Guest post by David Archibald
Solar Cycle 24 has already seen five consecutive colder winters. This is a link to a post about a German meteorologist who has seen the light. Eventually people will work their way back to where all the energy comes from. The amount and type of energy coming from the Sun varies on time scales up thousands of years. Now that we are somewhere near the peak of Solar Cycle 24, let’s see how things are progressing.
Figure 1: MF, TSI, F10.7 Flux and Sunspot Number 2009 – 2013
From Dr Svalgaard’s site, this figure shows that the F10.7 flux is hovering around 100, which is the breakover point between sea level rising and sea level falling. In turn that also means it is the breakover point between the planet warming and the planet cooling. Given that activity will drop once we pass solar maximum, cooling is in train from here.
Figure 2: Heliospheric Current Sheet Tilt Angle 1976 – 2012
The heliospheric current sheet tilt angle was at 70.6° as at November 2012. Solar maximum occurs when it reaches 74° – so a little bit further to go.
Figure 3: Ap Index 1932 – 2013
The Ap Index has fallen back below the levels of previous solar minima.
Figure 4: Solar Wind Flow Pressure 1971 – 2012
The solar wind flow pressure has also seen its peak for this cycle.
Figure 5: Oulu Neutron Count 1964 – 2013
The neutron count is likely to trend sideways for another year before rising to a new peak for the instrumental record.
Figure 6: Interplanetary Magnetic Field 1968 – 2013
The Interplanetary Magnetic Field appears to have peaked for this cycle.
Figure 7: Solar Cycle 24 Sunspot Number compared to the Dalton Minimum
This chart compares the development of Solar Cycle 24 with the Dalton Minimum. The Solar Cycle 24 is tracking Solar Cycle 5 very closely.
Figure 8: Solanki Sunspot Number Reconstruction 9455 BC to 2035 AD
The data is from Solanki et al 2004 “Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years”, courtesy of David Evans. A projection to 2035 is included based on Livingstone and Penn’s estimate of an amplitude for Solar Cycle 25 of 7. The average annual sunspot number in Solanki’s reconstruction is 28.7. The average annual sunspot number for the second half of the 20th century is 72.
Figure 9: Solanki cumulative sunspot reconstruction
This graph takes the data from Figure 7 and is additive relative to the average sunspot number over the period of 28.7. It shows that solar activity trends for thousands of years at a time.
Figure 10: Steinhilber et al TSI reconstruction 7,362 BC to 2007 AD
Similarly, Steinhilber et al reconstruction TSI relative to 1,365.57 W/m2 with data courtesy of David Evans.
Figure 11: Steinhilber et al TSI reconstruction cumulative
This graph takes the data from Figure 9 and plots it cumulatively. It also shows that solar activity trends for thousands of years. The Steinhilber reconstruction does show the beginning of the Dark Ages cold period and the Little Ice Age quite accurately.
Further to my last post,I merely wish to clarify that I was not suggesting that IR photons are within the visible range.
Professor Cox was saying that UV photons carry more energy than photons within the visible range and those within the IR range. He was suggesting that the sun was very energetic in the early years because it was producing more UV photons than it does today.
He also briefly touched upon the earth acquiring water. It may be the case that there was no water on earth during the faint sun epoch, and that water was aquired (by whatever mechanism) only later in earth’s history,
Professor Cox did not discuss whether the faint sun could maintain liquid water (perhaps due to the high energy UV photons which offset any reduced photonic activity in the visible spectrum), or whether water was aquired after the faint sun epoch so that there is in fact no paradox.
@John Marshall, do we fully understand any aspect of reality? N. N. Taleb and Benoit Mandelbrot have called reality “fractally complex”.
There is a recent paper, ‘Origin of probabilities and their application to the multiverse’, by Andreas Albrecht and Daniel Phillips, in which they “argue using simple models that all successful practical uses of probabilities originate in quantum fluctuations in the microscopic physical world around us, often propagated to macroscopic scales. Thus we claim there is no physically verified fully classical theory of probability.”
