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/
To Moderate Republican:
Your quote:
“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,”
….needs to be carefully assessed. The statement made there applies “for the period of satellite data”.. That period is only from approx. 1962 to now, What some here are talking about is a possible repeat of the Maunder Minimum, conventionally dated from 1650-1700, where sunspots disappeared for decades. This is believed to have resulted in a severe cooling referred to as the Little Ice Age. This is a far more severe event than anything in the past 5 decades. In fact, the past 5 decades include time when the Sun has been more active than at any time in the past 1000 years! (Search elsewhere on the Wattsupwiththat site for quoted papers on that.) The quoted statement for the last 5 decades, a period of very high solar activity, is almost completely irrelevant to the possible case being debated here. And as Steven Mosher has forcefully reminded everyone here, models of the Sun are not necessarily a priori more believeable than those of, say, the more extreme climate modellers.
Many commenter(s) seem to put all models on the same footing.
There are good models and there are bad models. There are testable models and there are untestable models. There are validated models and there are unvalidated models.
One thing for sure… if a model’s output does not match real life, empirical measurements… then it’s printout sheets retain usefulness, only as toilet paper or fire starter.
Good, valid models, have been in use for millennium, and are probably the single most important tool available for civilization. Mistaking a bad model for a good model can cause it’s destruction. Do I need to suggest which category our present, woefully inadequate climate modality falls into. GK
Were the results of this poll ever posted? I couldn’t find any.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/13/online-petition-the-next-solar-minimum-should-be-called-the-eddy-minimum/
Carbon market crash? Switch to long john futures?
rbateman says:
June 14, 2011 at 9:35 pm
Leif: If the flux that has returned to the Northern Solar Pole never received any more, what would that flux then be capable of producing in a SC25 Northern cycle?
There are something like five to seven ‘surges’ of flux that go to the poles. You can see them here http://obs.astro.ucla.edu/torsional.html so we expect there to be several more in SC24.
Moderate Republican(democrat) says:
June 15, 2011 at 7:25 am
“Models have predicted the warming we are seeing, the CO2 concentration levels, the interplay between CO2 and other GHG, impact on ocean temperatures and ocean acidification.”
WRONG.
No model has yet accurately predicted the decade plus stagnation and decline in global temperatures. All of the IPCC model simulations from the first IPCC though to AR4, from the highest estimate to the lowest they were all wrong. Climate models failed to predict the halt and recent decline in sea level rise, they failed to take account of negative feedbacks, they failed to predict a global sea ice stabilization. Climate models have been a spectacular failure and only the constant fiddling and adjustments and tinkering have made them anywhere near accurate. If a model is devised and run from 1990 and then needs constant corrective inputs to bring the model back from a false conclusion then that model has failed.
Show me a climate model that has accurately provided a global temperature prediction, one that has not been fiddled and adjusted over time to account for its failure. Climate models fail to predict, they are then adjusted with new data and still they failed, they were and are continually adjusted as they fail and still they fail. There has been no statistically significant warming since 1998. models from 1990 onward failed to predict the halt and decline.
Show me an unadjusted model that has been proven to have accurately forecast the last decades cooling. Please provide just one unadulterated model from the IPCCs stable that has proven to be accurate.
“Models have predicted … ocean acidification.”
In point of fact, temperature, CO2 levels and ocean PH levels are simply returning to the levels that they have been for most of the past 100 million years. The current climate conditions of low temperature, low CO2 and high ocean PH are the unusual conditions. They coincide with the current cycle of ice ages and are not the conditions that most of the life on earth evolved in.
The idea that a return to conditions prior to the past few million years in which ice ages ruled he climate will somehow harm life on earth ignores the reality of evolution. Life on earth evolved in a time prior to the ice ages, in which temperatures were warmer, CO2 levels were higher and ocean PH was more acidic than it is now. If these conditions were so bad for life, how did life survive? What built the huge deposits of limestone we find all over the planet if higher CO2 makes it impossible to shellfish to convert CO2 to limestone?
