“If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades,” Hill said. “That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth’s climate.”
Update: see the official press release here – “All three of these lines of research to point to the familiar sunspot cycle shutting down for a while.”
It looks like Livingston and Penn are getting some long deserved recognition. See their graph below:
Graph above from the WUWT solar reference page. Note: when the B gauss reading of sunspots hits 1500, they will no longer have enough contrast to be visible. That may occur at or near the years 2015-2017. WUWT carried a story in 2008 warning of this.
The American Astronomical Society meeting in Los Cruces, NM has just made a major announcement on the state of the sun. Sunspots may be on the way out and an extended solar minimum may be on the horizon.
From Space.com reporting from the conference:
Some unusual solar readings, including fading sunspots and weakening magnetic activity near the poles, could be indications that our sun is preparing to be less active in the coming years.
The results of three separate studies seem to show that even as the current sunspot cycle swells toward the solar maximum, the sun could be heading into a more-dormant period, with activity during the next 11-year sunspot cycle greatly reduced or even eliminated.
The results of the new studies were announced today (June 14) 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.
…
Currently, the sun is in the midst of the period designated as Cycle 24 and is ramping up toward the cycle’s period of maximum activity. However, the recent findings indicate that the activity in the next 11-year solar cycle, Cycle 25, could be greatly reduced. In fact, some scientists are questioning whether this drop in activity could lead to a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 when the sun showed virtually no sunspots.
…
“We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now, but we see no sign of it,” Hill said. “This indicates that the start of Cycle 25 may be delayed to 2021 or 2022, or may not happen at all.”
…
If the models prove accurate and the trends continue, the implications could be far-reaching.
“If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades,” Hill said. “That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth’s climate.”
More on this as it unfolds. This article will be updated as new information becomes available.
See also these previous WUWT posts leading up to this:
Solar activity still driving in the slow lane
Sun’s magnetics remain in a funk: sunspots may be on their way out
The sun is still in a slump – still not conforming to NOAA “consensus” forecasts
Livingston and Penn in EOS: Are Sunspots Different During This Solar Minimum?
Livingston and Penn paper: “Sunspots may vanish by 2015″.
Sunspots Today: A Cheshire Cat – New Essay from Livingston and Penn
=======================================================================
As I have been saying for some time:
The long term Ap (the solar geomagnetic index) has been on a downtrend, ever since there was a step change in October 2005.
Thanks to Leif Svalgaard, we have a more extensive and “official” Ap dataset (NOAA’s SWPC shown above has some small issues) that I’ve plotted below. The step change in October 2005 is still visible and the value of 3.9 that occurred in April of 2009 is the lowest for the entire dataset. The Ap Index was the lowest in 75 years then.
Click for a larger image
And I’ve also plotted the 1991 to 2009 from BGS/Svalgaard to compare against the NOAA SWPC data:
============================================================
Dr. Leif Svalgaard writes:
Here are the abstracts of the three studies referred to in the announcement:
P16.10
Large-scale Zonal Flows During the Solar Minimum — Where Is Cycle 25?13
Frank Hill, R. Howe, R. Komm, J. Christensen-Dalsgaard, T. P. Larson, J. Schou, M. J. Thompson
The so-called torsional oscillation is a pattern of migrating zonal flow bands that move from midlatitudes towards the equator and poles as the magnetic cycle progresses. Helioseismology allows us to probe these flows below the solar surface. The prolonged solar minimum following Cycle 23 was accompanied by a delay of 1.5 to 2 years in the migration of bands of faster rotation towards the equator. During the rising phase of Cycle 24, while the lower-level bands match those seen in the rising phase of Cycle 23, the rotation rate at middle and higher latitudes remains slower than it was at the corresponding phase in earlier cycles, perhaps reflecting the weakness of the polar fields. In addition, there is no evidence of the poleward flow associated with Cycle 25. We will present the latest results based on nearly sixteen years of global helioseismic observations from GONG and MDI, with recent results from HMI, and discuss the implications for the development of Cycle 25.
