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)
Since Leif has been busy in this thread, I am going to say a few words about him, mainly scientific.
1. He has been very kind to me on occasion, for which I thank him. OK, that’s ‘ad hominem pro bono’.
2. He has a _relatively_ closed mind to new ideas.
3. For example, he refutes (I believe) ideas of gravitational influences on the Sun, whereas I am convinced by Timo Nomura’s statistics on the timing of solar minimum relative to J’s position.
4. Still, he is right to point out the inconsistent position between those who think barycentric “forces” are at work (mainly J, S, U, N) and those who think tidal forces are at work (mainly J, E, V).
5. But his mind is not completely closed, as he responds to new data, and upthread he has given an example.
6. It is especially significant that he has changed his mind on the imminent future of the Sun. He used to say “this is no different from Cycle 14 (or was it 15) 100 years ago”, but now he has leaped across the Dalton divide and right back to the Maunder. In a different way from a young woman before him, he is pondering the Maunder.
7. He apparently doesn’t think that a new Maunder minimum will have a great effect on climate.
These are of course just my opinions and deductions, as I don’t know the inner workings of the mind of LS.
Rich.
See – owe to Rich says:
December 11, 2012 at 7:23 pm
6. It is especially significant that he has changed his mind on the imminent future of the Sun. He used to say “this is no different from Cycle 14 (or was it 15) 100 years ago”, but now he has leaped across the Dalton divide and right back to the Maunder.
You got point 6 a bit wrong. SC24 is still very much like SC14, it is the next cycle, SC25, that I think will be very small.
About open/closed minds: professional scientists are generally very conservative [in science, not necessarily in politics or life in general] in the sense that was is ‘accepted’ science is what has proven its worth in the past. Any new ideas must at the minimum still be consistent with earlier data and laws [within their domain of applicability], if not they new ideas will be given rather short shrift. Given overwhelming new data and a compelling new interpretation, a scientific discipline can ‘turn on a dime’ in a few years [e.g. as happened with plate tectonics]. Open/closed has nothing to do with it.
Lief says
It seems that now matter how hard I try to take that into consideration [going back several years], people just won’t listen. Here are some links to my taking these things into consideration, e.g.:
Lief, please go back and read what I said. TSI is not the be all and end all of the sun’s influence on climate. Your papers, and I went back and read them again, do not deal with the wavelength specific variation in solar output modulated by the solar cycles. I say again that the energy of a photon at 400 nanometers is far greater than the energy of a photon at 14 microns. There are several absorption lines by oxygen at the short end of the visible spectrum that would lead to thermal excitation of these molecules. If there are large variations of the flux it will have an impact on the atmosphere. We see this in the drag data in low earth orbit so it is not something to be casually dismissed.
Willis Eschenbach says:
December 11, 2012 at 3:11 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 …
_____________________________________
Unfortunately it sometimes take forcing their faces into the possibility of “B” (aka shoving their faces into a snow drift) before they turn loose plan A.
So far I see no indication of politicians letting go of A despite the UK’s problems and snow.
denniswingo says:
December 11, 2012 at 8:12 pm
Your papers, and I went back and read them again, do not deal with the wavelength specific variation in solar output modulated by the solar cycles.
I show that the amount of UV [to be precise Far Ultraviolet between 100 and 300 nm] has been modulated the same way in all cycles back to the 1830s [i.e. linearly follows the SSN]. In particular, that cycles 13-14 had the same UV flux as cycles 23-24. I would therefore expect climate a hundred years ago also to be similar if UV is a major part of the equation. This has nothing to do with TSI.
lsvalgaard says:
December 11, 2012 at 8:55 pm
denniswingo says:
December 11, 2012 at 8:12 pm
Your papers, and I went back and read them again, do not deal with the wavelength specific variation in solar output modulated by the solar cycles.
I show that the amount of UV [to be precise Far Ultraviolet between 100 and 300 nm] has been modulated the same way in all cycles back to the 1830s [i.e. linearly follows the SSN]. In particular, that cycles 13-14 had the same UV flux as cycles 23-24. I would therefore expect climate a hundred years ago also to be similar if UV is a major part of the equation. This has nothing to do with TSI.
