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)
Just under 10 years ago (in the early 2003, published Jan 2004, no accepted physics buck up) I wrote a solar activity formula which suggested downturn in the solar activity, at the time when everyone was predicting the highest ever SSN.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN.htm
Now I am going to contradict some of the current predictions.
Recently I developed a way of calculating relationship between the solar activity and N. Hemisphere temperatures trends (again with no accepted physics buck up):
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
What does its extrapolation say about future?
There are two critical factors:
Solar magnetic output closely related to the SSN, and multi-decadal ripple on the Earths magnetic field.
When two signals are in phase the 9-10 year cycles, as found in the AMO, goes positive, when out of phase it’s reverse. In addition there is a build up or decay of 60-ish year cycle from the same process. There is 15 year delay to whole affair (we are still benefiting from high-ish SC23.
If SSN is low in the next 2-3 decades, solar output end will not produce any significant warming or importantly any major cooling either. However a strong SSN with the wrong phase could produce significant cooling, as the high SC19 did around 1970.
The Earth’s signal is much more of a mystery, Data was worked out around 2000 by Andy Jackson (ETHZ) and Jeremy Bloxham (Harvard), but only going back to 1880.
I am not able to deduce if this is a more less regular oscillation or somehow linked to some other factors.
Assuming that variability is of constant amplitude (as it was applied in calculating waveform in the
link above), then a moderate cooling is on the cards, but no more sever than 1960-1980, but it will take 15-20 years to hit the bottom, i.e. the late 2020s.
We also have long CET record from which lot can be deduced. It’s multi-decadal trends are strongly underpinned by geological activity in mid-Atlantic ridge, all the way from equatorial Atlantic to the Arctic Ocean, beyond the N. Pole. This again (without taking into account any of the solar or geo-magnetic factors) suggest similar scenario, certain degree of cooling but no worse than 1970s:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NV.htm
Hence, I would disagree with many, and exclude the LIA type scenario, or a reoccurrence of the Maunder type minimum (before 2150).
No physics just calculations based on the past trends from the best data I could obtain.
Thank you for your attention.
vukcevic
Day By Day says:
December 10, 2012 at 10:15 pm
and this: Steve says:It’s amazing to me that we have all these experts that think they know how the universe was created and nobody knows if a simple solar cycle will cause heating, cooling or nothing.
Leif says: Of course we know: a simple solar cycle causes a heating of 0.1 degree followed by a cooling of 0.1 degrees, thus no net effect.
That is true for theoretical TSI effects, but we do not know what all the individual components achieve through many and various reactions with the earths atmosphere ionosphere etc, that we really do not have much grasp on at all imo, eg proton depletion of ozone which effects the north and south movement of the westerly streams, etc, etc, nor the effects of thje different heat on ocean s which can transfer heat from surface to below and vice versa via ENSO, AMO, etc, nor the effects on changing jetstream orientation caused by solar changes. In effect we do not know in reality, but we shall certainly find out the temp effects in the next 5 to 10 years with solar(with lag) effects) really cuts in with the solar expected Maunder Type Minimum. We all await with great interest.
Willis Eschenbach says:
December 10, 2012 at 3:26 pm
Burn wood ——> Extract heat from wood ——> Use heat to heat house ——> Heat atmosphere up chimney ——> Help demoisturize house with draft ——> Produce CO2 for growing more wood and food ——> Use ash to fertilise ground for growing more wood. Cant loose.
FWIW, the 20m ham (radio) band is as dead as a door-nail, more like a sunspot min than a max.
@vukcevic:
Sounds rather like the projected results from that “Moon Did It” paper I linked above. If you’ve not read that paper (lunar tide coupling) please at least look at the graphs (also linked above… just search on E.M. ) It might be very interesting if your formula matches there pictures…
I’m expecting (based on that paper) a bit cool to about 2020, then a shallow ‘flatish bump’ up and drop to 2050 (still minor) than a plunge into really cold in about 2300 ish AD.
So “not my problem”. Essentially likely a return to 1970’s through 2020, then a bit cooler to 2050. Don’t really care about 2300 😉
@TonyB:
Ok, ok already… 😉
Once Upon A Time, I was a ‘closet survivalist’. Later I outgrew it, and now I’m just “a citizen interested in urban preparedness”. Entirely different…
😉
First off, for any “scenario” you have to ask “what is the Bad Thing”, then you come up with ‘mitigations & adaptations’.
The “bad thing” you propose is a major cool event (say, of about 15 to 20 years duration).
