Have we hit solar max?
NOAA’s SWPC recently updated their solar metrics graphs, and it seems to me like we may have topped out for solar cycle 24. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence of resurgence in any of the three metrics. Granted one month does not a cycle make, but it has been over a year now since the peak of about 95 SSN in October 2011, and there has been nothing similar since. Unlike the big swings of last solar max around 2000-2001, there’s very little variance in the signals of the present, demonstrating that the volatility expected during solar max just isn’t there.
It has been 7 years since the regime shift was observed in the Solar Geomagnetic Index (Ap) in October 2005, and the sun seems to be in a generally quiet magnetic period since then with no hint of the volatility of the past cycle.
UPDATE: Another indicator that we are at solar max is that the polar magnetic fields are about to flip, as tracked in this graphic from Dr. Leif Svalgaard. Click image to enlarge:
![WSO-Polar-Fields-since-2003[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/wso-polar-fields-since-20031.png?quality=75)
Brrrr is all that comes to mind.
Very soon Climate Scientists find out that is’s the Sun STUPID. Many AGW believers including Leif are in wery embarracing situation. In next 10 years that 0,8 degrees celsius Global Warming are gone and they start saying, that CO2 makes iceage to us.
BTV 10 days sunspot avg app. 34
OK – so, as many have suspected, a Little Ice Age is on the cards – where is Plan B?
Not to panic. It is approaching SC24 max, Polar field dipole appears to have change the sign
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC6.htm
F10.7 and sunspot count on Lief.org site graph shows nine clear 27 day cycles in a row. Perhaps this has been there in past solar max but hidden, perhaps not, but it is odd how the sun can have a peak of activity on one spot, and it seems to be continuing (seen as it rotates to face us. Correlation to the quiet sun?
It has been 7 years since the regime shift was observed in the Solar Geomagnetic Index (Ap) in October 2005, and the sun seems to be in a generally quiet magnetic period since then with no hint of the volatility of the past cycle.
The October 2005 ‘step’ is spurious. In general the ‘volatility’ scales with the overall level, so a lower level also means lower ‘volatility’. No mystery.
REPLY: I know you keep saying that, due to the circumstances, but I don’t believe it to be spurious at all, and the graph shows that the overall level and volatility never recovered after that date. There’s some software that I can run to detect a regime shift, so I think I’ll do that and make a future post to settle the issue. Your point about the scaling of volatility is well taken though – Anthony
JM VanWinkle says:
December 10, 2012 at 11:18 am
F10.7 and sunspot count on Lief.org site graph shows nine clear 27 day cycles in a row.
Such has been noticed many times in the past. Known as ‘active longitudes’. Quite normal.
@JM VanWinkle
I have observed & wondered about this cyclicity.
Lief, could you comment on this cyclicity & what (if anything) it tells us?
Thanks!
I suspect the Dr. Svalgaard would agree with you. (About Solar Max) The sun’s magnetic poles are in the process of flipping now:
See here: http://www.leif.org/research/WSO-Polar-Fields-since-2003.png
and here: http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Polar-Fields-1966-now.png
In the past, the poles have flipped within a year of solar max.
Very soon Climate Scientists find out that is’s the Sun STUPID
Not apparently.
On the J.C’s Climate etc blog, for few days now the AGU’s presentation by Dr. V. Pratt has provoked lively discussion, since he apparently has matched global temperatures to the CO2 curve to a miliKelvin.
I made few posts, since he apparently has a standby hypotesis that the rest comes from the Earth’s core (no details except something incoherent about sawtoot oscillations).
Surprise, surprise, you may heard some more detailed stuff of that kind from someone called ‘vukcevic’: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EarthNV.htm
To shorten the story, our own Dr. S. made a very, very rare appearance, only to declare Vuk is wrong (nothing new there), but I managed to get something far more interesting:
Vuk: I presume you have by now dissected Dr. Pratt’s analysis
Dr. S: He needs to make an experiment that I suggested to him at AGU. Then we’ll see
Vuk: Don’t be so mysterious, we want to know, don’t we? What is the experiment?
Dr.S. Apply his filters to the sunspot number and to the heliospheric magnetic field
Something odd with the Stanford’s miliKelvin’s, now that is interesting, perhaps Dr.S may be persuaded to tell a bit more to his WUWT audience.
Anyway you choose, thanks Doc.
For any of you who operated the 10 meter ham contest this past weekend, it was almost like the bottom of the cycle conditions! The MUF was below 28 MHz on most east-west paths. I particilarly enjoy working aurora on 144 MHz. Aurora. What’s that? Since October, 2005, with the Solar Geomagnetic Index bottom fishing, there’s been almost no 144 MHz aurora here. I agree with Anthony that the cycle probably peaked out a year ago. Looks like we have an opportunity for the age of science to experience a grand minimum. That will be interesting. BTW, one of my routes to climate science was writing articles about the following topics- space weather and short wave propagation; troposphere and VHF propagation.