I do not expect [at least there is no evidence] that UV between 300 and 400 nm behaved any different from that of 100-300 nm a hundred years ago. So, if you want to maintain that it did, you will have to come up with evidence for that.
Leif
This has nothing to do with TSI……..So, if you want to maintain that it did, you will have to come up with evidence for that.
By definition variations in a small segment of the solar spectrum is not the total solar irradiance. It is a fact of physics that absorption is wavelength specific and that the atmosphere is transparent to most visible spectrum wavelengths, thus though there is a lot of energy in those wavelengths they are not absorbed by the atmosphere. These wavelengths are absorbed by the ground and the atmosphere is heated by the thermal emission wavelengths. Wavelengths in the near UV and near UV are directly absorbed and or scattered by oxygen. Here is the full absorption spectra relative to the sun.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Atmospheric_Absorption_Bands_png
I understand what you are saying that this is similar to what happened during solar cycle 14 and other weak cycles but since we had no equipment to measure the atmosphere at altitude during that era we cannot quantify its effect on global temperature. Now we can, and we will obtain even more data in the years to come of the effects in this weak cycle versus the higher cycles of 19-23 that have been measured from space. We do know that there is an effect on the atmosphere and that during the latest minimum the atmosphere contracted the most that it had since the dawn of the space age.
Another thing that we know about the earth’s climate that our friends in the AGW world don’t buy into is that the global system, which includes the air, the land, and the oceans is quite stable and the heat stored in the oceans filter short term effects. With the effect on the upper atmosphere already noted that no one disputes, it will be interesting to see what the effect of an extended minimum/extra weak cycle will have. If we truly are moving into a Maunder type minimum it is beyond the experience of modern science and to singularly focus on TSI is to perhaps miss valuable science. My point to you is that you cannot dismiss the effect on the atmosphere and at least the possibility of an effect on climate by a large change in UV solar radiation.
denniswingo says:
December 11, 2012 at 10:28 pm
My point to you is that you cannot dismiss the effect on the atmosphere and at least the possibility of an effect on climate by a large change in UV solar radiation.
I don’t dismiss that, but since there is no evidence for a large change in UV, I don’t invoke that either. To reiterate: there is good evidence that UV the last two cycles was not any different than a century ago, hence I would expect its effect on the climate to be the same, yet the climate now is rather different from that a century ago. hence UV does not seem to be the main factor controlling our climate.
I am trying to get a grasp on the Northern hemisphere/Southern Hemisphere sunspot numbers. I checked out the sunspot area data from http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/greenwch.shtml for each half and found that the highest area in the southern Hemis, was around July 2012. ( http://awesomescreenshot.com/0c7pgs990 )
The Northern Hemisphere showed different trends, though. ( http://awesomescreenshot.com/0b1pgsded )
I am trying to figure out if in fact the southern half is declining now and if it is, how sure are you of a 2nd camel hump?
Regarding the “bactrian camel top” shaped maximum of the sunspot number times series, there is a nice paper about this topic:
Georgieva K. (2011). Why the sunspot cycle is double peaked. arxiv.org/abs/1103.4552
And another interesting paper from the same research group:
V. N. Obridko, Yu. A. Nagovitsyn, Katya Georgieva (2012). The Unusual Sunspot Minimum: Challenge to the Solar Dynamo Theory. The Sun: New Challenges Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings Volume 30, 2012, pp 1-17
Leif,
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.
– The North pole has already reversed in 2011. I suppose that the South pole will not reverse in 2012 because of the current lack of any activity in the South.
– On the other hand, from the figure http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Polar-Fields-1966-now.png, one could deduce that the crossing of the polar fields has to occur in 2012. Did it happen yet?
– Has the crossing of the polar fields something to do with the flipping of the poles?
I have added the following picture of the current state of SC 24:
http://users.skynet.be/fc298377/Sun/ComparisonSC24_14.gif .
