I’ve managed to get a copy of the official press release provided by the Southwest Research Institute Planetary Science Directorate to MSM journalists, for today’s stunning AAS announcement and it is reprinted in full here:
WHAT’S DOWN WITH THE SUN?
MAJOR DROP IN SOLAR ACTIVITY PREDICTED
A missing jet stream, fading spots, and slower activity near the poles say that our Sun is heading for a rest period even as it is acting up for the first time in years, according to scientists at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
As the current sunspot cycle, Cycle 24, begins to ramp up toward maximum, independent studies of the solar interior, visible surface, and the corona indicate that the next 11-year solar sunspot cycle, Cycle 25, will be greatly reduced or may not happen at all.
The results were announced at the annual meeting of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society, which is being held this week at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces:
http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/SPD2011/
“This is highly unusual and unexpected,” Dr. Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network, said of the results. “But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.”
Spot numbers and other solar activity rise and fall about every 11 years, which is half of the Sun’s 22-year magnetic interval since the Sun’s magnetic poles reverse with each cycle. An immediate question is whether this slowdown presages a second Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period with virtually no sunspots during 1645-1715.
Hill is the lead author on one of three papers on these results being presented this week. Using data from the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG) of six observing stations around the world, the team translates surface pulsations caused by sound reverberating through the Sun into models of the internal structure. One of their discoveries is an east-west zonal wind flow inside the Sun, called the torsional oscillation, which starts at
mid-latitudes and migrates towards the equator. The latitude of this wind stream matches the new spot formation in each cycle, and successfully predicted the late onset of the current Cycle 24.
“We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now,” Hill explained, “but we see no sign of it. This indicates that the start of Cycle 25 may be delayed to 2021 or 2022, or may not happen at all.”
In the second paper, Matt Penn and William Livingston see a long-term weakening trend in the strength of sunspots, and predict that by Cycle 25 magnetic fields erupting on the Sun will be so weak that few if any sunspots will be formed. Spots are formed when intense magnetic flux tubes erupt from the interior and keep cooled gas from circulating back to the interior. For typical sunspots this magnetism has a strength of 2,500 to 3,500 gauss
(Earth’s magnetic field is less than 1 gauss at the surface); the field must reach at least 1,500 gauss to form a dark spot.
Using more than 13 years of sunspot data collected at the McMath-Pierce Telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona, Penn and Livingston observed that the average field strength declined about 50 gauss per year during Cycle 23 and now in Cycle 24. They also observed that spot temperatures have risen exactly as expected for such changes in the magnetic field. If the trend continues, the field strength will drop below the 1,500 gauss threshold and
spots will largely disappear as the magnetic field is no longer strong enough to overcome convective forces on the solar surface.
Moving outward, Richard Altrock, manager of the Air Force’s coronal research program at NSO’s Sunspot, NM, facilities has observed a slowing of the “rush to the poles,” the rapid poleward march of magnetic activity observed in the Sun’s faint corona. Altrock used four decades of observations with NSO’s 40-cm (16-inch) coronagraphic telescope at Sunspot.
“A key thing to understand is that those wonderful, delicate coronal features are actually powerful, robust magnetic structures rooted in the interior of the Sun,” Altrock explained. “Changes we see in the corona reflect changes deep inside the Sun.”
Altrock used a photometer to map iron heated to 2 million degrees C (3.6 million F). Stripped of half of its electrons, it is easily concentrated by magnetism rising from the Sun. In a well-known pattern, new solar activity emerges first at about 70 degrees latitude at the start of a cycle, then towards the equator as the cycle ages. At the same time, the new magnetic fields push remnants of the older cycle as far as 85 degrees poleward.
“In cycles 21 through 23, solar maximum occurred when this rush appeared at an average latitude of 76 degrees,” Altrock said. “Cycle 24 started out late and slow and may not be strong enough to create a rush to the poles, indicating we’ll see a very weak solar maximum in 2013, if at all. If the rush to the poles fails to complete, this creates a tremendous dilemma for the theorists, as it would mean that Cycle 23’s magnetic field will not completely disappear from the polar regions (the rush to the poles accomplishes this feat). No one knows what the Sun will do in that case.”
All three of these lines of research to point to the familiar sunspot cycle shutting down for a while.
“If we are right,” Hill concluded, “this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth’s climate.”
