We covered this story about solar magnetic field strength and sunspot contrast months ago on WUWT, and for a couple of years now I have been pointing out that the Ap Interplantary magnetic index took a dive, and has stayed at low levels. For example, this month, it remains stalled:
Late last year I ran this story:
In June 2008, WUWT published a wake up call, which had at that time, been mostly ignored by mainstream science:
Livingston and Penn paper: “Sunspots may vanish by 2015″.
But the rest of the world is now just getting around to realizing the significance of the work Livingston and Penn are doing related to sunspots. Science just ran with a significant story that is getting lots of press: Say goodbye to sunspots
Here’s a prominent excerpt:
The last solar minimum should have ended last year, but something peculiar has been happening. Although solar minimums normally last about 16 months, the current one has stretched over 26 months—the longest in a century. One reason, according to a paper submitted to the International Astronomical Union Symposium No. 273, an online colloquium, is that the magnetic field strength of sunspots appears to be waning.
…
Scientists studying sunspots for the past 2 decades have concluded that the magnetic field that triggers their formation has been steadily declining. If the current trend continues, by 2016 the sun’s face may become spotless and remain that way for decades—a phenomenon that in the 17th century coincided with a prolonged period of cooling on Earth.
Meanwhile, both the sunspot count and the 10.7 cm solar radio flux continue to lag well behind the prediction curves:
These three indicators, taken together, suggest the solar magnetic dynamo is having trouble getting restarted for solar cycle 24, which so far is not only late, but groggy.
But back to the Livingston and Penn article from Science. The most telling graph is one that Dr. Leif Svalgaard keeps updated:
Here’s the issue, which WUWT summed up when we printed excepts of Livingston and Penn in EOS. As WUWT readers may recall, we had a preview of that EOS article here.
L&P write in the EOS article:
For hundreds of years, humans have observed that the Sun has displayed activity where the number of sunspots increases and then decreases at approximately 11- year intervals. Sunspots are dark regions on the solar disk with magnetic field strengths greater than 1500 gauss (see Figure 1), and the 11- year sunspot cycle is actually a 22- year cycle in the solar magnetic field, with sunspots showing the same hemispheric magnetic polarity on alternate 11- year cycles.
In a nutshell, once the magnetic field gets below 1500 gauss, sunspots won’t have enough contrast to be visible.
Now maybe with the Science magazine article, the powers that be at the National Solar Observatory will give them more telescope time.They’ve had a lot of trouble getting time because the “consensus” of solar science didn’t embrace their idea. That may be about to change. With something this important, one would hope.
Theodor Landscheidt decades ago predicted a prolonged period of colder climate to be initiated by a secular minimum past 1990, which would reach its deepest point around the supersecular minimum in 2030 and come to an end in 2070 .
In 2010, Duhau and de Jager, published The Forthcoming Grand Minimum of Solar Activity . This says: the next Little Ice Age is beginning as the Sun reorganizes itself between 2009 and 2012.
Then came the stake driven into the heart of the nonsense of CO2 global warming:
Miskolczi, Ferenc M. 2010. “THE STABLE STATIONARY VALUE OF THE EARTH’S GLOBAL AVERAGE ATMOSPHERIC PLANCK-WEIGHTED GREENHOUSE-GAS OPTICAL THICKNESS”, Energy and Environment, 21, 243-262. This says: There has NOT been any greenhouse gas warming within the last 61 years, because CO2 and H2O vapor are ALWAYS in equilibrium.
If that wsn’t enough, along came Scafetta’s paper on the celestial origin of climate oscillations .
Global Warming Alarmists: It is time to close the doors on your church of unsupportable beliefs and be enlightened by the provable truths of astrophysics.
okie333 writes ” Also keep in mind that some sunspots have already disappeared due to L&P”
I am no expert, but I am not sure this is correct. What my very limited understanding is, and I am quite prepared to be told I am wrong, that when the field falls below 1500 gauss, the sunspots do not disappear. The contrast goes the other way. That is, sunspots looker whiter that the rest of the sun’s surface, rather than darker. At the time of the Maunder minimum, the telescopes would not be capable of detecting such spots. Or the observers might not have noticed them, even if they were there.
I wish volcanic activity would completely cease for just one complete solar minimum cycle so we could watch GCR cloud formation theory fall totally apart.
vukcevic says:
September 18, 2010 at 10:58 am
rbateman and I agree the trend line is misleading. Except you’re not taking our concern into account.
