Sol and NOAA predictions have a gap.
Here are some other graphs. The Ap magnetic index is up at least, but radio flux lags just like the spot count.
Source: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/
Since NOAA uses this on every press release, I suppose I should put it here.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the oceans to surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.
h/t to WUWT reader Stephan who says in comments:
OT but D Archibald right on track for SSN 40. The rest as usual way off.
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Leif Svalgaard says: July 17, 2010 at 10:37 pm Just The Facts says:
“Fact, as far as I know [there is always that implicit qualification].”
I like the qualification, had Hathaway qualified his predictions, particularly by pointing out his assumptions, discussing countervailing opinions and highlighting the range of credible predictions, he would not find himself in his current unenviable position. Recanting predictions that were stated with confidence and certainty is not good for one’s credibility.
Just The Facts says:
July 17, 2010 at 11:56 pm
had Hathaway qualified his predictions, particularly by pointing out his assumptions, discussing countervailing opinions and highlighting the range of credible predictions, he would not find himself in his current unenviable position. Recanting predictions that were stated with confidence and certainty is not good for one’s credibility.
I’ll have to disagree. Hathaway had made everything clear. The method was well-known. Where he went wrong was in identifying which peak would be the predictor. This was clear to all of us [for some a bit belated]. His credibility has not suffered [IMHO]. Now, NASA went beyond Hathaway and hyped the high as a breakthrough, and deservedly suffered loss of credibility.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 17, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Geoff Sharp says:
July 17, 2010 at 10:39 pm
It’s early days but the southern hemisphere is showing a reluctance for pole reversal according to the WSO. Are you ruling out the possibility of one or both failing to reverse polarity during SC24 and if there is a failure, how will this affect your views on the Babcock-Leighton theory?
—————————————————–
The polar reversal is a direct consequence of B-L. In fact was what got Babcock onto the idea in the first place. What happens is that the follower spot polarity moves to the poles and first ‘eats’ the existing field there, then adds its own reversed flux. If there are not enough spots [more precisely: no active regions] in a given hemisphere there will be no polar field reversal in that hemisphere, but there could be one in the other hemisphere, provided there are enough active regions. Then the sun could end up with the poles having the same polarity [this, BTW, has happened for a few years at some of the recent maxima].
So it can happen..but there are consequences to the theory.
If the poles do not reverse, their flux slowly decays and the cycle basically dies [probably not to be resumed]. This would also mean that solar cycle modulation of cosmic rays would cease.
That is an assumption based on the unproven theory? One hemisphere is still functioning perhaps. Isotope records for grand minima are low, as would be expected.
Since we know, that the modulation was as vigorous during Grand Minima as now, the cycle didn’t die and the poles must have reversed.
What is important, modulation or intensity? I am not convinced by your references in this area.
That leaves the question why there were no spots to be seen. The simplest explanation for this would be L&P. Granted that we still need an explanation for L&P, I consider that a separate problem, possibly linked to changes in temperature profile. This is still to be worked out.
It may be too simple, and without any basis and also predicated on weak data. I am still surprised you are backing this one.
Since most of the activity during SC24 has been in the north, it is no wonder that the south polar fields have not decreased as much as the the north [if at all]. The essential point is that activity and polar fields are linked in the B-L paradigm, which is why we think we can use the polar fields as a predictor of activity.
SC24 will be an important test of all this.
Or could the cart be following the horse ?…. all will be revealed soon, but I noticed you did not rule out the possible pole reversal violation.
As L&P method goes on to 2015 that can not measure anything since sunspots magnetic intensity drops below 1500 Gauss, then what? Do nothing.
Sunspots are NOT the only visible phenomenon on the Sun.
I refer you to this image: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html
What else do you see?
Geoff Sharp says:
July 18, 2010 at 1:15 am
So it can happen..but there are consequences to the theory.
What consequences?
“This would also mean that solar cycle modulation of cosmic rays would cease.”
That is an assumption based on the unproven theory? One hemisphere is still functioning perhaps. Isotope records for grand minima are low, as would be expected.
The solar cycle modulation is well-understood.
