I missed this earlier this week from NASA, I got a bit distracted with other things.
Sixty two – that’s the new number from Hathaway on April 4th, have a look:
They write at NASA MSFC
Current prediction for the next sunspot cycle maximum gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 62 in July of 2013. We are currently over two years into Cycle 24. The predicted size would make this the smallest sunspot cycle in nearly 200 years.
It’s quite a climbdown for Dr. Hathaway from his earlier predictions. Let’s give him credit for not trying to “hide the decline”.
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Tried to share this on Facebook .. it was blocked! … sent them a nasty message .. I am not amused ..
I believe it is time to rid myself of Facebook all together.
I am not at all surprised that SC24 appears to be “small”. In the 1950’s I did some work on the relative spottedness of the north and south hemispheres using the Greenwich records with backward extension using drawings by Schwabe and Sporer. The results were published in a paper in Monthly Notices ((MNRAS, 115,4,1955). In the paper it was noted that there was a marked correlation between the activity of a particular cycle and the change of relative spottedness during that cycle between the northern and southern hemispheres as represented by the ratio (N-S)/(N+S) (either in terms of spot counts or spot areas). For example, a very active cycle tended to be associated with a positive slope (south dominant at the beginning and north at the end of the cycle) and vice versa. During the decline of SC23 this slope was markedly negative and at minimum the activity flipped to north dominant in the new cycle. North has remained dominant on average up to the present (i.e. for 2-3 years). This would suggest that SC24 will not be a very active cycle and could indeed be one with a very low maximum.
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 9, 2011 at 6:59 pm
“Note that Hathaway’s error band is so broad that any value between 30 and 90 would fit. He is almost certain to be correct on that.”
It would appear from this, almost unbelievably in light of your education, that you don’t know the meaning of either “error band” or “smoothed sunspot number”.
From the referenced webpage,
“These predictions are for “smoothed” International Sunspot Numbers. The smoothing is usually over time periods of about a year or more so both the daily and the monthly values for the International Sunspot Number should fluctuate about our predicted numbers. The dotted lines on the prediction plots indicate the expected range of the monthly sunspot numbers.”
These values are not “error bands”.
Astronomy Picture of the Day
April 10, 2011
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1104/sunspotloops_trace_898.jpg
It was a quiet day on the Sun. The above image shows, however, that even during off days the Sun’s surface is a busy place. Shown in ultraviolet light, the relatively cool dark regions have temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius. Large sunspot group AR 9169 from the last solar cycle is visible as the bright area near the horizon. The bright glowing gas flowing around the sunspots has a temperature of over one million degrees Celsius. The reason for the high temperatures is unknown but thought to be related to the rapidly changing magnetic field loops that channel solar plasma. Large sunspot group AR 9169 moved across the Sun during 2000 September and decayed in a few weeks.
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 10, 2011 at 5:52 am
“But no sense of science (as we all know). Multiplying everything by 2 does not change the correlation nor R^2.”
As anyone who had a sense of science would know, that depends on just what “everything” means. Do you?
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 10, 2011 at 7:33 am
“The Sun may be hiding the spots at times”
That is the most profound statement you have ever made. I agree, the Sun hides at least half of its spots at any given time.
Do any of the sunspot measurements take size and intensity into account?
I’m curious on that point because the old manual measurements would have missed a lot of what gets counted today.
My apologies if this has been covered (just post the link and I’ll happy reading away).
Try this in Vegas. I said “hold.” No, “hit, me.” No, “black.” I said, “red.”
iEdward says:
April 10, 2011 at 8:45 am
…. Its interesting to see that the AGW skeptics have been spot on since predicting things 2 years ago whereas nearly ALL the AGW’ers have been way off except for last years temps, which I concede…..
Edward
Could you possibly tell me why AGWers would particularly want to over-estimate the SSN. It occurs to me that if the sunspot number is low while global temperatures remain high it helps their argument considerably. The fact that David Archibald and lots of others (including Leif Svalgaard) predicted a weaker sunspot cycle is irrelevant to the AGW debate – if global temperatures don’t respond as expected (by some). I’m far from convinced they will.
