The sun went spotless yesterday, the first time in quite awhile. It seems like a good time to present this analysis from my friend David Archibald. For those not familiar with the Dalton Minimum, here’s some background info from Wiki:
The Dalton Minimum was a period of low solar activity, named after the English meteorologist John Dalton, lasting from about 1790 to 1830.[1] Like the Maunder Minimum and Spörer Minimum, the Dalton Minimum coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures. The Oberlach Station in Germany, for example, experienced a 2.0°C decline over 20 years.[2] The Year Without a Summer, in 1816, also occurred during the Dalton Minimum. Solar cycles 5 and 6, as shown below, were greatly reduced in amplitude. – Anthony
Guest post by David Archibald
James Marusek emailed me to ask if I could update a particular graph. Now that it is a full two years since the month of solar minimum, this was a good opportunity to update a lot of graphs of solar activity.
Figure 1: Solar Polar Magnetic Field Strength
The Sun’s current low level of activity starts from the low level of solar polar magnetic field strength at the 23/24 minimum. This was half the level at the previous minimum, and Solar Cycle 24 is expected to be just under half the amplitude of Solar Cycle 23.
Figure 2: Heliospheric Current Sheet Tilt Angle
It is said that solar minimum isn’t reached until the heliospheric current sheet tilt angle has flattened. While the month of minimum for the 23/24 transition is considered to be December 2008, the heliospheric current sheet didn’t flatten until June 2009.
Figure 3: Interplanetary Magnetic Field
The Interplanetary Magnetic Field remains very weak. It is almost back to the levels reached in previous solar minima.
Figure 4: Ap Index 1932 – 2010
The Ap Index remains under the levels of previous solar minima.
Figure 5: F10.7 Flux 1948 – 2010
The F10.7 Flux is a more accurate indicator of solar activity than the sunspot number. It remains low.
Figure 6: F10.7 Flux aligned on solar minima
In this figure, the F10.7 flux of the last six solar minima are aligned on the month of minimum, with the two years of decline to the minimum and three years of subsequent rise. The Solar Cycle 24 trajectory is much lower and flatter than the rises of the five previous cycles.
Figure 7: Oulu Neutron Count 1964 – 210
A weaker interplanetary magnetic field means more cosmic rays reach the inner planets of the solar system. The neutron count was higher this minimum than in the previous record. Thanks to the correlation between the F10.7 Flux and the neutron count in Figure 8 following, we now have a target for the Oulu neutron count at Solar Cycle 24 maximum in late 2014 of 6,150.
Figure 8: Oulu Neutron Flux plotted against lagged F10.7 flux
Neutron count tends to peak one year after solar minimum. Figure 8 was created by plotting Oulu neutron count against the F10.7 flux lagged by one year. The relationship demonstrated by this graph indicates that the most likely value for the Oulu neutron count at the Solar Cycle 24 maximum expected to be a F10.7 flux value of 100 in late 2014 will be 6,150.
Figure 9: Solar Cycle 24 compared to Solar Cycle 5
I predicted in a paper published in March 2006 that Solar Cycles 24 and 25 would repeat the experience of the Dalton Minimum. With two years of Solar Cycle 24 data in hand, the trajectory established is repeating the rise of Solar Cycle 5, the first half of the Dalton Minimum. The prediction is confirmed. Like Solar Cycles 5 and 6, Solar Cycle 24 is expected to be 12 years long. Solar maximum will be in late 2014/early 2015.
Figure 10: North America Snow Cover Ex-Greenland
The northern hemisphere is experiencing its fourth consecutive cold winter. The current winter is one of the coldest for a hundred years or more. For cold winters to provide positive feedback, snow cover has to survive from one winter to the next so that snow’s higher albedo relative to bare rock will reflect sunlight into space, causing cooler summers. The month of snow cover minimum is most often August, sometimes July. We have to wait another eight months to find out how this winter went in terms of retained snow cover. The 1970s cooling period had much higher snow cover minima than the last thirty years. Despite the last few cold winters, there was no increase in the snow cover minima. The snow cover minimum may have to get to over two million square kilometres before it starts having a significant effect.
David Archibald
December 2010
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The last seven solar cycles have been very intense. Solar Cycle 19 stood above the rest back to 1750. I believe that the sun will be “resting” for at least the next few cycles and I would expect more than the usual cloud cover to follow.
