Below I have the latest solar cycle progression the NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
Sunspots look to be on a course for a peak well below the forecast red line.
The 10.7 centimeter radio flux remains anemic.
And the magnetic personality of the sun (The Ap planetary index) isn’t ramping up, just bumping along.
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The behavior of Cycle 24 has been remarkably stable, and quite slow.
It’s been a case of watching Solar paint dry.
Takes a long time.
My Active Region Count confirms the trend:
http://www.leif.org/research/Active%20Region%20Count.png
Maximum is on track to be somewhat more than half of SC23.
I thought a while back the prediction (by Hatherway) had dropped to 59. It looks like this one is about 142. What organization/person is the graph using for the predictions? I assume different organizations have their own.
Leif,
How does this cycle compare with cycle 5 at the start of the Dalton Minimum, and what is your outlook for cycle 25 and beyond?
If I recall correctly, from his previous postings here Svalgaard predicted 120. then 70 in 2009 and now hes getting closer to DA well what ya know! Join Hathaways club my friend.
As far as I can tell nearly everyone here has been wrong about ALL trends temp, solar etc. The Earth is not warming. Read Spencer and Braswell and 100’s of papers about this. Probably Co2 has zero effect on temperatures zilch nada, because the Earth loses any excess heat for whatever cause its self adjusting makes sense DUH! Most living systems have NEGATIVE feedback
Antoninus says:
August 9, 2011 at 8:31 pm
If I recall correctly
You don’t. In 2004 I predicted 75, later refined to 72, where it stands to this day.
P.S. The Active Region Count [ARC] is not the sunspot number, but an alternative measure akin to the group sunspot number. To approximately convert ARC to sunspot number multiply by 0.4.
Andrejs, you are looking at the 10.7 cm radio flux chart , not the sunspot number . . .
D J says:
August 9, 2011 at 8:26 pm
How does this cycle compare with cycle 5 at the start of the Dalton Minimum
Cycle 5 is poorly known: http://www.leif.org/research/Wolf-SSN-for-SC5 shows three versions.
The blue is Rudolf’s Wolf’s first attempt published in 1882 [it is clearly somewhat fake as it is much too smooth – he interpolated a lot]. His successor Wolfer got some more data and came up with the red version in 1902 [this is still the ‘official’ version]. Hoyt and Schatten’s group sunspot number is the cyan curve. As you can see the agreement is too good. My own research suggests that all these curves must be increased by 20% to match the current calibration of the sunspot number http://www.leif.org/research/History%20and%20Calibration%20of%20Sunspot%20Numbers.pdf
so make up your own mind 🙂
and what is your outlook for cycle 25 and beyond?
I don’t think we can predict with confidence more than one cycle ahead, and that only after maximum has passed, so SC25 can only be speculation. Anybody’s guess: http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston-Penn%20Data%20and%20Findings%20so%20far.pdf
D J says:
August 9, 2011 at 8:26 pm
How does this cycle compare with cycle 5 at the start of the Dalton Minimum
Cycle 5 is poorly known: http://www.leif.org/research/Wolf-SSN-for-SC5.png shows three versions.
See Ed Fix’s model: The Relationship of Sunspot Cycles to Gravitational Stresses on the Sun: Results of a Proof-of-Concept Simulation”. Ch 14 p 335 of Dr. Donald Easterbrook, ed. (Elsevier, 2011) e-book
can be previewed at: Read Inside by searching for “355″ or “barycenter” or “sunspot cycles”.
His model shows the lower magnitude and shorter Cycle 24.
Note also Ed Fix describes his cycle analysis method at Tallbloke’s blog: Solar activity simulation model revealed.
David L. Hagen says:
August 9, 2011 at 9:19 pm
See Ed Fix’s model
Ed Fix says “this system must be driven by an outside force evidenced by the radial acceleration of the sun relative to the barycenter” etc.
As the sun is in free fall it does not feel any forces or accelerations, so the theory fails right there.
One good prediction (with the highest correlation) that has been spot on up to date:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
The latest Hathaway prediction (Aug 2) is 69, in June of 2013.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml
Additionol CO2 could result in more green growth (Biology 101) in the equatorial zone, which would mean more water vapor goiing into the atmosphere, which would increase the Earh’s real albedo as more cloud cover made its way toward each polar region, which would mean cooler overall temperatures. I can’t see any way that calculations could be done, however.
