Guest post by David Archibald
Solar Cycle 24 is now over a year old, so it is appropriate to see how it is ramping up.
Solar Cycle 24 was a late starter, about three and a half years later than the average of the strong cycles in the late 20th century and almost three year later than the weak cycles of the late 19th century. It was almost as late as Solar Cycle 5, the first half of the Dalton Minimum. The last few months have seen it ramp up relatively rapidly.
[Note: Solar Cycle 22 and 23 are overlaid on solar cycle 3 and 4 above to show similarity]
Plotting up the last three solar cycles relative to the Dalton Minimum, another solar minimum is not precluded by the data to date.
With Solar Cycle 23 ending up at twelve and a half years long, applying Friis-Christenson and Lassen theory to the temperature record of Hanover, New Hampshire results in a two degree centigrade decline in the annual average temperature at this location over the expected twelve years of Solar Cycle 24, from December 2009 to late 2021. Given some record low monthly averages in the northeast US in the recent summer, and the current cold winter, this cooling is well under way.
Dr Archibald, ultimately, what does it really mean to the layman? I still predict the SH winter will be “harsher” than last year, and will continue for some years.
Australia seems to be stuffed with people who cannot think! I really wish a shopping trolley would take over, at least it would have better concept of what is real and what hype.
As I’ve said before, as long as cricket, tennis, footy etc etc etc is on Aussie TV, most Aussies can’t be arsed!
hunter (01:47:47) :
And this as well. http://www.omatumr.com/abbre-resume.html
Cut ‘n’ paste his name, is all I did!
John F. Hultquist (23:27:21) :
We do know that long solar minimums and very low solar activity times correspond to cooler times in human history. The problem is that the exact process by which this takes place has a lot of uncertainty. L&P is a complication that suggests this Minimum lies between a Dalton and a Maunder. L&P started before SC 24 came along, by quite a few years.
If the Climate Record weren’t so messed up, we’d know for certain when the cooling started…i.e. – coinciding with L&P??
No, there are no hard and fast rules for cylce ramp up/ramp down. 4.3/6.7 is not etched in stone.
Baranyi/Ludmany wrote a 1998 paper on the 22 year Solar modulation of Earth’s northern hemisphere temperatures. It’s not confined to the NE.
The graph of SC24 is going to be a lot sharper than SC5. We can detect much fainter sunspots than 210 years ago. Back then, we didn’t count sunspots, we counted groups.
No, I do not see this subject as being in the same pot as AGW. Nothing I know of is that bad, or seeks to install itself as the whipmaster of the Earth though deception and trickery.
I’ve always been aware of and supportive of the idea that solar activity levels are linked to tropospheric temperature changes and David does excellent work on the topic.
However we have to take note of the facts that Leif gives us and on the basis of those facts it is certainly true that the variation of solar output between active and inactive phases is very tiny and on the face of it insufficient to provide the climate variability observed.
There are a number of potential amplification possibilities however including the Svensmark cosmic ray hypothesis, my suggestion as regards the effect of internal ocean circulations changing the rate at which energy is released to the air above and a number of proponents of amplification caused by chemical and physical processes in the upper air affecting albedo through cloudiness changes often involving changes within the ozone layer.
Generally I favour oceanic amplification rather than amplification arising in the atmosphere because of the enormous thermal inertia of the oceans and the fact that generally tropospheric air temperatures are seen to react very quickly to sea surface changes.
There have been attempts to suggest that the sea surface changes themselves are a result of changes in the air above which then feed back to the troposphere via the ocean surfaces but as yet I have not seen a convincing correlation to support that on longer multidecadal, century or millennium time scales but tallbloke has had a stab at that which I intend to look into more closely when time allows.
So the question arises as to whether the phasing of high solar activity with warmer tropospheric temperatures is simply a coincidence as I think Leif would contend whilst the true climate driver is in fact the oceans which currently vary the rate of release of energy approximately in phase with solar activity levels e.g. currently the ocean surfaces tend to be positive (warming) at the same time as the sun is more active and that tends to give the possibly false impression of a causative correlation between solar activity levels and tropospheric temperatures.
Whilst I admit that the point is unresolved I have described elsewhere the possible implications of the current timing of solar/oceanic/ tropospheric temperature phases being merely a temporary feature.
