Solar cycle 24 continues weakly, perhaps weakest of the space-age

For all the ridicule heaped upon Theodor Landscheidt, his predictions of a Grand Solar Minimum seem to be working out much better than the temperature projections of the AGW alarmists.

The Panel prediction of 90 was too high to begin with [as I pointed out already back then] but was a compromise [so much for science]. My own prediction stands at 72. An unknown element is the effect of the Livingston and Penn effect, which will lead to an undercount of sunspots compared to to the magnetic fields present: http://www.leif.org/research/Disappearance-of-Visible-Spots.pdf
There is no doubt that the Sun is ‘up to something’. What it is we don’t know. One may speculate that a Maunder Minimum is in the cards.

After the peak/plateau of the current solar cycle finishes is going to be interesting, likely terra incognita for the modern era. For instance, while the minimum following cycle 22 and the minimum following cycle 23 both had 0 sunspots, the latter had substantially less magnetic deflection of cosmic rays than the former (illustrating how not all minimums are equal, not having a flat floor), and, from past history, there is reason to believe vastly more variation in GCR flux than seen during recent decades would occur if transitioning towards a Grand Minimum after the current cycle 24 ends a few years from now.
http://s10.postimage.org/l9gokvp09/composite.jpg
The last solar cycle (1996-2008, the temperature plateau) was almost identical to cycle 20 of four decades ago in average cosmic ray count, though differing by 3% from the high solar activity cycles of 21 and 22 (1976-1996, warming and the global warming scare), but a few years from now could come a difference of 10% and beyond, combined with the AMO moving into the post-peak phase of its oscillation…

vukcevic says:
November 6, 2012 at 10:54 am
Dr.L.S. will tell you it is spurious
Now that you have seen the light, I don’t need to tell anybody anymore.
Henry Clark says:
November 6, 2012 at 11:13 am
For instance, while the minimum following cycle 22 and the minimum following cycle 23 both had 0 sunspots, the latter had substantially less magnetic deflection of cosmic rays than the former (illustrating how not all minimums are equal, not having a flat floor)
Every second minimum have a [low] flat top, while the intervening minima have a sharp [high] peak. The reason for that is known and has to do with the sign of the solar polar fields. This last minimum was not significantly special, e.g. http://www.puk.ac.za/opencms/export/PUK/html/fakulteite/natuur/nm_data/data/SRU_Graph.jpg
Compare the three peaks at Hermanus [red curve]. Or Thule: http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/~pyle/modplotth.gif

There was lots of articles online around 2004-2009 claiming that solar cycle 24 would be the most active cycle ever experienced since 1755, which would (they claimed) increase the effect that greenhouse gases have in the atmosphere, which, would dangerously raise the planets temperature etc…
The alarmist scientists quoted by the news media Muppet’s have already conceded that an increase in solar activity will raise the planets temperature, so, therefore they will now have to conceded and acknowledge that also the lack of recent solar activity and a continuation of weaker solar cycles have the ability to cool the planets temperature. They will also have to conceded and acknowledge that solar activity has been stronger in the later half of the 20th century and a lot cooler when the Sun has been quiet and less active in the past.
Check Mate, game set and match!

Johanus says:
November 6, 2012 at 11:26 am
Then we should be looking at the solar microwave flux (e.g. 2800MHz) levels, which don’t seem to be affected as much by the L&P effect. It is a more reliable (less subjective) way of measuring solar magnetic activity. I believe we can reconstruct flux levels back as far as the 19th century, is that not correct?
The microwave flux is a better indicator, but not because it is more objective. The L&P effect is a reduced number of spots for a given amount of magnetic flux. The 299Mhz or F10.7 cm flux can be reconstructed back to [at least] the 1840s: slides 13-14 of http://www.leif.org/research/Rudolf%20Wolf%20and%20the%20Sunspot%20Number.pdf

Leif Svalgaard says:
November 6, 2012 at 11:33 am
“Every second minimum have a [low] flat top, while the intervening minima have a sharp [high] peak. The reason for that is known and has to do with the sign of the solar polar fields. This last minimum was not significantly special, e.g. http://www.puk.ac.za/opencms/export/PUK/html/fakulteite/natuur/nm_data/data/SRU_Graph.jpg”
For the last minimum following cycle 23, compared to the minimum following cycle 21, while the http://www.puk.ac.za/opencms/export/PUK/html/fakulteite/natuur/nm_data/data/SRU_Graph.jpg plot has the count at Pc=9.2 GV reach about the same value in both cases, it also shows a difference appearing at lower GV values.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 6, 2012 at 11:33 am
“Compare the three peaks at Hermanus [red curve]. Or Thule: http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/~pyle/modplotth.gif“
The difference is noticeable even if just taking the http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/~pyle/modplotth.gif plot and drawing a line at the last minimum for improved readability, adding a horizontal red line to that neutron monitor plot:
http://s9.postimage.org/jz6qpr7zz/lineadded.gif
The minimum after cycle 19 comes closer to the minimum after cycle 23 but still does not reach the same value, while the minimum after cycle 21 does not even come close.
Moreover, clearer than either of the above graphs is rather
cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startday=1&startmonth=01&startyear=1964&starttime=00%3A00&endday=30&endmonth=11&endyear=2012&endtime=23%3A30&resolution=Automatic+choice&picture=on
Such shows that, while the neutron count of the minimums of the four prior cycles depicted from the 1960s onwards did not exceed around 5% to around 7.5% on the scale used there, the last minimum reached around 11% on the same scale.

Edit to prior comment, which should make the last link properly clickable:
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startday=1&startmonth=01&startyear=1964&starttime=00%3A00&endday=30&endmonth=11&endyear=2012&endtime=23%3A30&resolution=Automatic+choice&picture=on

Henry Clark says:
November 6, 2012 at 12:43 pm
The minimum after cycle 19 comes closer to the minimum after cycle 23 but still does not reach the same value, while the minimum after cycle 21 does not even come close.
There are no significant differences between any of the minima taken in pairs that exceed the statistical variation from station to station.
cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cg
It is difficult to maintain the same calibration over decades and Oulu has not been able to do this successfully.
Sparks says:
November 6, 2012 at 12:45 pm
Leif, could you be more specific to what you believe I was inferring, thanks.
Why don’t you explain yourself. You said: “solar activity has been stronger in the later half of the 20th century”. My interpretation of that is that meant ‘stronger than at other times the past several centuries’. Correct me if you think that is not what you meant and you support the notion that activity in the later half of the 20th century was nothing special.