Can we identify magnetically active regions on the sun that would be visible sunspots if the magnetic field were strong enough prevent convection in the plasma? I had sort of assumed people would start doing that since that’s the only way I see to track the effect into the “missing sunspot era.” There’s also the dichotomy between the 10.7 cm radio signal and sunspot number, but I see that as an adjunct to tracking the effect, not as a good substitute.
Leif (when you show up here) is there data from SDO that reports field strength at sunspots and not-going-to-be sunspots? I had been hoping SDO’s resolution would reduce the time needed at Kitt Peak.
And this morning we had 7 Florida White Tail deer in the back yard, resplendent in their winter coats. So being the curious person I am, I went out and struck up a conversation and ask, “What’s with the winter coats already?” To which one of the bucks (there were 3) replied, “What? You haven’t noticed the sun spots are dang near gone? It’s going get real cold, real soon and stay cold. You frail humans better stock-up and buy some long-johns.” Then they ran off. Ha! Deer. They think they know everything.
Carsten and okie333
Thanks, I shall update chart, and rename it, I just realised abbreviation for the contrast chart was not appropriate.
Peter Sturrock is the Stanford physicist who has noted changed radioactive decay rates on earth when the neutrino ‘face’ of the sun’s core rotates toward the earth.
================
BarryW says: September 18, 2010 at 9:44 am
Awhile back you had an animation of earlier predictions of cycle 24. It would be interesting to see how they compare now.
I didn’t make an animated gif, just a multicolored chart of 3/06, 10/08 and 1/09 overlaid on the latest above.
http://i53.tinypic.com/2mw6t11.jpg
Here is an update of the L&P with the trend lines with the moving averages.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/L&Pma.htm
Indeed! Who knew even a few years ago that we might witness the Sun conduct an Earth Climate Disruption Experiment (an ECDE, if I may call it that). Some commenters are absolutely sure this will “play merry hell with food and survival for millions” (comment #1) but I am a 100% fence sitter on this. I have no idea. I think it exciting that we may witness such an experiment but if the worst does happen there is nothing much to do but watch. In contrast to CAGW, about which some think there is something to be done, that is not the case with the Sun. From a scientific standpoint it will be like stirring a beehive with a stick.
Ric Werme says:
September 18, 2010 at 12:23 pm
My suggestion to the concern is to watch the faculae around the AR’s. The recent new spot group that just cleared the limb looks to be located in N/S faculae runs (jigsaw pattern).
Unanswered (though sometimes considered) is what happens to the spots when the gauss drops below 1500.
Once this L&P advances far enough, will we see faculae turn to weak spots then back into faculae?
The SDO AIA 4500 and AIA 1600 at full res. might be the way to follow this.
I’d meant to start my previous comment with this:
Ric Werme says: at 10:25 am
“I’m sure you appreciate your ring-side seat.”
Milwaukee Bob says:
September 18, 2010 at 12:24 pm
..resplendent in their winter coats..
~
Are you serious?
Hmm maybe one should hang out at a deer registration facility to find out about fat layers this year. Not me.
Magnetic funk in the solar system.
Has anyone ever heard the phrase “magnetically controlled astrosphere sizes?”
The situation refers to Interstellar Magnetic Field, taking down an astrosphere (heliosphere syn).
John F. Hultquist says: September 18, 2010 at 1:39 pm
…………………
It looks it may get colder, but not caused by the lack of sunspots, and so on this one I am in agreement with my great adversary (Dr. L.S).
I think there is a prolonged and significant change of the North Atlantic’s temperatures trend, having identified a natural trigger for those changes. The CET response is cumulative and variable in intensity and delay, but always there.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETnd.htm
Latest data implies a down-trend at least comparable to one in the 1950-60s
John F. Hultquist says:
September 18, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Indeed! Who knew even a few years ago that we might witness the Sun conduct an Earth Climate Disruption Experiment (an ECDE, if I may call it that). Some commenters are absolutely sure this will “play merry hell with food and survival for millions” (comment #1) but I am a 100% fence sitter on this. I have no idea. I think it exciting that we may witness such an experiment but if the worst does happen there is nothing much to do but watch. In contrast to CAGW, about which some think there is something to be done, that is not the case with the Sun. From a scientific standpoint it will be like stirring a beehive with a stick.
Has any government considered planning for catastrophic cooling scenarios? It might be time that they did.
Geo-engineering?
I’m a non-scientist, so someone out there correct me if I’m wrong. The reason for a lack of sunspots is because of all the CO2 we’ve emmited in the last 50 years, right? If we don’t reduce our CO2 output, we’re all gonna freeze!
