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/
Robin Barry says: June 15, 2011 at 12:26 am
If this is true, and we are headed for a new Maunder type minimum, shouldn’t we be worried that it will get colder than even the little ice age as the current warm period, just ending, has a lower temperature than the medieval warm period? It seems to me that if we experience a similar drop in temperatures, but start from a lower point, we will end up colder than last time.
Robin, I’ve written a piece on my private blog and I’d be interested in comments. It’s a very difficult balance. Obviously people ought to be aware of the possible implications, but obviously we don’t want another global warming scam and another huge waste of public money.
My fear is that we will get both: total denial by the warmist policy advisors suddenly switching to hysterical “sunspot” fever when the alarmist industry works out how to make money from the scare.
Whilst definitely relevant, surely forecasting solar activity, isn’t the sole issue, re: Svensmark and the influence (now seemingly confirmed by CERN, etc) of cosmic rays and their associated particles?
Are we considering the extra solar system flow, the level of availability, of cosmic rays, to be a constant? Wouldn’t that be a rather large assumption?
Are there perhaps cycles of cosmic ray availability? Plus perhaps irregular extra flows along with irregular lesser flows (supernovas don’t appear to happen every week, at regular distances).
Now if there’s a period of low solar activity, and the solar system’s resistance to the influx of cosmic rays weakens as a consequence, and that event should happen to coincide with a period of low cosmic ray flow rates, then that could be a remarkably different scenario to a period of low solar activity, coinciding with a period of high cosmic ray flow rates.
Given that we can only measure, and therefore know, the cosmic rays that the solar system grants entry to, by seeing what actually arrives here, it might be important to see if there are any other telltales that usually accompany them, which might have the potential to be measured at significant distances outside the solar system? So we get to know just what sort of ‘weather fronts’ might be moving in?
Otherwise, we would all appear to be up the creek without a paddle, and stumbling around in the dark, with everything being ‘after the fact’? I’m ok with being on the receiving end of ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’, but it would be nice to have that reality stressed properly if that is actually the case.
If being forced to acknowledge that allows ‘Government’ to become a little more humble than it presently seems to wish to be, then that itself could be a significant win for all of us.
At the end of the day, if the truth is ‘We don’t know’, then there’s absolutely nothing wrong with saying ‘We don’t know’. It can even be highly valuable to confirm it, and not just from the point of view of saving valuable wealth and resources from being wasted on futile follies..
Jim D says: June 14, 2011 at 8:16 pm wrote
quote
Replying to various people, the 3.7 W/m2 was for doubling CO2 from pre-industrial, which may happen within 50 years. So far we have had nearly 2 W/m2,
unquote
Tamino, owner of the blog Open Mind, was kind enough to calculate the warming from CO2 during the two 20th century warming spells. In the first it was 0.25 w/m^2, in the second 2.0 w/m^2.
quote
also larger than the Lean estimated 0.5 for the Maunder Minimum. The downward revision of Lean’s number was from astronomical studies of sun-like stars that just don’t have much variability, but I’d tend towards Lean’s number, if I had a say. [] Where do people get the idea that the IPCC discounts the sun when they were using solar forcing variations in addition to volcanoes, CO2, etc. The warming from 1910-40 relies on it for a significant fraction of the effect.
unquote
Presumably the same other forcings are occurring now — including albedo change and aerosols which are, perhaps, included in that little weasel word ‘etc’ in your statement above. Have you an explanation of how the extra 0.5 w/m^2 from the sun in 1925 compensated for the 1.75 w/m^2 less from the sun? Are sun’s watts more powerful than CO2 watts? Is this also discussed by the IPCC?
mosher wrote
quote
funny how skepticism about models and predictions all fly out the window
unquote
But what a time to test one set of forecasts against another! If, for example, the iris theory is correct then the putative cooling will be resisted by less heat dumping to space, if the climate is homeostatic then presumably albedo will drop. A good time to be a scientist who has nailed no flags to the mast. For those who have, not so much.
JF
Some genuine scientists have always said that the time has come when the whole warmist agenda will be smashed and made futile. This is the beginning of their contention that rather than warming, the planet was due for a cooling down, even to the point of entrance to a new mini ice age. The establishment laughed at us. Now there is **official** support for the contention that a solar minimum will bring about the cooling effects that will stop the global warning agenda dead in its tracks. As a certain fictional character once said: “The truth is out there”. This really is the beginning of the end!
BBC response: silence.
CNN response: silence.
The silence of the AGW lambs.
I would like to take credit, but I read it on another site…This should not be called a Maunder Minimum, but be referenced as “The Gore Minimum”
Another trend to worry about?