I wonder if someone can answer a question for me. When it is said that sunspots “disappear”, what exactly does this mean? Does it mean that the magentic strength is so weak, that the sunspot does not form at all? Or does it mean that the sunspot forms, but because the magentic strength is so weak, that there is no contrast with the solar background, so we cannot see it?

Leif Svalgaard says:
“There is no doubt that the Sun is ‘up to something’. What it is we don’t know.”
Perhaps it is digesting (or puking up) some of that Dark Matter that you indicated is theorized to be hiding inside the sun since none can be found anywhere in our local vacinity?

Jim Cripwell says:
November 6, 2012 at 1:01 pm
Does it mean that the magnetic strength is so weak, that the sunspot does not form at all? Or does it mean that the sunspot forms, but because the magnetic strength is so weak, that there is no contrast with the solar background, so we cannot see it?
A combination of both, with the first being dominant.

Jim G says:
November 6, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Perhaps it is digesting (or puking up) some of that Dark Matter that you indicated is theorized to be hiding inside the sun since none can be found anywhere in our local vicinity?
Dark Matter is not black or ‘dark’, but rather ‘invisible’, i.e. does not interact with electromagnetic radiation [i.e. light].

Billy Liar says:
November 6, 2012 at 1:47 pm
Obviously, Leif is going to tell me the fat lady has yet to sing but it sure looks like it’s going to be a win for the physical modelers.
Success has many fathers [including all the ones that are right for the wrong reasons]. Failure is an orphan…

Leif Svalgaard says:
November 6, 2012 at 10:53 am
The Panel prediction of 90 was too high to begin with [as I pointed out already back then] but was a compromise [so much for science]. My own prediction stands at 72. An unknown element is the effect of the Livingston and Penn effect
That effect shows up now in graph #’s 1 and 2 above. Simply draw a line between the peaks of SC23 and SC24 (current) and there’s that L&P slope. Extending the line to the bottom suggests that SC24 will disappear spotwise sometime in 2014-2015 timeframe. Speculative, sure, but what else is new.

Leif Svalgaard says:
November 6, 2012 at 1:22 pm
“The triangles show Oulu divided by the mean of the other stations mentioned on the plot: http://www.leif.org/research/Cosmic%20Ray%20Count%20for%20Different%20Stations-Oulu.png”
Even there, adding a red line from the middle of those others in that graph makes blatant the following, of how, despite a particularly zoomed-out graph, the minimum following cycle 23 is still seen to be several percent higher peak count than the minimum following cycle 21:
http://s9.postimage.org/c7s36sxwv/lineadded2.gif

Henry Clark says:
November 6, 2012 at 12:58 pm
Thanks Henry,
In this Cagw based climate change – global warming situation/issue, where energy policy, tax hikes and laws are involved, all the convenient revisionism doesn’t sit well with me either, what happens when political policy or a law is pushed in under a flawed understanding or a misrepresentation of the science such as the hockey stick version of the temperature record?
It can be said that science always evolves but that leaves policy makers, advisers and promoters with two choices, one is to concede that they are wrong and the other involves trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Birdieshooter says:
November 6, 2012 at 6:01 pm
If a Maunder Minimum is indeed is in the cards, how many more years until you begin to have a high level of confidence that it is coming and then how many more years before it starts to affect our climate?
20 years, and I don’t think it will have any significant effect on the climate.
Geoff Sharp says:
November 6, 2012 at 6:52 pm
One of the interesting aspects of SC24 is that it is shaping up to replicate the GSN version of SC5.
First: the GSN is flawed and should not be used.
Second: the data for SC5 is so poor that we have no real idea what it looked like
Third: the contemporary observers say that ‘they had never seen to many sunspots as during SC5’

With all the wonderful astronomical technology of today I wonder if we are counting spots that would not have been observed 200 years ago. Also why no mention of the current UV level from the sun and its effect on the atmosphere?

If I remember, Richard111, they keep the same way of counting the sunspots as they did back then so the stats wont need to be adjusted.

Long term solar proxies show regular cycles of 104 and 208 years, see both
http://cyclesresearchinstitute.wordpress.com/2010/06/27/cycles-in-sunspot-number-reconstruction-for-11000-years/ (104.3 and 207.7 years) and
http://cyclesresearchinstitute.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/analysis-of-be10-records-as-a-solar-irradiance-proxy/ (104.7 and 206.9 years)
and the modern sunspot data shows greatest correlation after 210 years. All of these facts makes the current weak sunspot cycles entirely predictable.

Sparks says: @ November 6, 2012 at 11:53 am
They will also have to concede and acknowledge that solar activity has been stronger in the later half of the 20th century and a lot cooler when the Sun has been quiet and less active in the past…
________________________________
No they did not concede that. Actually the ‘Team’ and the IPCC went to great lengths to bury that and continue to do so. It was called Judithgate.

Judithgate: IPCC consensus was only one physicist
…As I wrote elsewhere (Czech article ACRIM vs PMOD), Judith Lean and Claus Fröhlich are responsible for scandalous rewriting of the solar activity graphs. The original satellite data showed, that TSI (measured in Watts) increased from 1986 to 1996 by cca one third… But then Judith and Clause “laundered” the graphs and voila… solar output increase was gone.
The people, who were in charge of the satellites and who created the original graphs (the best world astro-physicists: Doug Hoyt, Richard C.Willson) protested against this manipulation. In vain.
R.C. Willson (head of the ACRIM satellites): “Fröhlich made unauthorised and incorrect adjustments… He did it without any detailed knowledge of the ACRIM1 instrument or on-orbit performance…The only obvious purpose was to devise a TSI composite, that agreed with the predictions of Lean’s TSI proxy model.”
[see original article for Dr. Willson’s letter]
Douglas Hoyt (the famous inventor of GSN – Group Sunspot Number indicator) agrees with Willson. The graph tampering done by Judith and Claus was scientifically unjustified. Hoyt must know that. The questionable changes were done to the data from the Nimbus 7 satellite, where he used to be in charge…..
[see original article for Dr. Hoyt’s letter]
…And the comment from the representatives of the Norwegian government on Chapter II, Working Group I (solar forcing) are very striking in the context of solar forcing.
(Note 2-26 from the Norwegian government, ref. No. 2018-42 Expert and Government Review Comments on the Second Order Draft)
“I urge IPCC to consider having only one solar physicist on the lead author team of such an important chapter. In particular since the conclusion of this section hangs on one single paper in which Judith Lean is the co-author.”…..
The mystery of the vanishing graphs
Since they did not bother to ask the astro physicists, IPCC is kept in dark about the Sun. IPCC reports have some 3000 pages, but the most important segments – about Sun – are just a few short and vague articles.
While in other places IPCC is rich in graphics, strangely you cannot find there any graph of cosmic radiation, sunspot cycle length or geomagnetism. Which is odd, because these are the key indicators of solar activity. Shouldn’t the IPCC reports be an exhausting compendium of the latest scientific knowledge? ….
[see original article for graphs]
Mendozagate: A sequel to Judithgate
IPCC assessed the solar activity development without asking the solar physics or astronomers. And they plan doing this in the Fifth Report (AR5, 2010-2015) again. In June 2010 they published (here) the names of the staff for the next IPCC report and – if I counted correctly – the solar chapter has only one solar physicist again (Blanca Mendoza, a sample study of hers here). The boss of this chapter is to be Mr.Shindell from GISS, a colleague of the climate madman Jim Hansen, who endorsed Keith Farnish’s book promoting eco-terrorism last year….
http://www.klimaskeptik.cz/news/judithgate-ipcc-consensus-was-only-one-physicist/