Jim Cripwell says:
September 18, 2010 at 12:08 pm
If there’s any effect like that, it would be related to concentration of energy at the spot. Some of the area around a spot is brighter/hotter than average. It may be that if you have a spot and the field falled below 1500 gauss so convection can resume, then hotter than normal plasma might manage to well up to the surface and be brigher than average until it cools.
However, the key attribute of the L&P effect is that a strong magnetic field limits the convection at a sunspot, the plasma cools, and gets dimmer than the hot plasma nearby. So when a spot tries to form but the field is too weak, convection is maintained and there isn’t enough of a temperature differential to make the area stand out, and nothing to make it appear brighter than the local environment.
Have a read at this:
http://climategate.nl/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/KNMI_voordracht_VanAndel.pdf
Or not… anyway…
The dust is flying and bin busting record harvests are underway!
http://www.google.com/m/news?ncl=doNh_fnho9ZlSVM2Uk9MkGGmZ08YM&hl=en
kim says: “…I’d like to know if the recent discovery of processes on the sun that can modify radioactive decay rates on earth have any role in elucidating any of these mysteries?”
The first WUWT post on that subject was here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/23/teleconnected-solar-flares-to-earthly-radioactive-decay/
The comment thread was pretty negative; many reasons to disbelieve in such a connection. There may have been a subsequent WUWT thread, as well, with more debunking.
Has any government considered planning for catastrophic cooling scenarios? It might be time that they did.
Geo-engineering?
Cave dwelling.
Let’s be careful how we quote L&P. Yes, the magnetic storms on the photosphere that we call sunspots are ‘disappearing’, according to L&P, but only in the sense of being ‘not visible’. At 1500 Gauss there won’t be enough contrast to make them stand out from the rest of the photosphere, so they will be invisible to the eye. But they will still exist as active magnetic processes.
Another way of looking at this is that the sunspots are getting hotter, so they won’t be darker than their surroundings. But 1500 Gauss is still a lot of magnetism. About 30 times more powerful than the average field around the sun (the solar magnetic field is about 50 Gauss, about the same as a refrigerator magnet).
So the sunspots will still be active, we just won’t see them in visible light. The effects of their magnetic activity might diminish somewhat, but will still be observed.
Here is a link to Penn & Livingston’s paper “Temporal Changes in Sunspot Umbral Magnetic Fields and Temperatures” published in 2006 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters Volume 649, Number 1
http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-4357/649/1/L45
c. j. acworth says: September 18, 2010 at 2:43 pm
“I’m a non-scientist, so someone out there correct me if I’m wrong. The reason for a lack of sunspots is because of all the CO2 we’ve emitted in the last 50 years, right?”
Neither and I but I can explain it completely.
You see the sunspots are there, if you check any CAGW site they clearly indicate that the minimum ended months ago and everything is fine, so not to worry. What is actually happening is that the CO2 has built up to such a high concentration that it is now not only reflecting 610% of the radiated heat from the earth back to the earth but is now actually reflecting non-heat (magnetism, radio-waves, the ice cold energy from black sun-spots, etc.) directly back at the sun.
So we are just not able to see the sun sport. Imagine that you were lying on you back on the beach on a sunny day and someone was dropping sand on your face, eventually there would be so much sand that you would not be able to see the sun. CO2 works the same as the sand and the person dropping the sand is all of humanity and, in this scientific explanation your face is the sun.
Eventually you will get upset with the person dropping sand on your face and you will leave the beach, this is what CO2 is doing to the sun. If humanity does not stop dropping sand on the sun then the sun will leave the beach (which in this scientific explanation is the solar system) and go to another solar system where CO2 does not exist.
If that happens, if we pass the tipping point of the suns tolerance to sand, then we are in fact all doomed. Based on the latest consensus this tipping point could occur as soon as Wednesday as 15<553,213 GMT or not for another 1.24 duo-septillion-quadrillion nanoseconds, and you realize that a nanosecond is thinner that a human hair.
So we are less that a hair width from burning up in 610% degrees ice and sand while the sun move away a the speed of light. The sun as you know is made up of 100% light; that is why it is so bright and why it floats in the sky, it is light.
I hope I was able to clear all that up for you.
PS. Some de[snip]ers think the sun floats because it is full of hydrogen, but if you have seen the Hindenburg footage you realize that if that were true then the sun would have come crashing down to earth long ago and destroyed all the humanity.
Caleb @ur momisugly 8:45 am:
Here is the 2009 progress report by CERN of the ongoing CLOUD experiment, looking at the possible “seeding” of clouds by cosmic rays.
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1257940/files/SPSC-SR-061.pdf
Papers about CLOUD were presented at the Helsinki International Aerosol Conference earlier this month, so the scientific community is being informed.