But the solar forcing climesci includes is only the direct heat impact, not the indirect and amplified effect of a reduction in solar wind leading to more cosmic ray nuclei to form clouds.
As for 2009, maybe there’s a lag and it takes a while for the earth to shed its heat. We should know a bit better in a few years.
He’d be a brave man to do that–to “confirm” that something “IS” going to happen. Foolhardy. But Hill, or one of the authors of these three papers, did state that the findings have implications for the earth’s climate. Therefore your words “completely unsupported” are a rash overstatement.
It is based on extrapolating the effects on temperature of earlier prolonged solar minimums. Your “no basis” is unwarranted.
Another rash overstatement filled with absolutes. “Deniers” presumably means all deniers, which isn’t justified. And “being totally useless” isn’t the objection that most deniers make to models. Here’s a quote, maybe from another thread, on this matter:
Pretty immoderate.
Cassie
Actually, some did. There are around 20 models or so. For Ar4 there were about 50 runs contributed by those models. The mean or average of all those runs is clearly above observations. However, some runs of some of the models were actually below observations. Some models run too hot, some run too cold. As it stands
now, more run too hot than too cold.
steven mosher,
Just because a model appears to get one prediction right out of multiple runs means nothing. Consistency is required. Let us know when a specific model consistently makes accurate predictions of the future climate, including temeprature. If that ever happens, I’ll start to believe that models have credibility. Until then, getting a hit once in a while is simply a model version of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.
[Labeling others “deniers” violates site Policy and results in your comment being snipped. ~dbs, mod.]
[Snip. Labeling others with the d-word is against site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]
Smokey says June 15, 2011 at 8:25 am “Just because a model appears to get one prediction right out of multiple runs means nothing. ”
This is a strawman argument because there are multiple climate models that have successfully predicted the warming we are seeing. Models have successfully predicted the following;
* Cooling of the stratosphere
* Warming of the lower, mid, and upper troposphere
* Warming of ocean surface waters
* Trends in ocean heat content
* An energy imbalance between incoming sunlight and outgoing infrared radiation
* Amplification of warming trends in the Arctic region
Moderate Republican,
I suggest you re-read Cassie King’s comment @7:59 am above.
~ Moderate Independent☺
Smokey – Cassie is wrong (as shown) and so are you.
It’s unusual to see myself agreeing with such people as R Gates, but stranger things have happened:
As a sceptic, I’m dismayed to see people jumping on this story like a proverbial tramp on a sandwich.
Despite (rightly) denigrating warmists for making un-founded assumptions and relying on wretched models, people on this site are doing those very same things, just because the story is about cooling rather than warming.
Case in point: After contributing an interesting and informative post about his work, Don Easterbrook then (in my opinion) ruined it all by coming out with the line, “The time to prepare is now–later may be too late.The clock is ticking. Time will tell!” Such a phrase could have been lifted verbatim from Real Climate.
If any cooling does happen, I believe it will be interesting for the following reasons:
1. Governments who have wasted billions on AGW legislation, such as the UK and Australia will have a hell of a lot of explaining to do
2. Greenpeace and their cronies will have to do a hell of a lot of back-pedalling
3. Hansen will have a sh*t-fit
However, I wouldn’t be surprised if the AGW team use a quiet Sun as an excuse to explain away the lack of warming that they had so confidently predicted i.e. “if it wasn’t for the lack of sunspots covering up the AGW we’d be really frying by now, so we need to keep cutting those CO2 levels!”
The Team and the IPPC will not give up so easily, so if cooling really does come about we may have an even bigger fight to try and win…
[Snip. If you continue to label others as “deniers” all your comments will be snipped. ~dbs, mod.]
Pete H says:
June 14, 2011 at 11:28 pm
Thanks for the link, Pete!