Dr. Svalgaard if you have a problem with the work of Dr. Willson and Dr. Hoyt please take it up with them. Their letters were written to Dr. Scafetta in September 16 of 2008 for inclusion in Dr. Nicola Scafetta’s Climate Change and Its Causes – A Discussion About Some Key Issues (Presented at EPA, Feb 2009) LINK
For the rest of us, Dr Richard C. Willson is Principal Investigator of the ACRIM ( Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor) team. Dr. Nicola Scafetta is listed as a Co-Investigator so these are the guys collecting the actual data from ACRIMSAT. LINK

Richard111 says: @ November 6, 2012 at 11:58 pm
With all the wonderful astronomical technology of today I wonder if we are counting spots that would not have been observed 200 years ago. [That is what Geoff Sharp tried to address with his layman’s count. Lief S. comments on it are scathing scroll down to comment section to see his comments. link contains forbidden word so ‘google’] Also why no mention of the current UV level from the sun and its effect on the atmosphere?
____________________________
There is mention of the UV/EUV see:

NASA – EVE: Measuring the Sun’s Hidden Variability
…..Almost none of the drama of Solar Maximum is visible to the human eye. Look at the sun in the noontime sky and—ho-hum—it’s the same old bland ball of light.
“The problem is, human eyes are tuned to the wrong wavelength,” explains Tom Woods, a solar physicist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. “If you want to get a good look at solar activity, you need to look in the EUV.”
EUV is short for “extreme ultraviolet,” a high-energy form of ultraviolet radiation with wavelengths between 1 and 120 nanometers. EUV photons are much more energetic and dangerous than the ordinary UV rays that cause sunburns. Fortunately for humans, Earth’s atmosphere blocks solar EUV; otherwise a day at the beach could be fatal.
When the sun is active, solar EUV emissions can rise and fall by factors of hundreds to thousands in just a matter of minutes. These surges heat Earth’s upper atmosphere, puffing it up and increasing the air friction, or “drag,” on satellites. EUV photons also break apart atoms and molecules, creating a layer of ions in the upper atmosphere that can severely disturb radio signals.
To monitor these energetic photons, NASA is going to launch a sensor named “EVE,” short for EUV Variability Experiment, onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory this winter…

Also see:
http://ilws.gsfc.nasa.gov/ilwsgoa_woods.pdf
NASA: EUV Images

My frustration is that certain media outlets are still crying wolf about “MASSIVE SOLAR FLARES PREDICTED! SUN IS OUT OF CONTROL!” I hear all sorts of local folks fretting and worrying about how the Sun has become dangerous and that we’re all on the brink of complete technological destruction. Some press outlets are really harping on the “rising potential for solar flares,” never once mentioning how flares are actually less than expected, less than in the past, and certainly much less than the same time last cycle. I understand that our technology becomes more and more susceptible to solar slaps, but usually that particular point is not made. It’s put out like the Sun is some evil monster that is out of control. Well… technically… it is out of control: our control. Thus the fear. Come on, Sun! Shine! Slap us with us some sweet lovin’ warmth.

Interesting that the sun is spotless again. For the last few months, there have been subdued but pretty reliable spots getting nearer and nearer the equator — closer in the N hemisphere than the southern. That seems to indicate it’s getting very close to or is at “max”. Next step, according to my education here, is polarity shifts for the N hemisphere spots.
And the core keeps merrily along fusing hydrogen at a constant rate, completely indifferent to what’s happening at the surface.

Also, has anyone been paying attention to the degree of ionization in the ionosphere/thermosphere? Particualy the F1 layer? It is known that during the previous deep minimum we just had that this upper boundry layer contracted by as much as 28% and according to NASA they say 60% of the contribution to this collapse is “unaccounted” for. The problem I see is that this rapid increase in ionization began during the minimum when it should have been low and continues to this day, along with a still contracted F1. What are the consequences of the combination on heavy ionization coupled with a contracted upper layer other than drag on sattellites? Obviously you cant keep packing more and more ions/atoms into the same space before something bad happens.

Project722 says:
November 7, 2012 at 8:07 am
Obviously you cant keep packing more and more ions/atoms into the same space before something bad happens.
The F1 layer is at about 200 km height. For every 50 km you go up in the atmosphere, the density drops by a factor of a thousand, so the density 200 km up is 1000*1000*1000*1000 = 1,000,000,000,000 times smaller than at the surface so at that LOW density not much bad can happen.

Ed Zuiderwijk says:
November 7, 2012 at 8:44 am
What drives the climate? ’o sole, ’o sole mio, sta nfronte a te
Sun that gives all things birth
Shine on everything on earth!
If that’s too much to demand
Shine at least on this our land
If even that’s too much for thee
Shine at any rate on me
Piet Hein (Danish Poet, 1905-1996)

Resourceguy says:
November 7, 2012 at 9:43 am
So you are saying solar cycle predictions are done by committee? That’s dumb!
Well, not entirely dumb as there is input from ~12 experts http://www.lund.irf.se/helioshome/Cycle24PredictionPanelA.gif as well as from several external scientists. So there is debate and discussion and the problem can be examined from many sides.

Leif Svalgaard says:
November 7, 2012 at 9:44 am
Project722 says:
November 7, 2012 at 9:30 am
Thank you for the explanation Dr. So there’s plenty of wiggle room. That’s good to know. Any ideas though on what caused this “unaccounted” for shrinkage that we don’t normally see? Or what is causing this runaway ionization in the F1?
The model that is used to ‘account’ for the shrinking dates back to the 1970s and is in need of updating [but is ‘standard’ and so a bit sacrosanct]. Approaching solar max we would expect the ionization to increase.
True. I understand that. However if you look at the FoF1 plot data on the HAARP digisonde on their website and scale to yearly output you will see an uptick around 2006-2007 at minimum when we would expect ionization to be lower, then going forward by the year we see a gradual and rapid uptick. (Which I would say in OTHER cycles would be normal, but considering how our sun has been in a coma…) Going further back to before the previous maximum and comparing to present coming into current maximum we are very juiced up. IMO I don’t think we can chalk this up to a GCR contribution as we would have seen this in previous years and did not.