# # #
Media teleconference information: This release is the subject of a media
teleconference at the current meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s
Solar Physics Division (AAS/SPD). The telecon will be held at 11 a.m. MDT
(17:00 UTC) on Tuesday, 14 June. Bona fide journalists are invited to attend
the teleconference and should send an e-mail to the AAS/SPD press officer,
Craig DeForest, at deforest@boulder.swri.edu, with the subject heading “SPD:
SOLAR MEDIA TELECON”, before 16:00 UTC. You will receive dial-in information
before the telecon.
These results have been presented at the current meeting of the AAS/SPD.
Citations:
16.10: “Large-Scale Zonal Flows During the Solar Minimum — Where Is Cycle
25?” by Frank Hill, R. Howe, R. Komm, J. Christensen-Dalsgaard, T.P. Larson,
J. Schou & M. J. Thompson.
17.21: “A Decade of Diminishing Sunspot Vigor” by W. C. Livingston, M. Penn
& L. Svalgard.
18.04: “Whither Goes Cycle 24? A View from the Fe XIV Corona” by R. C.
Altrock.
Source:
Southwest Research Institute Planetary Science Directorate
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~deforest/SPD-sunspot-release/SPD_solar_cycle_release.txt
Supplemental images: http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~deforest/SPD-sunspot-release/
JPeden
And Hansen assured us that future glaciations simply would not occur,
As easy as that might be to believe, I’m afraid I need evidence of that claim.
John Finn says:
June 15, 2011 at 1:41 pm
My question is what time frame does this T0=288K to T1=288.072K (delta=.072K) occupy?
How long does it take, a day, a week, a month, a year, an entire Solar Cycle?
mod rep
A smart a$$ might ask you to substantiate that.
May want to check the source of MR comments. He reminds me of a character I encountered several years on an ABC forum on the Great Global Warming Swindle. Faux sympathy, voluminous inane comments that make a thread undesirable to read; derailing promising discussions. Standard dis-information/subversion. It prompted me to ask the commenter, voltscommissar, if his real name happened to be Gavin. His reply was simply “No comment.”
aaron,
Gavin did make a few comments on Curry’s blog earlier today. Perhaps he has the day off.
Smug is an accuate description in this picture.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/gschmidt/
Then there’s this from Wiki,
Schmidt defended the scientists named in the 2009-2010 Climatic Research Unit emails controversy, including Michael E. Mann and Phil Jones, saying in a post on the blog, “Gravity isn’t a useful theory because Newton was a nice man.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Schmidt
Aaron, I sincerely hope that’s not the case here because if MR’s abortive attempts at logical argument here are indicative of the deductive abilities of the only “Gavin” I know of then it really is worse than we thought!
rbateman says:
June 15, 2011 at 3:18 pm
John Finn says:
June 15, 2011 at 1:41 pm
My question is what time frame does this T0=288K to T1=288.072K (delta=.072K) occupy?
How long does it take, a day, a week, a month, a year, an entire Solar Cycle?
—————————————–
….. and furthermore, does this take into account the cumulative, day after day, trapping of energy delta in the oceans, including the UV component, which, I believe from reading here, varies by 8% over a solar cycle ??
Brent Hargreaves says at June 15, 2011 at 3:03 pm “one group holds a view in the light of the evidence before them and the other holds views regardless of the evidence.”
So quick test on which group you fall into. Are our CO2 emissions change the chemistry of the ocean at a pace unseen in 55 + million years? Yes or no?
MR: You’re surely new here. I waited almost three months before commenting, spending that time reading through the archives. You can’t expect posters here to drop this discussion and start disputing all the broad spectrum of warmist claims you’ve been making. Our side has comebacks for most of your assertions. You should click on “Categories” in the sidebar (hit page-down five times after going Home). This will give you a list of hundreds of threads here under various category headings.
Ah, but TonyG you are mixing multiple standards here
TonyG says June 15, 2011 at 2:58 pm “Those who are sounding a clarion call for massive policy changes”
Few of the research reports I read address policy issues, and for that statement not to be strawman you need to provide evidence that the science community (who many of the people here lump into the alarmist camp) does this writ large.
In fact – I think you hit on something there. It certainly appears that much of the froth from the ‘I don’t believe the science’ crowd here is actually more worried about what we do about the warming than the actual science. Just an observation – not claiming it is fact.
Re: Moderate Republican; 1:17 pm
Your reply is mind boggling.
You simply do not understand me.