Counting the peaks, one could deduce that the current solar cycle is not as active as SC 14 (already one peak instead of two). Of course, the solar cycle 24 is still going on. As one can read in your study Asymmetric Solar Polar Field Reversals: If later on, there is more activity in the South, then that flux will help reverse the South Pole. In this way, we get (in the ideal case) two humps in solar activity and a corresponding difference in time of reversals.
I didn’t see NASA prediction of Dec. 10, 2012 posted yet:
Solar Cycle Prediction
(Updated 2012/12/10)
The current prediction for Sunspot Cycle 24 gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 72 in the Fall of 2013. The smoothed sunspot number (for 2012/02) is already nearly 67 due to the strong peak in late 2011 so the official maximum will be at least this high and this late. We are currently well over three years into Cycle 24. The current predicted and observed size makes this the smallest sunspot cycle since Cycle 14 which had a maximum of 64.2 in February of 1906……….
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml
Rik Gheysens says:
December 12, 2012 at 3:08 am
– The North pole has already reversed in 2011. I suppose that the South pole will not reverse in 2012 because of the current lack of any activity in the South.
The South pole is reversing right now
– Has the crossing of the polar fields something to do with the flipping of the poles?
One and the same. It is misleading language to talk about ‘flipping’. The poles don’t flip.
leif says
hence UV does not seem to be the main factor controlling our climate.
Nor did I claim it was, you know better than to extrapolate like that. What I did say is that there is a well known, measurable influence on the atmosphere modulated by the solar cycle. The papers that I have read before attribute this to variations in solar UV. This influence on the upper atmosphere is temperature related and at low orbital altitudes results in density variations of almost an order of magnitude. How far down the exosphere this extends and what are the results on climate is an interesting question. When gasses are compressed and or expanded there is an impact on convection of that gas. We simply don’t know the magnitude of these influences are on the planet’s atmosphere but we know that these influences exist and the nearly established fact that we are going into a period without sunspots means that there is some interesting science to be learned. That is my only point.
The larger point is that we know that climate has varied over short time scales, hundreds to thousands of years that are not Milankovitch forcing related and are not anthropogenic CO2 related. Understanding the causes of these variations is important to humanity as a whole and again to dismiss the sun’s role in this by only looking at one measure (TSI) does a disservice to the science.
“…. – solar max reached?”
Hard to tell by looking at sunspot counts, since they’re fading due to L&P effect. Better to look at 10.7 cm radio flux plots:
http://sidney.spaceweather.gc.ca/data-donnee/sol_flux/sx-6-mavg-eng.php
Looking at these plots and comparing to previous years, you can see that we have definitely reached the plateau region of the solar max, which normally endures for 4-5 years or more.
During that time there are spikes of activity, one of which will inevitably claim the title “solar max”.
But as you can see that the “winning” spike doesn’t necessarily occur at the beginning of the plateau. I’d say there will be several more spikes in SC24, one of which may exceed the first and only plateau spike so far (or not).
In any case, SC24 ain’t over yet.
Alec,
That’s interesting. I didn’t realize that Cycle 14 had already reached a maximum of 64.2 in February 1906. This is lower than the sun has reached in Cycle 24. If one transpose it in our Cycle 24, this would be December 2012.
The smoothed sunspot number for 2012/02 was 66.9. This is indeed higher than the number of Cycle 14.
I was impressed by the fact that the three strongest peaks of SC 14 are higher than the one peak of SC 24. But I had to know that higher peaks do not mean a higher smoothed SSN.
Remark: In my picture, the smoothed number is calculated according Meeus smoothed SSN.
Leif,
You wrote:
The South pole is reversing right now
Has it happened earlier that the South pole was reversing without any sunspot in the southern hemisphere?
You wrote in your study about reversals: If later on, there is more activity in the South, then that
flux will help reverse the South Pole. On the latest SOHO images of the sun, I don’t see any sunpot in the southern hemisphere.
denniswingo says:
December 12, 2012 at 8:17 am
we are going into a period without sunspots means that there is some interesting science to be learned.
Certainly, and we are all expecting to learn a lot.
to dismiss the sun’s role in this by only looking at one measure (TSI) does a disservice to the science.