I’ve pointed at ‘prior history’ for your reading pleasure, but maybe not pointed enough… The general pattern (and given that you are in the UK IIRC) is that there’s a boat load of cold, snow, and excess rains. Lots of crop failures (mostly due to water). Loss of life from hypothermia. Then a tendency to wars and social decline. (Eventually leading to collapse in very long lived events). As we’ve set this scenario at 20 ish years max (and pointed out that you have plenty of time it it goes longer – and as the longer was rejected…) we can ignore the ‘longer’ issue of social collapse… as both unlikely and outside the scenario interest range.
Mitigations:
1) Cold, snow, wet. Make sure your home is serviced for heating and roof and that you have a standby heat source. Depending on kind of home and location this can be wood pile, larger oil tank, standby generator, large propane tank, or just a couple of extra fluffy bed covers and an electric blanket. ( I have a freezing level sleeping bag in each persons ‘quake kit’ as we rarely get below freezing… you might want to get a ‘sub zero’ bag. I also have a rain rated tent as the quake may take the home down. I doubt you need that.) Keep the car full of fuel as it is a heater, too. Buy a snow shovel, if needed. Get thermal rain boots and a good Mac. Gloves. Long woolly underwear. Use them only if needed as otherwise you will run out of itch cream too soon 😉 Get a spare umbrella.
2) That eventually leads to food shortages regionally. You rejected my assertion that the global transport will likely keep the food flowing, so you need to have a food storage system. Plus stuff to prepare it with. Plus stuff to deal with the social and physical chaos that comes with food shortages.
The following lists everything you could need, kitted, in layers. Start with buying stuff for the small kit and work your way up. As you are in the UK, swap “firearm” for “bow and arrow” 😉
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/crisis-kits-and-preparedness-packs/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/food-storage-systems/
The food storage system says to use 1/2 Gallon Jars (in boxes with crumpled paper / ‘popcorn’ around them). As you are in the EU, use 2 L jars… The ‘rule of thumb’ is “one pound of dry food per person per day”. Change that to 1/2 Kilo of dry food per person per day. Yes, that gives you more to eat, but it’s colder in the UK than in California too… Store as much as your concern warrants and your wallet allows. If you don’t have a garden, start one. If really worried and living in an urban area with no land, move to a rural small town and get a garden. Focus your seed library on cold season and wet tolerant crops. (Peas, kale, cabbages, parsnips, turnips, potatoes… but you already do that, as you live in the UK…)
Per wars and social decline: Sorry, but Europe hasn’t dealt with that well over the centuries. Consider moving to Brazil or Australia… Or just lay in a supply of good books and some nice darts. Learn to extract various plant poisons from the directions in the books and apply it to the darts. When “unwanted” visitors with guns arrive, offer tea and a ‘friendly’ game of darts…
Get a ‘food dryer’. Good for turning large surplus of fresh meat into storable jerky. You never know when you might have a sudden squad of “dear sized animals” to put away for winter… Be careful to remove darts… If in Brazil, learn to use “blow darts”…
😉
On a global scale, things break into two scenarios.
a) It all goes to handbasket journey land.
b) Government stay intact and things get hairy.
In “b” it’s a financial and political hardship, but you don’t really deal with it, the government does. Take your ration card and fill your basket at the relief station. (Look up what happened during W.W.II. Learn to love “SPAM and Crackers” again.)
In “a”, you will not have any control anyway. Most likely there will be a W.W.III type event which means that the Middle East / Asia will be a horrible mess. At that point it will be a Russia / China / India ‘3 way’ with Radical Islam in the wings and THE best place to be is as much “up wind” as possible. Say, UK over the water? Oh, wait, you are there already… Consider moving to Australia or Brazil if that isn’t comforting enough… Really. They are one of a very few places that will be warm and net food exporters. (Argentina / Chile is another, but Argentina is a ‘bit of a mess’ right now and Canada is another but they go ‘way cold’ so not comfy. USA is another but we’ll have 70,000,000 Hispanics grazing the MidWest in any disaster / collapse of order). Frankly, just look at who had it best during W.W.II and that’s likely where they will have it best. Modulo the USA being more overrun and less isolated.
That’s about it.
What? You wanted some scenario where some agency ‘fixes’ the cooling and some other agency ‘fixes’ the conflicts? “Facts not in evidence”. In severe collapse events, you are on your own. ( We’ve already rejected the “Don’t worry, be happy”, remember? Me? I’m going to be ‘not worrying’ in California…)
There is no fix to cold and wet climate. Just ship more food from not-cold and not-wet and try not to start any wars.