As background I will tell you that I frequently serve as an expert witness in civil cases. An appeal to authority is meaningless to me. I have often heard experts express opinions at complete odds to evidence and science. When caught, they don’t recant their opinions, they obfuscate. Citing experts who are committed to a point of view and whose words are carefully parsed to obfuscate arouses nothing but antipathy in me.
One simple fact is that these men tried to surpress opinions and evidence that challenged their “opinions” (yeah, those are scare quotes, I find it hard to believe that they honestly believed the “facts” they presented).
The other simple fact is that these men tried to obfuscate a simple understanding of the point they were trying to make (“hide the decline”, “get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”).
I strongly disagree with their “opinons” for what I believe to be rational reasons (IMO, but that’s life), those can be debated, only time and science will tell, but by their actions they have sunk as low as human beings can sink.
If you recall, we were debating pejoratives.
Ric Werme says at June 15, 2011 at 2:40 pm “The graphs there come from Hansen’s GISS data which WUWT has pretty much given up on.”
OK, fine, but that doesn’t make it scientifically valid to do so. You may “give up” because you don’t like the conclusions perhaps….
Ric Werme says at June 15, 2011 at 2:40 pm “The poor quality ground record and GISS’ adjustments have more problems”
Yet multiple independent studies confirm the same warming trends, such as this one.
Global surface temperature trends, based on land and marine data, show warming of about 0.8°C over the last 100 years. This rate of warming is sometimes questioned because of the existence of well-known Urban Heat Islands (UHIs). We show examples of the UHIs at London and Vienna, where city center sites are warmer than surrounding rural locations. Both of these UHIs however do not contribute to warming trends over the 20th century because the influences of the cities on surface temperatures have not changed over this time. In the main part of the paper, for China, we compare a new homogenized station data set with gridded temperature products and attempt to assess possible urban influences using sea surface temperature (SST) data sets for the area east of the Chinese mainland. We show that all the land-based data sets for China agree exceptionally well and that their residual warming compared to the SST series since 1951 is relatively small compared to the large-scale warming. Urban-related warming over China is shown to be about 0.1°C decade−1 over the period 1951–2004, with true climatic warming accounting for 0.81°C over this period.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008JD009916.shtml
Moderate Repub, do you have any skepticism on the surface data set? What do you think the margin of error is and what do you say about the constant massaging of the data sets by Hansen? Alarm you at all? It sure alarms this meteorologist.
R. Gates says:
June 14, 2011 at 8:35 pm
As the long-term decline in arctic sea ice is what IS happening in the region of the planet that is supposed to be on the front lines of global warming, when all the AGW skeptics are getting all frothy about a new pending Little Ice Age, I think it wise to keep them grounded in what actually is happening.
Does the Antarctic count? That’s the ice that counts in any event and she ain’t and never will melt because of mans input of co2. Perposterous.,
Surprisingly restrained post from Andy Revkin on this, including mention of the MM coinciding with cold temperatures and no attempt to deny (or confirm) a link. His final comment that the sun will have the last word on this is bang on for once:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/a-solar-scientist-rebuts-a-cool-sunspot-prediction/
The only trouble is, being AR, I can’t help wondering what he’s up to…… 😛
I am not a scientist and I went to school in the 70s and studied a bit a physics. Somebody help me out here. Has there been a period of an extended solar minimum during which it was not cold? I know we don’t know why these two things seem to be associated (lower sun activity = cold) but as far as I have read, they are associated. I am a bit of a student of history so I am familiar with the Dalton Minimum and the Maunder Minimum. I have also looked at the specific patterns (Alaska warm, Greenland warm, East Coast of North America, Northern Europe and Russia very very cold and the rest of the world just cold). Comments?
Jeremy says at June 15, 2011 at 2:40 pm ” Now when data comes out that seems to support an alternative view, all those models and predictions and warnings and fire-and-brimstone of the warmistas gets dropped like refried beans out of a babys butt in favor of keeping all the “frothing-at-the-mouth” skeptics ‘grounded in reality’ as some kind of altruistic public service.”
Well that was interesting;
1) What data that supports alternative view – nothing has happen yet.
2) Not sure exactly what refried beans have to do with the science
Brent Hargreaves says:
June 15, 2011 at 3:03 pm
R. Gates (June 14, 2011 at 9:41 pm) wrote:
“But what if, even with a grand solar minimum we don’t cool that much or at all? What if we continue to warm? What will skeptics think then?”
