Guest post by David Archibald
Dr Svalgaard has an interesting annotation on his chart of solar parameters – “Welcome to solar max”:
Graphic source: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
Could it be? It seems that Solar Cycle 24 had only just begun, with solar minimum only two and a half years ago in December 2008.
The first place to confirm that is the solar polar magnetic field strength, with data from the Wilcox Solar Observatory:
Source: http://wso.stanford.edu/
The magnetic poles of the Sun reverse at solar maximum. The northern field has reversed. There are only three prior reversals in the instrument record. Another parameter that would confirm solar maximum is the heliospheric current sheet tilt angle, also from the WSO site.
The heliospheric current sheet tilt angle has taken a couple of years to reach solar maximum from its current level.
If the Sun is anywhere near solar maximum, the significance of that is that it would be the first time in the record that a short cycle was also a weak cycle, though Usoskin et al in 2009 proposed a short, asymmetric cycle in the late 18th century at the beginning of the Dalton Minimum: http://climate.arm.ac.uk/publications/arlt2.pdf
Interestingly, Ed Fix (paper in press) generated a solar model (based on forces that dare not speak their name) which predicts two consecutive, weak solar cycles, each eight years long:
The green line is the solar cycle record with alternate cycles reversed. The red line is the model output. Solar Cycles 19 to 23 are annotated.
This model has the next solar maximum in 2013 and minimum only four years later in 2017. This outcome is possible based on the Sun’s behaviour to date.
Mike McMillan says:
May 8, 2011 at 12:23 am
We don’t really need another Dalton, not with the population size we’ve got to feed.
Don’t worry. A Dalton will cure that problem.
http://research.aerology.com/natural-processes/solar-system-dynamics/
Just my 2 cents
*A nameless over view*
JG says:
May 8, 2011 at 11:29 am
From the SWPC .pdf on solar predictions, Hathaways’ second prediction was:
Author – Hathaway, et al. (2004)
SSN prediction – 145 ± 30
Year of Maximum – 2010
Prediction Type – Fast meridional circulation speed of SC 22 leads to a strong SC 24
You can read more about solar cycle predictions here.
Of the 12 or so panel members of that team, only Leif seems remotely close to predicting it correctly. Leif was also the only member on that panel that used magnetic fields to formulate his prediction.
Meridonal flow also looks promising in determining SSN. Choudhuri, et al. (2007) used a flux-transport dynamo model that also predicted a low SSN. Of which I think looks just as promising, if not more, than Svalgaard etal. (2005)
I am curious Leif, did you have any discussions with Dr. Choudhuri, and if so, what is your thought about using a flux transport model for future predictions of solar cycles?
Or even possibly combining the flux transport model with your current magnetic field strength method?
“Alex says:
May 8, 2011 at 4:17 am
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 8, 2011 at 2:02 am
No, the Earth’s orbit and axis orientation are.
So if you “remove” the sun there wouldn’t be much change?”
If you remove the sun, Earth would no longer go in an elliptical orbit but would go in a straight line. Any planet that goes in a straight line would approach absolute zero in a matter of time.
Rob .. do you know of anywhere we might find a Forbush decrease? left field on
Werner Brozek says:
May 8, 2011 at 2:52 pm
Since the Sun is too small to go Nova, I guess we’re stuck with ol Sol.
The paleoclimatic record has a series of abrupt cooling events that are concurrent with abrupt changes in solar cosmogenic isotopes. (The abrupt change in cosmogenic isotopes is the smoking gun. The question is what causes the abrupt change in climate.) The abrupt cooling event comes in small, medium, large, and super large.
The duration of the cooling event is directly dependent on the size of the cooling event. An example of the super cooling event is the Younger Dryas cooling event or the termination of the last interglacial period Eemian. The interglacial periods end abruptly, not slowly.
As I have noted there is concurrent with these abrupt cooling events abrupt changes to the geomagnetic field. It appears a restart of the solar magnetic cycle causes an archeomagnetic jerk (geomagnetic field’s dipole axis abruptly changes orientation by 10% to 15% degrees with respect to the rotational axis of the earth) or a geomagnetic excursion (the event attempts to reverse the geomagnetic field.)
Solar cycle 24 appears to be an interruption to the solar magnetic cycle. Base on the paleo record we will have a chance to observe a restart.
There are a whole set of astronomical anomalies that related to the solar mechanism and that can be explained by this mechanism. The mechanism explains how and why large stars form and what causes magtars and so on.
