Guest post by David Archibald
My papers and those of Jan-Erik Solheim et al predict a significant cooling over Solar Cycle 24 relative to Solar Cycle 23. Solheim’s model predicts that Solar Cycle 24, for the northern hemisphere, will be 0.9º C cooler than Solar Cycle 23. It hasn’t cooled yet and we are three and a half years into the current cycle. The longer the temperature stays where it is, the more cooling has to come over the rest of the cycle for the predicted average reduction to occur.
So when will it cool? As Nir Shaviv and others have noted, the biggest calorimeter on the plant is the oceans. My work on sea level response to solar activity (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/03/quantifying-sea-level-fall/) found that the breakover between sea level rise and sea level fall is a sunspot amplitude of 40:
As this graph from SIDC shows, the current solar amplitude is about 60 in the run-up to solar maximum, expected in May 2013:
The two remaining variables in our quest are the timing of the sunspot number fall below 40 and the length of Solar Cycle 24. So far, Solar Cycle 24 is shaping up almost exactly like Solar Cycle 5, the first half of the Dalton Minimum:
The heliospheric current sheet tilt angle has reached the level at which solar maximum occurs. It usually spends a year at this level before heading back down again:
Similarly, the solar polar field strength (from the Wilcox Solar Observatory) suggest that solar maximum may be up to a year away:
Notwithstanding that solar maximum, as predicted from heliocentric current sheet tilt angle and solar polar field strength, is still a little way off, if Solar Cycle 24 continues to shape up like Solar Cycle 5, sunspot amplitude will fall below 40 from mid-2013. Altrock’s green corona emissions diagramme (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/08/solar-cycle-24-length-and-its-consequences/) suggests that Solar Cycle 24 will be 17 years long, ending in 2026. That leaves twelve and a half years of cooling from mid-2013.
From all that, for Solheim’s predicted temperature decline of 0.9º C over the whole of Solar Cycle 24 to be achieved, the decline from mid-2013 will be 1.2º C on average over the then remaining twelve and a half years of the cycle. No doubt the cooling will be back-loaded, making the further decline predicted over Solar Cycle 25 relative to Solar Cycle 24 more readily achievable.
David Archibald says: (August 13, 2012 at 5:09 pm}
[If the Svensmark theory is correct]
Svensmark claims that solar activity controls the low clouds, which is falsified here …
It would appear that Svensmark is using a smoothed curve that removes the ‘noise’ of annual fluctuations that are shown in your reference. I would think falsification would require comparisons of similarly filtered cosmic radiation flux at ground level. (*not solar activity*) I would be somewhat surprised if the Royal Astronomical Society would accept for publication, a paper by someone known to have released obviously false data.
The real issue here, I would guess, is the degree by which cosmic ray generated condensation nuclei are required for condensation to occur: 100%, 90%, 50%, 10% . . . Svensmark seems to have shown that cosmic ray flux can be correlated with climate changes associated with the transit of the solar system through the spiral arms of the galaxy where cosmic radiation levels are relatively high and ground temperatures tend to be low–perhaps due to accelerated convective activity.
http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/219-news-2012/2117-did-exploding-stars-help-life-on-earth-to-thrive
http://thegwpf.org/the-observatory/3016-new-evidence-that-cosmic-rays-seed-clouds.html
Dr. Tim Ball
A Different Perspective
Svensmark’s Cosmic Theory Confirmed; Explains More Than Solar Role in Climate Change
http://drtimball.com/2011/svensmark%E2%80%99s-cosmic-theory-confirmed-explains-more-than-solar-role-in-climate-change/
D. Patterson, I trust old farmer’s bones more than I do any other source. I ain’t no farmer, but I grew up outdoors, working outdoors, gardening, growing, pruning, trimming, etc. The advent of August was a weird one, almost like it was late September instead. Could it be a shift in the seasons? Like the seasons are out of whack by a month? I know that sounds foolish, but I am a layman. I merely say that as contrast. I hate to sweat, but it’s better than shivering. I hope that ol’ sun keeps burning, baby!
Spector says:
August 14, 2012 at 8:52 am
“Svensmark claims that solar activity controls the low clouds, which is falsified here …”
It would appear that Svensmark is using a smoothed curve that removes the ‘noise’ of annual fluctuations that are shown in your reference.