What is important, modulation or intensity? I am not convinced by your references in this area.
Modulation is important. Intensity is contaminated by climate effects influencing the deposition.
It may be too simple, and without any basis and also predicated on weak data. I am still surprised you are backing this one.
L&P is backed by the changing F10.7-SSN relationship. And a simple explanation is usually preferred.
Or could the cart be following the horse ?…. all will be revealed soon, but I noticed you did not rule out the possible pole reversal violation.
I rule it out because it is not observed. I explored the consequences of no reversals and showed that they would lead to effects that we do not see.
rbateman says:
July 18, 2010 at 7:31 am
As L&P method goes on to 2015 that can not measure anything since sunspots magnetic intensity drops below 1500 Gauss, then what? Do nothing.
Sunspots are NOT the only visible phenomenon on the Sun.
I refer you to this image: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html
What else do you see?
==================================================
I totally agree that the sunspots are not the only parameter to study the activity of the sun.
But what we need is digitized quantitative description of this activity.
Leif Svalgaard says: July 18, 2010 at 12:07 am
“I’ll have to disagree. Hathaway had made everything clear. The method was well-known. Where he went wrong was in identifying which peak would be the predictor. This was clear to all of us [for some a bit belated]. His credibility has not suffered [IMHO]. Now, NASA went beyond Hathaway and hyped the high as a breakthrough, and deservedly suffered loss of credibility.”
I think that this may be the perception gap between what someone in the field sees versus what the rest of us saw. For example, in the July 11, 2008 NASA press release titled “What’s Wrong with the Sun?”;
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/11jul_solarcycleupdate/
the press release begins with;
“Stop the presses! The sun is behaving normally.
So says NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. “There have been some reports lately that Solar Minimum is lasting longer than it should. That’s not true. The ongoing lull in sunspot number is well within historic norms for the solar cycle.” ”
Now one could argue that it was NASA press release author, Dr. Tony Phillips, who is responsible for writing the misleading and unscientific statement, “Stop the presses! The sun is behaving normally.” but David Hathway offered the supporting quote and allowed for this misleading statement to be attributed to him.
In terms of credibility, in his NPR interview;
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128268488
David states that;”The ham radio operators like a big cycle. In fact, they’re really upset with me that – well, because I went out on a limb back in 2006 using a solar cycle prediction technique that relied on us being near sunspot cycle minimum.” And I thought, well, the last few cycles were 10-year cycles. Chances are the next one will be a 10-year cycle. So I went out on a limb and made a prediction in 2006 that I have long since regretted, but it was a prediction there was going to be a big cycle coming up. I’ve now, at every opportunity, recant that prediction, but the ham radio operators, they’re saying you promised us.”
In addition, David notes that, “I actually had a guy who got upset when I didn’t put out my sunspot number stuff on a daily basis, because he was using it to predict the stock market. And he kept coming to me for couple years, and I haven’t heard from him in a long time. So I don’t think it worked.”… “But like I said, he stopped calling me, so I’m assuming that he realized this didn’t work. I lost a bunch of money on this guy.”
The second quote is more opaque, but both quotes seem to be indicative of a loss of credibility. In the July 11, 2008 press release, as well as many of the others I highlighted above;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/16/noaa-behind-the-curve/#comment-432000
David Hathaway failed to qualify his predictions, particularly by pointing out his assumptions, discussing countervailing opinions and highlighting the range of credible predictions. He might have done this with his peers, but he didn’t do so in his primary communication conduit to the rest of us, i.e. NASA press releases.
Peter Pan says:
July 18, 2010 at 8:02 am
….
> I totally agree that the sunspots are not the only parameter to study the activity of the sun.
Note that we can also visualize the magnetic fields on the sun, and those will remain after sun spots fade from view. See http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_mag/1024/latest.html
> But what we need is digitized quantitative description of this activity.
That’s one reason Leif has been encouraging using the 10.7 cm flux data instead of (well, in addition to) counting spots. We don’t have centuries worth of data, of course, but at least we have some data.