Connect the dots is an overused phrase. Imagine that one located a set of dots in a complex phase space and use them to inductively infer whatever, do the dots or their generating function contain a frumious Bandersnatch or a Black Swan?. Non-existence can be proven only by examining the entire Universe (multiverse).
Make of this what you will, &c
http://www.carolmoore.net/articles/sunspot-cycle.html
Sunspot cycles and activist strategy.
“During World War I, A. L. Tchijevsky, a Russian professor of Astronomy and Biological Physics who continued his studies at the war front, noticed that particularly severe battles regularly followed each solar flare during the sunspot peak period of 1916-17.”
Vidoe just relased by NASA 23 Feb
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/storm_watch_stories3&stormfile=A_solar_flare__and_rain_on_the_sun_23_02_2013?ref=ccbox_homepage_topstories
Coronal Rain on the Sun.
Is it just my download or is 11 really missing?
lsvalgaard says:
February 25, 2013 at 7:15 am
vukcevic says:
February 25, 2013 at 6:30 am
what matters it is the polarity of the solar magnetic cycle in relation to the Earth’s magnetic field variability.
No, that matters not. Your ‘correlation’ is spurious.
====================================
With all due respect, two waves operating at closely the same frequency, and with inverted polarities will indeed have a negative effect. (even at ultra low frequencies of 1 cycle in 40+ seconds) wave canceling is also power robing…
@richard verney
>He also briefly touched upon the earth acquiring water. It may be the case that there was no water on earth during the faint sun epoch, and that water was aquired (by whatever mechanism) only later in earth’s history…”
Given that there is about twice as much water in the mantle of the earth as there is in the oceans, the mass gain involved would surely have affected the moon’s orbit and the earth’s orbit – no? Unless the orbital radius and speed are (literally) set by resonances and perturbed by no more than the energy needed to pull the planet into a correspondingly higher or slower orbit, wouldn’t something ‘fall down’?
I don’t have an answer here, but it seems the faint sun paradox is a real headache.
Crispin in Waterloo says:
February 25, 2013 at 8:33 am
AS long as the sun keeps turning, the magnetic rope holding the planets in their orbits remains strong and we dont get hit with something we will continue to be where we are… just like a yo yo on a string…
When solar activity and , global ocean SST are in sync and both are declining, the decline in global atmosphere temperatures will follow as they have for nearly a decade and a half and during other similar past periods.Global inland areas like Russia, Eastern Europe and Central North America will feel the cold first in the winter with the return to negative AO and eventually negative AMO. Global temperature altering strong El Nino’s will be fewer in numbers and will not be able to prevent a steady decline of surface temperatures for the next several decades.[like 1890-1910]
lsvalgaard says:
February 25, 2013 at 7:15 am
No, that matters not. Your ‘correlation’ is spurious
referring to the second illustration shown here
Sun has strong magnetic link with number of planets, the Earth happened to be the first in the line of action. Here is some more ‘spurious’ sun-Earth magnetic correlations, you may dislike
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SGMF.htm
One ‘spurious’ correlation’ may be an coincidence but three or more hardly so.
Correlations are there, ‘spurious’ or not, the solar and climate scientists should be looking into reasons for it.
Leif
You were only the third person to comment and Vuk was fifth. What was the matter with you two? We expect a quicker response when the word ‘solar’ is mentioned.
tonyb
The fact is that the ONLY variable that is changing in this climate AGW theory ongoing saga is the SUN. We can now safely assume that most of the “rise” in mean global earth temperature data “adjusted” by NASA GISS BOM or raw data lost by HADCRUT ect was essentially made up to suit the AGW theory and is false. However fortunately solar activity does not seem to have been tampered with and reliably shows a decline in SSN and geomagnetic activity etc which by past historic records equates to a cooling earth even if it takes a lag period. BTW it appears DA has been 100% spot on with his solar predictions and the supposed solar experts have been 100% wrong (just joking) LOL.
Quite professional.
There is no such thing as ‘global’ warming, its a regional thing, with some places warming and some cooling;
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/in-search-of-cooling-trends/
Here in Britain we are certainly not seeing rising temperatrures-quite the reverse
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
tonyb
TheHermit says:
February 25, 2013 at 7:23 am
The dark line in the above plot looks to have hit the 74 deg mark.
