UPDATE: see my animation of NASA solar forecasts since 2004 below.
WUWT Commenter J Gary Fox writes:
The solar cycle 24 predicted sunspot maximum has been reduced again – predicted peak down to 59 Max. (1/3/11) http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. Philosopher Y. Berra
This will be at the level of the Maunder Minimum of 1675 -1715.
Previous NASA predictions below:
- 2010 October: Predicted peak 60-70
- 2009 May 29: predicted peak: 80-90 range
- 2009 Jan 5: predicted peak: 100-110 range
- 2008 Mar 28: predicted peak: 130-140 range
From the NASA page:
Current prediction for the next sunspot cycle maximum gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 59 in June/July of 2013. We are currently two years into Cycle 24 and the predicted size continues to fall.
Here’s what the prediction looked like in March 2009:
What a difference.
Here’s an animation showing all of the prediction graphs from NASA that we have thus far:
Ira Glickstein did a guest post here a few days ago that outlines a lot of the changes in the forecast over time. It is well worth the read.
Brief Summary:
[Rest trimmed Robt]
1700 to 1722 and 1798 to about 1820 would be the models of sunspot cycles I would pick,
We should stay away from exaggerations for awhile.
OMG! Initiate Emergency Protocol 417
How long does the good Dr.Wollf estimate this disordered path to last?
So look for deeper penetration of cosmic rays over the next 20 years and this means more cancers, genetic defects, and the continuation of the trend to global cooling. It amazes me how climatologists dare to say anything when we can be so far off (300%) in the possible 2010 highs predicted for sunspot count (as predicted back in 2008) versus the real data. Now NASA, having been totally discredited as a predictive entity, is doing what? Revising their predictions! This borders on anti-science. Why not just admit that we dont have a clue what the short term changes to the sun will be. We have proven this to ourselved with our own raw data! Few doubt that the Sun is the greatest infuence (directly or indirectly) upon our climate. Anyone, and I mean anyone who thinks that we have any handle whatsoever on our ability to predict even moderately long term (say a few hundreds of years) changes to our climate is worth more pity than praise.
I read somewhere that there is a lag of one year from a low SSN phenomenon to cooling in planet Earth. If this will hold true, then the cooling in the next few years will be severe.
My guess is that the Sun is heading for Maunder type period of inactivity, but the sunspot free period will only last till about 2035.
How long will the MSM be silent on what happening on the Sun?
Right now they are from time to time proclaiming the solar activity soon will be back to levels prior to SC24. Nothing to see here. Nothing out of the ordinary. Move on.
It’ll be about 45.
Thanks folks. Now my question is by how much is the present spot count elevated by the new method?
Geoff Sharp says:
January 18, 2011 at 4:48 pm
The current F10.7 readings are too low considering the current spot activity. We have also witnessed a overall rise in magnetic strength and sunspot darkness over the past 12 months as we head towards solar max, sunspot 1148 yesterday continues this trend which flies in the face of L&P (although Leif will tell you differently)
The sunspot count is too low relative to F10.7
http://www.leif.org/research/F107-SSN-divergence.png
and L&P is right on track. http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn.png
Now, one can always manipulate the sunspot number to make it fit whatever one wants too. Perhaps GISS is not the only one playing games with the ‘data’.
An interesting animation. It shows just how poor their predictive powers really are. At first I was thinking those other lines were error bars, but they appear to be natural variation lines.
The first set of predictions show a low around 2007, with a peak of approx 160 sunspots in 2010.
The actual low is centred on 2009, and the next peak being pushed to 2003 at 50 sunspots.
I would call that a very different outcome to what was expected. They should be embarrassed with that outcome.
Sean Houlihane says:
January 18, 2011 at 3:49 pm
Nonoy Oplas says:
January 18, 2011 at 6:51 pm
These responses answer my question from earlier. But which is right? If Sean is correct, then we should see a decent drop in temps over the next few years, as solar activity was starting to get low ~2005. If Nonoy is right, then this might not be such a big deal because we’ve already had plenty of exposure to the low solar output without a big drop in temps.
