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.
Bob Tisdale says:
September 20, 2010 at 9:27 am
What flawed theories?
What solar flare scare?
How about these examples of flawed predictions based upon flawed theories… they all can’t be right… and maybe none of them will be correct.
See page two of State of the Art: Predicting Cycle 24
http://www.leif.org/research/Predicting%20the%20Solar%20Cycle.ppt
How about these examples of the solar flare scare
Meltdown! A solar superstorm could send us back into the dark ages – and one is due in just THREE years Last updated at 11:24 PM on 19th April 2009
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1171951/Meltdown-A-solar-superstorm-send-dark-ages–just-THREE-years.html
Severe Space Weather–Social and Economic Impacts
January 21, 2009: Did you know a solar flare can make your toilet stop working?
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/21jan_severespaceweather/
Just the tip of the growing iceberg… as every Satellite Soothsayer and Galactic Gatekeeper knows… now I understand why this is a Titanic struggle for the doomed captains of the dark consensus… Women, Children and Scientists first!
Here are two perfect examples in my opinion:
On September 8th of this year, Spaceweather.com published a blank sun with “sunspot” 1105 circled. Yet when you magnify the area, only a slight discolored plaque area is photographed:
September 8th, 2010
http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=08&month=09&year=2010
On that same date, the Layman’s Sunspot Count shows the exact same sun, just as spotless as it was on Spaceweather.
Another example appears on the 9th of September:
Again, Spaceweather.com shows a blank sun with a circle around a supposed “sunspot”
Click for yourself and see:
http://spaceweather.com/images2010/09sep10/hmi1024_blank.jpg?PHPSESSID=vq30v5tc787hm6okiv32gh2ec5
During 3 consecutive spotless days, our goverment counted 1 spotless day.
Again, sunspots measured at “11” and “13” are non-existent.
The entire sunspot record for this solar cycle has been inflated in this way.
But again, you can believe whoever or whatever you want.
Or you can believe your own lying eyes.
Carla says:
September 20, 2010 at 12:58 pm
One more thing, it was around 1600-1700 maunder time, when the North Magnetic pole starts its journey to the Western Hemi.
Not too exciting, as the magnetic pole sort of goes around in a circle every ~700-900 years, so has been there before…
http://www.accuweather.com/video/96827541001/run-hide-the-sun-is-coming-to-get-you-%28if-you-trust-nasa%29.asp?channel=vbbastaj
Joe Bastardi explains this in 4 minutes…
Jus sayin…
Galactic Gatekeeper ALL HANDS ON DECK!
Satellite Soothsayer PREPARE TO REPEL BOARDERS
Galactic Gatekeeper TAKE AIM… STEADY NOW…
Satellite Soothsayer WAIT FOR HIS WORD.
Galactic Gatekeeper FIRE!
Satellite Soothsayer ARGGGGGHHHHHHHH
Galactic Gatekeeper Are you hit trusted knave?
Satellite Soothsayer Holed below the water line Sirrrrrrrrrrrrrre
Galactic Gatekeeper White Coat DOWN! White Coat DOWN!
Satellite Soothsayer Kiss My Hadley Data Centre… ufffffffffffffffffffffff
Consensus Chaplain Now where is my white coat?
Galactic Gatekeeper Women, Children and Scientists first!
Consensus Chaplain Rememeber the 1st shall be last and the last shall be 1st.
Galactic Gatekeeper LADIES! MAKE WAY for the SCIENTISTS.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 20, 2010 at 10:18 am
Ulric Lyons says:
September 20, 2010 at 10:09 am
Observations show that surface temperatures drop when the solar wind velocity is lower, for sure.
“There are, for sure, no such observations. Claims galore, but no facts, or even hints.”
____________________________________________________
The first 2 weeks of January, the coldest part of last winter;
http://www.lmsal.com/solarsoft/last_events_20100106_1924/index.html
http://www.lmsal.com/solarsoft/last_events_20100113_1033/index.html
Consistently very low velocity as I have demonstated many times on this blog.
