SWPC updated their solar cycle progression page…looks like the levels have held since the big uptick in March.
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SWPC updated their solar cycle progression page…looks like the levels have held since the big uptick in March.
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rbateman says:
May 12, 2011 at 1:53 pm
A number in millionths of the Solar disc area would be greatly appreciated.
The area is not used for calculating the SSN. A firm lower limit would be area=zero 🙂
NOAA reports areas in steps of 10 millionth. Perhaps 3 millionth would be a reasonable number, but the real issue is how dark the spot is. Lots of the specks you see on SDI/HMI images would not qualify as ‘spots’ if we were to maintain a comparable definition as the historical record.
Jcarels says:
May 12, 2011 at 1:50 pm
……………
L&P up to now has been just a reverse image of the sunspot count.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/L&Pma.htm
I think there is far less to it than it is claimed, it just may be a feature of the solar slow down
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
which is widely expected, despite some predictions of ‘strong’ SC25.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 12, 2011 at 2:12 pm
The area is not used for calculating the SSN. A firm lower limit would be area=zero 🙂
NOAA reports areas in steps of 10 millionth.
The total area as computed by NOAA is crude, but is not the issue.
Perhaps 3 millionth would be a reasonable number, but the real issue is how dark the spot is. Lots of the specks you see on SDI/HMI images would not qualify as ‘spots’ if we were to maintain a comparable definition as the historical record.
That is an issue. The way it appears to me is that there is no effort to maintain such, and it’s a disconnect. 3 millionths is reasonable, along with some sort of definable intensity below the solar surface brightness threshold. It is for this reason that I have stopped bothering with SSN. It fails to tell the story adequately, and should the day come where the L&P gains full effect, the spots will simply vanish. What will that look like? A precipitous drop, and hands will be full trying to explain why it was not so. Once again, credibility and believeability will suffer….needlessly.
Carla says:
May 12, 2011 at 1:30 pm
Interesting. At one time, galaxies looked like homogenous clouds. Upon further examination, however, the nature of the beast changed remarkably.
The universe never fails to reveal marvelous variance, upon closer scrutiny.
Why should interstellar space be any different?
~
No reason why they should be any different..cept for that proportion and size difference.
So we can hit one of these cold little devils approx. decade width every 100 or so years or not.. lol..quite alot going on inside this opened ended warm cavity..
Do any of our experts know how many corotating regions the sun has out to the corona. Or can’t we refer to aspects of differential rotation as corotation? Or how many corotating rings out to Oort? Yep its messy, warped and dented..
“”We can tell how quickly the surface of the Sun is rotating by observing the motion of structures, such as sunspots, on the Sun’s visible surface. The regions of the Sun near its equator rotate once every 25 days. The Sun’s rotation rate decreases with increasing latitude, so that its rotation rate is slowest near its poles. At its poles the Sun rotates once every 36 days!”””
The interior of the Sun does not spin the same way as does its surface. Scientists believe that the inner regions of the Sun, including the Sun’s core and radiative zone, do rotate more like a solid body. The outer parts of the Sun, from the convective zone outward, rotate at different rates that vary with latitude. The boundary between the inner parts of the Sun that spin together as a whole and the outer parts that spin at different rates is called the “tachocline”.””
http://www.windows2universe.org/sun/Solar_interior/Sun_layers/differential_rotation.html
rbateman – thanks for the link.
—
Regarding the Leif – vuk acrimonious debate : Just for once I hope I have got things hopelessly wrong, but from my reading of the interchange, both have some very serious explaining to do.
vukcevic – Information posted by Leif appears to show that your web pages which were supposedly unchanged had in fact been changed and the changes had then been denied. What you choose to do about this is of course entirely up to you, but without a detailed itemisation of events I’m going to find it hard not to put your analysis into the same folder as CRU/UEA (of Climategate fame).
Leif – It appears that you have conducted an Overload attack on vukcevic’s website (also known as Denial of Service attack or DoS : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack). I’m appalled. This is so totally unacceptable, and so far away from proper scientific debate, that I’m dumbstruck. Again, what you choose to do about this is of course entirely up to you, but to my simple mind a full apology is required.
