Astronomers: World may be entering period of global cooling

There are curious differences between the Japanese and English versions of the press release. The Japanese versions abounds with incorrect claims of priority and the usual ‘never seen before’ stuff. The fact is that it is quite normal that the polar fields reverse at different times. This was noted in the very first observations of a polar field reversal http://www.leif.org/EOS/Babcock1959.pdf
We have seen the North pole reversal coming for some time, e.g. AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, 5-9 December, 2011, Early Reversal of the Sun’s Polar Field – Is Solar Cycle 24 Already Peaking?, J T. Hoeksema, SH33A-2044.
The Japanese data is just confirmation of what has been known for a long time and does not call for any revisions of current theories. Currently, the two poles have the same polarity and there are two equatorial patches with the opposite polarity: http://www.leif.org/research/April2012-Solar-Magn-Field.png but this is nothing new. Science by press release is bad style.

We live in interesting times indeed.

Scientist, especially climate ones can be so touchy!
It would seem that the ‘team” do most of their climate science via press release, hell they even do peer reviews by it now!
Still interesting stuff, it begs the question, just how long can the sham of ignoring the sun’s influence on climate change continue?

The switch to quadri-pole magnetic is understandable, based on the “fluid” dynamo that exists within the sun (and likely the earth). There has been much research into the potential for a terrestrial quadri-pole during some periods of magnetic field flipping. No reason to believe it can’t happen on the sun, nor that such scenarios are particularly uncommon (in celestial timescales). What we don’t know is whether such a scenario has any effect on the Earth. The dearth of data from the Maunder period doesn’t allow us to make reliable predictions of the current and near future. Yes, we see fewer sunspots – but we have no data from past events that link this to a quadripole phase. The next 20 years will be very important in the evaluation of the data.

Well the Arctic sure is cold. Ice extent above the running average in spite of NOAA’s attempt to change the rules so it would not graph out.

Agree that science by press release is bad style, since the popular press is no place for objectivity. However, it would be appropriate for those who do have an impartial knowledge and understanding to nevertheless attempt conveying the facts without a drama.
This is what separates alarmists and armageddonists from scientists

Hoser says:
April 21, 2012 at 10:58 am
Is there any way to test whether a magnetic quadrupole existed during the Maunder or Dalton minima?
We don’t need to go that far back. Here is a similar situation in 1980:
http://wso.stanford.edu/synoptic/WSO-R250.1691.gif
Here are the dipole, quadrupole, and even hexapole components for the past several solar cycles:
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/MultipoleR.gif

Leif Svalgaard says:
April 21, 2012 at 11:18 am
Here are the dipole, quadrupole, and even hexapole components for the past several solar cycles:
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/MultipoleR.gif
There is really no mystery here. The large-scale field is dominated by the lowest multipole orders. At times when the dipole [the lowest order] is weakening [polar field reversal], the next-lowest [the quadrupole] becomes dominant. Simple as that. To a certain extent one might call that a bit of mathematical ‘trick’ that nature is playing on us…

Sparks says:
April 21, 2012 at 11:29 am
Yea, because the sun’s acitivity is going acording to plan. when in actual fact they’re clue less.
What clues do you have as to how clueless other people are?

Daniel Vogler says:
April 21, 2012 at 10:45 am
The has been some computer modelling (successfull, in contrast to climate modelling) on the Earths pole flips, with multiple poles occurring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
Auroras above each pole and associated effects are not mentioned in this particulal article om Wiki …
According to NASA we are long due for a flip here on Earth …
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-poleReversal.html

It does not seem obvious to me that intensity of the magnetic field is related to the number of poles. Imagine a dodecahedral pole structure. It would seem that at a distance that there is no field, yet close to the surface of the earth, there is abundant field strength.
For example, consider a tuning fork. In this case we have a dipole and at a distance it is difficult to hear it. But between the forks it is very loud indeed.
To me, intensity of the field, depends on where you measure it, radially from the earth’s surface and where on the surged in logitude and latitude. I believe, that the efects on climate may be more related to intensity than polarity.
Also,
It is difficult to get a historical record of terrestrial field vectors since they can only be recorded as minerals pass through their curie temperatures as they cool. That happens in volcanicly active locations. With out that record, it is impssible to correlate historical temperature data to pole reversal data or intensity data.

There may be a simple reason the Japanese have overblown their press release. If you don’t get noticed, you don’t get grant money. If your finding is not big enough to be noticed, the money will go to someone with a sexier finding. We often see this in paleontology, if you discover what you claim is an ancient fossil (a few fragments of bone connected with a lot of imagination), you often see claims that it is older than that other guys fossil, the guy with the oldest fossil wins.

SEIJI TANAKA/ Staff Writer for the Asahi Shimbun said:
The sun may be entering a period of reduced activity that could result in lower temperatures on Earth, according to Japanese researchers.
Officials of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the Riken research foundation said on April 19 that the activity of sunspots appeared to resemble a 70-year period in the 17th century in which London’s Thames froze over and cherry blossoms bloomed later than usual in Kyoto.
In that era, known as the Maunder Minimum, temperatures are estimated to have been about 2.5 degrees lower than in the second half of the 20th century.
The Japanese study found that the trend of current sunspot activity is similar to records from that period.

– – – – – –
In the newspaper article I did not see any specific cite or link to any specifically named scientists involved in the Japanese ‘study’ nor to any specific paper or study.
Does anyone have the names of the Japanese scientists or papers/studies that support the Asahi Shimbun article?
John

Paul Westhaver says:
April 21, 2012 at 12:37 pm
It is difficult to get a historical record of terrestrial field vectors since they can only be recorded as minerals pass through their curie temperatures as they cool. That happens in volcanicly active locations. With out that record, it is impssible to correlate historical temperature data to pole reversal data or intensity data.
We have a better record of the magnetic field than of temperature. Without the latter it is impossible to correlate…
Legatus says:
April 21, 2012 at 12:42 pm
It was so big, it may have shattered old ideas about solar activity
And what would those old ideas be?
Further analysis may yet reveal the underlying trigger”
It takes a lot of clues to even be able to pose that question.
u.k.(us) says:
April 21, 2012 at 12:44 pm
@ Leif, What is with the paired-up sunspots on the Earth facing solar disk, seems to be an unusual lay-out to my untrained eye ?
The untrained eye is very good at finding patterns where there is none. This is a simple consequence of evolution: “is that a tiger in the grass? better run away”. 99% of the time that is a false positive, but it pays to run away in any case.