Dr. Lurtz says:
April 10, 2011 at 7:23 am
We are at the Global temperature equivalent to the 1970s. In 2.5 years, the Global temperature will be equivalent to the 1900s.
Or it may hold the ’70’s values until SC24 is spent and rolls down into the next minimum. Then the bottom will fall out.
…something completely different:
Anthony said “I missed this earlier this week from NASA, I got a bit distracted with other things.” We all hope everything is going well with your wife’s surgery and recovery, Anthony!
fabron says:
April 10, 2011 at 7:24 am
Vuk said since 1945, implying to bring the correlation in line with one before 1945, in which case your remark is out of place.
Eastern Europe was part of the ‘West’ until taken over by Communism. So his remark only makes sense for years after 1945.
Pascvaks says:
April 10, 2011 at 7:31 am
Any significant changes to the “formula” as a result to the 23-24 cycle change and the slow and low progress of 24 to date? Based on the early estimates of Cycle 24 (your’s and some others at the low end of the scale and Hathaway’s et al toward the high end) seems some formulas are more accurate than others.
If you took the trouble to look at the Hathaway paper I have already linked to a couple of times, you’ll see that the formula is a description of the current cycle based solely on observed solar activity so far since the minimum.
ferd berple says:
April 10, 2011 at 8:19 am
The observation that we get different weather patterns when the magnetic fields are aligned as compared to when they are opposite is largely ignored in climate science.
And for good reason. As there is no convincing evident or mechanism for that. BTW, the alignments are from solar max to solar max.
Doug Proctor says:
April 10, 2011 at 8:27 am
And the spike: is it real or an artefact of how the spots are being counted …
It is real. In a weak cycle such spikes are commonplace, e.g for cycle 14: http://www.leif.org/research/SC14.png
ferd berple says:
April 10, 2011 at 8:30 am
“The level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional — the last period of similar magnitude occurred over 8,000 years ago.
No, it is not: see e.g. Figure 10 of this peer-reviewed paper: http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf or http://www.leif.org/EOS/muscheler05nat_nature04045.pdf or http://www.leif.org/EOS/muscheler07qsr.pdf or
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL038004.pdf
“It is not what you know that gets you in trouble, but what you know that ain’t so”.
Glenn says:
April 10, 2011 at 9:08 am
“The dotted lines on the prediction plots indicate the expected range of the monthly sunspot numbers.”
If you would care to actually learn about how their method works, you would find that the dotted lines represent the 5% and 95% percentiles of the prediction [plus/minus two standard error bars]. We would, indeed, expect individual values to fall in that range.
Glenn says:
April 10, 2011 at 9:15 am
“But no sense of science (as we all know). Multiplying everything by 2 does not change the correlation nor R^2.”
As anyone who had a sense of science would know, that depends on just what “everything” means. Vuk said: ” use to multiply all achievements”. The all indicates ‘everything’ in my book.
Glenn says:
April 10, 2011 at 9:23 am
That is the most profound statement you have ever made. I agree, the Sun hides at least half of its spots at any given time.
Actually, not. We can see the whole surface of the Sun these days, by several methods. But it would be reasonable for you to comment on science not on misunderstood banalities [this and previous posts as well]. You bring nothing to the table.
TRM says:
April 10, 2011 at 9:43 am
Do any of the sunspot measurements take size and intensity into account?
I’m curious on that point because the old manual measurements would have missed a lot of what gets counted today.
Unfortunately, yes. Bigger spots are counted by the sunspot reference station [Locarno] with a weight of up to 5 depending on size. You can see that clearly here: http://www.specola.ch/drawings/2010/loc-d20100927.JPG look at some of the groups [they have numbers]. e.g. number 94 is shown to have 3 spots in the table in upper right while the smaller spot in 98 is counted with weight 2. Group 97 has three small spots [counted as 1 each], while the two bigger spots are counted as three each, for a total of 9 for the group.
