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/
MR:
You use the term “Climate Scientist”, and you say that certain skeptics are not “Climate Scientists”.
Please share what you believe is appropriate qualifying criteria to be a “Climate Scientist”.
DCA says @ur momisugly June 16, 2011 at 2:09 pm “Since you claim the quote is “out of context”, you’re claiming you know the context of Gavin’s wiki quote who sure as hell knows.”
Um, I provided the paragraph that you pulled the single sentence from from which provides context.
You seem very angry about something, but I fail to understand why.
Leif, following up on Ben and Laura’s questions, do you have any guesses at time frames? For example, do you expect the .1C fall to be gradual or more like a step change? Would you guess at cooling throughout a low activity period, or a move toward a state?
Oh, also important, for how long/over what approximate time period?
A .1C fall over less than 10 years would trump GHG warming over that period.
Moderate Republican says:
June 16, 2011 at 2:35 pm
DCA says @ur momisugly June 16, 2011 at 2:09 pm “Since you claim the quote is “out of context”, you’re claiming you know the context of Gavin’s wiki quote who sure as hell knows.”
Um, I provided the paragraph that you pulled the single sentence from from which provides context.
You seem very angry about something, but I fail to understand why.
LOL Angry??? If I were angry I’d use a lot of bold font like you’ve done several times until you were asked by the mods to stop.
What we have here is: Argument By Pigheadedness (Doggedness):
refusing to accept something after everyone else thinks it is well enough proved. For example, there are still Flat Earthers.
Now thats three times you’ve dodged the my question about the context of Gavin’s Wiki quote and we still don’t the accurate context. I provided the original wiki quote and you pulled half of it out in your first reply. Now if your comment was deleted for more policy violations could you provide that “context” you claim you know and claim to have provided previously. I can’t seem to find it out of the dozens of comments you’ve made.
I believe Roger is accurate about your claim.
Roger Knights says:
June 16, 2011 at 4:52 am
It looks as though it’s MR who’s removed the context from the quote.
….and is a thus a logically fallacy.
Non sequitur. An out of context quote is a debater’s trick. There’s no logical flaw involved.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 16, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Matt G says:
June 16, 2011 at 11:58 am
O.1c is just the estimated change within one full cycle
Provided it is a normal cycle. If the cycle shrinks to nothing, the change will be down 0.1C, so that would be the largest change I can think of.
R. Gates says:
June 16, 2011 at 12:06 pm
I would say that the certainty of knowing at any given time of x,y, or z being a given size is low…that is, I think that x,y, and z and change over time, and may also in fact affect each other.
since climate is on long time scales, the random changes of X, Y, and Z might wash out. Anyway, we can’t really deal with a moving target too much: imagine we were to assign different values to X, Y, and Z every day..
———-
In your last line you’ve just nicely illustrated the essence of the 3-body problem and the roots of chaos…
aaron says:
June 16, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Leif, following up on Ben and Laura’s questions, do you have any guesses at time frames? For example, do you expect the .1C fall to be gradual or more like a step change? Would you guess at cooling throughout a low activity period, or a move toward a state? Oh, also important, for how long/over what approximate time period?
This is all guesswork and speculation. My guess was under the ‘worst’ case scenario that we are indeed entering a Maunder-type minimum and pertains to the maximum drop over that period [what people 200 years from now would say that temps dropped during the Eddy Minimum due to the Sun]. If we are just entering a small cycle or two there will be a much smaller change that we could hardly see in the record [given all the other variability].
DCA says @ur momisugly June 16, 2011 at 4:20 pm “Now thats three times you’ve dodged the my question about the context of Gavin’s Wiki quote ”
You still seem kinda angry.
Well it was there yesterday – evidentially was deleted at some point.
Here is the context in which that since sentence you pulled – out of context – is from.
“It’s obvious that the noise-generating components of the blogosphere will generate a lot of noise about this. but it’s important to remember that science doesn’t work because people are polite at all times. Gravity isn’t a useful theory because Newton was a nice person. QED isn’t powerful because Feynman was respectful of other people around him. Science works because different groups go about trying to find the best approximations of the truth, and are generally very competitive about that. That the same scientists can still all agree on the wording of an IPCC chapter for instance is thus even more remarkable.”