John Whitman says:
April 21, 2012 at 1:07 pm
In the newspaper article I did not see any specific cite or link to any specifically named scientists involved in the Japanese ‘study’ nor to any specific paper or study.
Tsuneta at NAOJ and Shiota at Riken

DocMartyn says:
April 21, 2012 at 1:22 pm
Leif, what do you think of measuring the magnetic properties of tree rings, as a proxy for magnetic fields during deposition?
If it works in general it might be yet another weapon in the arsenal. It is a bit bothersome that “the remanent component in this tree may be thermal in origin and was controlled by local thermal condition” making it a bit hard to disentangle thermal and magnetic effects.

vukcevic says:
April 21, 2012 at 1:53 pm
There are 3 graphs there showing various correlations, could you be more specific, so I can identify data for you to plot graphs for yourself.
All of them are spurious. ‘spurious’ here means with no physical connection, just selective wiggle matching.

vukcevic says:
April 21, 2012 at 2:07 pm
I was expecting more specific reply
Number 1 is spurious
Number 2 is spurious
Number 3 is spurious

eric1skeptic says:
April 21, 2012 at 2:45 pm
While #2 and #3 do not appear to be correlated, it looks like #1 is correlated, but also that the “Arctic geomagnetic field” and the solar cycle ought to be correlated.
Look correlated is not the same as is causally related. In fact, they cannot be such for several reasons: e.g. 1) The geomagnetic field is generated deep in the core and solar activity does not penetrate that deep, 2) going back in time, the geomagnetic field was much stronger [like double], but solar activity was not.
This nonsense is a sad comment on the general state of scientific literacy. In addition, Vuk has been shown this several time, but is learning resistant, and never misses a chance to hijack a thread peddling his personal pet theory.

Steve from Rockwood says:
April 21, 2012 at 3:05 pm
Now that was funny. Leif, I know almost nothing about the sun. Can you provide a link so that some of us can get up to speed? Specifically the poles, the changes of the poles and its influence on climate if any. Thanks.
Not sure which poles you mean, but assuming you mean the solar poles, here is a short run-down:
Sunspots are magnetic. When they decay, their magnetic field does not completely disappear. Instead, the field remnants are carried by a circulation of matter from the equator to the poles [somewhat similar to the Hadley cells in the Earth’s atmosphere]. There they concentrate and collect [can’t get further up in latitude] and become measurable by our instruments on Earth [the ‘polar fields’]. The circulation now caries the field into the sun; it is also possible that some of the field sinks on its way to the poles. In any event, the field continues with the circulation and is now amplified by something called a ‘dynamo’ process. The dynamo is a form of induction: a magnetic field moved in a conductor [the solar matter] induces an electric current that creates its own magnetic field, which is turn induces more current and more field, and so on. In this way the weak polar fields become amplified a thousand times. Such a strong magnetic field has a pressure of its own which means that to maintain pressure equilibrium, less hot matter is needed, so a ‘parcel’ of the sun with a strong field has less matter, is less dense, and is thus buoyant and rises [in a few weeks] to the surface. On its way up, the field is shredded by the roiling convection into many ‘strands’ that when arriving at the surface as a lot of small field elements again assemble into the sunspots we see, and the whole process repeats.
Only a very small part of the total magnetic flux [perhaps 1/100th of the total] survives the trip to the poles, so the field up there is much weaker than in a sunspot [like 300 times weaker]. This means that the magnetic field [which normally traps matter in the lower atmosphere [the beautiful loops you see in images from SDO] is not strong enough to prevent the super hot atmosphere to escape the sun. The result is that the polar fields are dragged out with the escaping wind and forms the magnetic field in interplanetary space [the Heliosphere]. That magnetic field is by wind speed differences and solar rotation compacted into tangled shocks which turns away a small fraction [some 10%] of the cosmic rays that comes to us from the Galaxy [generated in supernova explosions].
The magnetic fields on the surface cause a slight brightening and thus a very small variation [1 in 1000] of the solar output of heat and light. That variation in turn causes a variation of the Earth’s temperature of about 0.1 degree over the solar cycle of varying sunspots. This variation is too small to affect the climate, so many people invent creative ‘feed backs’, ‘triggers’, and other fanciful mechanism to help the sun modulate our climate to their satisfaction.

Legatus says:
April 21, 2012 at 12:30 pm
There is really only one way to tell for sure what the sun will do in the future, and that is, wait and see. Currently, people keep making predictions of what the sun will do or not do, and then it does something else….
_______________________________________
Predictions are part of doing science. If we think we understand something ( form a hypothesis) we use that understanding to predict the future. If the prediction does not come true then our hypothesis has been falsified. Lief, based on his knowledge of solar physics, predicted cycle 24 would be a weak cycle. So far he has been correct. Hathaway (NASA) did not do nearly as well. http://i55.tinypic.com/2dj2fc9.jpg
WUWT on the subject back in 2008: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/20/new-solar-cycle-24-goalpost-established/

Richard G says:
April 21, 2012 at 4:52 pm
<i.the magnetic polarity of some of the spots seems to be changing from a distinct polarity to a bracketed or confused polarity with +-+ or -+-.
As far as I know this has nothing to do with the polar reversals, just shows how messy the sun can be.
Bruce Cobb says:
April 21, 2012 at 4:48 pm
Meanwhile, those with a vested interest against it will continue to fight it, as their livelihoods and reputations are at stake.
You have this completely backwards. If the Sun were the primary driver of climate, that would make my livelyhood and research field of utmost societal interest and funding would be flowing like wine and honey in paradise. Unfortunately that is not the case.