That’s easy! If the Earth gets warmer and warmer we’ll accept that there’s global warming; we’ll concede defeat. This is what rational people do when faced with facts which contradict their expectations.
So what will you do if the 1998 peak isn’t surpassed by, say, 2011?
The intellectual divide between us is clear, R…. one group holds a view in the light of the evidence before them and the other holds views regardless of the evidence.
———
If 2011 is not warmer than 1998 (and I currently don’t expect it will be given the La Nina that just ended), I will look at the data and understand why a La Nina year, when the oceans are absorbing net heat might not be warmer than an El Nino year when the oceans are giving off heat to the atmosphere. This process says nothing about the longer term effects of CO2. The ENSO cycle is shorter term while the effects of the slow build-up of anthropogenic CO2 have been building for centuries. Likewise, if the sun goes into a sleep mode for a few decades it will give ample chance to see how strongly that affects the climate versus the 40% more CO2 we have now in the atmosphere over the last time the sun took a nap…
tom says at June 15, 2011 at 4:09 pm “Does the Antarctic count? That’s the ice that counts in any event and she ain’t and never will melt because of mans input of co2. Perposterous.”
1) “Never” is kinda a scientific no-no tom. After all, saying never implies certainty over an event. Maybe you’d rather apply a mathematically valid statistical significance to your statement instead of saying never?
2) ‘A new study finds that global warming is responsible for snowfall that’s expanded the range of Southern Ocean sea ice, even as western Antarctic glaciers have disintegrated.
That expansion contrasts with the common public perception of a uniformly melting Antarctic. But this fortunate balance between loss and gain likely won’t last. By the end of this century, continued warming will turn extra snow into rain.
“With increased loading of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through the 21st century, the models show an accelerated warming in the Southern Ocean,” writes Georgia Institute of Technology climatologists Jiping Liu and Judity Curry in an Aug. 16 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study. The ultimate result “is a projected decline of the Antarctic sea ice.””
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/antarctic-ice-future/
Moderate Republican, you are sounding a bit like Spock; admittedly you haven’t used the term ‘illogical’ but you’ve thrown around a lot of ‘that is a factually incorrect statement’ and a lot of definitions.
You completely blew your credibility by linking to ‘skepticalscience’.
Are you actually IBM’s Watson fresh from Jeopardy fame?
Topic reset:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Minimum
The Dalton Minimum was a period of low solar activity, from about 1790-1830 that coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures.
The Year Without a Summer, in 1816, occurred during the Dalton Minimum.
1. The Sun was quiet for 40 years.
2. The Earth got very cold.
3. We don’t understand the exact relationship.
4. No correlation with CO2.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_minimum
The Maunder Minimum was a period of low solar activity, from about 1645-1715 that coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures.
The Maunder Minimum coincided with the middle — and coldest part — of the Little Ice Age.
1. The Sun was quiet for 70 years.
2. The Earth got very cold.
3. We don’t understand the exact relationship.
4. No correlation with CO2.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporer_Minimum
The Sporer Minimum was a period of low solar activity, from about 1460-1550 that coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures.
1. The Sun was quiet for 90 years.
2. The Earth got very cold.
3. We don’t understand the exact relationship.
4. No correlation with CO2.
@ur momisugly Joe Horner 4:12
“The only trouble is, being AR, I can’t help wondering what he’s up to…… :P”
Pretty simple, the NYT is trying to keep from going broke so they are softening their appoach.
Krazy P says at June 15, 2011 at 4:17 pm ” Has there been a period of an extended solar minimum during which it was not cold?”
Well the recent solar minimum hasn’t stop the warming, so maybe – just maybe – the climate is driven by more than the sun. I know – crazy idea. I mean, it isn’t like there is a dynamic atmosphere to consider or anything.
NASA solar physicist David Hathaway said of the sun’s Great Conveyor Belt has been running at record-high speeds for the past five years. “I believe this could explain the unusually deep solar minimum we’ve been experiencing,” says Hathaway.
Billy Liar says at June 15, 2011 at 4:30 pm “but you’ve thrown around a lot of ‘that is a factually incorrect statement’ and a lot of definitions.”
Well, there is a lot of factually incorrect statements here. There are a lot of logical fallacies as well, especially in the form of strawman, so that gets brought up a lot.
If only I had the recall capabilities that IBM’s Watson does – pretty cool stuff.