Can anyone tell me which comes first, CO2 or temperature?
I want to correct this:
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 20, 2010 at 4:39 pm
“harrywr2 says:
December 20, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Which is why the scientists at CERN are doing very expensive CLOUD experiments.”
No, the scientists at CERN are not doing any such experiments. CERN only lends some unused, obsolete capacity to outside scientists for this.
CERN is a laboratory controlled by the countries that support it through committees. One of them is a committee that accepts proposals for experiments from any group and judges them on their scientific merit, in a sense a peer review . If the resources exist and the experiment is considered worthy of execution, it is approved. If the group does not come from a country that supports CERN extra money will be requested, otherwise CERN supplies the facilities and the experimenters the set up needed for the experiment. For CLOUD to be approved it means that a scientific committee judged it worthy of the effort and time on the machines needed.
crosspatch says:
December 20, 2010 at 9:11 pm
“Your point is valid, and much will be uncovered soon.”
That sounds like the mumbo jumbo that Madame Sofia up the street says when she looks into her crystal ball.
If you have physical evidence that this cycle will be anything different than other such weak cycles we have seen in the past, then present it. What evidence is there that there will be more than one weak cycle (as in two successive weak cycles as the Dalton Minimum was)? Please show the basis for the “prediction” else label it as speculation.
Perhaps you should get out more, if you have not made yourself acquainted with my research can I suggest it might be a good place to start. There is ample history in the sunspot record and also in the isotope records showing multiple solar cycles shutting down on regular basis that follow a regular pattern. This pattern is repeatable and its strength is quantifiable to the point that I can predict the next 200 years at least. I wont bore everyone with the detail here.
There is a chance the pattern might be be broken this time. but I don’t like your chances.
Grey Lensman says:
December 20, 2010 at 7:44 pm
We know that the ropey things transfers that current through space to a load, the Earth. Themis has imaged them and Nasa has reported on them. Electric current sheets have been measured in the Aurora. now when you apply electric current to a load you get heat.
Almost there, but not quite. The current is not transferred through space, the magnetic field of the rope and the plasma in it are. When that plasma hits the magnetic field of the Earth, a new current is generated. This is the current that makes the aurora. The total energy [some 100 GigaWatt on a good day over the hemisphere] in the aurora is, however, very small compared to the energy that ordinary sunlight contains, so you don’t get much heat that way.
Geoff Sharp says:
December 20, 2010 at 7:45 pm
but the WSO record right now is not looking good for pole reversal at cycle max.
Yes, it is looking good, the reversal is already under way: 25% of the field is already gone. I would say we are right on track.
R. Gates says:
December 20, 2010 at 8:01 pm
These as yet not included effects could include the GCR/cloud relationship, high energy UV effects, solar-geomagnetic effects, etc. There is no way these secondary effects could be currently included (at least not accurately) in GCM’s as none of their dynamics are as yet fully understood or even proven.
The only one not included is the GCR/cloud hypothesis. UV and geomagnetic heating are well understood and proven [their effects are just small].
Geoff Sharp says:
December 20, 2010 at 8:05 pm
And you are omitting that Wolfer applied this factor outside of a grand minimum. The factor falls down when the speck ratio increases, so it is better to use a threshold like Wolf. Plus you are omitting that the factor was applied to the 80mm telescope that does not see as much as the current 150mm telescope. This is simple telescope basics.
There is no evidence that 1) we are in a grand minimum and 2) that the factor is systematically different depending on activity [this has been extensively studied for over a century]. Whatever difference the telescope makes is taken care of by the individual factors for each observer.
Let us go through the various comparisons, first here is NOAA vs. SIDC since 1991 and their ratio. http://www.leif.org/research/NOAA-vs-SIDC.png . As is evident, around 2001, SIDV dropped 11% compared to NOAA, both in values [lower numbers] and ratios [upper numbers], showing the SIDC undercount, contrary to your claim.
Keller and Friedli use the original 80 mm Wolf telescope and since Keller was Waldmeier’s assistant also the weighting scheme [i.e. everything the same since 1945], and it is clear that again around 2001, SIDC goes lower:
http://www.leif.org/research/Keller-SIDC.png .
The last few years are shown here in more detail: http://www.leif.org/research/Keller-SIDC-2.png ,
again SIDC is undercounting, compared to the standard in use since 1945.