beesaman says:
April 21, 2012 at 12:20 pm:
In response to your comment, Dr. Svalgaard, on his research site, is very open with information, presentations, etc.
It is a matter of finding time to learn.
And it is also a matter of discovering something new, and then the press release about that “New” something.
Like the L&P Effect. Now that is one interesting area!
Here is a link to a board that Dr. Svelgaard is so gracious to post to when relevent.
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=855

Leif Svalgaard says:
April 21, 2012 at 3:49 pm
..The magnetic fields on the surface cause a slight brightening and thus a very small variation [1 in 1000] of the solar output of heat and light. That variation in turn causes a variation of the Earth’s temperature of about 0.1 degree over the solar cycle of varying sunspots. This variation is too small to affect the climate, so many people invent creative ‘feed backs’, ‘triggers’, and other fanciful mechanism to help the sun modulate our climate to their satisfaction..
Well I have a theory bout that..
During the last half of the last century there has been an uptick in solar activity. (now dafunct)
More Earth directed CME’s and more intense solar activity. But the more Earth directed CME’s are we direct our attention today.
.
Solar Storm Dumps Gigawatts into Earth’s Upper Atmosphere
March 22, 2012: A recent flurry of eruptions on the sun did more than spark pretty auroras around the poles. NASA-funded researchers say the solar storms of March 8th through 10th dumped enough energy in Earth’s upper atmosphere to power every residence in New York City for two years.
“This was the biggest dose of heat we’ve received from a solar storm since 2005,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA Langley Research Center. “It was a big event, and shows how solar activity can directly affect our planet.”
Mlynczak is the associate principal investigator for the SABER instrument onboard NASA’s TIMED satellite. SABER monitors infrared emissions from Earth’s upper atmosphere, in particular from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances that play a key role in the energy balance of air hundreds of km above our planet’s surface.
“Carbon dioxide and nitric oxide are natural thermostats,” explains James Russell of Hampton University, SABER’s principal investigator. “When the upper atmosphere (or ‘thermosphere’) heats up, these molecules try as hard as they can to shed that heat back into space.”
That’s what happened on March 8th when a coronal mass ejection (CME) propelled in our direction by an X5-class solar flare hit Earth’s magnetic field. (On the “Richter Scale of Solar Flares,” X-class flares are the most powerful kind.) Energetic particles rained down on the upper atmosphere, depositing their energy where they hit. The action produced spectacular auroras around the poles and significant1 upper atmospheric heating all around the globe.
“The thermosphere lit up like a Christmas tree,” says Russell. “It began to glow intensely at infrared wavelengths as the thermostat effect kicked in.”
For the three day period, March 8th through 10th, the thermosphere absorbed 26 billion kWh of energy. Infrared radiation from CO2 and NO, the two most efficient coolants in the thermosphere, re-radiated 95% of that total back into space..
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/
Phobias of SW African tigers not the Siberian kind. And in the middle what kind are in Kashmir?

I’m taking a cautious view. Predictions of the sun don’t seem to be particularly predictive. According to take-it-with-a-grain-of-salt Wikipedia, before 2007, everybody thought cycle 24 would be a very active cycle. Then things didn’t pan out, and they revised the predictions down to a quiet sun.
What I would like to see is an overlay graph of all the predictions for cycle 24 and the dates they were issued. I got the distinct impression that the predictions weren’t based on any theories that held up and that they were just winging it when they made them. This means they didn’t have a clue back then. They had to wait until the sun told them what kind of cycle we’d have, which doesn’t say much for their expertise. Predictions don’t mean much if they’re always getting thrown under the bus. I wouldn’t make much of this new study until we see how its conclusions pan out.
Along with the overlay of graphs of all the predictions, I’d like to see the reasons the minority thought it would be a small cycle and whether or not they had a valid theory to predict with, or whether they happened to be clueless and lucky.

So what’s with all the “snake bites” on the sun today? I don’t think I remember seeing such symmetrical pairs of groups before.

I always enjoy Leif’s comments, even though I am not that interested in solar cycles.
Makes a refreshing change from the vague blather and rehashed dogma that emanates from most climate scientists.

Carla says:
April 21, 2012 at 5:12 pm
Solar Storm Dumps Gigawatts into Earth’s Upper Atmosphere
Solar TSI dumps hundreds of millions of Gigawatts into the Earth’s lower atmosphere
TomH says:
April 21, 2012 at 5:22 pm
Funding would only be flowing for you like wine and honey if you could conjure how the sun’s actions could lead to more tax and government
I was talking about the motivation here. Why I would love and pray that ‘it’s the sun, stupid’ because that would make my research so much more worth.
Jeff Mitchell says:
April 21, 2012 at 5:41 pm
before 2007, everybody thought cycle 24 would be a very active cycle.
Along with the overlay of graphs of all the predictions, I’d like to see the reasons the minority thought it would be a small cycle and whether or not they had a valid theory to predict with, or whether they happened to be clueless and lucky.
Not everybody as you well know. Here are the reasons: http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%2024%20Smallest%20100%20years.pdf
In a certain sense, it is not so much a prediction as a validation of the basic theory. If the theory was to have legs, the cycle should be low. So, we are testing the theory here.
Nicola Scafetta says:
April 21, 2012 at 6:03 pm
pattern from a solar model capable to hindcast thousands of years, which is what you have not done.
Neither have you or anybody else with any accuracy. The difference is that we have a reason based on valid physics rather than just cyclomania.
Geoff Sharp says:
April 21, 2012 at 6:37 pm
Leif is skirting around the big point here. Of course the poles can reverse at different times, but what is highly possible this cycle is (as stated in my paper) the south pole not reversing at all during sc24
It is well on its way. If it does reverse in a year or so, that will invalidate all your speculation, right?
Philip Bradley says:
April 21, 2012 at 8:02 pm
I always enjoy Leif’s comments, even though I am not that interested in solar cycles.
Makes a refreshing change from the vague blather and rehashed dogma that emanates from most climate scientists
And from the illiterate pushing their pet theories here.

