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
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RR Kampen says:
December 20, 2010 at 1:08 am (Edit)
So 2009 and 2010 should have been half a degree C colder than it was around 1970. But they aren’t. How come?
HR and senseseeker might take note of this as well:
When the sun goes quiet, energy previously stored in the ocean by incoming solar shortwave comes out again as El Nino’s. These events prop up the surface temperature even as ocean heat content falls, as it has for the last 7 years.
This is why there is a seeming ‘lag’ between solar activity and surface temperature.
But the sun is weak, cloud cover has increased, and so insolation *at the surface* isn’t rebuilding ocean heat content, 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.
My prediction is for a less drastic fall than David predicts, because the OHC is historically high following the highly active solar cycles of the late C20th, but it is still a fall.
Enhanced co2 Greenhouse conjecture is dead in the water, because Trenberth’s ‘missing heat’ isn’t hiding in the system, it is the figment of a failed model. There is no missing heat, we will have to make do with what heat the oceans are still retaining.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/working-out-where-the-energy-goes-part-2-peter-berenyi/
Is there a next glaciation period in there? We are overdue. And how would we know, it’s just getting cold. So little ice age or real ice age?
We think we know what causes the glacial epochs, the Isthmus of Panama being plugged by plate tectonics about 4 million years ago, altering the ocean currents, but are there other triggers? It would make sense that something like sun cycles were the trigger, for real ice ages.
During the Little Ice Age (and all the minima and the Big Ice Ages too) both poles experienced significant sea ice growth. Watch the sea ice global total for global cooling-warming indicators. It’s a kind’a global thermometer thingy-wingy. Atmospheric temperature is OK for any one ‘where’ at any one ‘time’ or from any one year to another year, but you don’t want to write home about it. Watch the sea ice. Watch the glaciers.
PS: In today’s much abused and overpopulated world we’ve lost touch with a number of realities. One very important one is that you never trust a politician any farther than you can throw them. (I don’t think I can say that too often.)
“The Year Without a Summer, in 1816, also occurred during the Dalton Minimum.”
FYI The Year Without a Summer is widely acknowledged to have been caused by volcanic winter. Four large but not record setting eruptions from 1812-1814 in Japan, Indonesia, the Carribean, and the Phillipines had primed the atmosphere with dust before the main event in 1815 – the eruption of Mt. Tambura which was the biggest volcanic event in at least 1600 years.
It is suspected that the Dalton Minimum was a contributing factor but not the primary factor of the catastrophic cooling in 1816.
@Sense Seeker
“Solar activity has at best been essentially flat since at least 1980, so the oceans should have caught up by now.”
Yes but it’s been flat at the highest level since record-keeping of sunspots begin in the year 1600.
If you have a constant flame under a pot of cold water the water keeps getting warmer even though the flame remains constant. Duh.
When comparing SC24 with the Dalton Minimum it is important to allow for improvements in technology and counting method changes. The Layman’s Count attempts to mimic the Wolf reconstruction method of the Dalton which shows we are now at 5 days spotless…..the F10.7 values are also very low.
Sense Seeker says:
December 20, 2010 at 4:04 am
Baa,
For the globe to cool, first the oceans must divest themselves of some heat content. The recent El Nino as an example… The heat is passed into the gaseous part of the atmosphere and from there finds its way into space by the often described processes. While that is happening the air temperature must needs be higher than before, perhaps even at record levels. If one understands the source of the heat energy, one will be tempted to ascribe the elevated temperatures to a cooling process. The proof, one way or the other, will depend upon future conditions.
Then there is past correlation to consider. Correlation may not be causation, but that’s the way to bet it. A hypothesis without correlation of some sort to back it up will not fare well. We are in some sort of solar minimum. The oceans are dumping heat content. We can see clearly where it is going, and it’s up. There is high correlation associating Solar events with temperatures. I putting my bets on cold to come. Seems like sense.
The more the climate scientists talk up the heat given the past few winters, the more they totally shred their credibility with the public who have to wear the consequences of a government unprepared for these severe cold snaps.
Its tough to believe in “global warming” when your constantly freezing your ass off.
HR says:
December 20, 2010 at 3:38 am
It’s holding up better than the prediction of children in England not knowing what snow is.
It’s holding up better than the prediction of an ice-free arctic ocean in the summer.
It’s holding up better than the prediction of increasingly powerful Atlantic hurricanes.
But the prediction that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones is holding up best of all.
HR says:
December 20, 2010 at 3:17 am
So any lags in global temperature associated with this?
Because where ever you think 2010 global temp is going to finish it’s going to take a stretch to describe it as cool no matter how many personnel reports of it being cold outside. Certainly the UAH satellite data doesn’t seem to have it cool.
‘Cool’ and ‘hot’ are measures of temperature.
Temperature does not equal heat content
A dry airmass (see http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/natl/flash-wv.html ) holds far less heat than a humid airmass. So all that dry air you can see near the tropics is really hot but holds far less heat than the humid airmass.
Everyone is using the incorrect metric.
After all the ‘green house gas’ theory is that ‘heat’ is trapped in the atmosphere. The amount of temperature rise in air depends on its enthalpy which is driven largely by its water vapor content.
So scientists should stop measuring temperature and doing temperature comparisons ! They are meaningless.
Casper says:
December 20, 2010 at 12:23 am
It is quite probably that we’ll be seeing a new Dalton Minimum. A global cooling? I’ll bet the man is responsible for it! lol
================================================
NOPE !!!!!!!!!