These comparisons and the conclusion that SIDC is undercounting are completely independent of the F10.7 record, so that straw man you can scrap.
Once again your not giving the full detail. Tapping’s exercise shows a deviation around cycle max when flare activity was unusually high, he does not show the deviation over the whole back half of SC23 as you do.
Again you are not knowing what you are talking about [or worse: you do know, but misrepresents].
Here is Tappings paper from 2010:
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2010ScienceMeeting/doc/Session6/6.03_Tapping_F10.7.pdf
“• During late Cycle 23, the relationship between photospheric activity changed, with more coronal activity than one might expect on the basis of the level of photospheric activity. [i.e. sunspots too low compared to F10.7]
• Indications are that in Cycle 24 so far the deviation from “standard behaviour” is continuing or perhaps increasing.”
Note the ‘perhaps increasing’
This deviation is the observed L&P effect, but has nothing to do with the differences in counting, so perhaps you should stop using that straw man from now on.
You agree that the record needs adjustment after 1945…that should be the end of the argument. We are not comparing apples.
I discovered and told you that the record needs adjustment and also precisely how much, so you should indeed not have an argument. Wolf did not observe before 1848, so none of your ideas apply. He adjusted other peoples count using geomagnetic records and auroral counts. Those are your ‘apples’.
Are you still holding the line that we are not heading into a grand minimum?
The Dalton minimum was not a Grand Minimum. All we know is that solar activity is back to where it was 107 years ago. How it will develop we don’t know. Statistically, a small cycle is followed by other small cycles, but not always. Anything else is speculation.
anna v says:
December 20, 2010 at 9:46 pm
For CLOUD to be approved it means that a scientific committee judged it worthy of the effort and time on the machines needed.
That still does not mean that CERN is running the experiment, just that it has been approved.
“The 1970s cooling period had much higher snow cover minima than the last thirty years. Despite the last few cold winters, there was no increase in the snow cover minima. The snow cover minimum may have to get to over two million square kilometres before it starts having a significant effect.”
Thank God for all the new Coal Plants in China. Combine that with elevated CO2 levels and modern cereal crop varieties and we may be able to grow more than single crops of hay in Canada during this ‘Grand Minima’ 😉
HR says:
December 20, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Thanks Tallbloke
“so the La Nina’s following the El nino’s will take the surface temps lower than before the previous El Nino from now until the sun perks up again.”
I like shorter term predictions like this we should get the first insight in 12 months or so, something to watch.
I think you’ll find it generally true over the decadal timescale. There is noise in the system generated by cloud cover change and ocean reverberation which might bring about exceptions o shorter timeframes. Take a look at the SST record for the end of the C19th when the sun got quiet heading towards 1910.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1880/to:1915
R. Gates says:
December 20, 2010 at 8:01 pm
The bottom line is, even when such secondary (solar) effects are finally included in GCM’s, it remains to be seen how much difference it will make in terms of overtaking the dominant forcing role that the 40% increase in CO2 plays in the models, such that, even if we are entering a period of weak solar activity, it still could be the case that this activity will only slightly lessen the effect of centuries of rapidly increasing CO2 concentrations. The good thing is, we should know the answer to these questions in the next few years…
Yes, the evidence is growing that the climate modelling charlatans will introduce the solar effects they’ve been denying all along and keep a diminished role for co2 affecting cloud cover as a face saver. (it should take us a while to debunk that claim).
I see Kevin Trenberth is ahead of the curve…
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/2009GL037527.pdf
Global warming due to increasing absorbed solar radiation
Kevin E. Trenberth1 and John T. Fasullo1
Received 28 January 2009; revised 10 March 2009; accepted 19 March 2009; published 14 April 2009.
[1] Global climate models used in the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report
(AR4) are examined for the top-of-atmosphere radiation
changes as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases build
up from 1950 to 2100. There is an increase in net radiation
absorbed, but not in ways commonly assumed. While there
is a large increase in the greenhouse effect from increasing
greenhouse gases and water vapor (as a feedback), this is
offset to a large degree by a decreasing greenhouse effect
from reducing cloud cover and increasing radiative
emissions from higher temperatures. Instead the main
warming from an energy budget standpoint comes from
increases in absorbed solar radiation that stem directly from
the decreasing cloud amounts.
“There is ample history in the sunspot record and also in the isotope records showing multiple solar cycles shutting down on regular basis that follow a regular pattern. This pattern is repeatable and its strength is quantifiable to the point that I can predict the next 200 years at least. I wont bore everyone with the detail here.”