The present solar cycle demonstrates quite nicely that it isn’t possible to predict even one solar cycle ahead . . . of course, the “prediction” can be updated as the solar cycle does not meet at all the predicted values, and pretend that the future was predicted.
I was startled the other day by the sharp drop in SORCE TSI as I looked over Anthony’s solar reference page.
As the sun is in free fall it does not feel any forces or accelerations, so the theory fails right there.
It has been a long time since I took physics but I see no reason why a body in free fall can’t experience gravitational acceleration. After all the Earth is in free fall and yet it is accelerated by the sun.
Where is my error in thinking? Or am I misunderstanding the problem?
Laurence M. Sheehan, PE says:
August 9, 2011 at 11:23 pm
The present solar cycle demonstrates quite nicely that it isn’t possible to predict even one solar cycle ahead . . . of course, the “prediction” can be updated as the solar cycle does not meet at all the predicted values, and pretend that the future was predicted.
There are good physical reasons why it is possible to predict just one cycle ahead. The people who think that the ever changing Hathaway curve is a ‘prediction’ are mistaken. Hathaway’s curve is a ‘projection’ of the likely behavior in the near future based on the observed behavior of the cycle so far. There is no theory behind this, just curve fitting based on the typical sunspot cycle scaled to the observations so far for cycle 24. No ‘pretension’ here.
M. Simon says:
August 9, 2011 at 11:28 pm
but I see no reason why a body in free fall can’t experience gravitational acceleration. After all the Earth is in free fall and yet it is accelerated by the sun.
But we on the Earth do not feel that force. Just like an astronaut in free fall around the Earth is accelerated all the time [his direction is changing], yet is weightless and feels nothing.
Over the the period 1921 to 1991 I note the incoming energy from the sun increased by about 1W/m^2. This amounts to an extra 5.095 x 10^14 joules of energy per second. I realise I am ignoring albedo but if most of the increase is in the UV band then that energy will be absorbed.
This is equivalent to heating 121.8 cubic kilometres of water by 1 degree every second of every day over a period of 70 years.
Yet the warmists still claim the sun has no effect!
TSI at TOA should be showing a down turn in a few years.
Leif,
The update of your page http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png is currently rather hilarious. We see the words “Welcome to solar max…” next to a historically (since 2008) low TSI !!
Right now we see a sun with two speeds: the northern hemisphere has reached almost maximum activity while the southern hemisphere still dwells in a kind of minimum activity. If this situation persists, I think it could have surprising consequences (Maunder minimum, …). Do you think this is a point of interest or is it a “normal” evolution of solar activity?
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 9, 2011 at 11:39 pm
M. Simon says:
August 9, 2011 at 11:28 pm
but I see no reason why a body in free fall can’t experience gravitational acceleration. After all the Earth is in free fall and yet it is accelerated by the sun.
But we on the Earth do not feel that force. Just like an astronaut in free fall around the Earth is accelerated all the time [his direction is changing], yet is weightless and feels nothing.
How do tides in Earth’s seas work then?
I find this probably much closer to the reality than the previous predictions which I believed were too high. But we are about half way to solar max so it seems reasonable that he would eventually narrow down to a reasonable number.
Would someome please help me with my confusion over the published figures displayed on the climate widget?
At the end of a month, within a few days, the previous month’s figures are introduced. Sometime later, but before the start of the subsequent month, figures are altered. This has happened for June and July, as follows:
June : TA 0.31 degC; CO2 391.4; Sunspot 61 (then later 128); Solar Flux 90 (then 120) per WUWT (revised 1/8)
July : TA 0.37 degC; CO2 391.4; SS initially 119 (now 54); SF 98 (now 92) per WUWT today, 10th)
The early July CO2 figure remained reading “June 391.4” until now it reads “July 391.4” So, this doesn’t make sense to me. It would be useful to have consistent and presumably, meaningful values. Or am I misunderstanding something?
M. Simon says:
“Where is my error in thinking? Or am I misunderstanding the problem?”
This depends on how you define what “experiencing” is. The gravity pulls on every single atom of it, so it does accelerate, but does not experience any non-negligible forces that would “mix its contents”, “deform it” or “pull it apart” . The only thing that we could say it does experience are tidal forces but these are really, really small. If Sun was perfectly round sphere of water, these tidal forces would create tides up to two millimeters high on it. It just does not seem to be plausible that such microscopic forces over so long time scales could have any substantial effect on Sun activity.