There is no fix to general social breakdown. Not the UN. Not some other country. Look at all of history and if you get to that point, it’s tribal / gang rules. Just try to be on a big, good gang.
Were I World Tsar what would I be doing? Building modular fail-safe Gen III and Gen IV nukes and building hydroponic greenhouses as fast as I could in Europe. (Consider moving to Southern France. In anything short of social breakdown, it will be better. Nuclear power, Mediterranean warmth and food, better wine. Just have to deal with the French and North Africans from Marseillaise 😉 I’d be building more bulk grain shipping and filling all the grain silos around the world. But I’m not Tsar, so that’s not going to happen.
Best you can do is put up a couple of tons of food on your own. (AND learn how to prepare it and rotate stock). It’s about 50 cents / pound for dried grains and pulses (Lentils keep longest – I’ve eaten 12 year old lentils just fine when 2 year old dried peas are hard rocks…) So that’s about $1000 / ton. That’s 2000 person days (or 4000 person days if you can continue to buy 1/2 rations ). So 5 to 10 years. 12 if you try just a little. If you are more worried than that I’ll tell you how to make a food storage system that looks like furniture (but over on my blog as this is seriously off topic here) but would really recommend that you buy a farm in a warm semi-tropical country. Perhaps North Island New Zealand…
That’s about as complete as I can cover.
But frankly, the odds that you will need much more than an electric blanket for daily use and a camp stove with instant cocoa and ‘space blanket’ or sleeping bag (for occasional power outages from too much demand) approach Nil. We’re just not going into a major climate collapse. IFF we plunged dramatically, we’d be all the way back to 1976. Hardly a catastrophe. IFF we could add on a really killer volcano, we get one year of “1800 and froze to death” issues. (So having 190 lbs of dry food added to 1/2 rations from the store gets you through. That’s 4 x ’50 pound bags’ of sugar, flour, rice, and beans. About $100 to $200 max. Fits in a closet.)
Industrial society is just way too ‘capital stock rich’ for much bad to happen. But too politically obtuse to plan ahead on major preparation.
Good enough?
Wikipedia – NASA defines the term (Little Ice Age) as a cold period between AD 1550 and AD 1850 and notes three particularly cold intervals: one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, each separated by intervals of slight warming.
E.M.Smith says:
December 11, 2012 at 5:32 am
Sounds rather like the projected results from that “Moon Did It” paper I linked above.
The Moon may have some climate effects, but attributing overall long term major climate deviations experienced during deep solar grand minima on lunar variations is perhaps a bridge too far?
If so the shape of the Holocene should follow lunar patterns?
Just my observation, but the southern hemisphere spots still have a way to go moving north toward the equator. That suggests to me that it’s still not at “max”, or perhaps at a plateau.
But it is strangely quiet again, magnetic-wise. Food for Dr S.
In reply to:
lsvalgaard says:
December 10, 2012 at 10:26 pm
William says:
December 10, 2012 at 7:56 pm
During the reversal 41,000 years ago the field was very weak with only 5 percent of today’s field strength, researchers said, and as a consequence Earth nearly completely lost its protection shield against hard cosmic rays, leading to a significantly increased radiation exposure
Yet here was no detectable climate change at that time…
Your comment is correct. It appears Svensmark’s mechanism saturates.
The geomagnetic field intensity fell to 1/20 of current strength during that 41 k BP geomagnetic reversal. The other cycling cooling events the drop in geomagnetic field intensity was 1/2 to 1/3.
There is correlation of past abrupt climate change for example the 1500 year cycle D-O events (also called Bond events) and past geomagnetic field changes. There has most certaintly cooling during the Younger Dryas event, which is Heinrich event 0. The largest change in cosmogenic isotopes correlates with 1200 years Younger Dryas cooling event.
If I understand the mechanism, the solar cycle re-start triggers the geomagnetic field change. The event can increase or decrease the geomagnetic field depending on orbital configuration on the time of the restart. There is a time delay as the liquid conductive core integrates the surface field change which explains the rapid drop in field intensity followed by an increase or decrease in geomagnetic field intensity, in the geomagnetic field record.
The sudden increase in volcanic activity is the reason for the delay in cooling for cycle 24. The longer the delay in cooling the greater the increase in volcanic activity and the greater effect on geomagnetic field configuration/intensity. The field strength in the Southern Atlantic anomally was 30% less the main geomagentic field prior to the cycle 24 change.
If I understand the past record, there should be an anomalously quick drop off in sunspot activity, a continual increase in earthquake activity, in addition to the increase in volcanic activity. There is now some observed cooling. The significant record cooling appears to be 3 to 4 years out. Say in time for the next US election.