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html
According to the marine records, the Eemian interglacial ended with a rapid cooling event about 110,000 years ago (e.g., Imbrie et al., 1984; Martinson et al., 1987), which also shows up in ice cores and pollen records from across Eurasia. From a relatively high resolution core in the North Atlantic. Adkins et al. (1997) suggested that the final cooling event took less than 400 years, and it might have been much more rapid.
The event at 8200 ka is the most striking sudden cooling event during the Holocene, giving widespread cool, dry conditions lasting perhaps 200 years before a rapid return to climates warmer and generally moister than the present. This event is clearly detectable in the Greenland ice cores, where the cooling seems to have been about half-way as severe as the Younger Dryas-to-Holocene difference (Alley et al., 1997; Mayewski et al., 1997). No detailed assessment of the speed of change involved seems to have been made within the literature (though it should be possible to make such assessments from the ice core record), but the short duration of these events at least suggests changes that took only a few decades or less to occur.
The Younger Dryas cold event at about 12,900-11,500 years ago seems to have had the general features of a Heinrich Event, and may in fact be regarded as the most recent of these (Severinghaus et al. 1998). The sudden onset and ending of the Younger Dryas has been studied in particular detail in the ice core and sediment records on land and in the sea (e.g., Bjoerck et al., 1996), and it might be representative of other Heinrich events.
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html
Until a few decades ago it was generally thought that all large-scale global and regional climate changes occurred gradually over a timescale of many centuries or millennia, scarcely perceptible during a human lifetime. The tendency of climate to change relatively suddenly has been one of the most suprising outcomes of the study of earth history, specifically the last 150,000 years (e.g., Taylor et al., 1993). Some and possibly most large climate changes (involving, for example, a regional change in mean annual temperature of several degrees celsius) occurred at most on a timescale of a few centuries, sometimes decades, and perhaps even just a few years. The decadal-timescale transitions would presumably have been quite noticeable to humans living at such times, and may have created difficulties or opportunities (e.g., the possibility of crossing exposed land bridges, before sea level could rise). Hodell et al. (1995) and Curtis et al. (1996), for instance, document the effects of climate change on the collapse of the Classic period of Mayan civilization and Thompson (1989) describes the influence of alternating wet and dry periods on the rise and fall of coastal and highland cultures of Ecuador and Peru.
We discuss the possibility that an abrupt reduction in solar irradiance (my comment. the mechanism is not a change to TSI. See next paper for another hypothesis.) triggered the start of the Younger Dryas and we argue that this is indeed supported by three observations: (1) the abrupt and strong increase in residual 14C at the start of the Younger Dryas that seems to be too sharp to be caused by ocean circulation changes alone, (2) the Younger Dryas being part of an & 2500 year quasi-cycle * also found in the 14C record* that is supposedly of solar origin, (3) the registration of the Younger Dryas in geological records in the tropics and the mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/BardPapers/responseCourtillotEPSL07.pdf
Response to Comment on “Are there connections between Earth’s magnetic field and climate?, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 253, 328–339, 2007” by Bard, E., and Delaygue, M., Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., in press, 2007
Also, we wish to recall that evidence of a correlation between archeomagnetic jerks and cooling events (in a region extending from the eastern North Atlantic to the Middle East) now covers a period of 5 millenia and involves 10 events (see f.i. Figure 1 of Gallet and Genevey, 2007). The climatic record uses a combination of results from Bond et al (2001), history of Swiss glaciers (Holzhauser et al, 2005) and historical accounts reviewed by Le Roy Ladurie (2004). Recent high-resolution paleomagnetic records (e.g. Snowball and Sandgren, 2004; St-Onge et al., 2003) and global geomagnetic field modeling (Korte and Constable, 2006) support the idea that part of the centennial-scale fluctuations in 14C production may have been influenced by previously unmodeled rapid dipole field variations. In any case, the relationship between climate, the Sun and the geomagnetic field could be more complex than previously imagined. And the previous points allow the possibility for some connection between the geomagnetic field and climate over these time scales.
Given that CO2 does not affect the climate in a significantly, why could another Maunder Min. not happen? Do we have a proof as to why the first Maunder Min happened?
History will repeat itself if the Sun was the cause of the Maunder Min.
I see the mention that the Sun has 99% of the mass in the solar system. But have you ever looked at the distribution of angular momentum in the system?
