Guest post by David Archibald
The prognostications based on spotless days are now a distant memory. From here, given that the green corona brightness indicates that solar maximum will in 2015, the big unknown is what the maximum amplitude will be. We are now eighteen months into a six year rise to solar maximum. What is interesting is that in the last few days, the F10.7 flux has fallen to values last seen in late 2009:
The red line is a possible uptrend based on the data to date. That uptrend would result in a maximum F10.7 amplitude in 2015 of about 105. Using the relationship between F10.7 flux and sunspot number, that in turn means a maximum amplitude in terms of sunspot number of 50 – a Dalton Minimum-like result. Dr Svalgaard has kindly provided a graphic of the relationship between sunspot number and F10.7 flux:
Dr Svalgaard has also done the work to show that Solar Cycle 24 is looking less and less like Solar Cycle 19:
The red line is the Solar Cycle 18 to 19 minimum, and the blue is the Solar Cycle 23 to 24 minimum. Dr Svalgaard updates this graphic daily at: http://www.leif.org/research/F107%20at%20Minima%201954%20and%202008.png
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I just read a commenter in another thread who said the Arctic “enjoyed…..warm conditions” this past winter. We should have all moved there to enjoy that sub zero warmth.
I would imagine the same commenter will say the sun is enjoying cool conditions now. I’ll take a sweater on my next trip there.
What my F10.7/SSN graph shows is that the SSN may not be a good proxy any longer. F10.7 is better, and the prediction is for F10.7max = 120. The SSNmax can be anywhere between 0 and 72. The SSN may not be meaningful if Livingston and Penn are correct. So correlations involving the SSN may be void.
For all the new commenters here there is a hypothesis from Henrik Svenmark that the sun does indeed affect climate on earth. For those who haven’t seen it you can seen it in a documentary in YouTube in 5 parts
part 1
This animation is a simplified explanation of how it is thought cosmic rays effect cloud formation on earth. A more active sun blocks more cosmic rays from entering the earth. And a less active, “lazy”, sun allows more in.
Congress needs to include sunspot legislation as part of their larger climate/energy bill. They should set an acceptable range for sunspots and fine the Sun if it fails to comply.
Typo? “solar maximum will in 2015”? is there a missing verb? Should that be “solar maximum will ??? in 2015”? Maybe “???” should be “occur”?
The Oulu neutron counter and the five counters shown on Dr. Svalgaard’s site have flat lined or shown a slight increase over the last couple weeks.
The Ap geomagnetic index showed a large jump in April. Here is the last twelve months:
4 4 4 5 4 3 3 2 3 5 4 10
It will be interesting to see what happens with May’s index, and what happens with the neutron counters by June’s update of the Ap index.
The possible uptrend line looks to be high, based on the recent downturn. I know it’s early, but the next few months may prove interesting…
What strikes me is that the uptrend, even if it holds, could result in a Dalton-like minimum? IMHO, that’s something to be worried about, if indeed there is a climate effect as some predict for such a minima.
Layman’s sunspot count: SC 24 = SC 5
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/50
OT but worth to share:
Consider the idea that since the Carbon Tax exchange (scam) is a given, why not band together and deliver a “Weather Options” exchange.
Science could conquer the “Street” mentality and defuse the greed on “real” terms or will it just give “Warmers” a chance to lose real money betting on weather reports?
Based on the “Warmer” comments, they look like a reasonable “chump” to leverage the taxation scheme?
R. de Haan says:
May 15, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Layman’s sunspot count: SC 24 = SC 5
The problem with that idea is that we really don’t know [to within a factor of two] what SC5 was…So cannot compare.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 15, 2010 at 5:13 pm
What my F10.7/SSN graph shows is that the SSN may not be a good proxy any longer. F10.7 is better, and the prediction is for F10.7max = 120. The SSNmax can be anywhere between 0 and 72. The SSN may not be meaningful if Livingston and Penn are correct. So correlations involving the SSN may be void>>
Leif, Leif, Leif… if the proxy is diverging from the data then the accepted scientific practice in a number of recently published, peer reviewed papers, it to replace the part that diverges with something else and splice them together. Aren’t you keeping up with the times?
Seriously, I would be curious as to when this divergence between SSN and 10.7 started to become significant in your opinion?
What my F10.7/SSN graph shows is that the SSN may not be a good proxy any longer. F10.7 is better, and the prediction is for F10.7max = 120. The SSNmax can be anywhere between 0 and 72. The SSN may not be meaningful if Livingston and Penn are correct. So correlations involving the SSN may be void.
Any longer, that is an incredible statement Leif. I understand the Livingston and Penn connection but 10.7 while it is one proxy, does not tell a lot about the actual effect of the solar cycle on the Earth’s atmosphere. Have you seen the USAF numbers lately on the exosphere thickness? I haven’t but the relationship between the instantaneous sunspot number and SSN vs 10.7 should be applied to the temperature profile in the outer reaches of the atmosphere.
The question is: Is atmospheric expansion following SSN/Sunspots or the 10.7. If it is the former, then the relationship between sunspots and climate may be strengthened. If the atmospheric expansion is following the 10.7 number then it may be a definitive falsification of the Maunder minimum effect on climate.
From what I know, I would bet on the former. I don’t have the latest data from the USAF on the lower Exosphere, do you?