As all the other solar indicators scale reasonably well with TSI. ‘TSI’ is just a proxy for these other ones. Actually since we have never measured TSI before 1978, it is really the other way around: the other solar indicators [which might influence climate] are used as a proxy for TSI [which then simply becomes ‘solar activity indicator’ on the TSI scale]. Since solar activity [measured by TSI, UV, sunspots, Calcium II, etc] now is the same level as it was a century ago, but climate is not, the primary conclusion to draw is that said solar activity is not demonstrated to be a major driver of climate. This is especially the case for UV, where we have a good reconstruction back to the 1780s [via its influence on the conductivity of the E-layer, controlling the variation of the Sq current system whose magnetic influence we directly measure on the ground]. So, UV has not been a significant driver of surface climate, but, of course, does control the density of the upper atmosphere.
Rik Gheysens says:
December 12, 2012 at 9:07 am
Has it happened earlier that the South pole was reversing without any sunspot in the southern hemisphere?
It is not important that there is a single [or a few] days with no spots; you have to look at a longer term average [e.g. a year].
Now this is not the max. It is not even beginning of the max. But it is perhaps the end of the min.
tonyb
I agree with you and Prof Easterbrook that global cooling is coming and that the climate cycle is just starting to turn down during this last decade . I personally prefer the template of the 1880-1910 era as a guide to the type of future climate development over the next 20-30 years, although it may not get quite as cold. I think there will not be a so called “ice age” type of situation but a 20-30 year global cooling anomaly or drop of about 0.2 C to 0.3 C The global anomaly may bottom around 0.2-0.1 C.Short term and regional anomalies can be much lower like inland areas of Asia, Europe and North America . I also agree with Willis Eschenbach in that no one will listen today to make any major adjustments until they start to be affected in a more significant way. [like UK was during the winter of 2010/11.] There was too much of the false ICE AGE warnings back in the 1970’s that has caused people to be more hesitant about any ice Age warning and it is unlikely that there will be any Ice Age conditions globally this time as well [ regionally there could be some very cold years still ] It will take some more cold years before the general population will see the wisdom of adjusting to global cooling plans whatever it turns out to be . I see this more in the post 2015 period. The observed global temperature curve and the IPCC predicted curve are diverging and the errors of supporting PLAN A[ preparing for unprecedented global warming] will be clear for all to see in just a few years .
Inreply to Isvalgaard,
lsvalgaard says:
December 11, 2012 at 7:18 am
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.
Hello,
There are observations that do not support the standard geomagnetic field generating mechanism which is a self induced dynamo.
In the last 10 years geomagnetic specialists have found evidence of cyclic abrupt changes to the geomagnatic field that too rapid to have been caused by changes to the liquid core. A rapid core based change induces a counter EMF in the mantel that resists a core field changes. There are for example archeomagnetic jerks with a periodicity of roughly 400 years when the field orientation changes 10 to 15 degrees. The Heinrich events are larger geomagnetic field changes.
If I understand the mechanism both geomagnetic field changes are caused by a solar magnetic cycle restart.
If one accepts the earth evidence of rapid field changes and cyclic excursion (the geomagnetic specialist have over the last 10 years accepted it), then the conclusion is there is some external cyclic forcing function. The sun is the logical and perhaps the only possible external forcing function. Flipping the problem around how could the sun cause what is observed? What assumptions about the sun and basic fundamental physics assumptions are incorrect? No one has travelled to the core of the sun. What is fact about stars and what is assumed?
There are burn marks on the surface of the planet that correlate with the Younger Dryas abrupt climate change event and there is a geomagnetic excursion that correlates with that event. Accept for that the sun caused the burn marks, with a special CME that its not electrically neutral. The burn marks are created, by electrical strikes and re-strikes. There are also burn marks that correlate with the 41 kyr BP geomagnetic excursion. The electrical discharge explains the bio hemispheric increase in volcantic activity that correlates with termination of the glacial phase and the increase in strength of the geomagnetic field by a factor of 2 to 3 during the interglacial phase. (The ice sheets are insulators.).
I have been investigating this problem from the standpoint of the sun as a class of stars and looking for observations to support the hypothesis and have found astronomical evidence to support it. This appears to be one of the most interesting and far reaching discoveries in cosmology.
