them.
Like Ching Cheh, Hung, I’m not making claims or saying this or that is definitely true or false (unlike some others around here), just calling for the scientific method to be applied, and proper empirical tests to be done now we have the technology to do it. Better than relying on thought experiments in my view. Meantime, we can discover what we can through looking at available data. It’s a work in progress.
I’ll leave the last word to Ching Cheh Hung.
“To summarize, it is noted that the forecast based on rules (A) and (B) worked very well, but the
forecast based on rule (C) worked only marginally well. It is also noted that the solar flares from this
sunspot group 960 (M8.9 and smaller) were much smaller than the flares from which rules (A), (B), and
(C) were established (X9.0 and larger). In this particular forecast, applying these three rules to flares
smaller than X9.0 produced acceptable results.
The trial forecast described here is a single data point that supports the possibility of forecasting the
solar flares based on the planet positions, but it is far from statistically significant. Using the future large
sunspot groups and the procedure described above to repeatedly conduct trial forecasts of solar flares is
needed to confirm, disprove, or modify the above three rules of solar flare forecasting.
http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/Citations.aspx?id=330
tallbloke (09:10:21) :
In the context of solar flare prediction, I’m interested in NASA scientist Ching Cheh Hung’s success
And I have shown you that his analysis is flawed. And even if he were correct, that would have no import for the interplanetary medium. It is your assertions about the latter that marks you.
The trial forecast described here is a single data point that supports the possibility of forecasting the
solar flares based on the planet positions, but it is far from statistically significant. Using the future large
sunspot groups and the procedure described above to repeatedly conduct trial forecasts of solar flares is
needed to confirm, disprove, or modify the above three rules of solar flare forecasting. From your quote, bold mine.
As far as empirical goes, professionals look at errors. Not statistically significant means errors larger than the measurement. Once again: the scientific method in physics in our times requires rigorous mathematical analysis of the physics behind any claim.
This is not science as physics knows it.
Leif Svalgaard (09:25:32) :
tallbloke (09:10:21) :
In the context of solar flare prediction, I’m interested in NASA scientist Ching Cheh Hung’s success
And I have shown you that his analysis is flawed.
No you didn’t. You attempted a hatchet job and failed.
anna v (09:39:48) :
Not statistically significant means errors larger than the measurement.
No it doesn’t. Not in this case anyway. It’s a pity you and others in the physics community didn’t get as far as the next sentence in NASA scientist Ching Cheh Hungs report after the one you bolded. Why do you think I chose to quote that part of the report?
Strangling a promising field of study at birth
This is not physics as science knows it.
tallbloke (10:34:09) :
“And I have shown you that his analysis is flawed.”
No you didn’t. You attempted a hatchet job and failed.
I showed that he omitted several events which is a no-no when attempting to do statistics [which on top of this isn’t significant as per his own admission] on a small number of cases. You language is not conducive to serious discussion.
Strangling a promising field of study at birth
If it is not significant then it is not promising.
Leif Svalgaard (10:45:30) :
tallbloke (10:34:09) :
“And I have shown you that his analysis is flawed.”
No you didn’t. You attempted a hatchet job and failed.
I showed that he omitted several events which is a no-no when attempting to do statistics
No you didn’t. You misread the title at the top of table III and convinced yourself he was “cooking the books” when he wasn’t.
tallbloke (10:34:09) :
Why do you think I chose to quote that part of the report?
Hung is welcome to do this and report back in the peer-reviewed literature [that you prefer]. Others have little incentive to do so given the non-significance of the ‘finding’. Soviet doctors years ago reported that inmates in lunatic asylums were more agitated following the passage over the Earth of the HCS. One might propose that Congress allocates billions to investigate this promising line of research. Perhaps the magnetic disturbances emanating from the electric activity in their brains interacts with the interplanetary magnetic field in turn interacting with the Sun’s magnetic field causing flares and climate change. As a result of this promising line of research special tin-hats could be constructed to prevent such calamities. A lot more research [by honest scientists, mark you] is clearly needed and this project should not strangled at birth.
tallbloke (10:56:19) :
No you didn’t. You misread the title at the top of table III and convinced yourself he was “cooking the books” when he wasn’t.
I did not misread anything. The flares he omitted were part of the same groups of flares he included. Go check yourself.
Leif Svalgaard (03:39:20) “Question: is it [Log2(R+1]‘ or Log2[(R+1)’] or Log2(R’+1) ?”
[Log_2(R+1)]’ where _ indicates base and ‘ indicates differencing.
I’m quite sure you know some of the possibilities listed are ruled out (e.g. log of negatives, which certainly arise when differencing series), but I’ll throw the outside brackets on for the benefit of the scores who are eager to misunderstand (or simply lacking education).
–
vukcevic (04:56:49) “[…] nothing new, 160 years ago Wolf wrote to Carrington with calculations using inner planets masses and mean distances, which gave similar results.”
Certainly nothing new.