Geoff Sharp says:
April 21, 2012 at 6:37 pm
Leif has stated in the past we are NOT heading into a grand minimum….but is changing his tune these days
The new element is the Livingston & Penn effect. Which might result in sunspots becoming effectively invisible [or not forming] although most of the magnetic field will still be there as the dynamo will still be running as always and as shown by the cosmic ray modulation being as strong during the Maunder Minimum as now.

E.M.Smith says:
April 21, 2012 at 9:14 pm
http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/images/image022.jpg
Is an interesting graph. While sunspots just wobble back and forth, solar storms ramp up nicely (as we warmed) and then fell off a cliff (about the time things went a bit flat).
The graph is not quite correct. There is now general acceptance of the geomagnetic index on which the graph is based is not calibrated correctly, so the values after 1957 are somewhat too large. Of course, that does not explain why activity now is so low. That is due to the fact that we have returned to conditions around 1900.
The Barnett effect is the magnetization of an uncharged body when spun on its axis.
This was also suggested later by Blackett http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackett_effect but was eventually rejected, even by Blackett himself.

Geoff Sharp says:
April 21, 2012 at 6:37 pm
Leif has stated in the past we are NOT heading into a grand minimum
To quote me correctly, you should have said that I did not predict cycle 24 to be a grand minimum [and I still don’t]. Statistically, low cycles come in bunches so the next couple of cycles may be low [but no guarantee]. L&P may presage that cycle 25 may be the start of a grand minimum, if by grand minimum we understand solar cycles with hard to see sunspots. The dynamo will carry on, the polar fields will reverse, etc even during a grand minimum.

Dear God: please let me live a very long time so that I can watch all this lovely solar science unfold. And all the other lovely scientific conundrums unfold, for that matter. Sincerely, Jenn

Leif Svalgaard says:
April 21, 2012 at 12:15 pm
“What clues do you have as to how clueless other people are?”
Leif, don’t be taking offence to any of my remarks, their not intended as such, But for some of us who read a lot and who follow the science become subjected to all sorts of clues as to the state of the science and the reporting of it.
here’s one example;
Dr Solanki says, “…looking at the past 1,150 years the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years. Over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots, a trend that has accelerated in the past century, just at the time when the Earth has been getting warmer. The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer. ”
(However the BBC reporter adds his own expertise).
“Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to increase.
This is put down to a human-produced greenhouse effect caused by the combustion of fossil fuels. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3869753.stm

Thanks Leif! Looks like we don’t know everything about the sun either. I hope your wine and honey supplies improve soon.

Sparks says:
April 22, 2012 at 2:02 am
Dr Solanki says, “…looking at the past 1,150 years the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years.
There are good reasons that Solanki [and others saying this] are wrong about this. I summarize those reasons here http://www.leif.org/research/The%20long-term%20variation%20of%20solar%20activity.pdf
What to do about this: see slide 49 and http://www.leif.org/research/Svalgaard_ISSI_Proposal_Base.pdf

Bruce Cobb says:
April 22, 2012 at 5:02 am
I actually only posited the idea of the sun having a big influence on Earth’s climate. I did not say “the primary driver”. When you misrepresent what others say, it gives the appearance of someone motivated not by science, but by personal interests.
Either way: ‘big influence’ – ‘primary driver’ the argument still holds. But if the Sun is not the primary driver, what in your opinion is? And how much is ‘big influence’? 70%, 50%, 30%, 10%?

****
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 21, 2012 at 3:49 pm
****
Thanks, that explanation of magnetic fields is very interesting. Copied & saved.

vukcevic says:
April 22, 2012 at 6:02 am
Cycle SC24 started tail end 2008, SC24 max and PF reversal in 2011 ?
Not likely. I’d say spurious predictions.
As I said: speculation, which is always allowed if labeled as such.

There are many mysteries more simple of this , and we didn’t resolve them.
For example. causes the spin of celestial bodies including the Sun.
Why has the dual rotation of the sun?
What is causing the planets spin?
Why are the magnetic poles of the celestial bodies near its own axis of rotation?
Why the sunspot cycle lasts about 11 years?
Why is the science dealing with predictions based on the past, when it rarely repeats itself?
The grandmothers who tell fortune, they hit something, so can scientists.
I think we little know of what all the sun can cause.
This applies to the planet.!
How can there be four pole-magnetic sphere, if there aren’t two separate masses that are rotated around different axes rotation?
Nothing happens by chance, not even the reconnection of magnetic fields.
At the Sun it is much faster than at the Earth. Why?
The answer is not complicated.
It is a mutual “agreement” of celestial bodies in our solar system.
There are so many cycles and sub-cycles.
To organize this scientifically, need is a powerful “machinery” of the powerful institution or organization.
The solar system is not subject to our actions, but allows us to completely different methods, find out more about him.
Perhaps it is hot when we are ” looking and surveying” it only by the instruments ,because they do not give a true picture of him.
Sun is main “offender” for all phenomena in our solar system.INDEED !

rgbatduke says:
April 22, 2012 at 7:02 am
In either event, a quadrupole field dies down much faster than a dipole field with distance, which means that one would expect — all things being equal in terms of the strengths — that the Sun’s magnetic field should be extremely weak in the vicinity of the Earth just now and be predominantly oriented radially out or radially in.
That is not how it works. The magnetic field structure in interplanetary space is determined by the plasma flow close to the sun [a couple of solar radii] and it from there carried out by the solar wind. At the Earth the magnetic field varies by about a factor of two only and the field right now is about average. The various torques have been calculated decades ago and are extremely weak and ineffectual.

vukcevic says:
April 22, 2012 at 7:12 am
When prediction are ranging from a strong SC25 to start of a grand minimum, all within 10 months of the near static polar fields, when compared to 400 years of the sunspot records, is the best the science can offer
Science allows for failed speculations.