Where is earth’s orbit relative to the solar equator? Also, is there a general directionality for high energy CRF through our solar system?
Bill Illis says: “TSI … needs to change by 10 to 40 times more than that to cause Little Ice Age conditions.”
But what if the main mechanism by which the Sun changes our temperature is indirect?
http://www.space.dtu.dk/English/Research/Research_divisions/Sun_Climate.aspx
eg. “Climate models only include the effects of small variations in direct solar radiation (infrared, visible and UV). The effects of cosmic rays on clouds are not included in models, and the models do a rather poor job of simulating clouds in the present climate. Since cloud feedbacks are a large source of uncertainty, this is a reason for concern when viewing climate model predictions.“.
P. Solar – Your approach of fitting cosine+linear is more sophisticated than the IPCC’s linear-only approach, and may well be useful as a short-term predicter (and for longer than the linear model of course), but in the end it suffers from the same problems : it has no physical mechanism and it takes no account of longer cycles. There are longer cycles visible in our temperature history, and if one or more of those are turning now, then your improved predicter could soon deviate from the actual.
There are countless places that I could provide links to, showing the existence of other cycles. I’ll give one, which maybe is a little more interesting than the average: \http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?old=2007031924578
“NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records
… The Nile water levels and aurora records had two somewhat regularly occurring variations in common – one with a period of about 88 years and the second with a period of about 200 years.
The researchers said the findings have climate implications that extend far beyond the Nile River basin. …“
Ed Fix says:
May 8, 2011 at 8:02 am
Ed, your model got its first outing when I used the same graphic in my last book a year ago (Figure 67). Ed’s model is a major advance in our understanding of the Sun. If you can predict solar activity, you can predict climate. Ed’s model’s hindcast match is about as good as you could hope for, which gives a lot of confidence about what it is predicting. It is fabulous knowing what is going to happen. For example, a number of papers have been published predicting (on no physical basis whatsoever) that we will have a mini-ice age by mid-century. Ed’s model says back to normal by mid-century.
As a teaser, this is what I wrote for a review committee for Ed’s paper (taking out reference to certain forces that must not be named):
“This is a very important paper because it provides a physical explanation for solar cycle behaviour. Many of the existing observation-derived rules for explaining the fundamental properties of the sunspot cycle have not, until this paper, been quantified. To a large extent, existing solar science is based on non-mathematical observation.
In terms of some of the existing empirically-derived properties of solar cycle behaviour, this model shows that the Schwabe cycle is not important in itself and should be considered to be half a Hale cycle.
This model explains why, for extended periods, a successive increase in solar cycle amplitude is seen before the system gets out of phase and phase destruction occurs. This paper explains why individual Hale cycles are not discrete magnetic events. The quantum of flux preserved in the system is the basis for the amplitude of the following cycle. Thus the sunspot cycle memory effect is explained.
It also explains the Waldemeir effect – that strong cycles reach a maximum of amplitude in the shortest period of time. It also explains the amplitude-period effect (the anti-correlation between the peak amplitude of a cycle and the length of the preceding cycle) and the amplitude-minimum effect (the correlation between cycle amplitude and the activity level at the previous minimum).
Further, I expect most of the existing science on solar cycle behaviour to be re-expressed in the frame of reference provided by this model. That in turn will result in refining and extension of this model.”
Ed made a major scientific advance at home in his spare time.
Malcolm Miller says:
May 8, 2011 at 3:49 pm
I see the mention that the Sun has 99% of the mass in the solar system. But have you ever looked at the distribution of angular momentum in the system?
~
The solar system looks like a huge vortex type structure imho.
Smaller, faster, shorter orbitting bodies corotating in higher levels of ionization at the center. with larger rings of larger bodies with longer orbits in corotating, in ever lowering levels of ionization.. throughout..
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 8, 2011 at 9:57 am
“Pulsars are not like the Sun and any comparison will be rather meaningless”
I didn’t suggest that a pulsar is like the Sun, I wish I had a bigger brain to simplify further such a complex concept that I tried to explain above.
“people are trying to find stars just like the Sun [called solar analogs] and see how they behave”
One obvious problem with this approach is; what knowledge is there to gain and understand between two similar objects, other than what you can already observe with one? Very little!! maybe we could compare subtitle differences which to me is kinda superficial, It would be like comparing two apples, Hmm… They’re both green, similar in size and one a day keeps the doctor away. not too interesting.