Project722 says:
November 7, 2012 at 10:08 am
But if you look at the FoF1 plot data from the HAARP digisonde and scale it back to a yearly output you will see an increase around 2006-2007 at minimum when we would expect it to be lower.
Just by eye-balling the summer values and plotting them together with the microwave flux and the sunspot number http://www.leif.org/research/foF1-F107-SSN.png I see nothing out of the ordinary.
Dennis Ray Wingo says:
November 7, 2012 at 10:33 am
There has been a definite contraction of the atmosphere and the expansion/contraction is extremely well correlated to the sunspot cycle.
Thanks for the update. So, there is nothing ‘unaccounted’ for. Some earlier papers I read on that were still using the old Jachia model and that one did not account well for the data. So, the myth of unaccounted for changes is just that: a myth.

Silver Ralph,
“While Dark Matter does contribute to gravity, does it react to gravity?”
That which we call the effect of gravity, is no more than curvature in space-time. Bodies are forced to travel in straight lines unless acted upon by a force (Newton) but space-time curvature means that the shortest distance is in fact a curved trajectory. A curved trajectory through space-time appears as an acceleration through space.
Another rule of thumb, is that bodies move unaided along trajectories such that their clocks show the greatest elapsed time. This results in an acceleration towards a centre of mass.
I would suggest that based on such fundamental properties as space-time curvature, and the effects of gravity on time, dark matter would indeed react to gravity, otherwise it would have the ability to move in and out of different dimensions, which we can’t even be sure exist (string theory not withstanding). Not impossible, but implausible.

Throwing a bone to the doomers … only 43 days until 12/20/2012! 🙂

vukcevic says:
November 7, 2012 at 12:20 pm
20.20GMT: sudden strong geomagnetic storm from nowhere
It is not from nowhere, but is related to the expected sector boundary crossing at that time: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ace/MAG_SWEPAM_7d.html

Can someone explain to me what the “dark count” measures and why it lies within the range of 40-48? It can be found on the SDO-EVE Diodes plot along with irradiance.

Project722 says:
November 7, 2012 at 2:34 pm
Can someone explain to me what the “dark count” measures and why it lies within the range of 40-48? It can be found on the SDO-EVE Diodes plot along with irradiance.
A measure of the noise in the system can be had by not letting sunlight into the detector and see what reading you get [the dark current].

Doug Proctor says:
November 7, 2012 at 6:14 pm
Leif Svalgaard says: November 6, 2012 at 10:53 am
Hmm. Pattern is more like precursor to Dalton than Maunder.
On what is that supposition based?
Is there any more reason than excitement to go all the way to Maunder?
If SC25 will be as low as 7 as we wildly speculate here http://www.leif.org/EOS/Penn-Liv-Sval-ApJ.pdf then we have a Maunder. This is, of course, speculative.

Larry Kirk says:
November 7, 2012 at 6:26 pm
why do you think that a Maunder Minimum in the sunspot count would not have any significant effect on the climate?
Simply because of the inconvenient and unpopular truth that the Sun has not varied enough: http://www.leif.org/research/Does%20The%20Sun%20Vary%20Enough.pdf

Project722 says:
November 7, 2012 at 6:53 pm
So why is this noise reading significant? What does the measure tell us? Does it correlate or correspond to other sun related activity?
I expressed that poorly. What I should have said is that any electronic measurement has a background level that is due to e.g. thermal noise in the detector. To get the real signal one must subtract that background. To measure the background level [the ‘dark current’] simply switch off the Sun [put the cover back on the instrument] and see what current you still see. This should not correlate with solar activity for a well-built instrument.

Project722 says:
November 7, 2012 at 7:14 pm
Still…what does the dark current tell us and why is it important?
Imagine you are to go on a flight to some distant place. There is a weight limit of 50 pounds for your suitcase. How do you check that it doesn’t weight too much? What I do is to take the suitcase with one hand and stand on the scale and note the combined weight of the suitcase and me. Then I let go of the suitcase and weight only me. Subtracting my weight from the combined weight of the suitcase and me, gives me the weight of the suitcase. My weight, that I subtract, is the ‘dark current’.

Project722 says:
November 7, 2012 at 7:14 pm
Still…what does the dark current tell us and why is it important?
I note that you called it the ‘dark count’. In my own work we measure a current so I used that word. If one is counting photons, ‘count’ would be better, of course. But to check, could you give me the exact URL where you found the ‘dark count’, so I can check that I’m not just making too many assumptions.

Resourceguy says:
November 7, 2012 at 7:17 pm
Okay if the cycle forecast is done by committee then how are the expert forecasts evaluated and compiled? Is it a central tendency range rule mean and how are the outliers handled?
We all sat around a large table and evaluated by talking about the forecasts presented. Everybody had to convince all the others that the arguments were sound and the forecast good and point out weaknesses and error bounds. Outliers are beaten into the ground :-). At the first meeting we did not reach a unanimous decision so had to announce that the panel was split. At a later meeting [after much more work] we decided to accept the majority opinion. In a sense, you may say that each expert was peer-reviewed by 11 others. This is a much higher level of review than in normal peer-review of a paper for a Journal. We try to agree on a common number, and did not just average all the forecasts under discussion. In spite of all our effort, I think that we agreed on a number that is a bit too high. I raised that issue at our last meeting, but did not found a fertile ground for that opinion, so let the issue slide.

Project722 says:
November 7, 2012 at 7:58 pm
Sure, http://solarimg.org/artis/
From the description of the instrument: http://www.usc.edu/dept/space_science/publications/PDFs/spie6689_21_5.pdf
“The ESP configuration is shown in Figure 1. ESP has a filter wheel in front of the entrance aperture with three redundant Al filters, a visible light (fused silica) filter, and a dark filter. Each thin-film Al filter rejects the visible light while transmitting EUV radiation to the diffraction grating. The fused silica filter may be used to determine the amount of visible light that may reach the EUV channels as a scattered light and its signal should be subtracted from the EUV measurements. The dark filter is to measure each channel’s dark (background) current.”
So my explanation was basically correct, except for this:
“High-energy Solar Energetic Particles (SEP) (more than 40 MeV) can penetrate the ESP housing and opto-mechanical components and deposit some energy in the detectors thus adding particle related signal to the EUV signal. ESP’s dark channel may be used as a proxy for the SEP related signal, which may be subtracted from the EUV channel.”.
The dark current is contaminated by Solar Energetic Particles that leak into the instrument, so the dark count DOES depend on solar activity.