This is not a academic issue, if the above comments are correct. If there is observational evidence to support the above comments I will present an explanation of the mechanisms.
I think the most probable global climate template for the next 20 -30 years is the past climate period from 1880-1910. The period had three low solar cycles, something like pattern which is starting with our current sun cycle #24 and which could be the first of three such low solar cycles in the immediate future. Low solar cycles seem to cluster in 3’s.During that past lower solar cycle period the global SST anomaly dropped steadily as did the global air temperatures and they bottomed around 1910. AMO or Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation went negative or cool in 1900 .The probability of an AMO interval change of around 20 years is about 70%. It last changed in 1995 so we could see a negative AMO by 2015. We could also see fewer climate changing strong El Ninos, perhaps only one per decade compared with 2 per decade during the warmer three decades of 1970 -2000.During the period , 1880-1910, there were 4 El Ninos of which only 2 were strong
William says:
December 12, 2012 at 11:30 am
If I understand the mechanism both geomagnetic field changes are caused by a solar magnetic cycle restart.
Apart from the use of the nebulous word ‘restart’, your understanding is not correct.
The rest of your post is not valid physics.
The cause of geomagnetic jerks is still debated. Bloxham (2002) suggests that jerks are surface manifestations of a superposition of torsional oscillations [sorry for the jargon: a special class of axisymmetric, geostrophic, hydromagnetic waves] in the liquid, outer core. Nagao et al. (2003) suggest that differences in the mantle conductivity could explain why the two hemispheres exhibit jerks at different times [they appear with a delay in the Southern hemisphere]. In any event, they are of internal origin for the simple reason that external changes cannot penetrate deep into the Earth [skin-depth too shallow].
(the geomagnetic specialist have over the last 10 years accepted it)
I am a geomagnetic specialist 🙂
Leif, thanks for all of your explanations here. I have a question.
Regarding the sun, you say:
So clearly, we don’t completely understand why the sun does what it does.
On the other hand, you have come out very strongly to say that other than minor tidal effects, the planets have absolutely no effect on the sun’s cycles, changes, or variations.
I’m curious, given your lack of certainty about the cause of geomagnetic jerks, why you are so certain that the sun would have exactly the same cycles and changes whether or not it had planets? Upon what does that oft-repeated and seemingly rock-hard certainty rest, when we don’t completely understand how the sun works?
You have said before that you don’t know of any mechanism that could cause such changes in the sun due to the motions the planets, and neither do I.
But surely, lack of understanding of a possible mechanism would not lead to your solid certainty that the planets have no effect on the sun.
So what is the basis of your certainty on that question? Be aware that I am not saying that the planets do influence the cycles of the sun … I’m just asking why you are so sure that they don’t influence it. I just find it hard to believe that a sun without planets would have exactly the same cycles and variations that it would have if it had planets.
My best to you, and again, thanks for answering questions.
w.
Leif, thanks. The open/closed thing can be quite subtle.
For example, in response to Dennis Wingo you said “Since solar activity [measured by TSI, UV, sunspots, Calcium II, etc] now is the same level as it was a century ago, but climate is not, the primary conclusion to draw is that said solar activity is not demonstrated to be a major driver of climate”, and then later on, with a slight sleight of hand, you turned it into an assertion that UV definitely is not a major driver of climate. “Not demonstrated” is not the same thing as “demonstrated not to be”.
Your argument that global temperatures a century ago should match what they are now (if similar Sun rules the climate) ignores the fact that climate is a sort of integral. Now the mean Hadcrut3 during Cycle 14 was 0.13K cooler than during Cycle 13, and we _may_ see something similar in Cycle 24 (first 4 years’ values are 2009:0.44, 2010:0.48, 2011:0.34, 2012:~0.42) compared to Cycle 23 mean 0.38 – not yet lower but also not as high as the Met Office have forecast (which is that half the years 2010-2019 should exceed 0.55; oh, I suppose it _could_ still happen). So, we don’t know yet: let’s keep an open mind on it shall we?
Rich.