Looking at the warmer winters since 2002/3, it is clearly apparent that the solar wind velocity was significantly higher, as I have pointed out many times on this blog. http://www.solen.info/solar/coronal_holes.html
Denial will not make the facts go away.
Carla says:
September 20, 2010 at 12:58 pm
One more thing, it was around 1600-1700 maunder time, when the North Magnetic pole starts its journey to the Western Hemi.
Hi Carla
Strange thing happen at that time. The Northern Hemisphere and the Arctic in particular, experienced huge magnetic shock, which is still, to this day, resonating through the globe.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC3.htm
Tom Rowan says:
September 20, 2010 at 1:33 pm
During 3 consecutive spotless days, our government counted 1 spotless day.
Because these were not all spotless, here is Locarno in Switzerland [not your government]: http://www.specola.ch/drawings/2010/loc-d20100910.JPG
The entire sunspot record for this solar cycle has been inflated in this way.
The Layman’s count is a tampered with record that is supposed to support an agenda.
Or you can believe your own lying eyes.
You seem to believe somebody else’s lying eyes. I guess that some people are easier to fool than other. You have been had…
Ulric Lyons says:
September 20, 2010 at 2:11 pm
The first 2 weeks of January, the coldest part of last winter
It was summer in Australia, or does the solar wind only know about where you live?
Denial will not make the cherry picked coincidences go away.
Tom Rowan says:
September 20, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Or you can believe your own lying eyes.
Galactic Gatekeeper BUT…. BUT…. BUT… My trusted knave has the answer.
Satellite Soothsayer URMMMM… If you closed both your eyes
Galactic Gatekeeper YES?
Satellite Soothsayer And URMMMM… Poke your fingers in both eyes.
Galactic Gatekeeper YES?
Satellite Soothsayer Then what do you see?
Galactic Gatekeeper SPOTS!
Satellite Soothsayer Exactly. Spots! QED
Galactic Gatekeeper You just have to admire his lateral thinking!
Tom Rowan says:
September 20, 2010 at 1:16 pm
What I do know is that “spots” are counted on spotless days.
Clearly one does not count spots on spotless days. Now, somebody may not want to count the spots that are there, so declares the day to be spotless. There is also the fact that some spots only live a few hours, so there can be spots in the morning and gone by evening, so ‘spotless’ may depend on when you count.
Today we know that scientists have agendas.
There are hundreds of amateurs all over the world counting sunspots showing that there is no inflation of the count.
I think the Layman’s Sunspot Count demonstrates this conclusively.
The Layman’s count deliberately omit the smallest spots in order to get a sunspot number that is as low as possible. Go check out their website and my comments over there.
Vuk etc. says:
September 20, 2010 at 2:27 pm
The Northern Hemisphere and the Arctic in particular, experienced huge magnetic shock, which is still, to this day, resonating through the globe.
Complete nonsense.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 20, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Complete nonsense.
The Institute of Geophysics at the ETH Zurich would not be amused.
About 12 months ago you said of their database ‘the best there is’.
Rapid change of mind?
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 20, 2010 at 2:41 pm
“It was summer in Australia, or does the solar wind only know about where you live?”
So you think last winter was only cold where I live. The intelligent question would be to ask how much cooler did locations in the S. Hemisphere get in the first 2 weeks of January, and how much did that increase precipitation there.
Ulric Lyons says:
September 20, 2010 at 12:56 pm
[Snip. Strike two. ~dbs.]
Tom Rowan said:
>> What I do know is that “spots” are counted on spotless days.
Are you perhaps conflating the “SSN” count with “actual” count of sunspots? SSN stands for _Smoothed_ Sunspot Number and is often used to denote the output of Wolf’s well-known k(10g+s) formula. It tends to produce a value that is roughly 15 times the number of actual spots.