I post this here as a precautionary tale for those seeking patterns in assorted solar, magnetic, and climate-related indexes, searching for matches in timing and possible linkages.
I was playing with the UAH LT data at WoodForTrees. Besides the usual 13-mo (1 yr + 1 mo) smoothing (running centered average), I wanted to see how it looked with longer smoothing periods. Here is 1+1, 5+1, 10+1, and 15+1:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/mean:13/plot/uah/mean:61/plot/uah/mean:121/plot/uah/mean:181
Find the patterns. Identify the points you will match up with other indexes to confirm the timing.
Be careful with noisy data. Question if the sampling rate is high enough to capture the detail you want without distortion.
And be wary as some systems being measured come with built-in smoothing. Your pattern matching attempts may be doomed from the start. Try to smooth your other data to match, and as witnessed with that graph, you may just end up chasing non-existent artifacts.

Ray Tomes says:
November 7, 2012 at 9:14 pm
However I note that long cycles of 208 years and others show up very clearly in solar proxies such as C14 and Be10 as well as in climate.
Longer periods show up intermittently, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Production-of-14C.png
The ‘very clearly’ is not so clear.
Is it possible that these changes are not due to TSI but rather to small amounts of high energy events which we do know vary by very large percentages.
The variations in TSI [before 1978] are really determined from cosmic ray proxies, so TSI as such is not the issue. These ‘small amounts of high energy events’ should then also not show up in cosmic ray proxies..
We know that high energy particles affect cloud cover
No, we don’t KNOW that. We know that they produce ionization [which Wilson got the Nobel prize for in 1927], but we don’t know if that is efficient enough to actually produce clouds. Careful modeling suggests that it is not.

vukcevic says:
November 7, 2012 at 11:34 pm
Some propose hypothesis – useful
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.

Just a brief comment as an observer of this discussion. Still being in kindergarten as far as the principles of physics etc. involved in the scientific determination of these matters, I am forced by default to pay close attention to the modes of argument. This is a tip for Dr. Leif S., for what it is worth: You will be much more convincing if you stop being so darned condescending and, all too frequently, insulting towards, those like Vukevic who are practicing methodologies you don’t respect. I think everyone gets the point that you don’t respect them. You don’t need to beat that dead horse. It only produces sympathy for your critics and weakens the ethos of your own arguments. Citing stuff like Dunning-Kruger doesn’t help either. Everyone knows that experts, historically speaking, have very often been wrong.

Ray Tomes says:
November 7, 2012 at 9:14 pm
Leif Svalgaard, on page 15 of your PDF quoted above you state that large variations of TSI are doubtful, 11 year cycle has 0.1% variation, and longer periods not yet detectable. However I note that long cycles of 208 years and others show up very clearly in solar proxies such as C14 and Be10 as well as in climate. Is it possible that these changes are not due to TSI but rather to small amounts of high energy events which we do know vary by very large percentages….
__________________________________
You might want to look at Dr. Feyman’s work on the correlation of Nile River records and Aurora records.
http://www.agu.org/journals/abs/2006/2006JD007462.shtml
and the pdf:
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/lookingatearth/1/06-1989.pdf
And here is another paper.
Late Holocene forcing of the Asian winter and summer monsoon as evidenced
by proxy records from the northern Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau
[you will have to search for the title since the link contains chinese charaters]

a b s t r a c t
Little is known about decadal- to centennial-scale climate variability and its associated forcing mechanisms on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau. A decadal-resolution record of total organic carbon (TOC) and grainsize retrieved from a composite piston core from Kusai Lake, NW China, provides solid evidence for decadal- to centennial-scale Asian monsoon variability for the Northern Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau during the last 3770 yr.
Intensified winter and summer monsoons are well correlated with respective reductions and increases in solar irradiance. A number of intensified Asian winter monsoon phases are potentially correlated with North Atlantic climatic variations including Bond events 0 to 2 and more recent subtle climate changes from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age. Our findings indicate that Asian monsoon changes during the late Holocene are forced by changes in both solar output and oceanic–atmospheric circulation patterns. Our results demonstrate that these forcing mechanisms operate not only in low latitudes but also in mid-latitude regions (the Northern Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau).

And the U.S. Geological Survey paper: Variations of Solar Activity Affect Regional Hydro-climate So there are your correlations of climate rainfall patterns to solar irradiance.

…The historic records of the geomagnetic index aa and 36 month moving averages of Mississippi River streamflow are compared in the following graph….
The mechanism responsible for the linkage is thought to involve five important processes:
* Variable solar activity causes variation in total solar irradiance (energy) that reaches the top of the Earth’s atmosphere.
* Variable solar activity controls the flux of galactic cosmic rays which may affect the formation of low-level clouds that control atmospheric albedo (reflectance).
* Variations in total solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface are amplified by changes in atmospheric albedo;
* The variable solar energy is absorbed by tropical oceans creating large pools with different amounts of stored energy;
* Pools of ocean water with varying amounts of stored energy are transported by major ocean currents (Ocean Conveyor Belt) to other global locations where;
* Differential evaporation rates from oceanic areas alter global atmospheric pressure patterns (i.e., jetstream position and associated atmospheric vorticity);
These patterns dictate regional precipitation and temperature distribution and, consequently, the regional hydrology.
This mechanism is outlined in two papers (Perry, 2006) and (Perry, 2007)….

And yes Dr. S I know correlation does not mean causation. However we also know the ocean, which is 70% of the surface area of the earth, is penetrated by and absorbs the higher wavelengths of the sun’s spectrum. Graph 1 and Graph 2 Water is also the main absorber of the sunlight in the atmosphere Graph 3 (Allegedly water in the atmosphere is responsible for about 70% of all atmospheric absorption of radiation.) Also data shows the global relative humidity from 1948 to 2008 has decreased Graph 4 as has the Albedo.
We know that TSI over the short term does not vary much Graph 5. However that is TOTAL solar insolation and NASA has discovered that the mix of wavelengths that makes up that total does vary a lot more than the total. NASA link 1 and link 2 An article in Nature link and a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Space Physics
Oh, and the Central Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences at Pulkovo has this graph of TSI link
As far as I can tell the jury is still out and the sun/earth’s climate links are complicated so the correlations are murky and not straight forward.