But if you compare an apple to an object that is similar in a class in that it is a fruit, then we can try to understand what the differences and similarities are and construct an understanding of the connections between the objects.
If you have a set of predetermined results from Studying one apple then you are only seeking to confirm your results by finding and studying another apple. This is what “rather meaningless” means to me!! 😎
William says:
May 8, 2011 at 3:34 pm
~
“””The interpretation of the geological record of cosmogenic isotopes
relies on accurate models of the cosmic ray spectra. One factor that is not included in
the interpretation of the geological record of cosmogenic isotopes is that the cosmic ray
spectrum incident on the Earth consists of two components that behave differently as
the Sun travels through space. Galactic cosmic rays dominate at high energies, > 500
MeV, and are subject to heliospheric modulation as the Sun travels through space.
However a second cosmic ray component at lower energies is formed inside of the
heliopause from interstellar neutrals that penetrate and are ionized inside of the heliosphere,
forming pickup ions. These are subsequently accelerated to form lower-energy
anomalous cosmic rays (ACRs) with a composition derived from neutral interstellar
atoms in the CISM (Fisk et al. 1974). The local interstellar cosmic ray spectrum that
creates the geological radio-isotope record is thus composed of two components that
vary differently over time and space, the higher energy galactic cosmic rays (GCRs)
that are modulated by a variable heliosphere, and the ACRs that also depend on the
density and fractional ionization of the surrounding interstellar cloud.
In this paper we present the overall picture of the ISM characteristics that result
from the motion of the Sun and interstellar clouds through space. Observations of interstellar
absorption lines towards nearest stars show that spatial variations in velocity,
temperature, and ionization of the circumheliospheric ISM create temporal variations
in the heliosphere boundary conditions. These then cause temporal variations in the
spectrum and fluxes of cosmic rays at Earth.We also draw possible connections between
interstellar cloud transitions and the geological radio isotope record.”””
Time-variability in the Interstellar Boundary Conditions
of the Heliosphere: Effect of the Solar Journey on the
Galactic Cosmic Ray Flux at Earth
Priscilla C. Frisch · Hans-Reinhard Mueller
rev. 3 Feb. 2011
A Solar max from here on would be well within the standard deviation. Interesting times ahead.
aaron says:
May 8, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Where is earth’s orbit relative to the solar equator? Also, is there a general directionality for high energy CRF through our solar system?
According to The Sky and Guide 8 plantetarium software apps, the Earths orbit is tipped to the Solar Equator. You can see this on solarcycle24.com in the STEREO AHEAD and BEHIND images, as well as the Active Regions image.
fred.
“The IPCC GHG models failed to predict that warming would level off in 1999. Does this mean the GHG theory behind them has also failed?”
Actually not, a number of the models are consistent with the temperature series we have seen since 1999. You can see this clearly by looking at all the runs of the models.
Some runs show less warming than has occurred, Some show a little more and some show a lot more.
The different is this. Fix’s model looks to be deterministic. one set of inputs: one set of outputs. in a GCM the same inputs lead to different outputs because of natural variability in the models. IF GCMS gave you a deterministic answer then you could say they were wrong. But since they give a spread of results ( its the nature of the beast) we have a much more complicated situation.
Thanks.
I’m wondering if sign, distance, and amplitude may affect high energy CRF. Maybe there is a 20-28 yr periodicity.
“Since the Sun is too small to go Nova, I guess we’re stuck with ol Sol.”
Earth will be uninhabitable long before the Sun changes enough to really make all that much difference anyway.
The primary cause will be CO2 depletion of the atmosphere. Once Earth cools to a point where plate tectonics stops or greatly slows, CO2 will be removed from the atmosphere at a greater rate than it is added. Once we reach a point where plant life can not sustain animal life, we are toast. Then the water will be lost to space and Earth will look a lot like Mars does today. It will be very dry.
We have probably given things a million years or so of extended life by burning fossil fuel and returning some of that CO2 for another trip through the cycle but it eventually becomes limestone at some point. And with no subduction to cycle that CO2 back through a volcano, the CO2 eventually ends up at the bottom of the sea as limestone and eventually marble. My guess is we have about another 200-300 million years left of life on Earth and that is the end of it.