It is simpler than that: solar activity has been decreasing the past several decades and so has the low cloud cover, while Svensmark would predict the opposite. No amount of smoothing, torturing, or massaging can change that.
Notice to moderators : On every thread relating to the Sun or Solar System on WUWT you might as well put up a notice
COMMENTS NOT PERMITTED – LEIF SVALGAARD KNOWS EVERYTHING
That would be more adept. And I though that my wife was the world champion in having the last word on any subject!! 🙂
REPLY: Dr. Svalgaard is a competent debater, and welcome here. Engage him at your own risk – Anthony
Hi Anthony,
That’s why I put up the smiley in order to make clear that it was said in humour. Hope Dr.Svalgaard and you don’t mind it.
Venter says:
August 14, 2012 at 9:24 am
COMMENTS NOT PERMITTED – LEIF SVALGAARD KNOWS EVERYTHING
“In the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king”
Good one Leif, you had the final word here also, hats off 🙂
[snip – facts not in evidence]
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 14, 2012 at 9:14 am
“It is simpler than that: solar activity has been decreasing the past several decades..”
That depends on which metric: http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/tmp/images/ret_30917.gif
I’m not though supporting Svensmark.
Ulric Lyons says:
August 14, 2012 at 9:50 am
“It is simpler than that: solar activity has been decreasing the past several decades..”
That depends on which metric: http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/tmp/images/ret_30917.gif
I’m not though supporting Svensmark.
It really doesn’t. Svensmark claims cosmic rays are involved, and they follow closely solar wind B [inverted].
RE: Leif Svalgaard: (August 14, 2012 at 9:14 am)
Spector says:
August 14, 2012 at 8:52 am
“Svensmark claims that solar activity controls the low clouds, which is falsified here …”
It would appear that Svensmark is using a smoothed curve that removes the ‘noise’ of annual fluctuations that are shown in your reference.
It is simpler than that: solar activity has been decreasing the past several decades and so has the low cloud cover, while Svensmark would predict the opposite. No amount of smoothing, torturing, or massaging can change that.
I will have to accept this, provided that, ground level cosmic radiation flux, the ‘hypothetical’ Svensmark cloud-formation mechanism, has not also been decreasing over this period.
I was under the impression that the temperature rise over the last century might be explained, at least in part, as the result of a gradual decline in cosmic radiation from ‘The Chilling Stars’ reaching the surface of the Earth.
Again; I have seen, from my limited vantage point, no comprehensive attempt to explain the condensation process. When two water molecules collide in the atmosphere, what is the probability, if any, that they will fuse and during collisions or in fusing, can they generate unusual photons due to their strong polar electric fields, such photons that would not likely to be absorbed by other water molecules in free flight.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 14, 2012 at 7:47 am
tallbloke says:
August 14, 2012 at 5:31 am
The ten highest IDRT scoring journals consist of a range of journals relating to a variety of subjects.
The IDRT is just a measure invented by Bollen et al. to quantify their results of surveying the journal articles downloaded at one laboratory [Los Alamos] reflecting that laboratory’s interests and is not a measure of the general interest. As usual, you know not whereof you speak.
As usual your ignorance about the solar-planetary theory shines through. Los Alamos is where the theory gained its big leap forward in the modern era with the work of Paul D Jose.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 14, 2012 at 7:36 am
tallbloke says:
August 14, 2012 at 5:31 am
Funnily enough the “reputable Journal you review for isn’t in the list.
I have reviewed for some of those [and for some not in the list, like Nature and Science] and even published in some, including JASTP, so I don’t know what your problem is. BTW, IMO the quality of JASTP has, sadly, been declining lately.
Fascinating Leif, so you are also a gatekeeper for the journals Science and Nature, which enjoy such a high reputation for their unbiased approach to the climate debate amongst the sceptic community. Fancy that.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/sun-rediscovered-by-nature/
What solar cycle is David Archibald talking about? The solar cycle that climatologists generally talk about in terms of climate impacts is a 11 year solar cycle. We are currently in the start of a new cycle, so we can expect solar radiation to go up for the next 5 years, meaning slightly higher temperatures for the next couple years. See Figure 9 at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2011/
I’m sorry, but I the NASA scientists do peer-reviewed research whose data and software algorithms are publically available. Archibald will have a hard time convincing me when he is saying the exact opposite of James Hansen and the other top climatologists.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 13, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Jim G says:
August 13, 2012 at 2:49 pm
“stuff that only interacts gravitationally with other matter and energy and has been conveniently hypothesized to exist in order to explain why our other theories of mass and gravity, though ASSUMED to be correct and complete, are not proving out well based upon actual observations.