GlynnMhor,
Greetings. Nice to see you here in a positive environment rather than the G&M mosh pit.
Regards,
Paul

Draft of my letter to local paper, in response to an advocacy piece regarding McKibbon’s latest
book. Criticism is welcome. ….Lady in Red
I fell through the rabbit hole, into the world of climate change, several years ago after reading an English newspaper account about scientists at the University of East Anglia refusing to allow another to share their data and attempt to recreate their computer models predicting that the world was going to a climate hell in a hand basket.
I didn’t understand anything about the science itself, but I was indignant that supposed scientists would be secretive, refuse to share, to allow others to hone and improve upon their work.
What’s evangelical about about global warming, Rev. Waldrop asked in yesterday’s paper. Everything. Global warming (or the new meme “climate change” because, you see, the world stopped warming a decade ago) is a scientific fraud. There is no there there. Billions of dollars are being spent by governments all over the globe to conduct fraudulent research – research only to further confirm the crisis or to study mitigation. There are hardly two research pennies being spent to challenge the thesis: man is rapidly destroying the planet; CO2 emissions are the problem; we can fix it.
Not one of those assumptions is predicated upon any repeatable, quality, observational science. It is all a function of tweaked computer models predicting disaster into the future, but, worse: the models are unable to replicate the weather and the climate we’ve already lived.
Of course we should be good stewards of the earth. But that has little to do with (beyond stocks and bonds and pork bellies and wheat futures) creating a new commodity market for the likes of Goldman Sachs, trading carbon chits around the world: you “pollute” (are all the living things emitting carbon dioxide really evil “polluters?”) less and sell your carbon token to someone in China who gets to “pollute” more. And, big banking gets the commission. Is this your vision of the earth’s future?
I have no doubt that many, inside the maelstrom of the research, have come to believe themselves, but, sadly, it makes it no less fraud. No one – yep, no one – within the official climate science community will debate or publicly challenge anyone skeptical of their work. They wail and moan, sign groupthink letters confirming that “the science is settled,” but they will not engage.
Come on in, people; the water’s fine! You don’t need a degree in physics to understand what’s happening in “official climate science.” The Climategate correspondence is a hoot of idiotic arrogance. The wonderful Harry_ReadMe file written by the frustrated computer programmer – working for years to make sense out of computer code that crashed without error messages, working to make consistent data from an array of different sources (only to be told none of it mattered because “they” knew what the answer was, what “they” wanted) is the showcase of sloppy science. You can read about NOAA surface temperature stations located, all over the country, beside commercial air conditioners or in the path of jet engine exhaust. Would NOAA, a biggie, grown up and important government agency, do that? Yes.
The global warming science and advocacy community is perpetuating an international fraud many times larger and more complex than the Lysenkso fraud which held the Soviet Union in thrall from the 1930’s into the 1950’s.
Just last month, Dr. Peter Gleick, head of the Pacific Institute and chair of the AGU’s scientific ethics committee, declined to participate in a Heartland Institute conference on climate science, but, the same day, Gleick posed as a Heartland board member who had “misplaced” board documents and tricked a Heartland employee into sending the proprietary material to him. When what he got wasn’t sufficiently damning in his estimation, he wrote, or had written (sleuths contend the writing style is Gleick’s), an overview memo, contending among other things, that the Heartland Institute was trying to intimidate high school science teachers into not teaching science! About Gleick’s memo, the Atlantic Monthly opined: “It reads like it was written from the secret villain lair in a Batman comic. By an intern.”
Gleick has resigned from the AGU science ethics committee and has stepped down, temporarily, as prez of the Pacific Institute, but he’s lecturing at Oxford University this week. (Is this too funny? I am not making this up.)
The good news is that the curtain has been whisked back and the fraud exposed. More important, the blogosphere is awash is in smart, thoughtful folk who care both about the climate and honest science.
Please see for yourself: my favorite sites are WattsUpWithThat.com and JudithCurry.com.
WattsUp was created by a brilliant former meteorologist and tv weather man (who is also deaf), Anthony Watts. Judith Curry’s site is pretty new. She is head of Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech and is almost the only mainstream scientist to debate and engage outside the hallowed walls of academe. For over a year after she began her on-line interactive discussion, folk in “The Community” issued a career fatwa, but, somehow, she survived. (I think she’s tenured. And gutsy.)
Bill McKibbon, author of Rev. Waldrop’s book review, “hangs out” at Joe Romm’s site, the Climate part of ThinkProgress.org, a funded blog, with paid staffers. The Climate part of ThinkProgress has a very focused, mostly virtual-high-fives, comments section. They have a low tolerance for questions or dissent. Because I asked questions that were too challenging, I’ve been banned completely: straight into the spam. (None of the blogs pushing catastrophic climate change with which I’m familiar tolerate questions, genuine interaction. The discussions at WattsUp and JudithCurry, however, are wide-ranging and thought-provoking. You can learn, play “fly on the wall” there.)
I can’t finish this letter without a mention of Steve McIntyre, a retired Canadian mining engineer. Over a decade ago, McIntyre saw a graph of global warming catastrophe that looked suspicious to him. Being curious, he wrote for information, for data. Denied. He wrote formal FOIA requests for the data. Also, denied. McIntyre, a soft-spoken, gentle, respectful — but persistent – (and quite brilliant) man, kept writing. For years. McIntyre’s gentle persistence precipitated Climategate and the fraud of contemporary climate science. McIntryre crashed the walls of science fraud. McIntyre’s story is too long for this letter, but his name will be written in bright lights one hundred years from now, and beyond, in the annals of the greats in science. (McIntyre’s website is ClimateAudit.org, but, mostly, it’s much too technical for me.)
(Anthony Watts and Judith Curry and Steve McIntyre maintain their sites as a labour of love. ThinkProgress has big bucks funding.)
Come on in, folk! Earth Day’s coming up. Take care of the earth. Take care, and be respectful, of all its creatures (including man). But, don’t be stupid.