P17.21
A Decade of Diminishing Sunspot Vigor
W. C. Livingston, M. Penn, L. Svalgaard
s Convention Center
Sunspots are small dark areas on the solar disk where internal magnetism, 1500 to 3500 Gauss, has been
buoyed to the surface. (Spot life times are the order of one day to a couple of weeks or more. They are thought to be dark because convection inhibits the outward transport of energy there). Their “vigor” can be described by spot area, spot brightness intensity, and magnetic field. From 2001 to 2011 we have measured field strength and brightness at the darkest position in umbrae of 1750 spots using the Zeeman splitting of the Fe 1564.8 nm line. Only one observation per spot per day is carried out during our monthly telescope time of 3-4 days average. Over this interval the temporal mean magnetic field has declined about 500 Gauss and mean spot intensity has risen about 20%. We do not understand the physical mechanism behind these changes or the effect, if any, it will have on the Earth environment.
P18.04
Whither goes Cycle 24? A View from the Fe XIV Corona
Richard C. Altrock
Solar Cycle 24 had a historically prolonged and weak start. Observations of the Fe XIV corona from the Sacramento Peak site of the National Solar Observatory showed an abnormal pattern of emission compared to observations of Cycles 21, 22, and 23 from the same instrument. The previous three cycles had a strong, rapid “Rush to the Poles” in Fe XIV. Cycle 24 displays a delayed, weak, intermittent, and slow “Rush” that is mainly apparent in the northern hemisphere. If this Rush persists at its current rate, evidence from previous cycles indicates that solar maximum will occur in approximately early 2013. At lower latitudes, solar maximum previously occurred when the greatest number of Fe XIV emission regions* first reached approximately 20° latitude. Currently, the value of this parameter at 20° is approximately 0.15. Previous behavior of this parameter indicates that solar maximum should occur in approximately two years, or 2013. Thus, both techniques yield an expected time of solar maximum in early 2013.
*annual average number of Fe XIV emission features per day greater than 0.19
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Maunder Minimum:
>>> Posted August 27, 2009.
“Since the next maximum is still estimated to be at 2013, there’s absolutely no cause for alarm. If no substantial change occurs in the next couple of years, then perhaps that’s the time when we should start worrying.”
http://www.universetoday.com/38505/maunder-minimum/
The best thing about this occurring is that it will test the solar driven climate hypothesis. Obviously, the test period will be decades, but it will be tested none the less.
Interesting that Hill notes that this may effect the earth’s climate; Clearly knows of the Maunder Minimum correlation with cold climate. Surprised he would say that in a public forum though.
O, the irony of it all.
This situation was what the crazed climate hippies wanted in the 70’s when they shrieked about the coming ice age and people getting ice cubed before taking their merry time to turn to CAGW and people suffering year long heat strokes, all proven by models of course.
A good way to test the accuracy of models is to model the sunspot activity, I’m sure, but of course nobody wants to fail in real time time and time again.
However it is always nice to note that there are at least some scientists who’s scientific observations doesn’t automatically land them in the denier camp. Although cheap solar telescopes could be the actual cause for latter though. :p
Jan Perlwitz says:
June 14, 2011 at 12:27 pm
15 years is “just a few years”?
R. Gates says:
June 14, 2011 at 12:32 pm
I agree, 0.1C to 0.2C in extra heating will be of benefit.
Oh great, more predictions. Sorry for my cynism, but I doubt this will be anything but a lower than average activity cycle. Yet true enough, global cooling is coming… no, ice age even! We really don’t know the full effect the sun has on the climate. Of course it’s the driving factor, and logic dictates that less activity means less heat. However, logic also dictates that more CO2 means more heat. It’s all about the details.
Wil says:
June 14, 2011 at 2:05 pm
From NBC News: Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the founders of the RealClimate blog said the effects of solar activity on climate over the past 30 years have been “at the margin of what we can detect.”
More co2 propaganda from this putz.
Schmidt and Mann’s own paper from 2001 posits a .3 or .4° drop in global temps with the biggest drops in the Northern hemisphere…
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/294/5549/2149.abstract
You can bet it’ll be bigger than that.
How can we bet on sunspot futures?
