Guest post by David Archibald
Predicting the amplitude of Solar Cycle 24 was a big business. Jan Janssens provides the most complete table of Solar Cycle 24 predictions at: http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/SC24.html
Prediction activity for Solar Cycle 24 seemed to have peaked in 2007. In year before, Dr David Hathaway of NASA made the first general estimate of Solar Cycle 25 amplitude:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/10may_longrange/
Based on the slowing of the Sun’s “Great Conveyor Belt”, he predicted that
“The slowdown we see now means that Solar Cycle 25, peaking around the year 2022, could be one of the weakest in centuries.” He is very likely to have got the year wrong in that Solar Cycle 25 is unlikely to start until 2025.
In this paper: http://www.probeinternational.org/Livingston-penn-2010.pdf,
Livingston and Penn provided the first hard estimate of Solar Cycle 25 amplitude based on a physical model. That estimate is 7, which would make it the smallest solar cycle for over 300 years.
This is figure 2 from their paper:
Livingston and Penn have been tracking the decline in sunspot magnetic field, predicting that sunspots will disappear when the umbral magnetic field strength falls below 1,500 gauss, as per this figure from their 2010 paper:
Dr Svalgaard has updated of the progression of that decline on his research page at:
http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn.png
With data updated to year end 2011, the line of best fit on Dr Svalgaard’s figure of Umbral Magnetic Field now intersects the 1,500 guass sunspot cutoff in 2030:
Using the Livingston and Penn Solar Cycle 25 amplitude estimate, this is what the solar cycle record is projected to look like:
And, yes, that means the end of the Modern Warm Period.
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Further reading:
Sun Headed Into Hibernation, Solar Studies Predict –Sunspots may disappear altogether in next cycle.
NASA Long Range Solar Forecast – Solar Cycle 25 peaking around 2022 could be one of the weakest in centuries.
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JoeH says:
January 26, 2012 at 2:53 am
With known data maladjustment and mismanagement, etc- how trustworthy (say, using an error percentage) would you rate the HadCru temperature data?
People who claim the ‘uncanny’ correlation are happy using the HadCru data [or the GISS or whatever, they don’t differ much], so I’ll just as happily use the same data to show there is no correlation [with or without a lag].
PaulR says:
January 25, 2012 at 5:31 pm
On the bright side, Sahara desert expansion might slow down or even reverse.
—
It reversed something like a decade ago.
During the last ice age, the Sahara was lush with many rivers and lakes.
From the Guardian’s AGW blog
There may be as many as 120 days a year where the temperature rises above 26C by the 2080s, according to the government’s risk assessment
oldbrew 26 January 2012 11:03AM
The Central England Temperature graph for June since 1659 i.e. 350+ years, shows no such trend as suggested by the report.
Judging by number of hits at my webpage, the post appears to be popular with the Guardian’s UK’s universities readers, hopefully an eye opener for many.
MarkW says:
January 26, 2012 at 4:49 am
During the last ice age, the Sahara was lush with many rivers and lakes.
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That’s not quite correct, Mark. The Sahara always only gets wetter during transitionary times, i.e. from warm- to cold-periods and vice-versa. But once a warm or cold period is firmly established, the Sahara will dry out again.
I am the guy who harps on but one thing: The lowering of solar magnetic activity will at some point soon result of the permanent loss of the Solar Wind. This happened for two days in 1999:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/ast13dec99_1/
The Ice Ages will then have solid science to explain their occurrences.
Leif Svalgaard says:
&
JoeH says:
…………..
Global temperatures (Land and Ocean) anomalies for the 3 main data sets have only minor differences if all set to a common value for 2010:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GT-LO.gif
Can I ask a simple question which has been niggling me for a while and I haven’t found the answer. In the umbral magnetic field graph there are blue solid circles and red hollow circles some of which are more or less in the same place but in the later ones clearly separated – why and what is the difference
@R. Gates says: January 25, 2012 at 9:51 pm (and previously)
“you are taking away the last best hope of skeptics who’d like to find something…anything…to pin the late 20th century warming on other than the 40% rise in CO2 since the Industrial Revolution.”
Leif Svalgaard says:”Which explains the hostility towards what I say. but that ‘last best hope’ is just wishful thinking [as you say ‘something….anything’]. One should not let what one wishes to happen control the science [this goes both ways…].”
“R. Gates says “I am strongly convinced that the buildup of greenhouse gases over the last few hundred years is finally (perhaps since mid to late 20th century) beginning to dominate over the influence of the solar connection.”
But the only “last best hope” I have (together with most other skeptics commenting on here) is for a little bit of rational science creeping into the morass of incompetent fraud which passes for science in the IPCC, the UEA, Meltdown Mann’s “Team” and all the rest.
We don’t need “to pin the late 20th century warming” on anything.