rgbatduke,
I am with you on the near field verses far field manifestation of the earth’s magnetic field when dipoles are compared with quadripoles or higher order poles. I’d say there is plenty of model evidence for that, and I suspect that there may be measurements as well. It is true in acoustics.
Interesting point you raise about the interaction of the EMFs from the Sun and the Earth.
Though I can see that a splash of plasma hitting the earth and it’s associated magnetic field could yield some physical effect if only heating as indicated by the last big flare 5 weeks ago, I do wonder about the base field from the Sun itself.
Would there be a back EMF in the earth?
Would the cycles of the Sun’s field influence the cycles here on Earth. Is there a coupling of the Sun’s behavior wrt to it polarization and intensity with that of earth? I doubt there is any historical evidence of what the magnetic behavior of the Sun on the EPOCH time scale, I can’t imagine how the Sun’s magnetic field could be recorded in Earth’s nature without human instrumentation.
I think that is an interesting question and echos somewhat back to the planetary paper of last week. Who would have a model for this? I would love to see that.

Paul Westhaver says:
April 22, 2012 at 10:04 am
I am with you on the near field verses far field manifestation of the earth’s magnetic field when dipoles are compared with quadripoles or higher order poles
But this does not apply to the Sun’s field because the structure of the field that leaves the Sun is fixed very near the sun and the field strength does not fall of with distance as it would in a vacuum. the reason is that the solar wind is a conducting medium and transports the field with it.
I do wonder about the base field from the Sun itself.
Would there be a back EMF in the earth?
That field does not reach the earth as in a vacuum, but instead is embedded in the solar wind. When it hits the Earth, the solar field is down to 1/10,000th of the Earth’s field.
I can’t imagine how the Sun’s magnetic field could be recorded in Earth’s nature without human instrumentation.
The Sun’s field as embedded in the solar wind weakly modulates the flux of cosmic rays reaching the Earth, which in turn determines the production of Beryllium 10 and Carbon 14. The global, total production of 10Be is 2 ounces and that of 14C, 17 pounds. These isotopes are deposited in polar ice and in tree rings, respectively, where we can measure them by their radioactivity.

E.M.Smith says:
April 22, 2012 at 10:23 am
Is that not what causes the earth, with a molten metal core ( permeable and with a gyromagnetic ratio) to create a magnetic field?
No, the Earth’s field [and the sun’s] is generated by a dynamo effect where convection currents drive a conductor through an existing magnetic field to amplify it and keep it going. Rotation as such is not the mechanism. In the sun, there is ‘differential’ rotation, meaning that some parts of the Sun is rotating at a slight;y different speed than other parts. That aids the dynamo to make the variations more pronounced than in the Earth. Up-thread I gave a brief explanation of solar magnetism, look for it.

Paul Westhaver says:
April 22, 2012 at 10:58 am
Here is a fantastic animation of a spiral projection of the heliospheric current sheet. (Parker Spiral)
It is, indeed, fantastic what modern computer methods can do. When we discovered the current sheet I made one of the first drawings of by hand: http://www.leif.org/EOS/Nature/262766a0-HCS-Cosmic-Rays.pdf
ferd berple says:
April 22, 2012 at 11:04 am
If the magnetic field is self amplifying, this creates a new problem. How did it get started in the first place? What caused the initial magnetic field and how do we know the same process is not in operation today?
This is actually a very deep question. It is believed that the first magnetic field was made just after the Big Bang by a mechanism called the Biermann Battery Effect “The basic problem any battery has to address is how to produce finite currents from zero currents? Most astrophysical mechanisms use the fact that positively and negatively charged particles in a charge-neutral universe, do not have identical properties. For example, if one considered a gas of ionized hydrogen, then the electrons have a much smaller mass compared to protons. Thus that for a given pressure gradient of the gas the electrons tend to be accelerated much more than the ions. This leads in general to an electric field, which couples back positive and negative charges. If such a thermally generated electric field has a curl, then from Faraday’s law of induction a magnetic field can grow. The resulting battery effect, known as the Biermann battery, was first proposed as a mechanism for the thermal generation of stellar magnetic fields”
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March08/Subramanian/Subramanian3.html
E.M.Smith says:
April 22, 2012 at 11:30 am
So what is special about the conductive materials or the preexisting magnetic fields that makes ‘the conductor in a mag field making electricity’ driving it not applicable to changes of angular momentum in the sun?
This really has nothing to do with angular momentum in the first place. Here is more on how the current thinking explains the solar cycle: http://www.leif.org/EOS/SunMagneticCycle.pdf
Sparks says:
April 22, 2012 at 11:50 am
I think this is the best way to proceed in understanding our sun and planetary process, what we need to know or confirm about our sun is there in other stars, we know what criteria we need to observe and study, (sadly if the majority of funding is currently going to the politico-sciences to unsuccessfully confirm man made global warming then other worthwhile research looses out).
This is a very active research area. I hinted at it in a recent presentation at the 2011 Fall AGU meeting: http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Fall%202011%20SH34B-08.pdf [slide 19]: “Large planets very close to their host star are expected to exert a much larger effect than the farflung smaller planets in our solar system. A ‘Mega Jupiter’ with mass 3MJ and at 0.052 AU would have a tidal effect 4*100^3 = 4,000,000 times larger than our Jupiter’s [τ Boo].
HD 168443, with the innermost planet at 0.3 AU, has a dL/dt, with a periodicity of 58 days, that exceeds by more than five orders of magnitude that of the Sun. If orbital angular momentum variation plays a role, its effects should be visible in this system
Magnetic cycles might be visible in XUV or X-ray emission, or even total brightness for large star spots
(Poppenhäger & Schmitt, ApJ, 2011):
“We conclude that there is no detectable influence of planets on their host stars, which might cause a lower floor for X-ray activity of these stars”
So far, no star cycles synchronized with any exoplanets have been found

@ vuckevic
Hi misha,
McAdam,Canada

Vukcevic,
Incidentally, I don’t have a web page illustrating my science for reasons which give comfort to my clients. Nearly everything I do has some commercial value tied to somebody else’s interests (not oil) so I adhere to my policy of silence in my field of commercial activity. Global warming is not that field. I am well published at the US patent office, which is in the public domain.