73,
Doug
Is there any voice anywhere that can be heard that can sound the alarm to all the world, LITTLE ICE AGE is coming? Shouldn’t the whole world stand in awe of descent into little ice age? Is Bastardi the loudest voice? What will we call the decades of Solar Slump and Global Cooling? Landscheidt Minimum, in the tradition of the Maunder and Dalton minima? If his paper is confirmed with eventual Maunder minimum character with deep minimum in 2022, when will it be time for the world to declare a new Grand Minimum?
lsvalgaard says:
December 10, 2012 at 11:24 am
REPLY: I know you keep saying that, due to the circumstances, but I don’t believe it to be spurious at all, and the graph shows that the overall level and volatility never recovered after that date.
People believe all kinds of weird things. The overall level and thus volatility have not ‘recovered’ because cycle 24 is a much weaker cycle.
The seeming drop in October is due to some ‘last gasp’ strong storms in September, 2005 http://hirweb.nict.go.jp/sedoss/solact3/do?d=2005%2C09%2C01
combined with the fact that geomagnetic activity naturally declines as one goes from the equinox towards a solstice [happens every year]. Here are the variation of several solar/wind/activity indeces from 2000 to the present: http://www.leif.org/reseach/Oct-2005-event.png nothing unsual about October 2005, just the usual decline of solar activity.
http://www.leif.org/research/Oct-2005-event.png
JM VanWinkle says:
December 10, 2012 at 11:18 am
F10.7 and sunspot count on Lief.org site graph shows nine clear 27 day cycles in a row.
….
This effect was discovered by Dr. Svalgaard and J. Wilcox in the 1970’s
http://www.leif.org/research/Long-term%20Evolution%20of%20Solar%20Sector%20Structure.pdf
I did a simple polar graph with the more recent data:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC7.htm
Leif, I am not surprised that the 27 day cycle has been noted, it quite stares out a us, but is there a guess as to the cause. Also it seems to be quite pronounced at this point. Thanks for the response and thanks for the lovely graphs, I check them often. Furthermore, thanks for sharing your understandings. Best regards.
Cycle 23 had a Bactrian camel top (double humped) near maximum in both the Sunspot Number and in the 10.7 cm Radio Flux. Is it still possible or likely that this current cycle 24 will do a Bactrian Camel shape near maximum?
John
vukcevic says:
December 10, 2012 at 11:50 am
To shorten the story, our own Dr. S. made a very, very rare appearance, only to declare Vuk is wrong (nothing new there)
It is actually worse than we thought. Vuk is not even wrong, as nonsense cannot carry a clear distinction between wrong and correct. As for anybody claiming to find solar ‘cycles’ in non-solar data, a prerequisite for such cycles to be valid would certainly be that they are present on the Sun too.
vukcevic says:
December 10, 2012 at 12:00 pm
This effect was discovered by Dr. Svalgaard and J. Wilcox in the 1970’s
although what we were discussing was consistent with the effect, the ‘active longitudes’ were actually discovered by Maunder and Chree a century ago.
JM VanWinkle says:
December 10, 2012 at 12:01 pm
Leif, I am not surprised that the 27 day cycle has been noted, it quite stares out a us, but is there a guess as to the cause
Several proposed causes, but none generally accepted:
‘dynamo waves’, ‘fossil asymmetric field in the core’, ‘banana rolls in the circulation’, and more.
Yes Anthony but what does the polar “flip” MEAN to we dumbclucks? Be honest; should I be investing in tins of baked beans? Now if I was to suggest that the flip will take place on 21st December … Just what was it the Mayans were predicting would happen on that date?
MonktonofOz says:
December 10, 2012 at 12:26 pm
Yes Anthony but what does the polar “flip” MEAN to we dumbclucks?
The reversal of the solar polar fields is part of a regular and normal process: the polar fields are dragged down into the sun’s interior [by circulations] and there amplified to create the fields that give rise to sunspots. When sunspots die, part of their magnetic fields migrates towards to the polar and reverses the old polar fields, building a new one with reverse polarity, and the whole process repeats, the sunspots now having opposite polarities of the previous cycle and so on. Here a paper on reversals: http://www.leif.org/research/ApJ88587.pdf
Whilst I concur that this is likely to be a very weak cycle there are some very good reasons to doubt that we are yet at solar max.
Sunspot cycles often have several “maxima”, judging one during an on-going cycle could prove a tad embarassing especially with low amplitude cycles, which are renound for several “maxima” over an extended period. The maximum in October 2011 was mostly due to activity on the northern hemisphere. Subsequently the activity here has waned with the southern hemisphere becoming more active. The lattitude at which sunspot groups appear in the northern hemisphere seem to be somehwat closer to the equator than those in the southern hemisphere, perhaps related to the activity mentioned above. However the average latitude at which the sunspot groups appear, is par for the course Which would also suggest a while to go to sunspot max,
Observational data also suggests that weak cycles have a prolonged rise to solar max from minimum; a rapid ascent, such as would be suggested by a maximum in 2009 would be more normally asociated with a very short but active cycle.
Then again the sun has fooled quite a few people recently.
ANYTHING that happens on December 21st will be predicted by the Mayans!