Like I said, I hope I have got things hopelessly wrong, in which case the one apologising will be me.
Mike Jonas says:
May 12, 2011 at 4:02 pm
Leif – It appears that you have conducted an Overload attack on vukcevic’s website (also known as Denial of Service attack or DoS
I don’t think that a few hundred requests over a period of minutes constitute a DoS attack. In any event, it was just to prove that F5 can be very efficient to catch attempts to hide something, in spite of Vuk’s attempt to disparage me with ‘economy with accuracy’:
Vuk etc. says:
May 11, 2011 at 2:57 pm
Heh, ‘just leaning on the keyboard’, Chrome browser doesn’t work like that, a bit of ‘economy with accuracy’.
It gets worse, of course, with the attempt of framing it as an ‘attack’. I have very little tolerance with people that do what Vuk did. He has had many chances to just back off and admit the truth [and hopefully not continue with this kind of manipulation in the future]. He could always [as he has done in the past] just say that the changes were due trying to correct figures marred by sloppiness and lack of attention. This would have been perfectly acceptable, as we are all human. But, no, the whole affair was an attempt to claim superior results by dishonest means, and that shouldn’t happen.
Hypothetically thinking and this is for our PT friends here..and would definitely affect the topic here of “solar cycle,” to what degreee I’m not sure.
Here we go..
Taken somewhat from my current read lol.
Let’s take for instance we have a model of certain perameters of some nearby local interstellar space that include a moderately substantial increase in density. At this point I would like to remind the PT friends about the magnetic dipole positions of Neptune, Uranus, Pluto and Saturn.
Moderately substantial increase in density. Maybe a good thing that they don’t include the Interstellar Magnetic Field in this model, our PT friends. Not to mention the kind of solar cycle that would be trying to happen plowing through a mess like that..
Have a look at the model on page 10 figure 3. Dashed lines on left side indicate orbits of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. I think their magnetic dipole configurations are telling a story or two.
Heliospheric Response to Different Possible Interstellar Environments
Hans-Reinhard M¨uller1
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755.
hans.mueller@dartmouth.edu
Priscilla C. Frisch
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637.
frisch@oddjob.uchicago.edu
Vladimir Florinski and Gary P. Zank
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521.
vladimir.florinski@ucr.edu, gary.zank@ucr.edu
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0607/0607600v1.pdf
I’m starting to get a bad attitude about magnetic field reversals partial or full..eeek
Leif says : “it was just to prove that F5 can be very efficient to catch attempts to hide something”
Accepted. I apologise. With pleasure.
rbateman says:
May 12, 2011 at 3:18 pm
The way it appears to me is that there is no effort to maintain such, and it’s a disconnect.
We have other ways of keeping track of solar activity [e.g. F10.7 or magnetic field]. The reason we should [and do] bother with the sunspot number is that we need to understand its defects so we can interpret the old data.
and hands will be full trying to explain why it was not so. Once again, credibility and believeability will suffer….needlessly.
Lots of people with agendas will be scrambling to cover their backsides, but we know how to deal with that.
Carla says:
May 12, 2011 at 3:46 pm
So we can hit one of these cold little devils approx. decade width every 100 or so years or not.. lol..quite alot going on inside this opened ended warm cavity..
The article concludes: “In general, passage through interstellar clouds will lead to variations in the heliosphere boundary conditions over timescales possibly as short as 1000 years.” and “the Sun has entered the interstellar cloud component at the LIC velocity sometime within the past 40,000 yr, and will exit it sometime within the next 4000 yr.” We are talking thousands of years here.
Do any of our experts know how many corotating regions the sun has out to the corona. Or can’t we refer to aspects of differential rotation as corotation? Or how many corotating rings out to Oort?
I don’t think you have an idea of what ‘a corotating region’ is, so pay attention: The regions do not rotate at all, rather it is the Earth that runs into such a region every 2-4 weeks. The regions are rooted in a rotating sun and it looks like they are rotating, but they are not. It is like water from a garden hose sprinkler that also looks like it is rotating, while actually just flying straight out from the rotating sprinkler: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41VbUd5GLpL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000F49VDS?ie=UTF8&tag=milehighmist-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000F49VDS
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 12, 2011 at 6:38 pm
We have other ways of keeping track of solar activity [e.g. F10.7 or magnetic field]. The reason we should [and do] bother with the sunspot number is that we need to understand its defects so we can interpret the old data.