Vukcevic,
I had a look at this:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Tromso.htm
About halfway down you have a “suggested model” and I think I can get a similar surface mapping if I use a model wherein there are 2 toroidal, interlocked, oblique and precessing flows.
In otherwords, 2 flowing rings, that are interlocked like chain links, however not quite at right angles. Also the 2 links move together with a slow precess and a changing relative angels between their equitorial planes.
Do you get my meaning? I’d provide a sketch if I knew how to include one.

Vukcevic,
Beat frequency… Well that is absolutely fantastic!!
People don’t intuitively detect beat even though it is all around us. That was terrific stroke of intuition. Koodoos! I’ve been looking at it for years and never thought to consider beat…..very clever.
That opens up a whole area of examination, ie beat resonance. esp driven by the harmonics. It is no surprise that the sunspot cycle driver is such mystery.
Really…. a good job on that model.

Leif Svalgaard says:
April 22, 2012 at 12:24 pm
Leif, Thanks for the feedback and the links, I hope to get up to speed on your own research over the coming weeks on this area, I thought this was an active area of research and I’m happy to hear that it is, I consider it to be one of the most important and interesting.
Vuckevic, thanks very interesting, I think the solar related discussion here at WUWT has been progressing quite well thanks to yourself and Dr. Svalgaard and many other contributors as well, at my level (which is still pretty advanced) I don’t feel that I can as yet make any definitive conclusions so most of my time is generally spent understanding all the who, what, where and when of it all. And the contrasting ideas and points being made are invaluable in achieving this.
So keep up the good work, it is appreciated!

In Galileo parlence..
Yet it oscillates nevertheless.

Roger says:
April 22, 2012 at 7:41 am
“Pyers Corbyn probably knows more about the sun than most here (with David Archibald), in relation to future solar activity and weather because they have been correct most of the time. ie Hathaway forecast SSN 170 in 2006, versus 40-50 by Archibald.”
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 22, 2012 at 9:39 am
“So far both Hathaway [his old prediction] and Archibald have been wrong. The past year the SSN has averaged 60 and there is more to come [hasn’t quite peaked yet]. Corbyn predicts very strong tornado conditions in the US next week. Let’s see how that goes.”
Just a reminder that, if I recall correctly, Dr S predicted SSN 72. If we haven”t quite peaked yet, it looks like he is the only one right on the money.

Do I detect a note of “the yellow peril” in the solar establishment response to this Japanese research?