Well said Dennis
A
A rather stark comparison is the latest SOHO EIT’s in RGB color vs the same date in 1998 (1.6 yrs into SC23):
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin9.htm – first 2 images
It’s not just the current face of the sun, as STEREO EUVI Ahead and Behind faded off concurrent with SOHO EIT (next 2 images). STEREO is 3 days lag from SOHO in terms of downloading the 171 and 285 channels, so if you want to see how the entire Sun faded off as a unit, compare SOHO latest EIT 195 with latest STEREO EUVI 195’s (Ahead & Behind).
Why the Sun did this is something worth knowing.
What is going on up there?
Leif: If you draw a curve fitting to the bottom of the 10.7 cm flux instead of a single sweep, you’ll have a much better representation. It should show 2 successive waves of increasing amplitude, the latest one which is rolling down as we speak.
Is the Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Panel going to meet sometime this year to vote on what and when the max will be?
“Solar cycle 24 is looking less and less like solar cycle 19”
Can somebody explain to me the value or significance in comparing solar cycles?
Why would we expect #24 to look like #19 or be concerned about it?
davidmhoffer says:
May 15, 2010 at 6:15 pm
“Seriously, I would be curious as to when this divergence between SSN and 10.7 started to become significant in your opinion?”
I was thinking of asking the same question, in addition to when Leif first decided that SC5 count may be off by a factor of 2 and why.
Now, I might be just a plain ole dumb nuke, but it seems to me that if we wanted to count sunspots (instead of craters, canals, dust storms and black spots on Mars) we should turn the telescope back towards the sun…..
The WUWT daily solar image is, after all, labeled a Martian view …. 8<)
Does the Svalgaard effect apply to guest posts?
Seriously, solar activity remains low. To test if there is a strong linkage between cycles and activity with climate, is Dennis Wingo’s statement at 6:16 going to be evaluated by the scientific community over the coming years??
Both the Maunder and the Dalton were observed under Galileo’s system of counting Groups of Sunspots.
Pulkovo Observatory has done some work on conversion of Sunspot Drawings to the Greenwich System of Sunspot Area measurement, so you might ask Habibullo Abdussamtov for details. He is one of the speakers at the conference you are going to.
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/SC24/PulkovoWhSp.PNG
Well I would think that the flux would always be a better indicator or should I say measurement. But shouldn’t the SSN and flux eventually average out. Also I read something about the conveyor belt indicating lower activity which confuses me somewhat because s change in magnetic fields would make it extremely hard to pedict cycle activity.
davidmhoffer says:
May 15, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Seriously, I would be curious as to when this divergence between SSN and 10.7 started to become significant in your opinion?
Sometime between 1990 and 1996. Hard the tell more precisely.
Dennis Wingo says:
May 15, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Any longer, that is an incredible statement Leif.
Yes, indeed. And that is what makes it so exciting. In
http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Microwaves-at-23-24-Minimum.pdf you’ll see more of why we think it is so. BTW, two of the authors are World authorities on F10.7 [responsible for the Japanese and Canadian data, respectively. One author [HH] is a renowned solar expert [reported together with Willson the solar cycle variation of TSI], and LS has some knowledge too.
The question is: Is atmospheric expansion following SSN/Sunspots or the 10.7.
It is well-known that F10.7 [and also Ap] is the main input to the USAF operational models. E.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/ADA277355 and the newer
http://www.leif.org/EOS/JB2006_AIAA_2006-6167.pdf
There is a movement to also use more direct measurements of the EUV flux, e.g. MgII-index. But MgII is VERY well represented by F10.7, see e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/MgII%20Calibration.pdf A problem is that it is hard to get a good calibration of MgII [as my link shows], while F10.7 has a very stable calibration.
rbateman says:
May 15, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Leif: If you draw a curve fitting to the bottom of the 10.7 cm flux instead of a single sweep, you’ll have a much better representation.
I’m too lazy. Just let the computer do the fitting and drawing. And nobody should attached much significance to the curve anyway.
noaaprogrammer says:
May 15, 2010 at 6:22 pm
Is the Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Panel going to meet sometime this year to vote on what and when the max will be?
No. The science is settled…:-)
Glenn says:
May 15, 2010 at 6:32 pm
I was thinking of asking the same question, in addition to when Leif first decided that SC5 count may be off by a factor of 2 and why.
I didn’t ‘decide’ anything. This is well-known. Here are the Group SN and the Zurich SN for cycle 5:
1798 4.7 4.1
1799 5.6 6.8
1800 11 14.5
1801 51.1 34
1802 35.3 45
1803 18.5 43.1
1804 21.6 47.5
1805 25.6 42.2
1806 13.3 28.1
1807 5 10.1
1808 3.5 8.1
1809 1.2 2.5
1810 0 0
Ani says:
May 15, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Well I would think that the flux would always be a better indicator or should I say measurement.
It is, as it is a direct and absolute measurement [in Watt/square meter per Hz]
But shouldn’t the SSN and flux eventually average out.
Don’t know what you mean. And how long is ‘eventually’?
I’d like to recall this thread from WUWT in March, 2008.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/29/solar-cycle-23-forecasts-the-movie/
Two years ago the talk was about the moving official predictions for the SC24 upswing. It still hasn’t happened.
Can someone please post a graphic of this solar cycle overlaid with some of the more recent Mauder and Dalton cycles?
TIA