Recently there was a link (perhaps on this blog, perhaps not) that explained in detail the addition and deletion of thermometers in Bolivia and the effect of those changes. Would someone be so kind as to post a copy of that link
could you get any more petty?
REPLY: could you get any more drive by cowardly?
Ric Werme says:
July 18, 2010 at 1:35 pm
> But what we need is digitized quantitative description of this activity.
That’s one reason Leif has been encouraging using the 10.7 cm flux data instead of (well, in addition to) counting spots. We don’t have centuries worth of data, of course, but at least we have some data.
============================================================
I agree that 10.7 cm flux is a good index for the sun activity, but I favor the the solar polar field strength, because the 10.7cm flux is a scalar number and the solar polar field strength is a vector number.
Sunspots’ number, size and latitude are important factors for us to understand sun activity, 10.7cm flux may not represent those characters very well; the solar polar field strength, on the other side, can tell us about the strength and the direction (i.e. it shows us the polarity reverse) of the sun activity.
John Murphy says:
July 18, 2010 at 4:50 pm
It was here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/south-america-hockey-in-the-jungle/
About your excellent graph, Robert, I feel there’s a whole lot more that needs to be looked at to get a true grasp of what’s going on.
If it were possible to enter in the numbers of eruptions and total VEI volume for the years then we might have a better measure, because several VEI 3 above normal add up changing the picture. There are a lot of eruptions with question marks behind them, unsure of the volume.
How anybody can make any sort of climate change claims without an accurate and reliable monitoring of volcano eruption particulate volumes and gasses is simply amazing to me. The observation of volcanoes is very poor exactly where some of the most active ones are.
Maybe space and science .net will produce something solid, but I doubt it would be undisputed.
http://www.spaceandscience.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ssrcresearchreport1-2010.doc
This right here is about the only thing on the planet that I fear. Basically you plow right into it without knowing for sure you plowed right into it for some years to come.
Bipolar correlation of volcanism with millennial climate change — PNAS
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/17/6341.full
It reminds me of dinosaurs running and managing to escape the asteroid blast only to suffer a horrible death from the Deccan Traps. Watch the skies and the Sun and perish in some god awful eruptions that sneak up on you.
This also has me in a puzzle about the Smithsonian.
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/find_eruptions.cfm
Redoubt – United States 2009 Mar 15 2009 – Jul 1 ± 30 days VEI-3
VEI-3 ??? It was a VEI-4 until just very recently. I’ve not been able to find a good answer to this yet. I’ve asked Erik Klemetti to ask Sally Kuhn Sennert of the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program about it.
The son of a gun initially blew to 12 1/2 miles and then followed with something like 15 more and a dozen of these eruptions went 11 miles plus altitude. They aren’t even sure just how long it erupted. One person said its because historically its always been a VEI-3 !!?
From what I’ve seen of other specific volcano eruptions that occur over and over throughout history, some years ‘ARE’ larger than others.
I wonder, have the Libertards pressured someone to change it? Easy to do, I’d imagine, its such a sloppy system.
Stephan says:
Leif is a wonder because I cannot come to grips with the fact he does not seem to think the Sun has any effect on Climate.
I agree. His understanding of the sun and space weather is excellent. That someone can have delved such cutting deep insight and knowledge on something, and yet hasn’t taken a stance on a problem of simplest correlation – the SSN chart and the Earth climate record, despite the big row over it, and despite his interest in it, is beyound any idealogical scientific rationale.
There has to be another reason.
I think it’s a strategic abstain, which protects his income. Leif must have seen many aquaintances in the biz take a loud stance against AGW, and he’s seen them lose their jobs.
I haven’t seen leif rebut any of the simple correlations between solar magnetic activity and climate – the 70s cooling period vs weak solar cycle 20, the little ice age and the corrisponding low SSN at the time, the 20th century warming and the correlating higher SSN. Then there’s the berylium 10 record proxy for vs pre-little ice age climate, and many other proxys. With all, – no comment from leif.
Added to that, you’ve got the celebs on this site like Anthony abstaining from asking Leif to do a presentation ( even just a concise post ) on why he thinks the climate history vs SSN ( and proxys ) correlation isn’t sufficient as evidence for a causal link.