It turns out that if the phasing of solar and oceanic cycles can change over time and if higher solar activity actually facilitates the rate of energy loss to space from an expanded atmosphere (by more than the increase in raw solar power) then there is a plausible explanation for the relatively stable climates of interglacials and the wildly swinging climates observed during ice ages.
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4433#comments_top
Hey Oliver
I have enjoyed & appreciated your posts.
I know I’m lazy – what does the PI stand for?
I built a mock up of the Apollo Command Module out of a new washing machine carton when I was a kid – I was hooked – still am.
Thanks Veronica, I also found his @name links http://www.omatumr.com
But Oliver don’t keep changing your handle – I liked the Emeritus Professor AND Apollo PI one.
Great to see this post about sun spots – I was wondering what was happening.
Thanks Anthony and Mods … again.
Quote: hunter (01:47:47) :
“I am curious about the claim of Oliver K. Manuel to have been “Former NASA PI for Apollo”. This is a rather enormous claim. If it were true, you’d think there would be some record of this on NASA’s website. But a search for “Oliver Manuel” reveals only one result, which is about a poster presented at a meeting. “Oliver K. Manuel” gives no hits.”
As I recall, NASA grants are acknowledged in these two 1972 papers:
1. “Xenon in carbonaceous chondrites”,
Nature 240, 99-101 (1972);
CODEN: NPSCA6; ISSN: 0300-8746
http://www.omatumr.com/archive/XenonInCarbonaceousChondrites.pdf
2. “The role of isotopic mass fractionation in the production of
noble gas anomalies in lunar fines from the Apollo 15 mission”,
Proceedings of Third Lunar Science Conf, vol. 2, 1927-1945 (1972).
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1972Data1.htm
Both papers report evidence of extreme mass fractionation of xenon isotopes.
Mass fractionation explains why the surface of the Sun is 91% H (the lightest of all elements) and 9% He (the next lightest element).
The first paper also contained wevidence that meteorites formed directly from supernova debris, before isotopes made in different stellar regions were mixed.
Both papers were unpopular at NASA and my grant was not renewed.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Why was a 16 month spacing selected for the first plot? A 12 or 24 month gives years, but 16 is strange.
Thank you Vukcevic, I was going to ask that question, as to where we stand with that cycle.
wayne (03:06:34) :
Anthony and Dr. Archibald:
OTOH, the some of the best replication work is that done by people unfamiliar with the original as they can’t be directly tainted by the original.
I believe PI would be Principle Investigator.
“Given some record low monthly averages in the northeast US in the recent summer, and the current cold winter, this cooling is well under way.”
On a global scale, there is no cooling, at least not detectable in the UAH data. On the contrary, 2010 is so far the warmest year ever in the satellite record.
Pat Davis..theres a few of us Aussies awake and taking notice mate:-)
and I post WUWT to multiple people here.
and
some of them even read them:-)
This has me planning to winterise my home and surrounds better for the coming years, if its a soggy as I think it will be its time well spent, if it’s not no harms done, and it will help in summer too:-)
win , win! 🙂
“almost three year later ”
Please correct for grammar.
Haven’t been here in a while…
From what I can recall the Friis-Christensen and Lassen paper has been criticized and apparently the correlation no longer exists…
I believe that the only fair comparison that can be made to the Dalton Minimum is with the Layman’s sunspot count.
Currently it is matching the activity of the Dalton.
Any updates on the L&P graphic? I heard L&P were to take some telescope time on the 24th of January 2010…
Some reckon that maximum of SC 24 is currently occurring, one of the reasons being that a couple of regions have made it twice across the face of the visible disc, a phenomenon which is generally associated with maximum.
http://www.solarcycle24.com/stereobehind.htm is currently showing a region that could make a third transition as sunspot 9393 did (which even had similar structure to sunspot 1035).
Could this mean that maximum is near?
Or do regions normally make two transitions in the 4 years pre-max?
No doubt SC 24 will be very interesting.
Max of 50 – 70 is quite probable.
Layne Blanchard (22:59:57) :
“You have to wonder if that drop will be expressed in the same manner as we saw this last winter, with a negative AO, and a blast thru the center and eastern seaboard of the continent. I’m hoping so, because my little northwest corner stayed warm… :-)”
GRRrrr, and I sit here in the sunny southeast with 4″ of “global warming” still melting. So much for starting to plant new pastures this week.