John from CA says:
June 14, 2011 at 10:47 am
I’m more than a bit concerned about the erratic behavior of the sun in this cycle. It isn’t as simplistic as a dimmer switch.
solar activity occurs in spurts which are more visble in weak cycles. Compare with solar cycle 14:
http://www.leif.org/research/SC14-and-24.png
vukcevic says:
June 14, 2011 at 11:02 am
shows that the polar fields may not switch polarity some time in the near future.
Except that the North Polar fields have already reversed.
kramer says:
June 14, 2011 at 11:21 am
If I remember correctly, this goes against Leif’s point of view.
I have been supporting L&P for quite some time. E.g. slide 14ff of http://www.leif.org/research/Eddy-Symp-Poster-2.pdf and I’m a coauthor of their poster.
On the other hand it is a bit of a surprise that the polar fields are reversing already now [The north has already, and the South is well on its way]. This means that the rise time of cycle 24 may be short which might provide extra time for a build-up of a large new polar field and following cycle. Now, it is possible that the polar fields will fluctuate and thus not firmly reverse for some time. We don’t know.
Jim Cripwell says:
June 14, 2011 at 11:47 am
Let us not forget that the L&P paper was originally rejected for publication; why I never found out, but it is suspected that it was because it went against the warmahoilic religion.
Mostly because he didn’t have enough data. Now we have twice as much and it looks better. Since we don’t know the cause of this, the L&P effect is still numerology as it could reverse tomorrow. At best, the recognition of the L&P effect could make people begin to think about the possibility that it might be real, rather than dismissing it out of hand.
—–
Everybody and his brother that now come out of the woodwork saying that their pet theory predicted a small SC24 [long ago] can, of course, not declare victory as many others did the same. The trick is to be right when nobody else is.
Did I miss it?
Svensmark has been theorizing since 1996. He’s been EXPERIMENTING since 2000 !!! He’s got CERN doing the cloud experiment. CERN has done the work. They are PHYSICISTS not “climate scientists”. (Can we say IMPARTIAL, can we say NO AXES TO GRIND?) CERN’s boys have been VERY VERY quiet about their results because they are writing BONIFIDE papers. And there is a little self respect, and proprietary aspect here. (After all, how many people have a multi billion dollar accelerator to make synthetic (controlled) “cosmic rays”.)
If I were a typical “Warmista” right now, I’d be SHAKING IN FEAR. Because the combination: SOLAR MAUNDER TYPE MINIMUM + Svensmark + CERN could spell a nasty doom for the Warmistas. (Whoops, I didn’t even mention the NEGATIVE FEEDBACK by Dr. Spencer.)
Max
This is big. Will it make the MSM? That will be interesting – to see what vestige is left of an impartial media.
In all the excitement WUWT readers should be cautious about overstating the case for solar control / driving of climate. It is already clear that there is no tightly correlated direct driving of global temperature by any solar parameter. If there is forcing, it is weak forcing of a nonlinear oscillator, such that the relationship between the forcing and the forced frequencies is complex. Those trawling through statistical permutations of solar parameters for magical climate correlations will thus ultimately be disappointed. As this solar L&P downturn gains media attention, we need to avoid giving the AGW camp a rod for our own backs. The sun does not directly control climate. There’s a bit more to it than that.
Just saying,
Should you live out under the sun. You would come to know the sun in many ways.
http://www.solsticeproject.org/science.htm
Time is beyond the seeing.
R. Gates says:
June 14, 2011 at 12:32 pm
It has some effect, but remember that it is a trace gas, and is routinely .3 to .03 times less than H2O (RH).
We will run out of fossil fuels long before we burn enough of it to produce the requisite 1500 ppm to equal the RH on a desert-dry day.
In view of the fact that the world has still been warming since the last solar maxiumum, despite the deepest and longest solar minimum for a century, I think it would be wildly optimistic to expect a quiet sun to save us from dangerous anthropogenic warming… especially as greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase even during the global recession.
The decline, maybe an evolved response to subtle signals from the sun to adapt to the coming change.
Perhaps the things tend to be preceded by high activity, low cloud and volcano activity, good crops productivity…
The margin of what we can detect………….. (Then you have to add or subtract their thermometer degree of accuracy )
I recall this remark from here @ur momisugly WUWT…..which I found very interesting.. and pertinent here.