Leif accepting 0.1C due to TSI variation is a complete abstain from the real issue. But that’s all his boss will let him get away with!
meemoe_uk says:
July 19, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Added to that, you’ve got the celebs on this site like Anthony abstaining from asking Leif to do a presentation ( even just a concise post ) on why he thinks the climate history vs SSN ( and proxys ) correlation isn’t sufficient as evidence for a causal link.
I have done that several times. Most recently here: http://www.leif.org/research/Does%20The%20Sun%20Vary%20Enough.pdf
Leif accepting 0.1C due to TSI variation is a complete abstain from the real issue. But that’s all his boss will let him get away with!
I don’t have a boss!
It looks like the reversed polarity spot has reappeared, only this time with a 3-layer sandwich of polarities.
White leads Black leads White (so far).
It wouldn’t surprise me.
rbateman says:
July 19, 2010 at 5:07 pm
It looks like the reversed polarity spot has reappeared, only this time with a 3-layer sandwich of polarities.
There are at least two groups, so no reversal. See: http://sdowww.lmsal.com/sdomedia/SunInTime/2010/07/20/f_HMImag_171.jpg
Also very near the limb there can be ‘pseudo’-reversals because we are seeing horizontal fields.
SDO is not doing a very good job of matching the cadence of Magnetogram to Continuum, but I do see 2 groups.
The Northern one looks Beta and normal for polarity.
The Southern (returning) looks sandwiched still, with a facular area out front where the main spot should be.
That one looks Alpha….so far.
My money is on it staying that way until it vaporizes.
rbateman says:
July 19, 2010 at 5:07 pm
It looks like the reversed polarity spot has reappeared, only this time with a 3-layer sandwich of polarities.
White leads Black leads White (so far).
It wouldn’t surprise me.
I think old 1084 is still coming Robert, the longitude of 1089 is 203, 1084 was 145.
Thanks Leif, had a read of your presentation.
– you make the case that TSI is not the cause of Earth climate change, fine.
– How did steinhilber recontruct TSI? I thought Be10 and C14 were products of cosmic rays, which are modulated by magnetism, not TSI.
“14C Age Differences Partly Due to Solar Activity” should be “Due to Solar Magnetic Activity “
You’ve superimposed the SSN chart with the C14 chart.
– The amount of attention to measures other than TSI is not satisfactory! Slide 12 says AA-index and method is wrong. But there is a correlation between AA and SSN. So you imply there would be an even better correlation if the AA method was corrected, so more attention to the AA index. But no, you ignore it for the rest of presentation?
– You say SSN records are probably wrong. You don’t mention that there is a corelation between SSN and climate. We are again left guessing whether you mean SSN-climate correlation is a fluke or if a corrected SSN would give an even better correlation.
Your presentation evidences what I was saying. You seem to be avoiding the point of interest – magnetic aspects due to the sun both corelate with Earth climate and ( unlike TSI variation) haven’t been shown to be incapable of causing substancial change in Earth climate. And it concentrated on something that is not of central interest in the current debate – TSI variation.
Talking to AGW kids on web forums, if ever solar variation as the cause of climate change is mentioned, they come out with the TSI +-0.1% not enough to cause climate change meme. It’s like they live in an alternate reality where magnets were never discovered, or if they do exist, any magnetic effects can disregarded and not properly investigated due to some eerie mysterious reason just outside the realms of rationalism, which never needs to be explicitely stated. Why is Leif signed up to this group?
meemoe_uk says:
July 20, 2010 at 2:39 am
– How did steinhilber recontruct TSI? I thought Be10 and C14 were products of cosmic rays, which are modulated by magnetism, not TSI.
All solar variations are related [e.g. TSI, SSN, Aa, cosmic rays, etc]and you can generally reconstruct one from another. Steinhilber uses 10Be as the basis for his reconstruction of TSI. The emphasis is on TSI rather than on magnetism, because there is a million times more energy in TSI than in the solar wind.