Another trend we have to live with and adapt to.
In a cyclic system any trend will only show which part of the cycle you happen to be on.
I am confused. Should I be hoarding drinking water for the prevously predicted long term droughts caused by climate change or building an ark to deal with the predicted flooding caused by climate change? I am just a simple person who needs some clarity and direction. Instead I seem to get any opinion that will suit climate change disaster predictors even if it totally contradicts the preceeding opinion. Whatever happened to the impartial scientific method?
Hmmmm !
did I not read somewhere that the egg beaters don’t work in extreme cold ?
A little help please!
Could someone point me to a link that seeks to prove the relationship between sunspots and climate. I have read of these things in the past but now can not find the links anymore. I used Google but got back millions of hits to sites saying that it was not the sun but rather it was CO2.
Would someone help me out here please?
Most of the last decade solar scientists were predicting strongest SC24.
How wrong they were.
Now solar scientists are predicting no sunspots at all.
My view is that they are unjustifiably leaping into another extreme.
Dalton type minimum likely, but anything more extreme is highly unlikely.
I hope we do not spend years speculating about something that we will not live to see.
“Saved by the sun. Despite the massive amounts of CO2 being spewed into the atmosphere at an increasingly, unprecedented accelerating rate, it is now obvious that mankind will be saved by the sun, what irony.”
This is how the agw crowd will save face.
So if the solar activity remains low, at the level it reaches during the abscence of sunspots for an extended time then the reduction in solar energy recieved will be about 1W/m2.
A doubling of CO2 gives an increase of around 3.7W/m2
If you accept the widely supported figure for climate senstivity of around 3degC for a doubling Of CO2 this would mean the new ‘Maunder minimum’ would cause cooling of around 1degC, negating up to a third of the rise from CO2.
If you prefer Lindzen and others much lower climate sensitivity then the drop in solar activity will cause a cooling of about 0.3degC.
But then scientists predicting the future behavior of what is clearly a chaotic system in the solar ‘cycle’ from the present ‘initial conditions’ are fooling themselves that such a system is even capable of prediction – according to Dr. Andy Edmonds!
It would appear the cognoscenti have flown, their paradigm having crashed and burned. Schadenfreude does not quite capture our delight.
I’m waiting for the “human caused warming is being masked by changes in the sun” argument. That is, a causal factor of climate change dismissed by the alarmists as being too weak and unimportant to be counted is now overcoming the factor they consider to be the primary cause of climate change.
For several years I posted on warmist blogs that solar influences on climate were supported by several lines of research. I was denigrated or my posts were expunged. Believers in global warming completely disregard solar influences in their climate models. They have long claimed that solar influences on climate are negligible compared to those of CO2. With this new release’s mention of the Maunder Minimum solar influences on climate will be hard to deny. It looks like nature may be giving us a test of the null hypothesis that the sun has no influence on climate.
Meanwhile, the view that a rise in CO2 can cause harmful warming has been challenged by the work of Richard Lindzen of MIT and others showing that CO2 does not have a positive feedback effect. Put the work on the importance of solar influences on climate together with the lack of support for CO2 increases causing harmful warming and the rational case for global warming has fallen apart.
AdderW: 3.54 am. As per my comment, 4:39 am (although it’s mid evening here in Australia) only the really stupid ones will make that argument, not realising how it undermines their whole case.
Couple of things people should keep in mind:
1) This possible maunder-or dalton-like period doesn’t look likely to be as low or long as the previous maunder.
2) We’re starting from a much better position. Global temps this decade were quite a bit higher than the period pre-maunder. Nearly .3C of this can reasonably be attributed to a-GHG warming. That’s about .3C of warming that otherwise would not be retained. Also, being well mixed, this is pretty even throughout the atmosphere. This prevents temperature drops from being as large and also means temperature differentials will be smaller than they otherwise would be. This should take the edge off the weather effects we would otherwise expect.
Recently I made a minor discover which shows that the changes in the North Hemisphere geomagnetic field intensity follow the solar magnetic activity.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN-dBz.htm
Importance of this discovery may be properly assessed in the future years .
Good old Sol is taking a slumber, but we shouldn’t observe the sun because global warming, which must be catastrophic and anthropogenic otherwise taxpayers might want their money back, is still ongoing in the minds of the crazed climate hippie parade. Apparently some of the reasons are elderly getting heat strokes during warm weather because they can’t afford the new green world of electricity, hurricane season, it generally being warm during summer, folks being able to take a swim, in JUNE, for pete’s sake, and BEJESUS me but the arctic ice is melting at the outer rims during summer time! The horror, the horror of it all! o_0
So, essentially, the logic of the crazed climate hippie parade goes something like this: If we were really heading for global cooling (again!!!) why would people learn to swim?