All other solar observers do not do this, but since the SIDC [and indirectly NOAA as they try not to stray to far away from SIDC/0.6] uses Locarno as their reference station [which all observers are calibrated to], the weighting creeps in in the overall count.
There are ways to correct for this [as one should], see e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/SIDC-Seminar-12Jan.pdf
The r2-values only improved for the Waldmeier-relation, from 0.59 to 0.63. This reduces the uncertainty in the maximum timing by 1 month.
However, for the v20 and R25 predicton methods, the r2-values decreased by resp. 0.06 and 0.05, increasing the uncertainty of the prediction by 2 (resp. 22 and 20). With the changed SSN, the v20-method now predicts a SC24-maximum of 90+/-22.
This result pretty much summarizes what one does by increasing all sunspotnumbers prior to 1945: Because the maxima prior to 1945 increase by 20%, the trendline also shifts up by about 20%, whereas the slope decreases (only) by 4-7%.
That September-workshop promises to tackle very interesting topics. Apart from corrections to the past sunspotnumbers, one could also reflect on the influence of the instantly available high-resolution images on the SSN as determined by the solar observers, and one could at the same time ponder on what constitutes a sunspot.
Leif Svalgaard says:
“The Sun may be hiding the spots at times”
Glenn says:
April 10, 2011 at 9:23 am
That is the most profound statement you have ever made. I agree, the Sun hides at least half of its spots at any given time.
“Actually, not. We can see the whole surface of the Sun these days, by several methods.”
Uh, that isn’t attributable to the Sun, Leif. I’m disappointed in you. You would apparently think that all spots should be counted and relevant to the sunspot count. I doubt that would being much to the table.
Leif Svalgaard says:
“Vuk said: ” use to multiply all achievements”. The all indicates ‘everything’ in my book.”
It is sad that you would mischaracterize what another said, Leif. Just downright sad.
Vuk said
“In East Europe we use to multiply all achievements since 1945 and the West’s failures by 2.”
You left out an important part of “everything”, actually *half* of everything. Why, oh why?
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 10, 2011 at 10:58 am
Glenn says:
April 10, 2011 at 9:08 am
The dotted lines on the prediction plots indicate the expected range of the monthly sunspot numbers.
“If you would care to actually learn about how their method works”
I did, posted it, and you just quoted part of it. The values of the dotted lines are not the range of the *smoothed* number prediction. That means that were the smoothed sunspot prediction to be 30 or 90, their prediction of the smoothed sunspot number and maximum would be, well, wrong. I’ll repeat part of the quote:
“The dotted lines on the prediction plots indicate the expected range of the monthly sunspot numbers.”
Fabron & Glen thanks. It really isn’t that important, so let’s go back to science.
Why not just add 1300 to all SSN?
That way, no matter what happens, the SSN will be just as insignificant as TSI variations, and nobody will ever bother to observe or analyse them again due to triviality.
Why waste time on a constant?
Set it & forget about it.
Here on WUWT, the NASA Sunspot Prediction Roller Coaster tracks Hathaway’s numbers from March 2006 (156 to 180) through December 2010 (64). His high precision is all out of proportion to his evident lack of accuracy.
Back in January 2009, when he was predicting 104, I predicted a nice round 80, and in December 2010, when he was saying 64 I predicted a nice round 60. Now he is down to 62. Seems like we are playing leapfrog, but I’ll stick with my nice round 60.
By the way, unlike him, I do not claim any expertise in this area, nor am I funded by your tax dollars :^)
John Finn says:
April 10, 2011 at 9:55 am (Edit)
“Could you possibly tell me why AGWers would particularly want to over-estimate the SSN. It occurs to me that if the sunspot number is low while global temperatures remain high it helps their argument considerably. The fact that David Archibald and lots of others (including Leif Svalgaard) predicted a weaker sunspot cycle is irrelevant to the AGW debate – if global temperatures don’t respond as expected (by some). I’m far from convinced they will.”