“14C Age Differences Partly Due to Solar Activity” should be “Due to Solar Magnetic Activity “
No, the differences are mostly due to changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. Only a tiny part is due to the Sun.
You don’t mention that there is a corelation between SSN and climate.
I show explicitly that there is no such correlation. See slide 20. SSN, TSI, Aa are all mutually correlated so are interchangeable.
And it concentrated on something that is not of central interest in the current debate – TSI variation.
It is concentrating on where the energy is. And the corrected data show even less correlation. The rise [green arrow] shown in slide 12 did not happen. Rather there was a cyclic variation, rising until mid-century and now falling back to levels around 1900. The climate has not shown any such cycle [is not now the same as in 1900].
Talking to AGW kids on web forums, if ever solar variation as the cause of climate change is mentioned
The AGW people need solar variation to account for climate change before CO2.
Leif,
I show explicitly that there is no such correlation. See slide 20. SSN, TSI, Aa are all mutually correlated so are interchangeable.
Well I don’t agree. I see a lull in sunspots in the LIA, another lul corrisponding to the 70s cooling period ( SC20 ), and around 5 years ago I heard the solar-climate theorists predicting another cooling period now, corrisponding to a new lul in sunspots. And that’s exactly whats happened, unusual sunspots lul, suddenly 2 unusally cold winters for me, and the news reports, such as those from this site, say cold winters all over the globe, also my summers aren’t as warm as they were 10 years ago. That’s evidence enough for me for now, but a 3rd consecutive cold winter would convince me even more.
Your argument ‘SSN is not causally linked to Earth-climate because SSN variation is corelated with TSI variation and TSI variation cannot explain climate via direct incident energy ‘, is no more valid than ‘ Man giving signal by waving hand every time just prior to building demolition cannot be causally linked to building demolition because not enough energy in man’s hand to demolish building ‘.
There’s other ways besides less incident solar energy to cool Earth’s climate.
Look for a different mechanism.
Like the cosmic ray cloud seeding theorys we are all interested in at the moment.
I assume you think SSN is low at the monent. I don’t know if you agree that the winters have gotten cooler the last couple of years. You agree LIA had weaker SSN than 20th century? You agree SC20 had less sunspots than adjacent SCs and coincided with 70s cooling period?
I don’t understand why you seem to be using your expertise only to rebut climate models. Why aren’t you concurrently guiding us on the most feasible ways in which the significant climate variation over last few hundred years could be controled by the sun etc?
meemoe_uk says:
July 20, 2010 at 9:00 am
“I show explicitly that there is no such correlation. See slide 20.”
Well I don’t agree.
There are standard statistical ways of settling this independently of someone’s eyeballing, and they show that there is no correlation. This does not mean that you cannot find the occasional wiggles that line up, but for the correlation to hold up, almost every wiggle must match, and most do not.
Like the cosmic ray cloud seeding theorys we are all interested in at the moment.
That theory has already been disproved: cosmic rays [because of solar magnetic field] are now what they were around 1900, and the climate is not [2010 being the hottest year on record, so far].
Leif,
> cosmic rays [because of solar magnetic field] are now what they were around 1900, and the climate is not [2010 being the hottest year on record, so far].
Aren’t you going to allow some time for the climate to adjust? 1900 followed on from a cool century. 2010 follows a warm century.
Also,
> [2010 being the hottest year on record, so far]
Where do you get that from? UAH?
Your page 2 is relavent. At the heart of the climate debate there’s a big ambiguity, does it matter where the heat is? Does a global 14km above the surface count? What use is that if the surface temp drops 5C? Or the oceans? If the oceans warm while the land cools, who is right?
I don’t know for you, but for me it the land temps, globally. This is the most useful measure for the world economy, but also the most useful in terms of the climate record context.
All the old climate records are around the land.
If the cold conditions of the LIA return to europe, and simular cooler weather returns to other land masses, but the UAH graph goes up 3 degrees, I consider that to be a win for the people predicting cooling.
And since the weather here has been cooling while UAH goes up, what I’m sayng is relavent today. Even if UAH is objectively correct.