ModRep,
Actually, Cassie King was spot on. And your cherry-picked model ‘successes’ are one-offs. You cannot produce a model that hasn’t been tweaked, and that has correctly predicted any one of your parameters for a decade in advance within ±1 S.D. The Met office’s super expensive supercomputer predicted a “barbecue summer” for last year. That competely wrong prediction is typical of model outputs.
Climate models operate on the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy: shoot holes in a barn door, then draw a bulls-eye around them. Presto! Models can accurately predict…
…not.
steven mosher says:
June 15, 2011 at 8:20 am
Actually, some did. There are around 20 models or so. For Ar4 there were about 50 runs contributed by those models. The mean or average of all those runs is clearly above observations. However, some runs of some of the models were actually below observations. Some models run too hot, some run too cold. As it stands
now, more run too hot than too cold.
According to Andy Edmonds, in the recent June 13 post on chaotic theoretic modelling:
Models are generated by observing the earth, modelling land masses and air currents, tree cover, ice cover and so on. It’s a great intellectual achievement, but it’s still full of assumptions. As you’d expect the modellers are always looking to refine the model and add new pet features. In practice there is only one real model, as any changes in one are rapidly incorporated into the others.
So how different and independent are these 20 models you mention? Are they not just different implementation of more or less the same math(s)?
Moderate Republican@June 15, 2011 at 6:39 am
“Models have predicted the warming we are seeing”
What warming are we currently seeing? I haven’t seen any for the past decade.
Models have predicted the current warming.
They have? Where?
They have failed completely when they try to hindcast weather.
They can be tuned so that they predict the overall warming claimed by the extremely flawed ground based temperature network, however they fail to get any regional distribution right.
They fail when trying to handle cloud coverage.
They fail when trying to predict distribution of heat vertically as well as horizontally.
The truth is that the climate models have completely failed to predict anything.
Mosh,
“Actually, some did. There are around 20 models or so. For Ar4 there were about 50 runs contributed by those models. The mean or average of all those runs is clearly above observations. However, some runs of some of the models were actually below observations. Some models run too hot, some run too cold. As it stands
now, more run too hot than too cold.”
Just to clarify, was that around 50 runs in total (ie: about 2.5 per model)?
If so then it doesn’t really bode well for their skill that “some runs from some models” predicted lower than observations because it suggests that even those models that admitted a possibility of what we’ve observed were getting it right on some of their runs.
Seeing as “some runs” out of 2.5 each is between 40 and 80% that suggests that even the most accurate ( according to subsequent observations ) models were predicting higher than reality between 80 and 40% of the time and all the rest were predicting high 100% of the time. That smacks pretty strongly of a systematic bias somewhere in the way the models are constructed.
The warmists tell us that the reason we haven’t seen all of the heating that they are predicting is because the thermal lags of the oceans are decades in length.
Now they tell us, less than two years from the start of the current solar minimum, that because we didn’t see lots of cooling that this proves the sun has little impact on the climate.
Which is it. The oceans cause a decades long thermal lag, or changes should be seen instantly. You can’t have it both ways.
More wisdom from Gavin Schmidt:
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/14/6857473-solar-forecast-hints-at-a-big-chill
Let’s see….Chile, Eritrea, maybe Iceland…..Maunder II, here we come!
Anyone want to buy a very nice chalet in Graubünden? Cheap?
Mod, please snip this junk:
Moderate Republican says:
June 15, 2011 at 8:40 am
“… denier deception.”
[Reply: Snipped. Moderate Republican is on thin ice with his pejorative labeling. ~dbs, mod.]
So the alarmist response from various sources has been the sun will not affect the climate enough to prevent so called global warming. Well, if the predicted sun decline did occur, it would be a much bigger change than the decline over recent years. This was enough to stop global warming at least over the recent decade, so it’s fair to say already wrong before this period in question even occurs. So the question I ask you, why then are global temperatures not warming?