It’s typical of their magical thinking, John. They subconciously know that we are right but think that if they lie about it enough that things will come out true: if they keep counting more and more sunspots that aren’t there, that Earth will magically keep warming to fulfill their disasturbationist fantasies.
Glenn says:
April 10, 2011 at 11:42 am
You would apparently think that all spots should be counted and relevant to the sunspot count. I doubt that would being much to the table.
Indeed, yes, for studying the Sun that is what one should do. Once we get solar magnetographs in orbit on the backside, we will observe the full soar surface and our calculations of the heliospheric field to expect at Earth, or at other places where such information is needed will improve.
“In East Europe we use to multiply all achievements since 1945 and the West’s failures by 2.”
You left out an important part of “everything”, actually *half* of everything. Why, oh why?
Because that is what was said, otherwise it would read: we used to multiply all achievements since 1945 by 2 and correlate with the West’s failures. Nobody needs your sad ‘why, oh why’ lamenting.
Glenn says:
April 10, 2011 at 11:54 am
I did, posted it, and you just quoted part of it. The values of the dotted lines are not the range of the *smoothed* number prediction. That means that were the smoothed sunspot prediction to be 30 or 90, their prediction of the smoothed sunspot number and maximum would be, well, wrong.
Not wrong, just as in all science uncertain. But you did not read about their method. Read their paper http://www.leif.org/EOS/1999JA900313.pdf carefully, especially the discussion of Figures 16 and 17. Figure 16 estimates the standard deviation, and 17 explains that the dashed lines denote the 5% and 95% percentiles: “The dotted lines are placed at plus and minus two standard deviations”. This is the usual definition of two-standard deviation error band, within which one would expect 95% of individual monthly values to fall. Perhaps, you shouldn’t comment on things you do not understand. What was that again: ‘sad, so sad’.
rbateman says:
April 10, 2011 at 1:07 pm
Why not just add 1300 to all SSN?
Because we are not silly about this.
mikelorrey says:
April 10, 2011 at 1:54 pm
if they keep counting more and more sunspots that aren’t there, that Earth will magically keep warming to fulfill their disasturbationist fantasies.
“they” are not counting sunspots. Solar activity is kept track of by careful and dedicated observers for a lot of practical purposes [apart from studying the Sun].
Seems to me that there are 2 civilizational dangers these days;
Iran lighting off a nuke on the East coast or an X-C flare cooking our geese.
Ira Glickstein, PhD says:
April 10, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Back in January 2009, when he was predicting 104, I predicted a nice round 80, and in December 2010, when he was saying 64 I predicted a nice round 60. Now he is down to 62. Seems like we are playing leapfrog, but I’ll stick with my nice round 60.
In Hathaway’s description of what he is doing http://www.leif.org/EOS/1999JA900313.pdf he says: “Finally, on the basis of our analysis presented here, we predict that cycle 23 will have a maximum amplitude near 150 (slightly higher if expressed as a 13-month running mean) with the maximum occurring midway through the year 2000. Activity for the next 3-4 years (1999-2002) should be typical of the maximum phase condition [cf. Wilson et al., 1998b]. Although this prediction should not change much as the cycle progresses[because we are well into the cycle – the paper was written in March 1999], we update the prediction every month as new data becomes available and post it on a world wide web site at http://science.nasa.gov/…”
This is what should be done: updating all the time when new data becomes available. If you are just at the beginning of a cycle, so with little data to work with] the uncertainty will be large. As the cycle progresses, the prediction becomes better and better. This is no ‘roller-coaster’, but just correct application of data as good science should be done.
Vuk etc. says: “Fabron & Glen(n) thanks. It really isn’t that important, so let’s go back to science.”
Amen. Thanks, Vuk. The snark to content ratio was getting a bit thick.