It is up to you, “strongly convinced” in cAGW as you are, to come up with a shred of EVIDENCE for “late 20th century warming” being caused by human CO2 emissions and that it is such a problem that it is worth throwing the economy and western civilisation under a bus in a desperate attempt to stop it. And your “strong convictions” don’t mean diddly squat with me, especially as all the cornucopia of shroud waving doom forecasts have been convincingly demonstrated to be absolute drivel.
Sure it’s probably not TSI, but disappearing sunspots are a clue, as are the ‘large, sparse, and primarily southern hemispheric sunspots’ during the Maunder Minimum. I’m beginning to understand the ‘large and sparse’ given L-P’s work, but why ‘primarily southern hemispheric’? C’mon, Leif, find it.
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My dear Mr. Gates, I was about ready to take you to task for your oft mentioned solar connections to climate while you castigated skeptics of doing the same thing. That is until I read a subsequent comment of yours above asking for information from Leif re: this very topic.
Years ago (5?) I asked Leif for a list of solar books that presented accurate information on solar topics. It was clear that he did not adhere to a solar connection with temperature trends and I wanted to know why. He provided a list of books as well as a link to his website (and his link now with a smiling face icon has been on my favorites bar for years).
To state the obvious, I went back to school. After my “schooling” I had to drop my belief that solar mechanics can measurably affect temperature trends on the ground here on Earth. The noise of climate and weather variability (short and long term) buries the mechanistic and mathematic influence on these rather gross measures we currently have on temperature trends. And I will have to add that the influence of the anthropogenic portion of CO2 sweats bullets to rise above that same natural noise.
Preemptively, because you tend to beat the CO2 drum, calculating a trend line from the temperature data does not prove that the statistical trend is the anthropogenic CO2 portion of temperature change.
[Leif Svalgaard says:
January 26, 2012 at 2:33 am
Now that the usual pseudo-scientists have begun to rear their heads, it is time for me to yield the forum to their nonsense, as no serious discussion can be had. I have made my points for consumption as people see best. Let then the thread deteriorate into the swamp where (solar)threads always end up.]
Great verbage. Too funny. Would you give me permission to use this quote (substituting any conflicted subject matter for solar)?
@M.A.Vukcevic says:
January 25, 2012 at 11:24 pm
Your graph:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
published in January 2004 is the most meaningful, as being an extrapolation of the “polar field strength”, it reflects the actual functioning of the Sun, as an ECG of a human heart decreasing its beating, or the recurrent lapse in between inhalations.
Fairbridge and Shirley think we may be on the brink of another prolonged minimum of solar activity as the current solar motion resembles that of the earlier periods. They say that the last three prolonged minima of solar activity correspond in time to the coldest periods of the little ice age and we may face a deterioration of climates over the next few decades.
Shirley suggests that the Sun’s failure to loop around the barycenter during the years 1989 to 1991 may be similar to re-setting a clock or to a missing tooth in a gear which causes periodic slippage. The event is likely to perturb magnetic fields and/or the flows of materials within the Sun. Previous periods of similar Sun motion corresponded to periods of extreme cold, major volcanic eruptions, crop failures, “social upheaval, international migration, political rebellion and pandemic disease.” p. 11 (Zip Dobyns, “When the Sun Goes Backward”)
With the current government focus on CO2 caused warming, being done since it allows the government to regulate and tax more human activity, it is impossible for the government to even acknowledge the possibility of cooling, and thus prepare for it. I expect that when (not if) it comes, governments and their parasitic “experts” will blame it on CO2 somehow. In other words, they will take actions that will make it harder, in many cases a lot harder, for us to cope with the cold. When people get angry about that, they will take the usual actions, find someone, anyone, to blame. Usual result, opponents disappear in the night, foreign countries blamed with possible tensions and even wars to follow, suspensions of freedoms “for the duration of the emergency (forever), etc. It will be like the French reaction to the little ice age famines, in the name of freedom they ushered in killings and war and dictatorship. If the weather changes, blame the witches, that always works. And Jews of course, mustn’t forget to blame the Jews, tradition.
This has all happened before and will happen again (unless the wars get out of hand and nukes are used).
I think it’s too early to come up with such statistics.
It almost feels like a mirrored version of Global Warming scare.
Leif, have you done any research on the correlation between spotless days and the climate?
“M.A.Vukcevic says:
January 26, 2012 at 5:32 am”
NOAA claim (And I have seen alarmists post this so many times, its too funny) they have “worked out” what the GLOBAL land AND sea mean temperature was back in 1880. Can we trust that dataset? I don’t think so. NOAA talk of “laying grids” on the globe, so, one has to ask, was there a thermometer in each grid, in 1880, to calculate that land AND sea mean temperature? Simple answer is NO! So there global land AND sea mean temperature graph is, mostly, garbage. But what we see in that graph is an uptick in temps….from 1979!! Funny that!