I appreciate your comments in this forum.
Best wishes,
William
eco-geek says:
December 10, 2012 at 9:35 pm
Landscheidt was of the opinion that there was a hidden mechanism by which heat was coupled into the first few hundred feet of the oceans which buffered global temperatures through the minima of the 11 year sunspot cycle….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Graph: Solar radiation
Graph: Solar radiation at various ocean depths
Note it is the visible wavelengths (all the short wave lengths available at the surface) that penetrate the ocean.
Independent check on the above:
William says:
December 11, 2012 at 6:15 am
Your comment is correct. It appears Svensmark’s mechanism saturates.
Or rather, never worked to begin with…
If I understand the mechanism, the solar cycle re-start triggers the geomagnetic field change. The event can increase or decrease the geomagnetic field depending on orbital configuration on the time of the restart. There is a time delay as the liquid conductive core integrates the surface field change which explains the rapid drop in field intensity followed by an increase or decrease in geomagnetic field intensity, in the geomagnetic field record.
The solar cycles do not control the main geomagnetic field. The field at the surface comes from three sources: the liquid core, fixed deposits of magnetic minerals, and transient [a few days] fields from the ring current.
Whoa – ENSO’s dropping.
Doug Proctor says:
December 10, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Even the Maunder minimum wasn’t an ice age, but it sure got cold in the northern hemisphere.
======
The southern hemisphere also got colder. However, the effect was masked because the southern hemisphere is mostly oceans, and the land that is habitable is on average much closer to the equator than in the northern hemisphere.
Look at a polar map of the two hemispheres and you will likely be amazed.
To be fair 23 had that second peak (a beat frequency of sorts that manifests only a higher amplitude of the main harmonic). However one must concede that second peak did not equal or best the first.
BTW – mere days until …. 21 … DEC … 2012!!
tonyb says:
December 10, 2012 at 11:45 pm
As John Lennon observed, life is what happens while you are making other plans … including plans for a new ice age.
If you think that you will get human beings to sit down thirty years in advance and actually put together a valid and viable plan for an invisible threat for which you have absolutely no supporting evidence, all I can say is “Hi, my name is Willis, you must be new to this planet”.
As you point out “it has taken tweny to thirty years to put together a still evolving Plan A”. Not only that, but Plan A (cut down on CO2) doesn’t work for beans, and yet despite that, countries have just signed up for another eight years of plan A. Yeah, that’s the ticket …
I see you starting down that exact same identical alarmist path. Sorry, Tony, I have no interest in replicating that scenario for Plan B. Because that’s the usual result of mindless alarmism such as you propose. People run around like headless chickens screaming “The sky is falling!”, and put together some cockamamie plan that doesn’t have a hope in hell of working.
Look, humans muddle through. We’re real bad about making plans, but in the event, we seem to figure it out. Not only that, but having a long long time to make plans, as in the current instance re the forecast heat death of the planet, doesn’t seem to help us in the slightest. It just gives us more time to disagree.
So no, Tony, I’m not interested in the slightest in getting all rah-rah-rah and running around mindlessly shouting about THE COMING ICE AGE and insisting that we have to make complex plans against a possible future occurrence.
Sorry, but for me, if and when the temperature actually starts to cool, that’s the time to do that. Here’s my plan for the timing of my response to a long-forecast but terribly coy coming ice age:
w.
PS—It takes a long time to turn a supertanker around. It doesn’t take long for agriculture to adjust to a colder climate, they do that kind of thing all the time as climates grow warmer and colder, often from one year to the next. Farmers who couldn’t react in time to the news that next year will be a cold one were Darwinned out of the farmers’ jean pool long ago …
w.
All very wise – but how exactly do you stop those riding the present bandwagon ruining the lives of millions with crazed ideas about saving the planet from warming? Their agenda is about social control and the abuse of power – stuff that we fought against not so long ago.
– – – – – –
Don Easterbrook,
Thanks for bringing a geologic perspective to assessing the evidence wrt the possibility of already being at the start of an imminent cooling period. How much cooling, as you say, still remains to ponder.
I agree with the thrust of your post.
My thought is it is implausible to say that if we have entered a solar minimum like the Maunder then we will have another LIA. Rather I tend to think if a Maunder-like minimum occurs while some other natural phenomena are causing a cooling period then LIA is much more realistic; that is to say these solar variations we are discussiong are not major drivers of the climate changes being addressed on this thread. Having said that, however, there is a very persistent tickling in the back of my mind that says the relatively small magnitude variations in the sun should be researched much much more to look at additional possible physical mechanisms / causal connections to relatively significant changes in the Earth-Atmosphere system. I strongly recommend diverting a significant portion of current research funds from the myopic waste of the current ultra-excessive funding of Ax7. {Ax7 => AAAAAAA => the Alarmingly Anal Attention to the Absurd Assumption of Anthropogenic Armageddon}.