[snip]
Not sure why given your prior posts you would want to full context since it just brings up a conversation about how the we-don’t-believe-in-it-is-really-happening (no D-word there) blogosphere latched on the style of the emails when the substance of the emails after multiple independent reviews did not prove that the data was incorrect. (AP and others – citations upon request as I do not want to take up any more space here since I find this topic at this point to be a distraction from the sunspot conversation).
R. Gates says @ur momisugly June 16, 2011 at 4:47 pm
R. Gates says:
June 16, 2011 at 12:06 pm
I would say that the certainty of knowing at any given time of x,y, or z being a given size is low…that is, I think that x,y, and z and change over time, and may also in fact affect each other.
since climate is on long time scales, the random changes of X, Y, and Z might wash out. Anyway, we can’t really deal with a moving target too much: imagine we were to assign different values to X, Y, and Z every day..
———-
In your last line you’ve just nicely illustrated the essence of the 3-body problem and the roots of chaos…
__________________
Are you suggesting that you cannot model anything accurately then?
Leif mistakenly assumes that all solar-driven temperature changes here on Earth are produced by changes in TSI. He, of course, ignores the seminal work of the late Charles D. Keeling (of the CO2 Keeling Curve fame) who at least had the guts to investigate the possibility that Lunar tides might have an impact here on Earth. The only intellectual leap that you have to make after that is to realize that the effect of the Lunar tides on the Earth’s climate are synchronized with the level of solar activity. This is where Leif gets weak at the knees.
Keeling and Whorf 2000, PNAS, 97, No. 8, pp. 3814 – 3819
Ninderthana says:
June 16, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Keeling at least had the guts to investigate the possibility that Lunar tides might have an impact here on Earth.
Keeling thought that the long 1800-yr temperature variation is astronomically determined via lunar tides and that that was the natural explanation of the MWP and the LIA. This is possible, but has, of course nothing to do with solar activity. As Keeling said ” it becomes pretty clear that if today’s natural warming trend is combined with the greenhouse effect, then we’ll soon see the effect of combined warming all over the world”. So he’ll expect continued global warming. You subscribe to that?
Ninderthana says:
June 16, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Keeling at least had the guts to investigate the possibility that Lunar tides might have an impact here on Earth.
Solar UV creates and maintains the ionosphere and just as in the oceans there are also solar and lunar tides in the ionosphere. Whenever a conductor moves in a magnetic field and electric current is produced, so there are currents in the ionosphere created not just by the solar wind, but by the solar and lunar tides. These currents create a [very small, about a thousandth of the main magnetic field] magnetic field observable on the ground. So each day a regular ‘tide’ is observed. It looks like this: http://www.leif.org/research/Lunar-Variation-Huancayo.png The solar tide is about five to eight times larger than the lunar tide, so is the spike you can see every day in the upper panel. But if you look carefully you can see that the shape of the spike changes with the lunar phase. This is because a lunar day [on the Earth] is a bit longer than a solar day, so the lunar tide ‘slides’ over the solar ones and sometimes add to the solar spike making it larger, and sometimes subtracts from the spike, making it smaller. In the lower panel you can see the difference in shape of the solar tide caused by the moon.
This effect was discovered in 1850 by Kreil in Prague. So, the lunar tides do indeed have a magnetic effect on the Earth of the order of 1/10,000 of the Earth’s field.
@- Leif Svalgaard
Would it be correct to say that if the SUM of X, Y and Z is constant the climate is constant, when the total of the three changes due to a change in any one factor the climate changes.
The main argument is – How much?
Moderate Republican “An analysis of solar trends concluded that the sun has actually contributed a slight cooling influence in recent decades (Lockwood 2008).”
Lockwood, 2008:
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/464/2094/1387.full
Most of the cooling in this paper appears to be attributed to volcanic effects.
Lockwood in 2009 stated: “If the Sun’s dimming were to have a cooling effect, we’d have seen it by now. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8008473.stm
But in 2010 Lockwood suggested that a quiet sun may put Europe on Ice. Perhaps he opened his eyes?
=========
Quiet sun puts Europe on ice
May 2010 by Stuart Clark
BRACE yourself for more winters like the last one, northern Europe. Freezing conditions could become more likely: winter temperatures may even plummet to depths last seen at the end of the 17th century, a time known as the Little Ice Age. That’s the message from a new study that identifies a compelling link between solar activity and winter temperatures in northern Europe.