A different post here at WUWT devolved into a discussion of corn/biofuel. The USDA got rid of grain stockpiling thanks to the 1996 Freedom to farm Act. In 2008 the USDA reported “the cupboard is bare” Now, thanks to new government regs, one third of corn production in the US is for biofuels.
http://www.europeaninstitute.org/May-2008/biofuels-once-seen-as-a-climate-panacea-now-causing-food-headaches-and-transatlantic-second-thoughts.html
The USA grows about 25% of the world’s food and although we had a bumper corn crop we could not get it out of the fields and the quality (fungus) was lower than usual.
Weather changes do not effect just the length of the growing season but also the health of the crop. Cool wet springs and falls are not good for growing crops and that is what we saw.
Table 1. Unharvested Corn Production Estimates in the United States – 2010
http://www.smallgrains.org/article.aspx?id=8778
“….Several different types of ear rot problems are showing up in some of Ohio’s corn fields this year,…. http://corn.osu.edu/index.php?setissueID=326
“Late season corn diseases.
Eyespot has been the most commonly observed leaf disease on corn this season. It is more pronounced on some hybrids and more severe in corn on corn fields. Common corn rust is also becoming more visible, particularly on field edges….. Stalk rots from several species of fungi are now the primary concern from a management standpoint. Harvest poor standing fields early when possible….” http://swroc.cfans.umn.edu/SWMNPEST/09news/issue7/issue7.htm
@ur momisugly John F. Hultquist (23:27:21) :
“We fault proponents of AGW for their faith in CO2 as the cause of the warming (or climate change) when there is no sufficient mechanism.
How then can we claim catastrophic cooling based on these numbers from the Sun? What is the sufficient mechanism in this case?”
John, google Svensmark. A hypothetical — some would say proven — cause is well understood.
Konrad (00:54:45) :
“…. All three main global temperature records have been shown to be compromised. In addition there have been too many convenient adjustments to TSI and other solar activity indicators recently. Jack Eddy said “Many plugs”. The CLOUD experiment is one avenue of inquiry but I can think of a few others.”
Can you elaborate or provide links on the “convenient adjustments to TSI and other solar activity indicators” I did not catch that part of the data manipulation.
Thanks in advance
Ray (22:41:28) :
http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn.png
I’m not sure how often this is updated…Maybe Leif could add a date on the graph.
Stephen Wilde, I am always an avid reader of your posts. Your pensive logic and reasoning are superb.
I have my doubts about solar cylce 24’s shape. Since we have improved immeasurably in our ability to spot blemishes on the Sun’s face, through variuos filters and magnifications unavailable even 50 years ago, I believe we are guilty of overcounting it’s spots and we will continue to do so. We all kniow that sun specks were counted, when the face was (essentially) blank that would not have been visible years ago. I believe even though the conventions are unchanged the technology is giving rise to higher counts.
Does any serious work go into benchmarking or are we preserving the rules, but using new tools to count?
Oliver K. Manuel (04:25:32) :
Quote: hunter (01:47:47) :
“I am curious about the claim…”
_________________
Hunter: Next time we play baseball (or anything else) I’ve got dibs on him for my team.
Stephan (22:39:23) :
I doubt if Leif Svalgaard would agree with the statement “Given some record low monthly averages in the northeast US in the recent summer, and the current cold winter, this cooling is well under way.”
Yeah, it is plain silly to derive global cooling from Hanover, NH temps.
Gary Palmgren (03:15:09) :
Ap geomagnetic index is out for January. It is 2, same as December.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/weekly/RecentIndices.txt This is still rock bottom.
The SWPC Ap values are not correct. Ap for January was 3.1. Still low, though.
Nick (23:42:22) :
There is not enough data presented here to make any conclusions.
This has never stopped Archibald…or many others…
Remarkable and astounding the graph which compares solar cycle 04 with solar cycle 23. Congratulations and thanks for the update!
ohn F. Hultquist (23:16:37) :
The universe has been around for 5 billion years >> Stephan
Try again
If electric, it has been ALWAYS here.
Leif Svalgaard (07:16:52) :
Gary Palmgren (03:15:09) :
Ap geomagnetic index is out for January. It is 2, same as December.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/weekly/RecentIndices.txt This is still rock bottom.
The SWPC Ap values are not correct. Ap for January was 3.1. Still low, though.
Things are changing fast 🙂
The official Ap for January was just updated. The mean now stands at 3.03. You can get the latest here:
http://www-app3.gfz-potsdam.de/kp_index/kptab.html
http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/gifs/apindex.html