Why not just use the proxies, plug it all into a computer model, and let the code do the interpreting of the old data?
Like you say, we have F10.7 flux and magnetic fields for solar activity, so the sunspot has outlived its usefulness.
rbateman says:
May 12, 2011 at 7:18 pm
Why not just use the proxies, plug it all into a computer model, and let the code do the interpreting of the old data?
Code cannot do that. Humans may be able to.
Like you say, we have F10.7 flux and magnetic fields for solar activity, so the sunspot has outlived its usefulness.
The reason we still keep it around is to be able to understand the old data. For that reason I think we should keep the SSN around until after the next Maunder-type minimum, perhaps hundreds of years in the future.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 12, 2011 at 7:38 pm
rbateman says:
May 12, 2011 at 7:18 pm
Why not just use the proxies, plug it all into a computer model, and let the code do the interpreting of the old data?
Code cannot do that. Humans may be able to.
I agree.
Do you presently see any prospect that the studies in solar activity processes may one day unlock the means for man to be able to harness fusion as a power source?
rbateman says:
May 12, 2011 at 8:16 pm
Do you presently see any prospect that the studies in solar activity processes may one day unlock the means for man to be able to harness fusion as a power source?
I think it will be the other way around: laboratory studies of reconnection [and perhaps near-Earth spacecraft data] will teach us how to control plasma with magnetic fields. Such control seems needed for fusion, but this is just my speculation. Sometimes, real progress comes from a completely unexpected direction, and hence unpredictable.
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 12, 2011 at 8:37 pm
How hard a concept is magnetic reconnection to understand, i.e. – would a politician appreciate it? Fission is messy as well as fossil fuels appear finite, and unless a way is found to continue at present power consumption growth, the world will begin fighting big wars over supplies. World leaders seldom get along for extended periods.
rbateman says:
May 12, 2011 at 9:10 pm
How hard a concept is magnetic reconnection to understand, i.e. – would a politician appreciate it?
It is not difficult to understand at the conceptual level and there are beautiful laboratory experiments that explore the process http://www.leif.org/EOS/yamada10rmp.pdf section 2C addresses the fusion problem.
Mike Jonas says:
May 12, 2011 at 4:02 pm
………………
Hi Mr. Jonas
Some points from the paper:
Formula (as any reasonable person would see) has two lines, blue and red.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC7.htm
-Blue is periodicity, and has little to do with amplitude (SSNmax), as it is blindly obvious for cycles between 1900 and 1925. This just determines that the frequency of oscillations (defining period of repetition) is in the right ball park. This has phase shift in the original formula of 2pi/3 but as it happens 2pi/4 (pi/2) does just as good job as the frequency of oscillation is concerned. The fact that this in certain degree defines max amplitude is coincidental.
– Red line presents an amplitude envelope (term commonly used in the analog signal processing), this is what points, in general terms only, to what max amplitude may be.
– There is a phase shift of 90 degrees (Sin to Cos around 1800)
All these points are in the paper, and none have been changed (except Saturn orbit period which was slightly out in the original paper – taken of an internet astronomy page).
In the paper: http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0401/0401107.pdf they are treated separately (periodicity page 1, amplitude envelope page 3)
What is claimed:
That non-smoothed sunspot number may reach or somewhat exceed 80, as it did happen with other cycles in relation to the amplitude envelope (red lin). None of the cycles are exactly ending on the red line, so only a fool would claim precise number, particularly with non-smoothed monthly numbers. To make that clear I drawn green line that intersect the red line at 80 and it does not coincide with blue’s line peak.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0401/0401107.pdf
2003 publication does not show extrapolation beyond 2003, at the time I was not even aware there is any interest in the prediction of SC24.
So in that respect nothing has changed.
One has to question reasons why a scientist or word ‘renome’ would mount such a vicious personal attack on an solar science ‘nobody’, it is still a puzzle to me. Only reason I can think is the polar formula
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
which was derived from sunspot formula. To be honest I would not put much money on accuracy of sunspot formula, but the polar fields formula has really exceeded all my expectations in its accuracy to date.