Leif Svalgaard says:
November 6, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Jim G says:
November 6, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Perhaps it is digesting (or puking up) some of that Dark Matter that you indicated is theorized to be hiding inside the sun since none can be found anywhere in our local vicinity?
“Dark Matter is not black or ‘dark’, but rather ‘invisible’, i.e. does not interact with electromagnetic radiation [i.e. light].”
I know the theory, but unlike some, only accept it as that, a theory, which is, by the way, much too convenient an answer as to why observations do not fit the present theory of relativity. Now that a great deal of new information is coming re type 1A supernova light, the cosmological constant, etc. and is causing respected cosmologists and astromomers to believe that the universe may well be infinite in size (see Berman’s Universe, Astronomy Magazine last month’s issue) there will be more questioning of the Big Bang, Dark Matter, the microwave background source, and consensus science in general. Theories can, after all, be improved upon, if one thinks outside of the box, and does not worry so much about consensus.

Jim G says:
November 8, 2012 at 9:25 am
a theory, which is, by the way, much too convenient an answer as to why observations do not fit the present theory of relativity
Observations fit very well. There are no known exceptions to General Relativity. It is, in fact, precisely GR that shows us that DM exists, by gravitational lensing.

Leif Svalgaard says (November 7, 2012 at 9:31 pm):
(Regarding clear 208 year period suggested by Tomes)
Leif: Longer periods show up intermittently, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Production-of-14C.png The ‘very clearly’ is not so clear.
Ray: Perhaps I should not have put “very”, but the 208 year cycle is significant. You can see the spectrum and the 208 year cycle filtered from Be10 and C14 records on my pages at http://cyclesresearchinstitute.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/analysis-of-be10-records-as-a-solar-irradiance-proxy/ and http://cyclesresearchinstitute.wordpress.com/2010/06/27/cycles-in-sunspot-number-reconstruction-for-11000-years/ and the result is somewhat similar to your graph at the 208 year level.
Is it possible that these changes are not due to TSI but rather to small amounts of high energy events which we do know vary by very large percentages.
Leif: The variations in TSI [before 1978] are really determined from cosmic ray proxies, so TSI as such is not the issue. These ‘small amounts of high energy events’ should then also not show up in cosmic ray proxies.
Ray: I don’t quite understand what you are saying here. I don’t see why high energy events should not show up in cosmic ray proxies. I am suggesting that TSI is perhaps the wrong place to look for changes in Earth’s climate as it has rather small variations. But in other energy ranges the solar fluctuations have huge percentage ranges, even multiple orders of magnitude on time scales of minutes. These look to me like potential solutions to how the Sun can affect the Earth. Do you agree that this is better possibility than FSI?
Ray: We know that high energy particles affect cloud cover
Leif: No, we don’t KNOW that. We know that they produce ionization [which Wilson got the Nobel prize for in 1927], but we don’t know if that is efficient enough to actually produce clouds. Careful modeling suggests that it is not.
Ray: This is at least an open debate isn’t it?

So, being a comon person and after having reading all the above. The sunspot count is uncertian as compared to the distant past and also it has nothing to do with the temp. of the earth. Is this correct?

From Ray Tomes on November 8, 2012 at 1:28 pm:
Ray: Perhaps I should not have put “very”, but the 208 year cycle is significant. You can see the spectrum and the 208 year cycle filtered from Be10 and C14 records on my pages at…
Heh. I Googled for Be-10 data and found a 2009 WUWT post by David Archibald arising from an argument with Leif.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/17/beryllium-10-and-climate/
Leif Svalgaard said then:

It is a common human frailty that when one believes strongly in a cause [AGW or more rabidly Anti-AGW] a certain blindness or perhaps expressed better – selective vision, sets in and drives people to less than candid use of Figures and Data. So it is with this post.
The use of 10Be and 14C proxies is fraught with pitfalls. The production rate may be set by solar activity [the current paradigm says the Heliomagnetic Field. HMF], but the deposition rate in the ice and wood depends on terrestrial factors, climate, geomagnetic field, and volcanic eruptions [as 10Be attaches to aerosols]. Beer and McCracken have in two recent papers [see references in links below] attempted to reconstruct the ‘equivalent’ Climax Neutron Monitor count from the 10Be data and from that the driving HMF.
We have looked carefully at their reconstruction and are in the process of submitting a paper addressing serious issues we see with their result. a preliminary report was presented at last year’s SORCE meeting in Santa Fe: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI%20From%20McCracken%20HMF.pdf with some background information in http://www.leif.org/research/Consensus-I.pdf
(…)

Perhaps you should review the old argument about Be-10 and C-14 records there before launching a new one here.
Perhaps Leif has an update to the issue as well.

It seems Beer, McCracken AND Steinhilber are in opposition with Leif on two fronts.
1. The solar proxy record and its amplitude.
2. Solar output is governed by planetary influence.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/?q=node/290

Steven Mosher says (November 8, 2012 at 2:55 pm):
Steven: … That means.
1. Other factors besides the sun are required to explain the wiggles.
2. Other sun factors are required to explain the wiggles.
For option one we have climate science ( and yes GHGs ) decades of research and results. Its clearly not complete but its the best science we have. Best means it explains the most phenomena as well as can be expected. Not perfect, a work in progress with many gaps of knowledge to be explored.
For option 2? well you got graphs of data with unexplained lines drawn on them. You have speculations about correlations between some aspect of the sun and some limited phenomena of the climate. hey look, you give me any signal from any solar characteristic and I will connect it to the climate.. some river, some rainfall, the pile of things you could sort through looking for a correlation is so vast that it would be shocking if you didnt find “correlations”.
Does that mean 2 is wrong? of course not. Its not even well formulated enough to be wrong.
Something in the sun dunnit. ya leprachuans.
Ray: I look at things from a cycles perspective because I find that it exposes new understanding. When very long term data is available, the need for Leprechauns is greatly diminished because statistics give us bounds within which correlation should fall. I would say that as far as 1 goes, there can be natural oscillations of Earth’s climate system including ocean movements etc. Regarding 2, there are heaps of other solar measurements than just TSI. They often have their own peculiar fluctuations, but nearly always cycles are present. Cycles are a great method to work out cause and effect chains because, like fingerprints, they leave their mark as a set of frequencies. Provided of course that you have enough data to measure the frequencies accurately. then the Leprechauns are not needed.
As a cycles researcher, I am amazed to see how little people notice even really strong cycles in solar data. x-ray data shows changes of several orders of magnitude, often with cycles of 160 minutes. Kotov, a Russian astronomer, has written much on this cycle in the Sun, the solar system, in binary stars and even in other galaxies. Only cycles researchers come to see to what extent certain cycles periods pervade the entire observable universe. Just saying, widening perspective can be a good thing.