I just heard a lot from the AGW types last year about being at solar minimum and it still being hot. But if the lag time is 6 years, then that doesn’t matter too much, as 2004 had respectable solar output. Also, if the lag is 6 years, is there any connection between the large Arctic ice loss in 2007 and the solar max in 2001?
So can anyone clear up what the lag is supposed to be?
Thanks,
-Scott
Ed Reid says:
January 18, 2011 at 5:00 pm
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Yogi had another one that hits on the CAGW crowd’s methodology, Ed: “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
Les Francis says:
January 18, 2011 at 6:48 pm
How long does the good Dr.Wollf estimate this disordered path to last?
The solar disordered path goes from 2006 to 2016. How much of that path is available to solar suppression effects through vertical and horizontal forces is debatable, but currently being looked at.
Dr. Wollf and Patrone are not convinced that a short term reduction in solar activity can explain a grand minimum lasting for decades, but a disruption to the Hale cycle would allow this.
From the NASA page:
Current prediction for the next sunspot cycle maximum gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 59 in June/July of 2013. We are currently two years into Cycle 24 and the predicted size continues to fall.
I don’t blame NASA for what’s been going on with SC24, nor anyones predictions that didn’t pan out.
The Sun has been doing this of it’s own accord, dragging it’s cyclical feet.
At present rate (which shows no sign of turning any corner – surprise), 35-40 max in 2013, provided it doesn’t nose dive and hit the dirt first.
Ok. Who wants to bet that SC24 won’t stall out and crash in the next 2 yrs?
Nanoy Oplas said:
“I read somewhere that there is a lag of one year from a low SSN phenomenon to cooling in planet Earth. If this will hold true, then the cooling in the next few years will be severe.”
Based on an ice core study temperature reconstruction from the Altai glacier that correlated temperatures over the past 750 years with sunspot number there is a twenty year lag. Therefore since SSN in 1990 started to decline from 160 (SC22) to 110(sc23) to 60?(sc24) we might expect to see the decline begin 2010. As of today tropospheric temps (ch 5 UAH) have declined .86 degrees since last year at this time.
http://lch.web.psi.ch/files/Publikationen/analytic/Eichleretal_GRL2009.pdf
This is of course separate from any GHG forcings. However from the the extreme negative NAO and La Nina it is starting to look like solar rules.
Ed Wagner: Here’s a less sensational version of the article. It’s most likely just refraction:
http://www.livescience.com/environment/early-sunrise-arctic-greenland-110117.html
I just love how many in the astrophysicist community were predicting a quiet, delayed SC24 5-6 years ago, but of course were never listened to then nor now. They are becoming correct by the day through the process of comparing observational records against their hypotheses, yet the Hansenist NASA among others can move the goalposts monthly and still be the ‘go to’ voice and remain totally unapproachable when it comes to criticism of their failed predictions.
Long-range weather forecasters like Bastardi, Corbyn and Walker et al get it right far more often than any of the politicised weather bureaus, yet who do we always hear from??
I’m also looking forward to how far NOAA/GISS and others will need to fudge 2011’s data to make it the ‘hottest year ever’.
Remember, we live in an age of hearing not from who is correct, but from who is proper.
PS. Pardon my ignorance, but what is happening re. the DeVries Cycle – the 208-210yr long-term solar cycle. We’re due for a significant change any year now aren’t we?!
I’m not going to get too concerned until the next solar cycle ramp down gets well underway. Then I’ll be sweaty, because of Elbrus in Russia and the help it could get from other percolating big bad boys. Hope not, but its going to happen eventually sometime.
Dr. Lurtz says:
January 18, 2011 at 4:47 pm (Edit)
It is easier to think of the Sunspots cycle as a sine wave with a minimum of zero and a maximum of, say, 150. At zero the TSI is ~1360, at maximum is 1363. The difference, as per a verified previous post, corresponds to a Black Body temperature different of 0.15C. [Earth’s radiation temperature 288K.]
Starting in 2005 we started a constant out-flow of Black Body radiation of ~0.15C/2.5 years. Note: Full input from the Sun would require the Sunspots to reach ~150 or F10.7 ~250. Check Loehe temperature reconstruction graphs for the Dalton Minimum to verify the ~0.15C/2.5 years.