The theories about mass and gravity are not affected by the actual observations of dark matter and dark energy [are in fact used to detect those things]”
There has yet to be any “actual observations of dark matter and dark energy” only suppositions based upon present accepted theories of mass and gravity that cause believers, such as yourself, to think they have been “detected”. And it may well be so, but it might also NOT be so. True scientists need to open their minds to other possibilities or they will never be discovered if they do exist..
D. Patterson
You were commenting about what the local farmers in Southern Illinois , US ,were saying about the coming winter and their feeling that it would be an “extraordinarily “cold winter. I partly agree with them in that it will be a cold winter again but not necessarily extra cold [not like the winters of the late 1970’s which were extraordinarily cold ] . My feeling is that it will be more like the winters before the 2012 winter and more like the 2008-2010 winters around average winter temperature of about 25-27 degrees F
When will it start cooling??
Ah, It must just be my imagination then, I could have sworn that hundreds lost their lives earlier this year in Europe due to extreme cold and wintry conditions, and it brought chaos governments mobilized their armies and it effected hundreds of thousands right across Europe and Eurasia including freezing over canals and waterways for the first time in many years.
http://www.france24.com/en/20120205-death-toll-europe-deadly-chill-300-ukraine-london-heathrow-weather-cold-winter-snow
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/9061221/Britain-on-snow-alert-as-Europe-freezes-over.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097292/Big-freeze-Europe-shows-signs-letting-Venices-famous-waterways-ice-over.html
Maybe I was just dreaming that tens of thousands of people had to queue in the freezing cold for water in Northern Ireland and the largest lake in the UK and Ireland (lough Neagh) froze over in 2010, did the big freeze even happen?
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/12/29/northern.ireland.water/index.html
http://www.nightskyhunter.com/Extreme%20Lough%20Neagh%20Freeze%20-%20Page%201.html
And I must have imagined headlines like this from the US during February 2010; “Washington, D.C., is clobbered with snow again”
“The snowiest winter since records were first kept in the 1880s paralyzes the region, shutting down the federal government, airports and schools.”
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/10/nation/la-na-snow-washington11-2010feb11
2012 Johannesburg.
“The snowfall was the first in Johannesburg in five years and the heaviest since 1981.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/9461564/Johannesburg-snow-fulfils-couples-white-wedding-dream.html
2009 Historic snow event in South America.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/23/historic-snow-event-in-south-america/
So, when will this cooling start for real?
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 14, 2012 at 9:14 am
Spector says:
August 14, 2012 at 8:52 am
“Svensmark claims that solar activity controls the low clouds, which is falsified here …”
It would appear that Svensmark is using a smoothed curve that removes the ‘noise’ of annual fluctuations that are shown in your reference.
It is simpler than that: solar activity has been decreasing the past several decades and so has the low cloud cover, while Svensmark would predict the opposite. No amount of smoothing, torturing, or massaging can change that.
Solar activity hasn’t been decreasing the past several decades. The peak amplitudes have fallen slightly, though by very little according to your adjustments to Waldmeier’s sunspot counts, but the cycles were short, the up and downramps steep, and the minima brief. The average sunspot count over the second half of the C20th was significantly higher than over the first half.
No amount of your data flattening exercise will change that. Especially since the solar science community rejected your proposed revamping of the data.
So Svensmark is still in the running, considering how little we know about clouds and the effect of cosmic rays on them at this stage. Good results coming from Jasper Kirby at CERN though, and the big Forbush decreases in march this year lend credence to the theory. Sunny weather followed a week after the big solar flares. No amount of naysaying will change that either.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 14, 2012 at 10:02 am
I was merely commenting on your blanket statement that solar activity has been decreasing the past several decades. This is not true for plasma speed: http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/tmp/images/ret_11735.gif
tallbloke says:
August 14, 2012 at 11:39 am
As usual your ignorance about the solar-planetary theory shines through. Los Alamos is where the theory gained its big leap forward in the modern era with the work of Paul D Jose.