[…]
Mike Lockwood at the University of Reading in the UK began his investigation because these past two relatively cold British winters coincided with a lapse in the sun’s activity more profound than…
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627564.800-quiet-sun-puts-europe-on-ice.html
=========
By including solar activity as an important parameter while ignoring CO2, Lockwood produced a miracle for modern climatology–an accurate prediction:
December 2010:
“BRITAIN’S winter is the coldest since 1683 and close to being the chilliest in nearly 1,000 years.”
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/169577/Winter-may-be-coldest-in-1000-years/
The MET, on the other hand, presumably based on the magical “forcing” imputed to CO2, predicted another “mild” winter:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/28/the-uk-met-office-winter-forecast-fail-or-faux/
izen says:
June 16, 2011 at 9:03 pm
Would it be correct to say that if the SUM of X, Y and Z is constant the climate is constant, when the total of the three changes due to a change in any one factor the climate changes. The main argument is – How much?
There is no demand that the sum add to 1. But before we begin to discuss such fine detail, the order of magnitude of X,Y, and Z [relative to some reference period] must be decided.
@- gary gulrud says:
June 16, 2011 at 1:13 pm
“Cutting to the chase, back-radiation plays no part because the earth cools faster than the Atmosphere can heat the surface.”
But if there were no atmosphere, (or no GHGs) it would cool faster still.
Are you aware of how the ‘Greenhouse effect’ works, or are you one of those that rejects any role for the atmosphere in affecting the temperature at the surface?!
Dr S says – {.so TSI during a Grand Minimum might be higher than TSI now.}
Samething Dr. G. Schmidt said recently.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 16, 2011 at 8:10 am
tallbloke says:
June 16, 2011 at 5:20 am
I very much hope all concerned can trust the keepers of the record not to cook the books on TSI, because there are some eminent scientists who don’t have much faith in the person producing the figures, and believe he is agenda driven.
This is just crap. Nobody is cooking the books. And who is ‘that person’?
Here’s ‘that letter’ again:
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/acrim.jpg
The current platform (TIM/SORCE) shows a 4W/m^2 lower reading than expected when deployed, and this apparent aberration goes unexplained as far as I know.
All spacecrafts have undetermined offsets because the absolute level is hard to measure.
Right. And this is why there is a greater level of uncertainty in the splicing and extrapolation of the record than appears in the error bars on your page 20 TSI graph. Thanks for the TIMS info by the way.
Don’t get me wrong. I think you’ve done a great job with the lines of evidence and data available. I’m just ever mindful that there is enough flexibility in the interpretation due to uncertainty to admit of several ‘scenarios’.
Kwharizmi, The UK Met’s probabilistic forecasts don’t have anything to do with CO2 forcing . They are simply odds-based forecasts. Current conditions are compared with past seasons and regional indicators to produce an likelihood. That’s why they are never “right”….and are not the only forecast technique used.
tallbloke says:
June 17, 2011 at 1:00 am
Here’s ‘that letter’ again:
Froehlich is not the ‘keeper’ of the ‘record’.
And he has not [and cannot] change Willson’s data. All Froehlich does is to make his own private composite [called PMOD] of data using his own weighting of the available data [including Willson’s – which BTW does have problems and must be corrected before use. What Willson complains about is that Froehlich in so doing still calls the corrected series ACRIM. Had Froehlish called it, say, ACRIM* or something like that there would not have been a problem]. There is nothing wrong with that. PMOD is not ‘official’ or preferred in any way. You can use it or not.
And this is why there is a greater level of uncertainty in the splicing and extrapolation of the record than appears in the error bars on your page 20 TSI graph.
No, although the graph says TSI, it is really just 10-Be expressed in TSI units. The error bar is that of the 10Be ice core data. Nothing to do with TSI. And the spread in the level of [spacecraft] TSI is not ‘uncertainty’. The spread can be removed because we have overlapping data.
there is enough flexibility in the interpretation due to uncertainty to admit of several ‘scenarios’.
That uncertainty is already taken into account by me. I would not make a statement if I thought I went beyond what the data shows.