That is not how it works. The magnetic field structure in interplanetary space is determined by the plasma flow close to the sun [a couple of solar radii] and it from there carried out by the solar wind. At the Earth the magnetic field varies by about a factor of two only and the field right now is about average. The various torques have been calculated decades ago and are extremely weak and ineffectual.
Yeah, I thought maybe I should actually go learn how it works by reading some real papers/work on the subject instead of a mix of thinking out loud. I found a dated but free work on Google Books here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=tUQrAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
It appears to be well worth reading, although sadly very little appears to have changed in the solar climate debate per se over the last 30 years. In it the complexity of the magnetic field is explained, which is far greater than a mere “quadrupole” even during transition. One does wonder if there exists a time dependent decomposition of its multipolar moments throughout a solar cycle somewhere. Ah, ask of Google and ye shall be satisfied, I see:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/w5460752vh560gn7/
(THE VARYING MULTIPOLAR STRUCTURE OF THE SUN’S
MAGNETIC FIELD AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOLAR
MAGNETOSPHERE THROUGH THE SOLAR CYCLE, by S. BRAVO, G. A. STEWART and X. BLANCO-CANO, or Bravo, S. (1998). Solar physics (0038-0938), 179 (2), p. 223.)
Sadly, the article/book appears to be paywalled, and I’m waiting for the Duke proxy server to apply its magic keys to open the magic door.
Two things that are very interesting in the Solar Variability book (that includes extensive citations of a certain L. Svalgaard, so you know it has to be the real deal:-) are a) The MWP and LIA still are featured in the climate record, as is the dip from the 40s through the early 80s. Amazing what unbiased straight up analysis of the climate record produces when people have no particular hypothesis they wish desperately to see confirmed. and b) “CO_2” as a word only appears a handful of times — 2 or 3 — in the entire book.
Ah, the Bravo article finally came through and it does look like a lovely paper that is just what I was curious about. The paper is 1997, so it is a BIT dated — it would be interesting to see what the multipoles are doing now, that is, to see its figures brought up to date. I did find this: helios.izmiran.rssi.ru/hellab/Obridko/370.pdf (not paywalled) but it doesn’t present the multipolar decomposition itself.
For those who are interested but have no idea what a multipole is: electric and magnetic fields produced by a source with compact support — basically within a ball of finite radius — can be formally expanded in a “multipolar basis”, a series that consists of a monopolar moment (present only for the electric field), a dipole moment, a quadrupole moment, and so on. Because the field of multipoles drops off with radial distance by one over a power of r that increases with the multipolar moment, one expects the “far field” (for r large compared to the dimensions of the source) to be dominated by terms that are important in this order. However, the terms also have a lot of physical meaning, and knowing the multipolar moments of a source often can give one significant insight into what’s going on in the source to produce the fields. At the very least, it gives one a constraint on model explanations — the model has to be able to get the multipolar amplitudes approximately right.
What the Bravo group showed was that at the Sun’s surface the dipole moment is never dominant. Indeed, high order multipoles are completely dominant there — they only present but in this limited series is dominant which suggests that the surface is far more complex and probably gets major contributions in all the high order multipoles down to some very fine surface granularity. This makes some measure of sense — it means that at the surface, surface “feature” magnetism completely dominates the local field, with any large scale field produced in the interior being much less important, much as the magnetic field right next to a running electric motor might well “erase” one’s ability to see the Earth’s basic magnetic dipole field. However, even there there is a distinct oscillation between the dipole and quadrupole moment, which we can interpret as the switching of the poles — during the actual transition quadrupole moment dominates dipole, at the peaks dipole dominates quadrupole. Which makes sense.
This is a “near field” result, where one doesn’t expect the field to be dominant in multipole order, but as one gets farther away and the field transitions into a far field form, the dipole reasserts itself as the major contribution. Far from the sun, even at transition the dipole field dominates the far field. The quadrupole and higher odd multipoles appear to countervary and peak at that time, but their field strength far from the Sun is rather small compared to the dipole field and constitutes a weak perturbation. Finally, the dominance of the dipole moment even during transition in the far field suggests that the magnitude dipole moment never vanishes — its gets smaller, but does not go away. Since it starts out pointing “north” and ends up pointing “south” (so to speak) its component along this axis does vanish, but its perpendicular component does not — the magnetic pole actually tilts continuously from North down to South, shrinking in magnitude as it does so to be sure but never quite going away. Bravo shows a lovely plot of an “equatorial angle” as a function of time for two solar cycles that indicates that the angle is fairly stable North, fairly stable South, and during the transition switches fairly rapidly between the two, which makes a great deal of sense given that the system has a broken symmetry (the axis of physical rotation) that “locks” the direction of North and South.
I still have a rather huge number of questions, of course. First of all, there are multipoles and there are multipoles. If one looks at my online book on electrodynamics:
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Class/Electrodynamics.php
I devote an entire chapter to multipoles — in some sense my dissertation was on multipolar expansions in quantum mechanics and I was fortunate enough to have been Larry Biedenharn’s graduate student and inherited his graduate E&M notes, which formed part of the basis for this chapter. It unfortunately looks rather like Bravo et. al. may have used a naive decomposition — in spherical harmonics, not in actual multipoles (e.g. vector spherical harmonics or Hansen multipoles) and if this is the case their multipolar moments are probably incorrectly mixed. This also prevents one from taking a hypothetical current sheet and doing the integrals against e.g. Hansen multipoles to obtain the proper time dependent E&M field associated with said sheets to compare to the observed moments. I would say there are a few Ph.D. dissertations left to be done in this regard (unless it has already been done) because fitting at least the first three or four lowest multipolar moments has to be a constraint on a model of the time evolution of the major interior currents, and there is no doubt some very interesting information to be extracted from the process that allows one’s model to match up the meso-scale features once the gross features are modelled well.
In any event, I am now much less impressed with the top article. To be honest, its pictures of dipoles and quadrupoles are misleading and useless for any purpose but gee-whiz or press release. Lief’s figure of the polar fields, however, is extremely interesting, although it would be a lot more interesting as something that went beyond polar fields on axis.
Here is a very simple observation. We can (apparently) measure or infer the solar magnetic field quite accurately at all points on the photosphere and perhaps beyond, in the far field. If one takes the far field, projects it onto a proper multipolar basis as the time dependent multipolar moments, then one can reconstruct the multipolar field less the surface noise back on the photosphere, just outside the source, in the near field zone. The far field automatically filters, in other words, selecting the gross features. It would also automatically give one the associated far field electric fields induced by the time varying magnetic multipoles, the Poynting vector, and more (although it would then by construction omit the highly local features associated with CMEs and other “discrete” or surface events, which would have to be studied and added back in by hand).
I think that this sort of decomposition would contain all sorts of useful information that is obscured in “just” polar fields. And I would guess that all of this is being done, in spite of the fact that I can’t google up a quick result on it (I’m not doing a proper literature search because I don’t have time and this is just a hobby, as it were, I have professional obligations I’m blowing off to some extent even as I post this). If it is not, however, it most definitely should be. A historical record of the Sun’s primary (properly evaluated) magnetic multipole moments will ultimately give us a retroactive look at the internal state of the sun once we have reliable and consistent information on how they are connected to the interior dynamo, and a solid knowledge of that state over enough cycles might give us the ability to predict its state at least modestly into the future. Dr. Svalgaard may well feel that we (or he) already has that ability based on this or other considerations and I certainly wouldn’t argue, but multipolar decompositions are useful in nearly all other treatments of electromagnetism and I cannot believe that they wouldn’t (or aren’t) similarly useful for the Sun.
rgb

I have been following the colding of the Bearing Sea and the Himalayan glaciers. They didn’t seem to know about the supposed warming of Earth. It appears that this half-hearted effort of the sun to covert poles could stop at both N & S spin axis being positive and the equatorial area sites of negative regions.
I only recently realized that the snap back of the magnetotail was offered as a source of high energy ‘cosmic’ photons in the face of rejection that cosmic rays from exploding nova hundreds of light years across not-empty space could be the source.
I would like to be made aware of a site that offers possible consequences –besides cold– of having negative poles at the equatorial region. May I suggest: since the aurora would then enter the equatorial region where most charge is emitted, that super storms such as the global weather that caused the Stupe valley civilization to site themselves in a valley with all their town BELOW the ringing valley walls. Below for protection from super wind and storms. Also it may well be that this ringed valley offered some protection from the massive electrical storms that roam the surface depleting electrical energy, not giving.

Russ Browne says:
April 28, 2012 at 11:23 pm
“There is not much we can add to the graph, so conclusions are quite obvious. To UNEP and IPPC uncomfort and displease, the cause and effect correlation between solar cycles and terrestrial temperatures is incontrovertible”.
Except that the correlation breaks down when you add recent data to the graph: long cycle and high temperature.
Economist Martin Armstrong and former Chair of the Foundation for the study of cycles, noted that just about every civilization in history rose and fell on a 300 year cycle, He thinks the 2012 Mayan date will be the start of much colder weather on Earth which will be driven by solar output. Comments?
Invoking the Mayan dates does not qualify as science.