This is not result of some superior knowledge, just recognising process of signal modulation and realising that there are astronomic numbers to fit the scenario.
Re: DoS
As you can see from here
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/WEB-Page%20attack.htm
there were around 200 hits in ~7 minutes, however there were more than 300 (page recording records detail only up to 200), which would make it somewhat longer, hardly a finger slip. What is attitude of web authorities, and in particular of server operators of the perpetuator, it is not known to me, and hardly matters, but it does show intensity of ‘extreme dislike’ of the formula and unrelenting attacks on the author, not only here but elsewhere.
In that respect nothing has changed.
Page removal was only for about ½ hour, and it was kind of a test for response which was totally expected.
Sunspots are of interest only if there is effect on the climate, if it is shown that there isn’t, than solar science will be of less interest to wider audience. I am preparing a much longer paper, and may be out in month or two, which is currently my main interest. Of course personal attacks are not pleasant, but important thing is that formula has survived onslaught, changed or not, the rest doesn’t bother me in the least, I shall be arroun for a while.
Correction:
To make that clear I drawn green line that intersect the red line at 80 and it does not coincide with blue’s line peak.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0401/0401107.pdf
should be:
To make that clear I drawn green line that intersect the red line at 80 and it does not coincide with blue’s line peak.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC7.htm
It has belatedly occurred to me (after all the attacks by Dr. S) that in the graph of solar formula
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC7.htm
many readers including Dr. S automatically assume that blue line represents SSNmax. That is not so.
– Blue line is periodicity, and has little to do with amplitude (SSNmax), which is more than obvious for cycles between 1900 and 1925. Blue line just determines the frequency of oscillations (or period of repetition). The fact that it in a certain degree defines max amplitude is coincidental, but strengthens formula’s relevance.
– Red line is the peak amplitude envelope (term commonly used in the analogue signal processing), it (in general terms only) shows what non smoothed monthly SSNmax amplitude may be.
Extrapolation of red line shows that non-smoothed sunspot number may reach or somewhat exceed 80, as it did happen with other cycles in relation to the amplitude envelope. None of the cycles are exactly ending on the red line, so precise number is not something that can be predicted, particularly with non-smoothed monthly numbers.
This also shows, further away is the SSNmax lower it is going to be.
(This distinction between two is clearly made in the original paper.)
To make that clear on the above graph I drawn green line that intersect the red line at 80 and it does not coincide with blue’s line peak.
To me as the author, all this is plainly obvious, but it apparently did not resonate with readers.
Therefore I will when prediction are concerned show graph with a truncated and less prominent periodicity signal (blue line) as in here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC7a.htm
Thank you all for your patience.
vukcevic says:
May 12, 2011 at 11:59 pm
All these points are in the paper, and none have been changed
Whatever your interpretation is doesn’t matter or if your findings are correct or not. What does matter is that you pasted in the old version of the formulae on the new graph trying to justify that you have made no adjustments. THIS is the sin and this is what you tried to cover up, including trying to ‘disappear’ the evidence. Mike is quite correct to place you in the Climategate folder.
In order not to repeat it twice, my answer to your phoney ‘moralising’ with a useful counter-suggestion you can find here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/12/potential-agricultural-impact-of-the-eddy-minimum/#comment-659539
vukcevic says:
May 13, 2011 at 10:19 am
In order not to repeat it twice, my answer to your phoney ‘moralising’ […]
Asking you to be honest can hardly be phoney…
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 13, 2011 at 1:19 pm
…………..
Answer just posted here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/12/potential-agricultural-impact-of-the-eddy-minimum/#comment-659667
Leif, vukcevic – As I see it, there are two issues here:
1. Did vukcevic change a formula while claiming that the formula did not change.
2. How does the sun behave.
The answer to #1 has no direct bearing on #2. But the issue has certainly added an edge to the debate.