The natural cooling is just masking the CAGW !!!!
That’s how it gets spun !!
Vuksevic says
Quote
Only recently NASA has recognised existence of ‘magnetic ropes’ , which in reality is no more than a electric current loop.
Unquote
Now these electric currents have been identified and imaged, has their contact point with the atmosphere been tracked and their effects there noted. I have not seen any reports on this. They certainly are not locked in “frozen” magnetic fields.
I find the possibility that the Earth draws additional energy from the Sun through these electrical connections to be full of possibilities and clarifications to many so called puzzles and enigmas, including climatic responses.
@RR Kampen says:
December 20, 2010 at 1:08 am
“So 2009 and 2010 should have been half a degree C colder than it was around 1970. But they aren’t. How come?”
Stronger warming around the equinoxes played a large part.
Shouldn’t we be asking how carbon dioxide causes this lack of sunspots?
After all this is the root cause of everything?
Al Gore has said so. He has been backed up by David Suzuki & The Team.
Must be true.
David, UK says:
December 20, 2010 at 1:54 am
“I am of the mind that we need to start seeing a significant drop in temperatures for the sake of humanity. For all the damage this would do (crops would suffer, millions would die of starvation and cold-related deaths) it would pale besides the damage our corrupt leaders and the UN would inflict on us. ”
I hear ya, David. It’s a classic choice between the lesser of two evils. Warming is good. Cooling is bad. Cooling will have worse consequences if resources today are used to formulate plans and build infracstructure for increasing warmth. Calling it “blindsided by cooling” is exactly right. The AGW faithful are about to get bitch-slapped by mother nature and we’re all going to feel the blow.
Don’t take it to the heart Vuk, you’re not the first or the last from your country to be called such names.
vukcevic says:
December 20, 2010 at 3:33 am
Only recently NASA has recognised existence of ‘magnetic ropes’ , which in reality is no more than a electric current loop.
Getting facts straight seem to be hard. Magnetic ropes in the solar wind have been recognized for decades, e.g.:
http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/papers/bubblelike_solwind.pdf
I have been looking at cycles too, see http://agwnot.blogspot.com/2010/11/climate-and-solar-regularities-and_16.html . This cooling looks likely to bottom between 2030 and 2040, cooler than the Dalton.
My main gripe with this article is “the 1970s cooling period”, because the cool period really started some time between 1945 and 1950 and lasted all until 1980. That means that the record strong solar cycle 19 was also well within this cold period, so to me, the conjecture that the “1970s cooling” was connected to the weak cycle 20 doesn’t seem well supported. And: the rapid warming from about 1920-1940 happened during two quite weak solar cycles.
Geoff Sharp says:
December 20, 2010 at 5:48 am
The Layman’s Count attempts to mimic the Wolf reconstruction method of the Dalton
There were very few observations during the Dalton minimum. Wolf used mainly counts of aurorae to reconstruct sunspot numbers. So, there is nothing to mimic.
Re Sense Seeker says:
December 20, 2010 at 4:04 am
Seeker, you have to factor in cloud cover and cloud location. What heats the oceans is SWR at the SURFACE. This SWR has a long residence time within our earth’s ocean, land atmosphere. The longer the residence time, the more energy can accumalate.
This led me to some thoughts about the seasons. Sunlight, falling on the Earth when it’s about 3,000,000 miles closer to the sun in January, is about 7% more intense than in July. Because the Northern Hemisphere has more land which heats easier then water most people state that the Earth’s average temperature is about 4 degrees F higher in July than January, when in fact they should be stating that the ATMOSPHERE is 4 degrees higher in July. In January this extra SW energy is being pumped into the oceans where the “residence time” within the Earth’s ocean land and atmosphere is the longest. Some of the energy increases the mean evaporation rate of the earth and is transmitted to latent heat before being released, but most of the extra energy is lost to the atmosphere for a time as it is contained within the ocean, but eventually it is radiated from the ocean as LWR and increased latent heat in water vapor.
In actuality, due to the more intense southern sun’s SW radiation being trapped in the oceans, the earth is gaining energy in the southern hemisphere summers, and losing energy in the northern hemisphere summer. The extra energy is just hidden in the oceans for a time while the northern hemisphere summer reacts on a more sensitive atmosphere, creating a rise in atmospheric heat, but a net loss to the planet relative to the southern hemisphere summer.
At Tallblokes site he has some charts on clould cover as well as TSI. BTW, a flat line at a substained high level can build over time, and the expanisve heating of the oceans over the last several decades correspondes well to a consitently high SWR input at the surface. You need to look not only at the peaks, but the duration of the high periods of TSI, as a smaller peak that continues for a greater period can have an equall or increased effect. AT any rate SWR rules this planets energy balance.
I agree with crosspatch, I’ve done a little research that says it should last at least 2 cycles, but most likely 3 or 4. Back in April 2009, I created this chart, http://www.wxmidwest.com/solar/index.htm
Grey Lensman says:
December 20, 2010 at 6:02 am
…and possibly the Moon sucks off its part too from our Earth.
Dave Springer says:
December 20, 2010 at 6:06 am
Can you imagine a winter with 100% power from windmills?
Pops says:
December 20, 2010 at 12:43 am
The sun has probably been spotless on several occasions recently but those doing the counting have been using a large magnifying glass to count every pixel in a desperate attempt to pump-up the numbers. Some would even like to change the system and use the STEREO Behind / STEREO Ahead satellites to count sunspots out of sight of earth; to bump-up the numbers even more.
Dead right.