Dr. Leif Svalgaard,
Can you do this layman a favor with regard to the following questions ?
1. If the TSI is constant, why do I care about cycles ?
2. Someone stated that the TSI had been “relatively” constant for the past 100 years. It is still a challenge I believe to made a detector that is both accurate at any frequency, let alone one that is flat over a wide range of frequencies. How can this statement be made with regard the the sun’s emissions over the range of DC to gamma rays, going back to 1912 ?
3. Does the solar wind have any net charge effect on the upper atmosphere or do all positively and negatively chagred particles net to zero charge ?
4. Do all these particles result in significant mass being added to the atmosphere ? Likewise,
does anyone calculate this energy input (highly energetic particle with mass) to the earth’s energy budget ??
5. By what means is the solar magnetic flux measured and what is the expected accuracy ?
Your answers appear to be measured and to the point, and in some cases patient, something many of us appreciate I am sure
R. Gates says:
This kind of thinking should be a huge red flag for you and others. It shows that are not really a skeptic in the true scientific sense of the word, as a true skeptic doesn’t “want” anything in particular to happen. What this kind of thinking shows is that your thought processes are guided by some burning desire to prove your “side” right, which is of course, more politically motivated and exactly as expected for a certain segment of those who would otherwise call themselves “skeptics”, but in reality, are nothing of the sort. You give true skeptics a bad reputation.
You know Gates, those are some very strong and uncharitable words you have directed at Lawrie Ayres. Do you really believe that Ayres’ comment demonstrates a lack of functional objectivity, or are you just shoring up your own poorly supported worldview by charicaturing the opposition? Red flag? Politically motivated? Bad reputation? Do you honestly believe that?
Oldjim says:
January 26, 2012 at 5:42 am
Can I ask a simple question which has been niggling me for a while and I haven’t found the answer. In the umbral magnetic field graph there are blue solid circles and red hollow circles some of which are more or less in the same place but in the later ones clearly separated – why and what is the difference
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The solid circles are yearly median and the hollow circles are yearly mean.
Just for everyone to be up to speed on this issue of sun and how it can drive temperatures here, it interesting to note that a good number of the cosmic radiation theories are based on an INVERSE relationship to the sun’s activity. That means less output and less activity on the sun results in global warming. How this works is explained in this video:
In other words the change output of the sun is not enough to explain the larger climate effects on earth without some type of multiplier or feedback system. A good number of those theories are based on an inverse relationship to the suns output. And they even have data that points out such a relationship.
So just keep in mind that a dormant sun could mean global warming! And I not checked, but I believe that the sun’s activity in the last 30 years of warming up to about 1998 was decreasing (while earth was in a warming period). The basic idea on such theroies is that increased output from the sun causes a reduction in cloud cover, and that is a far great effect then the “change” in increased energy.
so dormant sun = global warming.
Leif,
For those scientists and advocates in the study of climate who are committed toward a certain cause [anthropogenic or solar or other] of the behavior of modern climate, I think they suffer the most fundamental of circular argumentation fallacies. They bring prior conclusions to their analyses and interpretations.
John
For everybody’s edification, here’s an example of proper application of the “blockquote” tag (my bolding). It really helps make things easier to read and more professional-looking and it was a great quote if I don’t mind saying so myself. 😉 Here goes:
Julian Flood says:
January 26, 2012 at 3:21 am blockquote RockyRoad says:
…during the Ice Ages the earth was cold and because it was cold it was dusty and because it was dusty, the dust found its way into the oceans and onto the glaciers where it was preserved for us to study. /blockquote I hope this helps.
Just put the angled brackets before and after the section you want to indent and the above quote will look like this (note that a blockquote set adds a carriage return before and after the section, it also indents, and it also italicizes):
Julian Flood says:
January 26, 2012 at 3:21 am
I hope this helps.
Looks like my little example on blockquoting lost the brackets on both sides of the “blockquote” and “/blockquote” in the third paragraph, but you can find them as the upper case comma and period, respectively. Try it out–you’ll only be embarrassed a time or two and then you’ll have it right!
Leif,
Your comment — “it is time for me to yield the forum” – reminds me of the song line in the Eagles’ “Hotel California”, namely, “… you can never leave.” Sorry, but I couldn’t resist.
Anyway, I’ve just caught up with this post, having been reading the Nagoya paper and a couple of others, and in an early comment you write:
“ . . . the magnetic fields of activity will still be there, but sunspots will not form.”
The phrase P & L used was — “few sunspots will be visible” –
Am I being overly sensitive to the words? Thanks, John
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New readers, an early look at P & L (on WUWT) four years ago:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/02/livingston-and-penn-paper-sunspots-may-vanish-by-2015/