Interesting, you seem to go exactly around what I thought I said. What evidence do you have that this low cycle will be repeated in the next cycle? We have a LOT of evidence of single low cycles, a double low cycle, and a period of several “missed” cycles. So what? What exactly leads you to your conclusion about cycle 26? We know that cycle 25 appears low, that is granted, what you seem to be avoiding is directly answering my question about why you state that cycle 26 will also be low.
Can you state it in clear language that is different than “all will be revealed” and following that with “I explained it already” because I don’t believe I have seen any such explanation and I am very curious about what leads you to that conclusion. I can’t find anything that would lead me to any firm conclusion that cycle 26 will also be low. It might be. Or it might not be. We have several instances of single low cycles.
And please do bore me with the details.
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 20, 2010 at 10:19 pm
There is no evidence that 1) we are in a grand minimum and 2) that the factor is systematically different depending on activity [this has been extensively studied for over a century]. Whatever difference the telescope makes is taken care of by the individual factors for each observer.
But you have said yourself the L&P effect (whatever that is) produces more specks, so no denying we have more specks. You are ignoring the major point, the larger telescopes are picking up smaller specks that get counted. Locarno has been the base station that every other station is factored against for decades…it has a 150mm telescope. This is not allowed for in the 0.6 reduction factor that is based on the 80mm telescope. It wouldn’t matter what evidence was presented you would argue around it.
There is no point using Keller as a benchmark, you dont have access to his sunspot drawings and are completely unaware of his methods or factors that could be in play.
I dont like your NOAA graph, once again you make up your own data. If we plot the standard deviation between NOAA and SIDC using NOAA’s published monthly values we see the SIDC is tracking at 0.6 since 2001, there is no deviation or undercounting.
Tappings conclusions are not backed up with convincing data. When I plot his Canadian F10.7 data against the the SIDC daily record I only get a deviation near cycle max. I am not sure what you guys are doing unless you are mining for funds, his closing statement “Weird solar behaviour should be good for solar and space
weather funding.” sort of says it all?
crosspatch says:
December 21, 2010 at 12:18 am
Your getting your cycles mixed up, cycle 26 should see a recovery. Do me a favour and bring yourself up to speed, it will save a lot of typing. This is not the forum for this type of discussion (it is banned) but if you would like to read my paper I will be happy to answer any queries via my blog or email.
Roger Carr says:
Is this a message, E, M,?
Sheesh, I step away from the computer for a few hours of Christmas Shopping (we actually had a break in the drenching) and come back to 237 comments…. It’s going to be a long night…
Is it a message? Well, I suppose it is… We’ve had a wonderful introduction to what life is likely to be like for a few years. Reminds me of what is was like back about 1963 or so. Long cold drenching rains. Days with no sun. Much better inside warm and dry…
I’ve got a posting up following the storm track as it heads to Utah, and with StormPredator images of the rain. Also some links to the relationship of cold / wet and hot / dry in the western USA with pictures of Lake Mead. We can start watching western lake levels as a “climate barometer”. As they refill, it confirms we’re cooling. Oh, and Accuweather has a warming out for flooding on the storm track…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/cooling-and-wet-utah/
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 20, 2010 at 2:49 pm
vukcevic says:
December 20, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Good luck with upgrading the SSN, a minor irritation you may have not counted on, my SSN formula
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC11.htm
would have closer correlation during the 19th century.
We call that confirmation bias. Since it is junk, it doesn’t matter.
I only wished you good luck, did not say that I would favour such results, hence as per definition it can’t be confirmation bias.
You are correct in stating that your revision doesn’t matter, since it is clear that the formula reflects reality far closer than the Svalgaard – Schatten disfunctioning delusion of the solar dynamo.
Last time you corrected my numbers, it again improved correlation of the anomaly formula in achieving the precise timing of the Maunder minimum.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC4.htm
It just shows you data is good, but you are committed to a wrong theory!
Speaking of F10.7 flux, yesterdays adjusted for AU middle reading came in at 75.4. This should make Leif’s graph look pretty sick when he updates.
I keep my own graph that compares with SC20 (low cycle), if the current spotless day run (6) continues we will see a further reduction in F10.7 flux.
Leif said
Quote
When that plasma hits the magnetic field of the Earth, a new current is generated.