The Global temperature has already lost 2005 until 2010 -> 5 years*~0.15C/2.5 years=0.3C.
Careful analysis of Loehe and other temperature reconstruction graphs, reveal a 350 to 400 years collapse of Solar output.
Remember that all of this has happen before, so therefore, the Sun is acting perfectly normally. The real question is ‘Why can’t the Solar Physicists, who have the Sun “completely understood”, tell us why we have an extended Solar minimum???’
—…—
I observe rather, that it is not so much the short 11.6 (some-odd) sunspot cycle that is important, but the three-period repetitive cycle of ALL the sunspot cycles that we have observed that is important to the earth.
Thus, every “set” of three “high-activity” cycles repeats 6 cycles (66 years) later with another set of three “high-activity” cycles. Between, three “low intensity” cycles repeat 66 years later with three more low intensity cycles.
SC21-22-23 were very high, perhaps the highest ever recorded. Before that, 18-19-20 were low, but not as abnormally low as 24 appears to be becoming. High intensity during SC15-16-17 were symptomatic of the rise in temperature between 1890 and 1940, just like SC21-22-23 high values corresponded to the rise in temperature into 2000-2010 Modern Warming Period from the low point in 1970.
My prediction?
SC24-25-26 will be very low, maybe equal to the 3 sunspot cycles spanning the Mauder Minimum where almost no activity will be found. But then they will recover.
Big questions?
What three sunspot cycle will be the peak of the Modern Warming Period? SC21-22-23, peaking in 2000-2010, to be followed by a Modern Ice Age beginning with the Modern Minimum of SC24-25-26?
Or will the Modern Warming Peak occur in the NEXT SC triple of SC27-28-29, with a Modern Warming Peak of high temperatures 66 years from now in 2066-2076?
—…—
Side Questions: What is the accepted period of the “long” Temperature Cycle (800 years, 900, 950 ???); and when did the MWP and LIA “peak” and “dip”?
When should we have begun our periodic return to the climate count towards the actual Modern Warming Peak?
Why three up, three down, three up, three down?
Get an answer, then write the Nobel Committee.
The sunspot cycle is known but there is a cycle of sunspot numbers, ie. a low number year will be in a cycle with the next low number year. This is probably twice the sunspot cycle length so about 20 years. There is also a cycle of solar magnetic activity, which is separate to the sunspot one, and other cycles as well all of which have an impact on climate. None of these cycles are incorporated in GCM’s.
I am sure that some solar cycles are longer than the time that we have been accurately monitoring the sun and proxy measurements of past solar activity, using Be isotope measurements, get poorer with age like all other proxy data.
Eh, if we’re still setting multiple record high temperatures worldwide despite unprecedentedly (and unpredictedly) low sunspot numbers, shouldn’t that make us more worried about global warming, rather than less? Why *isn’t* the wine frosting over in Versailles?
Hi Geoff
There is only one formula, one published in Jan 2004. Extrapolated it predicts peak value around 80 (red amplitude curve), which may be somewhat different from the annual averaged maximum. Further more it correctly identifies start of all grand minima (Oort to Dalton), as well as sudden drop in peaks of recent cycles e.g. SC20 (see fig 5),
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC5.htm
not to mention the polar field, the highest correlation in whole of the solar science.
Solar activity is electro-magnetic physical process and I think that latest findings from NASA with every new finding, indicate that solution to the problem can be only found in the study of the electro-magnetic relationships, with some ideas outlined in the above link.
“We still don’t quite understand this beast,” Dr. Hathaway said. “The theories we had for how the sunspot cycle works have major problems.”
Not that I expect that Dr. Hathaway would read or consider it, but if by any miracle he does, it would be interesting to know how would he now compare the magnetic IHV index method with the more compressive electro-magnetic feedback
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC5.htm
Dr. Svalgaard’s comments are welcome too.
What this demonstrates, is that they don’t understand the Sun and its dynamics.
I am sure the Sunspot cycle is not random – it is just that nobody understands what the underlying mechanism for the cycle is. And until they do, I would have thought that throwing out planetry orbits and other suggestions is tantamount to gross negligence.
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