I’m not a solar scientist, but my statistical intuition that tells me the Wolf created this rubric to provide a “standardized” (i.e. generalized and consistent) way to measure and manipulate estimates of spot activity that would be somewhat immune to the vagaries of telescope resolution and human eyesight.
So, for example, if I came up with a way to “smooth” the count of typographical errors per page, I would use a running average and might end up with some value like “2.5 typos per page”. Of, there’s no such thing as a ‘half-typo’, and there will be numerous pages with an ‘actual’ typo count of 0, but the ‘smoothed’ count will still be 2.5. But I think you’ll agree that such a ‘smoothed’ count serves a very useful purpose.
Same argument goes for SSN.
But why x15 factor? Why not try to estimate the “actual” sunspot count? Well, again I’m guessing, but it’s probably to minimize the occurrence of “zeros”.
Philosophically, zeros are a wonderful way to describe ‘nothing’. But mathematically, they’re nasty little buggers.
You can’t divide by them or take their logarithm. And any perfectly good number multiplied by zero, subsequently fails to have a legitimate algebraic inverse.
So, it’s best to avoid them whenever possible, when computing any kind of “positive measure”, and we can think of SSN as being a kind of positive “solar activity” signal that the sun sends us. Scaling numbers upwards by some fixed factor tends to reduce the occurrence of these zero counts. So, days without any observed spots can still have a non-zero SSN. That’s good. Take my word for it.
Think of positive measures as probability or likelihood. Zero probabilities don’t exist. The world may end tonight, not likely, but still a non-zero probability. We might not see a sunspot, but perhaps it was tiny or quick to observe.
Now, in my reading, I’ve learned that the term “SSN” is, unfortunately, a rather ambiguous term. Sometimes it means the Wolf number, but some use it do denote the actual count and other stuff. This is where I suspect your problem lies.
This web page does a good job of sorting out all the different definitions of “SSN”
http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/qsl-ssn-history-voacap.htm
Hope that helps,
:-]
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 20, 2010 at 2:41 pm
“Denial will not make the cherry picked coincidences go away.”
Comparing the solar wind velocity with surface temp`s in every winter since 2002/3 is not cherry picking. Exactly the same correlation can be found in summer months too, take your pick. Higher solar wind speed = higher surface temp`s, consistently.
A new coronal hole stream reaches Earth around the 22nd September, see how that affects land surface temperatures when the solar wind velocity increases.
http://www.spaceweather.com/
Leif is the only person so far I have seen argue against the Layman’s Sunspot Count. I wonder who has the agenda? Are you afraid the Layman’s Count is going to make your SC24 prediction look worse than it already may? Or is it just for the sake of arguing against someone who opposes your solar science?
There are some points that cannot be ignored.
We count sunspots differently to how it was done during Wolf’s day. The 22% Waldmeier factor alone is sufficient reason for discounting today’s count, to that we can add that Wolf didn’t count small spots and pores, as a result the Layman’s Count has more spotless days. We have very valid reasons for trying to formulate a modern count that closely matches how Wolf would have counted. At this stage the driving factor is to allow us to compare the current cycles with the past….accurately.
The subject of whether modern telescope seeing difference is affecting the record is currently under review.
Leif will come back with a stack of incorrect statements in an attempt to bluff and confuse those who do not have time to check the detail. He is learning a lot himself through this project and may not be as knowledgeable in this area as some might think.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 20, 2010 at 10:42 am
From whence does the locus of this shell polarity configuration emanate?
What configuration? If you mean a ring of opposite polarity or of any polarity, then that occurs quite often. As the magnetic field from a sunspot decays, it is caught up in the supergranular flow and often migrates to the edge of the supergranule, so you end up with a ‘network’ of cells.
No, I do not mean opposite polarities. I mean all polarities of the 3 major regions.
Ulric Lyons says:
September 20, 2010 at 3:39 pm
I know what you are saying, but it’s not going to light a bulb where there is no attention being paid.
It really shows up when you go from one Hem. winter to the opposing Hem. winter in succession.