I like to do my own calculations to assess the claims of others.
The thing I found most interesting about the new indices was that the resulting graphs reminded me of the motion of my sea-kayak when paddling in wind conditions that pile up groups of waves that are sharply troughed & crested in the middle of long sets and flatter with lower-amplitude interference in between sets.
The effect on entrainment of the kayak is remarkable. In the middle of a set, I match frequency with little effort (aside from a bit of spatial steering). Then I am thrown from the set into the node where whether-or-not I phase-drift amongst the lower-amplitude waves depends on what drive-power I supply myself.
The analogy is certainly not accurate, but the point I’ve been trying to make is that it is patterns of phase-residuals that interest me …whether physical or not – it doesn’t have to be physical to be of interest computationally. I would argue that we need all university science grads (at least) equipped with solid understanding of phase-aware methods, which are not covered at all in the majority of current science programs.
Furthermore, canned routines in SPSS, SAS, & SPlus are insufficient — they don’t do enough with wavelets, let alone with complex wavelets, complex cross-wavelets & harmonic complex cross-wavelets.
The sunspot series & planetary series make nice subjects for learning what results look like for relatively ‘well-behaved’ curves. They provide a convenient testing opportunity for homemade software. Since a lot of people I deal with have no intuition whatsoever about what wavelet plots are showing, I am having to go extra miles with supplementary repeat-harmonic-smoothing visualization-aids to help folks see approximately (using their own computations, since most can handle boxcar-smoothing at a specified bandwidth) what cross-wavelet results show using the RAW series.
How do you get a research grant to study LOD/GLAAM/QBO/SOI/NAM/SAM/etc. using cross-wavelet methods when the folks controlling the money won’t make the slightest effort to understand what cross-wavelets do? One thing you can do is patiently teach them using ‘interesting’ examples.
tallbloke (10:56:19) :
he was “cooking the books
In case you do not want to go have a look, I’ll show here the X-ray emission for Nov. 2-4, 2003:
http://hirweb.nict.go.jp/dimages/gxr1day/20031102.gif
http://hirweb.nict.go.jp/dimages/gxr1day/20031103.gif
http://hirweb.nict.go.jp/dimages/gxr1day/20031104.gif
and Hung’s table:
14S 56W X8.3 2003 Nov. 02 16:41:00 …
19S 83W X28.0 2003 Nov. 04 19:08:00 …
as you can see, he omits the two X-flares on November 3rd. The first one within the group near 19S, and the second one in a Northern one [which you may argue was not influenced by the planets, although the Sun would have to be clairvoyant to know that there would be a major flare the next day]
And for the April 2001 event:
21S 83E X1.2 2001 Apr. 03 2:53:00 3
21S 31E X5.6 2001 Apr. 06 18:59:00 3
21S 4W M7.9 2001 Apr. 09 15:06:00 3[…]
20S 85W X14.4 2001 Apr. 15 12:48:00
He omits the M9 flare on Apr. 5
http://hirweb.nict.go.jp/dimages/gxr1day/20010405.gif
Which was also part of the same group, and larger than the Apr. 9th flare. He also omits the second M6 flare on Apr. 5, even though it was greater than most flares in his 1978 events.
‘Cooking the books’, indeed.
Leif Svalgaard (11:05:30) :
I did not misread anything. The flares he omitted were part of the same groups of flares he included. Go check yourself.
Leif Svalgaard (13:32:38) :
tallbloke (13:00:21) :
Did you read the title of table III?
So what? the flares he omit still belong to the same group he selects. Yet another example of how you’ll believe anything as long as it fits, and ignore the rest.
TABLE III.—PLANET AND SOLAR FLARE POSITIONS FOR MAJOR FLARE EVENTS WHERE THE LARGEST FINAL FLARE WAS APPROXIMATELY 30° FROM NEAREST HIGH-TIDE POSITION
Leif Svalgaard (12:12:18) :
Hung’s analysis seems less that kosher. For example, for the Nov 4th 2003 event he omits the X-flare on Oct. 22,
NOAA AR 10486 was located at S16 E08 and passed over the solar disk from 23 October to 4 November 2003
http://www.ias.ac.in/jaa/junsep2006/JAA22.pdf
Just how big was the x flare on the 22nd?
Paul Vaughan (11:40:55) :
I’m quite sure you know some of the possibilities listed are ruled out
You are missing the point: the day only has so many hours and you help the reader by being explicit, rather than have to figure it out. Most people will only cast a glance.
when the folks controlling the money won’t make the slightest effort to understand what cross-wavelets do? One thing you can do is patiently teach them using ‘interesting’ examples.
No, those folks are ‘busy’ [and some are even smart] and not prone to spend time being educated. You get them to support you by showing them an example [and only one] of a case where your analysis leads to an interesting and solid RESULT that is useful. Not by saying “I make no claim about the physics”. Find an example where you CAN make a claim that your methods leads to UNDERSTANDING.