From Geoff Sharp on November 8, 2012 at 3:40 pm:
It seems Beer, McCracken AND Steinhilber are in opposition with Leif on two fronts.
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
– Marcus Aurelius

Leif, how does the sun cool the Earth?
It’s and honest question. You can also explain how the sun warms the planet, that would otherwise be a frozen ball.
Also, another, unrelated question I have. Why is Neptune a cold and windy planet.

From Ray Tomes on November 8, 2012 at 5:40 pm:
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says in a very long-winded innuendo-filled way…
In only 13 words.
I have many volumes of cycles analysis work done by Edward Dewey.
Indeed. When I Googled “edward dewey” your Dewey page on your site was result #3, with #1 being Wikipedia and #2 being the Resident Evil character of that name. Quite an accomplishment.
You do not see the problem. You are enamored with a man who saw cycles everywhere. You want to see cycles everywhere. Cycles are deterministic, they provide order and structure. Predictability.
But reality is chaotic, there is essential randomness. Essential. Reality is not fully predictable. You cannot describe everything with cycles. Dewey was wrong. And as you seek to emulate Dewey, you are also wrong.

Geoff Sharp said something.
I’m going to tell Geoff to get his fu*n act together.

Neptune is cold an windy.

David Archibald says:
November 8, 2012 at 8:54 pm
Geoff that is a fabulous paper. Full of goodies including:
Yes, was amazed when I learned of the authors involved. But not too many are discussing it here?

Sparks says:
November 8, 2012 at 10:10 pm
Leif, how does the sun warm the Earth?
By supplying an almost constant stream of photons each with a certain amount of energy. The Earth reflects some the photons back into space, but 70% get through and are absorbed by [mainly] the surface thus warming it. Now, you may have meant the atmosphere of the Earth. In that case the heat from the surface is [mainly] conducted and convected aloft.

Leif, So the sun can cool our Earth by not supplying an almost constant stream of photons each with a certain amount of energy. Interesting.

Leif, going by how the cycles & connections crowd looks at things, perhaps the “how does the sun cool” is related to this bit from that link:
Nature of the solar wind during Grand Minima. Both Parker and Eddy suggested that the solar wind might have been of “gale force” in all directions during the Maunder Minimum.
Maunder Minimum, solar wind, Little Ice Age. Throw in a few graphs from Vuk showing the strong correlation and it’s obvious the Sun can cool. Etc.
Thanks for the link. Been awhile since my Physics Bach., never really used it. I don’t recognize the participants and the exact theories they propound. But it was a good read for the science, and my absorption and retention rates are increasing.
Self-study may be slow, but as opposed to my college experience I am learning, and not just where to find what info in which textbook.

Kadata says:
You do not see the problem. You are enamored with a man who saw cycles everywhere. You want to see cycles everywhere. Cycles are deterministic, they provide order and structure. Predictability.
Did you at least look at http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/dewey/case_for_cycles.pdf ?
Did you read about Dewey’s consultation with Feynman regarding interpretation of cycles?
If not, then you have a close and prejudiced mind.
Dewey and I see cycles everywhere because they are everywhere. This is attested to by proper statistical procedures and proven to work by the ability to make forecasts. Using multiple cycles allows the best predictions of sunspot numbers and global temperatures.
But do not presume to know my needs and motives.

Ray Tomes says:
November 9, 2012 at 12:36 am
Are you referring to just the last few hundred years of instrumental records of SSNs? Because solar proxies (both C14 and Be10) show the 208 year cycle for about 10,000 years. That hardly should be classified as an artifact.

Hi Ray, I was referring to the Holocene record. Email me one day and we will discuss.

vukcevic says:
November 9, 2012 at 12:15 am
Of course, we (including Dr.S) know that planets affect solar cycles. What otherwise would be random outbursts of magnetic activity, feeds into Jupiter’s powerful and huge magnetosphere that extends beyond Saturn, with which it regularly merges with, and from the chaos there is order governing the solar magnetic field
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
However randomness is not totally eradicated and is reflected to a minor degree in variability of cycle length and amplitude.
Of far more consequence is how this affects the Earth and its climate. Having solid crust, liquid outer core and solid inner core, due to internal differential rotation, a ripple arises in its liquid core where its magnetic filed is generated. The rest is here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EarthNV.htm
I find your comments interesting. It would make sense that during a cycle of low polar magnetic strength and umbral field strength fading, that there would have to be another electromagnetic driver that influences the sun. I’m curious, are you partial to the electric universe model?
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 9, 2012 at 5:44 am
vukcevic says:
November 9, 2012 at 12:15 am
Of course, we (including Dr.S) know that planets affect solar cycles. What otherwise would be random outbursts of magnetic activity, feeds into Jupiter’s powerful and huge magnetosphere
As usual you are violating the laws of physics. The solar wind is supersonic and disturbances do not travel upstream towards the Sun, but as usual you refuse to learn.
With all due respect Dr. I believe you are making false assumptions. I believe many planets are magnetically tethered to the Sun and work outside of the space-time continuum. We have even confirmed the existence of magnetic portals and flux ropes from our own planet that have direct connections to the Sun that work independently of the IMF. What can be inferred from this is that if there is a magnetic field present, there is electric current and influence would be bi-directional.

Geoff Sharp says:
November 8, 2012 at 11:03 pm
Solar torque and AM are very closely related
Not at all. The torque is gravitational and has nothing to do with AM of the planet.

Leif Svalgaard says:
November 9, 2012 at 6:42 am
project722 says:
November 9, 2012 at 6:08 am
We have even confirmed the existence of magnetic portals and flux ropes from our own planet that have direct connections to the Sun that work independently of the IMF. What can be inferred from this is that if there is a magnetic field present, there is electric current and influence would be bi-directional.
No. the flux ropes are from the Sun and are part of the IMF. The solar wind plasma which is electrically neutral drags the frozen-in magnetic field with it from the Sun and impacts the Earth and planets. Very high-energy electrons from solar flares are not frozen-in and bounce freely back and forth between the foot-points of the flux ropes. Since the go in both directions they do not constitute a current, and their density is very low having no effect on anything.
Are you using the terms flux ropes and portals interchangeably? It is my understanding that flux ropes and portals are of different origins. The portals are a result of the reconnection process (X points) and open/close many times a day.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/mag-portals.html
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/11dec_themis/

Ray Tomes says:
November 9, 2012 at 12:36 am
Because solar proxies (both C14 and Be10) show the 208 year cycle for about 10,000 years.
No, they show that sometimes there are hints of a 200-yr cycle, but most of the time there are not.