It also shows up well in the summer temps in the S. Hem., and that is where the Sea Ice is also growing and where the La Nina is upwelling.
Caleb,
(I love that word, “electroscavanging.”) It also explains some rather sneering and belittling responces I’ve heard to the very idea that cosmic rays can increase cloud cover at all. They began with the same “either/or ” assumption I began with, but never got beyond it.
I’ve traveled the North American continent for decades observing the clouds, at times a complete lack of clouds for many months on end. Something that sitting behind a screen in a room cannot begin to replicate.
Long, long periods of time where you couldn’t buy a cloud and even the Weather Channel people were blown away by it. Then a big volcano plume from Columbia and a bit later clouds begin to stream into the southern USA.
I’ve watched these cloudless periods go well into solar cycle ramp-down (’06-’07 for example) when increasing GCR’s should have already been forming clouds. Then what changes is a round of big volcano eruptions and behold, clouds and rain everywhere.!!! Take those away and I do believe the psedo-science will be very, very weak.
Its a possibility, I acknowledge, but I officially withdraw my ‘or’ and I find psedo-science peddlers rather sneering and belittling. 🙂
On the subject of weather and climate and higher/lower temperatures one should keep in mind constantly: Correlation is not causation .
Here is another correlation with temperatures:
http://europebusines.blogspot.com/2010/08/special-post-life-on-this-earth-just.html
If the winter is severe will it be blamed on gulf oil? I think in the article the dispersant is wrongly inculpated using simple logic.
It is amazing that in the age of nanotechnology and quantum computing even trained people will succumb to the temptation of interpreting omens.
Ulric Lyons says:
September 20, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Exactly the same correlation can be found in summer months too, take your pick. Higher solar wind speed = higher surface temp`s, consistently.
For this to be true, the surface temperature everywhere must vary the same way, and it doesn’t. To substantiate your claim, plot solar wind speed against temperature and show that there is a strong correlation.
Geoff Sharp says:
September 20, 2010 at 4:49 pm
We have very valid reasons for trying to formulate a modern count that closely matches how Wolf would have counted. At this stage the driving factor is to allow us to compare the current cycles with the past….accurately.
Except that the cycles you want to compare with were not counted by Wolf at all.
My prediction so far is doing well: http://www.leif.org/research/Active%20Region%20Count.png
rbateman says:
September 20, 2010 at 4:52 pm
No, I do not mean opposite polarities. I mean all polarities of the 3 major regions.
The supergranular network, then.
@ur momisugly Leif Svalgaard says:
September 20, 2010 at 10:24 pm
“For this to be true, the surface temperature everywhere must vary the same way, and it doesn’t. To substantiate your claim, plot solar wind speed against temperature and show that there is a strong correlation.”
At the solstices, one hemisphere has summer and other has winter, they is no way they would have the same temperature change. Even in one hemisphere, the changes are different in extent, from tropics to sub-tropics to mid/higher latitudes etc.
Circulation issues such as incursions of polar air, will mean some regions will have temp`s going the opposite direction to the solar signal at certain times of the year.
rbateman says:
September 20, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Ulric Lyons says:
September 20, 2010 at 3:39 pm
I know what you are saying, but it’s not going to light a bulb where there is no attention being paid.
It really shows up when you go from one Hem. winter to the opposing Hem. winter in succession.
It also shows up well in the summer temps in the S. Hem., and that is where the Sea Ice is also growing and where the La Nina is upwelling.
___________________________________________________
I am only discussing in this example, the short term effects on land temperature in the first 2 weeks of January 2010, ie when the solar wind was very low, and in many places in the N. Hem was the coldest weeks of last winter.
There was a general fall in S. Hem temperatures in this 2 weeks, but much smaller than the drop in the N. Hem, as it was summer time, land temperature range in winter is far larger than ever happens in summer.
ENSO moves opposite to the solar signal and land temp` at certain times of the year, so is not relevant to what I am saying.