In the world of the hippies, there is no lag time for they have still plenty of time to leave the 60’s behind? :p
It really is quite entertaining to watch the sudden embrace of models, not to mention the hope for severe cooling, by some sceptics at this news! It’s also enlightening to see the responses from Warmists, which I’m pretty sure they just cribbed from the Sceptic’s old notes. Makes me wonder if genuinely impartial scientific thought is possible given human nature 🙂
One thing that should be remembered about this, tentative, prediction, which sets it apart from most AGW pronouncements is that it’s validity will be testable over a relatively short time-span. It’s also falsifiable in that, if SC25 turns up on-time and on-strength then the prediction was wrong. So, within a decade, we’ll know one way or the other. That’s a very different proposition to climate models, where the modellers have set the rules such that they’ll be retired or dead (and so will most of us) before the results are in, because apparent results sooner than that “don’t count” unless they seem to follow the hypothesis. So we have to accept the predictions on faith (or not, as the case may be).
As for hoping for another Little Ice Age, I’d like nothing better than to see Dr Jones, Mann et all shivering beside a Frost Fair on the Thames, still trying to tell us that we’ve got to stop burning all that coal, oil and gas and put another ethnically produced sweater on instead. The ensuing lynching would be memorable.
Fortunately, we don’t actually need cooling that bad to scupper the AGW position. The hypothesis has always been based on the rather shaky ground that “it must be CO2 because we don’t know any other forcings strong enough”. They specifically rule out solar activity as being no-where near enough of a forcing.
Leaving aside any question of the validity of global mean temperatures for now, all that an extended solar minimum needs to do is cause a small drop, or even an extended plateau in that global mean. The CO2 forcing, and all hypothesised feedbacks, will still exist so any such drop or extended plateau will demonstrate that solar activity can at least</i. match the suggested total forcing from GHG emissions. Which completely invalidates the assertion that "it must be because nothing else is that powerful".
So, let's all wish for some scientifically interesting solar inactivity and some pleasant, snowy, winters ahead – even an occasional Frost Fair could be nice for the festive spirit – without hoping for conditions which will bring hardship, famine and death on a massive scale! If this extended minimum happens, and does cause cooling, then feel free to gloat (I know I will be) but gloat nicely, without wishing harm on anyone when that harm isn't needed.
In fact, if you see Dr Jones huddled by the Thames, buy him a hot-dog from me 🙂
[snip. Do not call people “deniers.” ~dbs, mod.]
vinnster says:
June 15, 2011 at 2:43 am
> I would like to take credit, but I read it on another site…This should not be called a Maunder Minimum, but be referenced as “The Gore Minimum”
Cute, but the general consensus here that that Gore hasn’t contributed anything to science and hence does not deserve the honor. Jack Eddy has contributed a lot to solar physics, does deserve such an honor, and a lot of us want it named the Eddy Minimum.
See
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/13/online-petition-the-next-solar-minimum-should-be-called-the-eddy-minimum/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/22/wuwt-poll-what-should-we-call-the-current-solar-minimum/
What “alarms” me about this, is the mentioning of the Maunder Minimum. Why not the Dalton Minimum? The same with “lowest level since space based instruments”. Solar activity was pretty high right up to the end of the century, who’s to say this isn’t just a pause in that? My guess is we are going to be hearing a lot more about this as alarmists and politicians use it as their “Get out of Jail free” card.
scepticalnotyetcynical says at June 15, 2011 at 2:59 am
” Instead I seem to get any opinion that will suit climate change disaster predictors even if it totally contradicts the preceeding opinion. Whatever happened to the impartial scientific method?”
This is a strawman argument, and is a logically fallacy. A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position
You are making a claim against climate science that is unsupported by the facts. Climate science has included solar forcing as a consideration, and there is no contradiction in the variability of solar forcing changing. In fact this line of argument just helps prove deniers wrong.
“As NASA has said – A deep solar minimum has made sunspots a rarity in the last few years. Such lulls in solar activity, which can cause the total amount of energy given off by the sun to decrease by about a tenth of a percent, typically spur surface temperature to dip slightly. Overall, solar minimums and maximums are thought to produce no more than 0.1°C (0.18°F) of cooling or warming.
In 2009, it was clear that even the deepest solar minimum in the period of satellite data hasn’t stopped global warming from continuing,”