Paul Jose was at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico when he published his 1965 paper…
Who was ignorant now? http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1965AJ…..70..193J
Fascinating Leif, so you are also a gatekeeper for the journals Science and Nature
I’m a reviewer for all major journals in these fields. So now you equate ‘peer reviewed’ with ‘gatekept’. Perhaps you should use that terminology on your blog: make a global change of ‘peer reviewed’ to ‘gatekept’. You know, with computers such sweeping textual changes are easy to do.
Jim G says:
August 14, 2012 at 12:24 pm
There has yet to be any “actual observations of dark matter and dark energy”
That you don’t know of any, does not mean that there aren’t any. Dark matter is detected in several ways, for example by gravitational lensing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens
Dark Energy is detected by observing the speed up of the expansion of space with increasing distance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy In a sense the words ‘dark energy’ is just the label we put on the observation that the expansion is accelerating. Just like ‘solar energy’ is the label we put on the observation that we get hot when we are out in the sun.
Just for Leif,
Dark matter and dark energy were invented, or discovered, depending upon your point of view, to explain, respectively, why the orbital speeds of visible matter in other galaxies exceeded expectations given the amount of visible matter observed and why the expansion of the universe is accelerating when it would be expected to be slowing down due to gravitational effects. Einstein’s original equations for general relativity indicated an expanding universe which could not be detected by the technology available in his day. He then introduced a cosmological constant to bring his theory in agreement with observations available at that time which he later called his greatest mistake. Turns out, however, that there may well be a different correction factor need to explain an acceleration of the expansion, that being dark energy. Dark matter, on the other hand, seems to complicate this entire situation and cause many open minded serious scientists to question if there may be some finer points missing in the overall general theory of relativity.
Complicating all of this are questions as to the proper interpretation of the observed red shifts which give rise to the estimated of velocities and distances of far away objects as both the theories of dark matter and dark energy have their basis in these interpretations. Also, structures have been detected at distances, i.e. earlier in time, than theory says there should be such structures. This along with the inability to marry quantum physics with relativity has caused very notable scientists to question and attempt to explain what may be missing in relativity or quantum physics that might obviate the need for dark matter and/or dark energy. Being considered are theories of faster than light speed for systems of higher energy such as in the early universe and theories which “unzip” time from space/time that might obviate the need for dark matter and dark energy and avoid the infinities produced when trying to combine the theories of the very small with those of the very large.
Just as relativity replaced Newtonian physics it may be that there is another energy level at which one of these new theories may be more accurate than relativity. But it will take open minds, just like Einstein, who was at one point considered a heretic in his time.
tallbloke says:
August 14, 2012 at 1:04 pm
Solar activity hasn’t been decreasing the past several decades. The peak amplitudes have fallen slightly, though by very little according to your adjustments to Waldmeier’s sunspot counts, but the cycles were short, the up and downramps steep, and the minima brief. The average sunspot count over the second half of the C20th was significantly higher than over the first half.
The Waldmeier adjustment goes back to 1945 so it not relevant. The average sunspot count 1945-1995 was as high as some cycle in the 19th and 18th centuries. Since 1995 solar activity is lower.
Especially since the solar science community rejected your proposed revamping of the data.
I don’t think so. You can follow the evolution of the acceptance by the solar community here: http://ssnworkshop.wikia.com/wiki/Home see especially the summary by Hudson http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Hudson.pdf
So Svensmark is still in the running
So Svensmark is roundly falsified as should be clear to everybody, except hardcore believers.
Jim G says:
August 14, 2012 at 1:18 pm
cause many open minded serious scientists to question if there may be some finer points missing in the overall general theory of relativity
This has nothing to do with open-mindedness. All scientists dream about [and many try] proving Einstein wrong, but none have succeeded.
Jose: “http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1965AJ…..70..193J”
I give up on WordPress, here is my copy: http://www.leif.org/EOS/Jose-1965.pdf
Just for reference; here is a link to a plot indicating cosmic radiation since 1964.
Cosmic Ray Station
of the University of Oulu / Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory (Finland)
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startday=01&startmonth=06&startyear=1964&starttime=00%3A00&endday=30&endmonth=03&endyear=2012&endtime=00%3A00&resolution=Automatic+choice&picture=on
Home: http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/
This is the force that Dr. Svensmark believes to be driving the climate. There would be no need to examine solar activity–just this data. The plot represents cooling power which appears to be cyclicly decreasing until about 1995 and then cooling begins to increase from that point.