Attached is a paper that shows the late 20th century warming and cooling correlates with solar wind bursts. The solar wind bursts remove cloud forming ions by creating a space charge differential in the ionosphere. (See Brian Tinsley’s review paper.)
http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MSAIt760405/PDF/2005MmSAI..76..969G.pdf
Once again about global warming and solar activity K. Georgieva, C. Bianchi, and B. Kirov
“We show that the index commonly used for quantifying long-term changes in solar activity, the sunspot number, accounts for only one part of solar activity and using this index leads to the underestimation of the role of solar activity in the global warming in the recent decades. A more suitable index is the geomagnetic activity which reflects all solar activity, and it is highly correlated to global temperature variations in the whole period for which we have data.
In Figure 6 the long-term variations in global temperature are compared to the long-term variations in geomagnetic activity as expressed by the ak-index (Nevanlinna and Kataja 2003). The correlation between the two quantities is 0.85 with p<0.01 for the whole period studied.It could therefore be concluded that both the decreasing correlation between sunspot number and geomagnetic activity, and the deviation of the global temperature long-term trend from solar activity as expressed by sunspot index are due to the increased number of high-speed streams of
solar wind on the declining phase and in the minimum of sunspot cycle in the last decades."
See section 5a) Modulation of the global circuit in this review paper, by solar wind burst and the process electroscavenging where by increases in the global electric circuit removes cloud forming ions.
The same review paper summarizes the data that does show correlation between low level clouds and GCR.
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf
David Archibald says:
May 8, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Well, David said quite a lot, actually.
Wow. Did I do all that? I’ll have to remember to be humble when I accept my Nobel Prize 🙂
Most of the places you say it “explains…” this or that characteristic, I’d probably say, “Possibly provides a framework for explaining…”. And of course, the model in the form described in the current paper doesn’t really do any of that, but it does hint that it might be possible. That’s a big jump from possible to done.
Anyway, thanks for the vote of confidence, and for cracking the whip to get me to write it up.
Carla says:
May 8, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Perfect Leif, for an introduction to Ion Cyclotron Waves ICW. What if any is your opinion on the role of ICW in the heating and expansion of solar wind?
Sure they are important, but are completely off topic and irrelevant.
ClimateForAll says:
May 8, 2011 at 2:41 pm
I am curious Leif, did you have any discussions with Dr. Choudhuri, and if so, what is your thought about using a flux transport model for future predictions of solar cycles?
Of course I have. I have explained the polar fields to him and was a referee on his paper.
Sparks says:
May 8, 2011 at 4:58 pm
If you have a set of predetermined results from Studying one apple then you are only seeking to confirm your results by finding and studying another apple. This is what “rather meaningless” means to me!! 😎
You don’t learn about apples by studying coconuts .
Here is how we can learn from solar analogs: suppose we find twenty such. All twenty have activity cycles with the same characteristics as the Sun’s. Then we know that it are properties of the star itself that drive the cycle, rather than, for instance, their environment [planets, place in the galaxy, whatever].
crosspatch says:
May 8, 2011 at 7:12 pm
The tidal interactions of sun/moon on Earth should keep things going awhile, but a good solid whack by a large asteroid would also release a lot of CO2 from rock. Some hypothesize that this is what happened to Venus to make it so hot (it hasn’t cooled off yet).
I think what Aaron was really asking was where, and if, any interstellar medium impact our planet.
That is if, by CRF, he means Cosmic Ray Flux.
Some scientists believe that interstellar medium, at the atomic and sub-atomic level, should be spatially homogeneous. The radiative energy from other masses outside of our solar system, should diffuse into an isotropic state, once within the boundaries of the Heliosphere.
There has been quite a bit of debate on this subject here and other sites, e.g. solarcycle24.com, which rbateman suggested previously.
Just recently, an article from New Scientist, had this to say:
Later in the article, it is hypothesized that its origin must be within 0.03 LY, in order to have such high energy concentrated in this manner.
It it also suggested that the energy is funneled, as some form of flux transport, in part due to magnetic reconnection.
Having done some calculations of my own, the origins of these ‘hotspots’ would then be at or near the bow shock of the heliosphere.
Recently, images coming from Voyager I & II, as part of the IBEX mission, show perturbations within the heliosphere; a collision of charged particles is suggested to be the cause of it.
There doesn’t seem to be enough evidence to suggest any relationship between these two phenomenas, but there is enough to involve speculations.
If I was left to speculate anything from all of this, would be that while the Sun may not be affected by interstellar mediums, it does seem that the lack of productivity by the Sun is having an indirect effect on our planet, in part due to not blocking CGR from entering our atmosphere.
What a wondrous world we live in.