‘……………..
\ 1. John Blake says:
January 18, 2011 at 3:10 pm
For NASA’s information, the Maunder Minimum is conventionally dated over seventy years, from 1645 – 1715, when wolves froze to death in Rhineland forests and wine frosted over in Louis XIV’s goblet in his palace of Versailles. The subsequent Dalton Minimum persisted over forty years from c. 1790 – 1830, marking the final cold-snap of Earth’s 500-year Little Ice Age (LIA) before the precipitate rebound that began c. 1890 – 1939 (fifty years), alternating warming with cooling phases in 1940 – 1979 (forty years), 1980 – 2009 (thirty years), now 2010 – 2029 (twenty years).
On this basis, after about 2030 the global thermostat –apparently there is such a thing– will shake itself to pieces, simultaneously attempting to switch both On and Off. As cyclic wavelengths diminish, so weather-events’ amplitudes and frequencies will increase in proportion. Though chaotic, non-linear, complex dynamic systems are inherently unpredictable in detail (Edward Lorenz, 1960 – ’64), cyclical phenomena in context of long-term secular trends are well-defined.
Yes, global temperatures have been increasing since the LIA petered out from c. 1890; indeed, the thirty-year period 1980 – 2009 represented a cyclical warm-phase. But this involved no anthropogenic CO2 nor any other “forcing mechanism,” and populations now face an end to Earth’s “long summer,” our current 12,250-year Holocene Interglacial Epoch long overdue for a resurgence of median 102,000-year Pleistocene Ice Time.
Green Gangsters such as Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al. join Luddite sociopaths like Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, latterly Keith Farnish, in abominating post-Enlightenment industrial/technological civilization and all its works. Over the next several generations, their brutal handiwork will likely result in mega-deaths………………..’
The solar threads are my Fav. especially when the big boys show up.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 14, 2011 at 2:42 pm
..shows that the polar fields may not switch polarity some time in the near future. ..
Except that the North Polar fields have already reversed.
I was referring to my graph
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
sometime past 2020.
You were referring to last few weeks, but you are already out of date with your own data. PF gone back again, I would expect PF to move back and forward for at least 6 months to a year on a weak cycle as SC24.
2011:03:19 5N
2011:03:29 -6N
2011:04:08 -4N
2011:04:18 -0N
2011:04:28 0N
2011:05:08 1N
2011:05:18 -4N
Do you still predict SC25 to be considerably higher than SC24, and if so on what basis?
If not so what made you reverse your position?
Icarus said
June 14, 2011 at 2:51 pm
I figured this kind of sentiment was coming . . . part of the behavioral cycle of “dangerous anthropogenic” domination . . . Icarus are we are ALL supposed to be freezing about now? Simply because we may not ‘see’ it the same way Icarus and those like him do . . .
The meeting is not in Austin, T but in Las Cruces, NM: http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/SPD2011/
Statistically significant cooling in the future is not a possibility as long as we continue to fund GISS, and USHCN v3 will doubtless show that the past was even colder than previously thought. I don’t think we’ll see much about this in the MSM since it goes against the consensus of all serious peer reviewed science, and the public won’t buy that increasing regulation and taxes will have much effect on the sun.
AW Would make this or combination as top post for some time. The fact is even MSM is now aware that it MAY cause cooling this will probably be enough to stop the whole AGW movement in its track probably right now These are THREE INDEPENDENT findings thats why it was announced as an important notification.
Who is John Galt?
Better question is…Where is Atlantis? And, please Mr. Galt, I wanna go!
~Don
Also I think if you observe sea surface temperatures at AMSU satellite tempertaures, there is no flip flop to higher temperatures at this stage which usually occurs in the transition from La nina to el nino. Just pure speculation but noteworthy?
R. Gates says:
So CO2 has gone up by 40% ? It is still only up by 100ppm.
Water vapor is 10,000 to 40,000 ppm so total GHGs has gone up by between 0.25 and 1%.
Big deal!
This likely why we can’t find any effects without manufacturing them by torturing the data until it confesses.