Leif Svalgaard says:
November 9, 2012 at 8:31 am
project722 says:
November 9, 2012 at 8:19 am
Are you using the terms flux ropes and portals interchangeably? It is my understanding that flux ropes and portals are of different origins. The portals are a result of the reconnection process (X points) and open/close many times a day.
There are no such thing as ‘portals’. The portals is a dumbing-down term used in press releases. What happens is that when a small parcel of solar wind impacts the magnetosphere, the magnetic field in the parcel can easily connect with the Earth’s field if its direction is just right. As the solar wind is extremely variable, there are always some parcels somewhere on the boundary between the solar wind and the magnetosphere where the field directions are suitable for reconnection. The more of such parcels, the more reconnection do you get. This is a purely local process taking place at the Earth and does not feed back to the Sun. It is like water flowing over a waterfall not influencing the river 100 miles upstream from the fall.
So what is NASA showing us on the ISWA website with the Earth Sun magnetic field line/footprint connectivity cygnet? The flux ropes?

vukcevic says:
November 9, 2012 at 9:40 am
It is possible that most of energy is carried by the magnetic field, which is occasionally short-circuited by planetary magnetospheres (reconnection), when energy is released, and the magnetic loop interrupted. and since it is a close magnetic circuit, the interruption will be registered ad the source (solar surface) hence a planetary magnetic feedback.
An electric engineer should know that this is nonsense. There are no ‘magnetic circuits’ to be short-circuited. Any change in the magnetic configuration is carried downstream [away from the Sun] at ten times the speed by which magnetic changes can propagate upstream [the Alfven speed]. Your learning disability shows itself again. Dunning-Kruger were right.

vukcevic says:
November 9, 2012 at 9:40 am
carry a total axial current (IT ) of about a billion amps.
A single small sunspot the size of the Earth across carries a current of the order of 1000 billion amps.

Jim G says:
November 9, 2012 at 10:24 am
Since the theoretical dark matter is by definition dark, the only thing that can actually be seen is the supposed gravitational effects of the supposed dark matter which cause movement. The mass and location of the supposed dark matter are then inferred by those supposed gravitational effects.
That is how the supposed planet Neptune was detected in 1846.

Leif Svalgaard says:
November 9, 2012 at 9:23 am
project722 says:
November 9, 2012 at 9:17 am
So what is NASA showing us on the ISWA website
Give the full URL, please
http://iswa.ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/IswaSystemWebApp/
This should take you the the list of available cygnets. Go to page 10 under the solar tab, select the 1st or second on the left called “Earth-Sun Connectivity”. Hover over the image to get a description of what the cygnet does. In short this shows our magnetic footprint on the Sun. If you look currently our magnetic footprint is on the backside of the Sun.
Then on the same page to the right you will see another cygnet called “Earth Magnetic Connectivity WSA ENLIL Gong.” Hover over image for description. This shows you field lines that Earth has and what their current location is on the Suns corona where its originating.
I believe these 2 cygnets are supposed to work in conjunction, according to their description. And if you are correct these may be the flux ropes we have been talking about.

vukcevic says:
November 9, 2012 at 11:47 am
Magnetic clouds are only present in a subset of observed interplanetary coronal mass ejections.
So are rare and have even less effect
No need for magic, here is simple analogy: an ordinary magnetic needle of a compass has magnetic loops that are rooted at both of its ends, do a simple test by interrupting the magnetic field loops by a piece of iron and observe the ‘feedback’
Try that in a plasma. The analogy fails because the solar wind/magnetic cloud is not a vacuum [or non-conductor like air]. Alfven showed that in 1942 and got a Nobel prize for it.
Although only a small amount of energy is involved at any time, effect is cumulative increasing CMEs’ frequency and strength.
First of all, you can’t get it back to the sun. Second, as the sunspot dies there is no cumulative effect.
Heard of platoon of soldiers marching on a bridge?
It is more like an ant on the bridge.
But, again, you refuse to learn. Don’t be such a bad example to your children.

Leif Svalgaard says:
November 9, 2012 at 12:10 pm
“Educate yourself a bit about gravitational effects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens”
You obviously did not read completely and/or completely understand what I wrote. If you are going refer folks to a site on the subject, wikipedia is notoriously poor, as anyone can edit it. Here is one, of many others, you might consider http://astro.berkeley.edu/~jcohn/lens.html.

Leif Svalgaard says (November 9, 2012 at 8:34 am):
Ray Tomes says:
Because solar proxies (both C14 and Be10) show the 208 year cycle for about 10,000 years.
Leif: No, they show that sometimes there are hints of a 200-yr cycle, but most of the time there are not.
Actually, the analysis of the entire records show a significant cycle throughout. For Be10 the significance is p<0.0002 and for C14 there are two peaks with significance of p of 0.05 and 0.02. These are according to Bartels test which looks for common phase and amplitude of the cycle on each cycle period occurrence. At these levels the test is failed that the phase and amplitude are random scatter about zero. In Be10 we can say that this is surely a real cycle.
The two significant components for C14 does explain why your chart shows the cycle appears as present sometimes only, and that is because of the beats between these components. This is no different than saying that Sodium emits in the yellow part of the spectrum. Further analysis shows two lines in the spectrum so Sodium's yellow is not there much of the time.
In general all cycles show modulation. This is to be expected when you think about it, because there are always other forces at work than the simple oscillation. I have found that often the modulation period is matched to other known cycles. In this case the C14 modulation period is close to the 2300 year reported cycle in many related phenomena. Because only about 4 cycles of that longer cycle are present we cannot be definitive about that conclusion.

Ray Tomes says:
November 9, 2012 at 12:49 pm
I have found that often the modulation period is matched to other known cycles.
Clearly, cyclomania cannot be rationally discussed as it seems to be an article of faith for believers.

Leif Svalgaard says:
November 9, 2012 at 1:19 pm
There are many other peaks and people find them correlated with planets, climate, and whatnot.
A good way to see how stationary the patter is, is to split that data into subsets and see how the peaks fare: http://www.leif.org/research/10Be-FFT-Subsets.png
Now the peaks don’t look too hot [to me at least]. You can do other subsets or a sliding window subset scheme, etc, and people do this and find all kinds of fascinating things. None of which is compelling.

From Ray Tomes on November 9, 2012 at 12:32 am:

Did you at least look at http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/dewey/case_for_cycles.pdf ?
Did you read about Dewey’s consultation with Feynman regarding interpretation of cycles?
If not, then you have a close and prejudiced mind.