Regarding TSI, we only have accurate measurements of TSI for the last 30 years or so. During that time the sun was in a solar maximum. So we can’t really say much about how TSI varies over time yet.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 16, 2011 at 1:44 pm
If that supposition were true, then TSI should go up during a normal cycle minimum. It doesn’t. The dark spots are caused by magnetic fields preventing plasma that has cooled from mixing with surrounding plasma. In that case, the loss of energy from the cooled plasma could easily be compensated for by the increase in output from the surrounding plasma which is now hotter, since it isn’t mixing with that afore mentioned cooled magma.
R. Gates says:
June 16, 2011 at 12:06 pm
I would say that the certainty of knowing at any given time of x,y, or z being a given size is low…that is, I think that x,y, and z and change over time, and may also in fact affect each other.
since climate is on long time scales, the random changes of X, Y, and Z might wash out. Anyway, we can’t really deal with a moving target too much: imagine we were to assign different values to X, Y, and Z every day..
———-
In your last line you’ve just nicely illustrated the essence of the 3-body problem and the roots of chaos…
———————————————————————————————-
So very true. That is why in the start I asked for nothing more then an educated guess. As far as climate goes, we really have very little clue on how different factors effect each other (hence the roots of chaos.) These are not linear variables that can be plugged in to tell a story, what you need is the entire picture.
Without getting into an argument, yes the solar influences might be nothing, might be 0.1c or might be 0.3C or more over a long time period. This depends on a number of other factors along with the exact factors of what hte Sun is doing.
Something that I thought appeared somewhat interesting, maybe Leif would like to make a stab at this, we tend to see slightly more volcanic activity during solar mins.
This might have an interesting impact, kind of like the indirect PDO effect on temperatures… The actual PDO impact on temperatures is mild and only seen in limited areas. (Of course people in CA which is effected will disagree and say that the state is the entire world…but I digress.)
Again, We are discussing small aspects and very small parts of a very chaotic system. Who knows if the correlation is nothing more then simple coincidence? Who knows if one causes the other (of course I doubt the Earth can effect the Sun .. haha funny right?), but this is more of a general statement for climate.
I have long said that the true answer to CO2 impacts on climate are not well understood enough to make a meaningful guess. The noise is so high at this threshold that what appears to be CO2 could be some effect we simply do not understand well enough or even have no idea it had an effect.
This does not apply to solar as much since we do have some empirical data in the form of good proxies. But in the end, there are many questions with solar mins that modern equipment might finally be able to answer. Think of it as one step closer to solving the chaotic problem of climate. What other effects does a solar min have besides the temp? This is the same question that is so difficult to answer in relation to CO2 as well…namely what other things does CO2 impact. In the end, I would guess we have seen roughly 0.2C at the most in CO2 induced warming, with most of the warming temperated by negative feedbacks…but there are other sensible conclusions to be had from the data besides that. I tend to think lower limits in IPCC are about as high as I would call sensical…
As for CO2 directly and by itself, I don’t think we can even begin to guess what the actual impact of this is. Just like my semi-educated guess on solar, I think we are simply guessing at this aspect as well. In 100 years, we might start figuring this out, but in 100 years I fully expect us as a society to move on to better forms of energy….We shall see, time makes fools of us all.
In any regard, this is interesting, I will be out of town for the weekend (I might try reading comments on my BB, but that might not work well, never tried it….)
Moderate Republican says:
June 16, 2011 at 5:22 pm
R. Gates says @ur momisugly June 16, 2011 at 4:47 pm
R. Gates says:
June 16, 2011 at 12:06 pm
I would say that the certainty of knowing at any given time of x,y, or z being a given size is low…that is, I think that x,y, and z and change over time, and may also in fact affect each other.
since climate is on long time scales, the random changes of X, Y, and Z might wash out. Anyway, we can’t really deal with a moving target too much: imagine we were to assign different values to X, Y, and Z every day..
———-
In your last line you’ve just nicely illustrated the essence of the 3-body problem and the roots of chaos…
__________________
Are you suggesting that you cannot model anything accurately then?
———-
Not at all!
This notion systems that exhibit spatio-temperal chaos cannot be modeled comes from those perhaps who don’t understand the basics of chaos theory or somehow confuse deterministic chaos with randomness. The climate is hardly random (a notion many seem to hold), but it does vary based on multiple inputs which themselves can interact and vary over time with multiple feedbacks. Thus, simple linear models will not work and one needs to use more sophisticated means to understand how a the climate can vary in large ways over time with only small input changes year to year.
BenfromMO,
Excellent post…