Unquote
Thats contrary to basic plasma physics, plasmas are excellent conductors. How do you calculate the energy output. The Aurora is only a visible part of a small part of the total energy transfer.
I am fed up with the snow and cold.
I still gape at the Climate Scientists who say without any sense of irony that they can forecast the climate for centuries into the future, but they are wrong nearly every time they forecast the weather for next week. I remember them saying snow in UK would become a rare event.
What a pile of rubbish, we should abandon any expenditure on climate research and spend the saved money on snow ploughs, at least they would be of some use!
Grey Lensman says:
December 21, 2010 at 3:10 am
…………..
One of the top people in the field Angelopoulos, estimates the total energy of the two-hour event (magnetic storm/rope) at five hundred thousand billion (5 x 1014) Joules. That’s approximately equivalent to the energy of a magnitude 5.5 earthquake. Electric current is estimated to 650000A.
Some of the energy is converted to light (aurora), but in the Arctic’s case, crust is less than 30km thick, lower conductive layers act as a secondary transformer coil (the primary being ionosphere). It is a fact that electric current is induced to some depth, and I think that these electric currents act as ‘degaussing coil’ on the sources of magnetic field in the Arctic area. Fact is that there is a negative correlation between the solar activity and the Arctic magnetic field:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC9.htm
I happen to be first to discover and graph this correlation and possibly provide explanation as outlined above. There is no equivalent effect in the Antarctica, the reason: the geo- properties differences between the Arctic Ocean and the continent of Antarctica.
I’m certainly no scientist, but concerning those antique telescopes I have a question. They have lenses or mirrors made from blown, then polished glass, right? Doesn’t glass act like a liquid, deforming over long periods of time as it seeks a level of “flatness”? Might that make the them less capable at seeing sunspots? Conversely, could the “flow” of the glass act to remove any imperfections in the shape of the lense or mirror, making them able to image more clearly and discern sunspots better?
… although I’m a little tired of the ‘LIA is not related to Maunder Minimum’ folks … all I can say is “lies, damn lies, and statistics”. I find the fact 19th century grain traders and the farmers almanac used ‘sun spot’ statistics with some success as stronger evidence than somebody’s massaged data.
Now we even have a triage of causal mechanisms outside TSI …GCR cloud formation, UV heat transport to the Upper Atmosphere and Magnetosphere coupling with the Poles. Combine that with my own bag of statistics and ‘compare by graph’ supposition and I think my story is better than the solar cycle deniers. And there is some evidence the marginal effect of TSI’s modest variation can actually make a difference and I refer to the discussion in the BBC’s “Wonders of the Solar System” series.
I have to admit when you get into the Holocene Optimum, Heinrich Events or the different phases of the Milankovitch cycle … variations in solar activity are just psn in the wind … or that’s how it appears when you look at some of the evidence. CO2 doesn’t even register if there are any ‘magic gas’ people out there.
I’ve been ready for the cold for a few years because I didn’t quite believe the “Ocean-Climate” folks 10 year delay in cooling but that appears to be close now. Where I live the cold will functionally mean very little, winter is brutal regardless and if the carbon dusting from Chinese Coal Plants help to rapidly degrade the snow in the spring, all the better. I can just sit back and laugh at the UK clearing streets with children’s toys (plastic shovels) and town council’s handing out shovels in the fall 😀
“The northern hemisphere is experiencing its fourth consecutive cold winter. The current winter is one of the coldest for a hundred years or more. ”
Absolute Rubbish. See Canada during last winter for example.
Geoff Sharp says:
December 21, 2010 at 12:33 am
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 20, 2010 at 10:19 pm
There is no evidence that 1) we are in a grand minimum and 2) that the factor is systematically different depending on activity [this has been extensively studied for over a century]. Whatever difference the telescope makes is taken care of by the individual factors for each observer.
But you have said yourself the L&P effect (whatever that is) produces more specks, so no denying we have more specks. You are ignoring the major point, the larger telescopes are picking up smaller specks that get counted.
Leif says,
The 17th century technology is not the issue. We have good data and even the original telescopes [still in use] since the 1850s.
Leif states that the benchmark telescope is similar to this,
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/telescope1850-1852.jpg
Before 1856 this type of refector telescope had a speculum mirror which only reflected 66% of the light, after 1857 the mirror was silvered, this reflected 90% of the light, therefore observations during the dalton minimum were undertaken with an inferior telescope. Does Leifs benchmark telescope used today have a speculum or silvered mirror?