Re issue #1: As I had not archived any of vukcevic’s material, I can’t prove anything one way or the other. There do appear to be different formulae still up on vukcevic’s websites:
blue : Y = 100 abs[Sin(2π/3+2π(t-1941)/(2*11.862)) + Sin2π(t-1941)/19.859]
red : Y = 60*[2+COS(3π/2+2π(t-1941)/118) + 0.5*SIN2π(t-1941)/287.6]
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/combined1650.gif
blue : Y1 = 100 abs[Cos(2π/4+2π(t-1941)/(2*11.862)) + Cos2π(t-1941)/19.859]
red : Y2 = 60*[2+Cos(3π/2+2π(t-1941)/118) + 0.5Cos2π(t-1941)/287.6]
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/combined.gif
blue : Y1 = 100 abs[Cos(2π/4+2π(t-1941)/(2*11.862)) + Cos2π(t-1941)/19.859] (periodicity)
red : Y2 = 60 abs[2+Cos(3π/2+2π(t-1941)/118) + 0.5*Cos2π(t-1941)/287.6] (amplitude)
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC7a.htm and http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC7.htm (both dated 2003)
Y = ±A[Cos(π/3+2π(t-1940.5-3)/(2*11.862) + Cos2π(t-1940.5-3)/19.859] (publ. 7 Jan 2004) (this is a different formula – the “polar formula”)
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
[I hope I have transcribed them all correctly]
The different formulae and their graphs look like what Leif showed as undeclared changes. Did Leif get them from the same web page at different times, or from different web pages? I don’t know, but I have no good reason to disbelieve Leif.
Re issue #2: Any formulae like vukcevic’s can be interesting, and may lead to new understanding, but to my mind they prove nothing unless (a) the correlation holds up really well over a long period, and in particular over a period after they were first formulated, and/or (b) there is a physical explanation to go with them.
Over a few sunspot cycles, the sun’s behaviour is easy to graph visually well with an abstract formula such as vukcevic’s. Others have been cited here too. But it is too easy to keep fiddling the formulae as new data becomes available, so that the formulae retain a good match (the IPCC comes to mind). Have vukcevic and others done this with the sunspot cycle? Again, I don’t know.
What I do know is that Anthony has provided a brilliant forum in which issues such as this get an open airing.
I have been told that a couple of major papers are currently in the pipeline (sorry no details, but I’m told publication July/August), and I’m hoping they will take our knowledge and understanding a lot further. I’m quite sure they will get reported on WUWT when they are published.
Hi Mr. Jonas
Only thing which is different is 2pi/3 to 2pi/4 in blue periodicity formula. As explained in my previous post this is not dealing with amplitude envelope.
2pi/3 and 2pi/4 is a phase shift between two signals and this does not alter significantly meaning to physical aspects, just moves whole thing a bit sideways.
The amplitude envelope is red and determines where peak may be, and those changes with time of occurrence.
I tried visually to scan the formulae in your post, they appear to be Ok (I really would need to print them along each other to check)
My presentation is a bit more than sloppy, so when I updat the sunspot values on the graph, I re-pasted formulae in it and got obviously muddled up, grossly on the red, which if plotted it would be ridiculously wrong.
But I am not particularly concerned about any of this, somewhere in those numbers must be a correct set, else excel would not graph it, that is why I posted the excel entries.
If there is some meaning to whole thing, someone will get it right eventualy, only two important numbers in whole thing are: 2xJupiter orbit and 1xJupiter-Saturn conjunction period, the rest is just curve fitting.
2pi/3, or 2pi/4 or 1941 or 1940.5 (as probably more appropriate) with one or the other of pi-s, can’t remember which, does not bother me duly.
When I said no change here, I meant that in principle same thing has continued, unlike Dr. Hathaway’s and Dr. Dikpati’s who are changing whole theory as I understand, rather than an existing minor adjustment, anyway that was on periodicity, not on the amplitude, which is important here.
This has been too mush of a distraction over last two days, currently I am working on a climate paper, which to me is far more important, so it is time to move on.
Thanks for support and constructive comments, if you have inclination do sort it out you are welcome to do so.
vukcevic says:
May 13, 2011 at 3:42 pm
I re-pasted formulae in it and got obviously muddled up, grossly on the red, which if plotted it would be ridiculously wrong.
and yet you claim that you changed nothing. Pasting the old formula on the new graph is gross deceit. Trying to cover it up makes it worse.