John
For those worried about another ice age, James Hansen, in his book, “Storms of My Grandchildren” ($3.03 Kindle), says we could easily prevent it with the greenhouse gases from a single chlorofluorocarbon factory. I don’t know if it’s true (mabe it would take two factories), but he is a NASA scientist and that’s what he says.
Canman says:
December 11, 2012 at 10:25 am
For those worried about another ice age, James Hansen, in his book, “Storms of My Grandchildren” ($3.03 Kindle), says we could easily prevent it with the greenhouse gases from a single chlorofluorocarbon factory. I don’t know if it’s true (mabe it would take two factories), but he is a NASA scientist and that’s what he says.
I’d take whatever James Coal-Trains-of-Death Hansen says with a pound of salt. He’s nuts, of course. There is no way in heck we could prevent an ice age. Delay it for a few years, maybe.
John Whitman said :-
Excellent. Lets just call it 7A for simplicity.
Canman said :-
Future generations may well seek to increase the greenhouse effect or to find other ways to warm the planet perhaps via mirrors in space, or on the moon, but any attempt to modify the atmosphere via man-made gases would be lunacy if there is no ready and proven method to remove or reduce them.
My automatic reaction to anything that James Hansen says is that he is invariably wrong.
From vukcevic on December 10, 2012 at 12:51 pm:
Earth solid core is apparently asymmetric and has a diff rot of (I think) about 2degrees/ annum.
Very old thinking, the solid inner core was thought to turn one degree per year relative to the rest of the planet.
Current research shows it’s much slower, one degree per one million years.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110220142817.htm
As this is practically no rotation, I hope you do not think Earth’s magnetic field arises from the “spinning dynamo” of the inner core.
Willis and chiefio
The trouble is that our determination to implement plan A is having a profound effect on the need to have a plan B. for example in the uk we have an excess of 24000 deaths a year in winter due to cold.
Our plan A is deliberately forcing up the price of energy so there are now around 6 million homes in fuel poverty. That is some 15 million people who can’t afford to keep themselves warm and as a result of plan A therefore have to reduce the amount of heating, which in turn will increase the numbers who die. Our climate in the uk has been steadily declining for a decade–although still relatively high-so we are not talking about a problem in thirty years time but one that is happening now, this week with low temperatures, and through the rest of the winter.
So plan B is needed because plan A is counter productive to our well being and reality
Tonyb
E.M.Smith says:
December 11, 2012 at 5:32 am
……
Hi Mr. Smith
I have had look at some of the work, there are number of strong parallels, I shall go through the rest, need more time to get the complete picture.
However, there are some differences, on millennial scale Keeling may well be correct We propose that strong tidal forcing causes cooling at the sea surface by increasing vertical mixing in the oceans.
I was more interested at shorter decadal scale, distribution of tidal dissipation in the N. Atlantic (NASA Topex/Poseidon), did a test and got what appear to be opposite result
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AMO-T.htm
Ray’s paper link http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI4193.1
there is also pictorial presentation of the same title, (millennial) paper by Munk is also worth a look but has far too much maths.
@ur momisugly William say
“… If I understand the mechanism, the solar cycle re-start triggers the geomagnetic field change. The event can increase or decrease the geomagnetic field depending on orbital configuration on the time of the restart……”
and
” ….If I understand the past record, there should be an anomalously quick drop off in sunspot activity, a continual increase in earthquake activity, in addition to the increase in volcanic activity…..”
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/michele-casati-volcanicity-earthquake-geomagnetism-and-the-heliosphere/
climatereason says:
December 11, 2012 at 12:56 pm
Thanks, Tony. The fact that plan A is counterproductive doesn’t say to me that we need a plan B. It says we need to get rid of plan A …
w.
For the simple minded, one multidecadal ENSO teleconnected cooling event appearing somewhere within the boundaries of a series of low solar cycles will send them scurrying for virgin sacrifices to the solar god.
Consider this. Two completely separate quasi-oscillating events will at one time or another, appear at the same time. But should that happen don’t let me discourage you from your panic. If you want to jump on that “I made the sun rise” bandwagon, sacrifice is at 9:00 for early service and at 11:00 for regular service. I accept Visa and Mastercard.