By the time silvering became available the Daulton minimum had ended some 15 years earlier, see Leif`s graph,
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/sunspots2.jpg
It would seem that even in the 1850`s the sun suddenly became more visible using better equipment, remember UK TV 405 lines, now we have high def, all in 50 years.
Is this a model prediction?
Geoff Sharp says:
December 21, 2010 at 12:33 am
But you have said yourself the L&P effect (whatever that is) produces more specks, so no denying we have more specks.
So now you are invoking what you called ‘junk science’. L&P does not produce more specks, it converts larger spots to specks. And more and more of these drops out of visibility.
You are ignoring the major point, the larger telescopes are picking up smaller specks that get counted. Locarno has been the base station that every other station is factored against for decades…it has a 150mm telescope. This is not allowed for in the 0.6 reduction factor that is based on the 80mm telescope.
You are confusing the factors. There is a 0.6 factor to reduce Locarno to the 80 mm standard telescope [this is what I referred to when I said that each observer has his own factor], then there is another 0.6 factor to reduce the result to Wolf’s scale [to account for Wolf not counting pores].
It wouldn’t matter what evidence was presented you would argue around it.
Your confusion is not evidence, but do take this opportunity to be educated on how sunspots are counted.
There is no point using Keller as a benchmark, you dont have access to his sunspot drawings and are completely unaware of his methods or factors that could be in play.
The count is not produced by making drawings [Wolf, Wolfer, Waldmeier, Keller, etc did not draw, but counted by simple visible observation], and we are not ‘completely unaware’ of his methods. He states that it is done precisely as in the past [of which we know a great deal]. The whole thing is described here: http://www.rwg.ch/
I dont like your NOAA graph, once again you make up your own data.
What kind of nonsense is that? Plotted were the published values.
If we plot the standard deviation between NOAA and SIDC using NOAA’s published monthly values we see the SIDC is tracking at 0.6 since 2001, there is no deviation or undercounting.
Even your own plot shows the lower ratios after 2001:
http://www.leif.org/research/K-factor-NOAA-SIDC.png
Tappings conclusions are not backed up with convincing data.
Tapping’s result is backed up by independent Japanese data and by my independent analysis. Your plot is too crude to show anything. Do a proper analysis.
Grey Lensman says:
December 21, 2010 at 3:10 am
“When that plasma hits the magnetic field of the Earth, a new current is generated.”
Thats contrary to basic plasma physics, plasmas are excellent conductors.
I thought that you had grasped the idea. The excellent conductor moving into a magnetic field B with speed V sees an electric field VxB driving a current.
How do you calculate the energy output. The Aurora is only a visible part of a small part of the total energy transfer.
See below. The aurora has about half of the energy transferred.
vukcevic says:
December 21, 2010 at 4:05 am
One of the top people in the field Angelopoulos, estimates the total energy of the two-hour event (magnetic storm/rope) at five hundred thousand billion (5 x 1014) Joules. That’s approximately equivalent to the energy of a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.
An even greater authority shows you here how to calculate the energy [page 31ff of http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic-Response-to-Solar-Wind.pdf ], 5E14 Joule, equivalent to a 6.7 magnitude earthquake [not 5.5].
these electric currents act as ‘degaussing coil’ on the sources of magnetic field in the Arctic area.
There are, in fact, an almost equal current induced within the Earth’s crust, but the magnetic field does not come from the crust, but is generated in the liquid core where there is no significant induced current. The secular changes in the Arctic and elsewhere are not due to any ‘degaussing’. The correlation is spurious, as most such are.
Robuk says:
December 21, 2010 at 6:24 am
Leif states that the benchmark telescope is similar to this,
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/telescope1850-1852.jpg
Before 1856 this type of refector telescope had a speculum mirror which only
No, the telescopes used for sunspot counting are usually refractors. The standard telescope [which is still in use] is this http://www.leif.org/research/Wolf-Telescope.jpg
Geoff Sharp says:
December 21, 2010 at 3:00 am
Speaking of F10.7 flux, yesterdays adjusted for AU middle reading came in at 75.4. This should make Leif’s graph look pretty sick when he updates.
The flux is just approaching the trend line shown as the curve hugging the bottom of the graph showing the increase of general background level as expected.