As one of the people who built the Wilcox Solar Observatory, I should comment that out polemost pixel covers everything from 55 degrees to the pole so that attaching any great significance to a couple of degrees of the tilt angle is really not warranted.
February 25, 2013 at 7:34 am
It seems you’re in disagreement with the idea that cooling is positively correlated with solar activity as measured by sunspots? IS that correct?
There is no good evidence for that. Solar activity varies too little compared to the regular output from the Sun. Perhaps this plot of TSI as observed [red curve] and the part related to solar activity [blue curve] will help: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE.png . The curves should really start from zero as in this one to get the correct perspective help://www.leif.org/research/TSI%20at%20Earth.png . Yet another way to show the variations is this plot that shows a separate curve for each of 10 years of TSI at a function of time of the year. All these curves fall on top of one another because there is so little variation. The little wiggles show the influence on TSO of solar activity. http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-through-a-year.png
Why show TSI? that is where the energy is. All other solar output is about a million times weaker.
richard verney says:
February 25, 2013 at 7:42 am
I wonder whether this is fully taken account of in the so called faint sun paradox.
Yes, even if UV photons have more energy, there are a lot fewer of them than visible and IR photons. Here is what know about the ‘faint sun’
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011RG000375.pdf
This may also be of interest:
No climate paradox under the faint early Sun, by
Rosing, Minik T.; Bird, Dennis K.; Sleep, Norman H.; Bjerrum, Christian J.
Nature, Volume 464, Issue 7289, pp. 744-747 (2010).
Abstract
“Environmental niches in which life first emerged and later evolved on the Earth have undergone dramatic changes in response to evolving tectonic/geochemical cycles and to biologic interventions, as well as increases in the Sun’s luminosity of about 25 to 30 per cent over the Earth’s history. It has been inferred that the greenhouse effect of atmospheric CO2 and/or CH4 compensated for the lower solar luminosity and dictated an Archaean climate in which liquid water was stable in the hydrosphere. Here we demonstrate, however, that the mineralogy of Archaean sediments, particularly the ubiquitous presence of mixed-valence Fe(II-III) oxides (magnetite) in banded iron formations is inconsistent with such high concentrations of greenhouse gases and the metabolic constraints of extant methanogens. Prompted by this, and the absence of geologic evidence for very high greenhouse-gas concentrations, we hypothesize that a lower albedo on the Earth, owing to considerably less continental area and to the lack of biologically induced cloud condensation nuclei, made an important contribution to moderating surface temperature in the Archaean eon. Our model calculations suggest that the lower albedo of the early Earth provided environmental conditions above the freezing point of water, thus alleviating the need for extreme greenhouse-gas concentrations to satisfy the faint early Sun paradox.”
MC says:
February 25, 2013 at 7:49 am
Leif, Why don’t you go ahead and give a thoughtful critical analysis supporting or not the post by Archibald.
All your points are good, and I have done that several times in the past. The problem is that his posts are somewhat incoherent and there are often so many errors and so much sloppiness that critique is hard.
But we can say a few things:
1) Figure 2 is showing a ‘non-preferred’ curve. Here is a better one: http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Tilts.gif [use the full curve, not the dashed one]. As noted above the values are not very precise [our pixel size is only 1/11 of the solar diameter]. This is also a general comment of the danger of drawing sweeping conclusions from shaky data.
2) In Figure 3 it is claimed that “The Ap Index has fallen back below the levels of previous solar minima”. It has not.
3) Figure 6 shows data from Oulu. Most other stations do not show a similar variation, e.g. http://www.puk.ac.za/opencms/export/PUK/html/fakulteite/natuur/nm_data/data/SRU_Graph.jpg [so some cherry picking]
4) Figure 7: solar cycle 24 tracking cycle 5 very closely. Our knowledge of the sunspot number for cycle 5 is very poor and DA uses the Group Sunspot Number which we now know has a calibration problem around 1885 [too low before that – slides 23-25 of http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Svalgaard11.pdf ], so the comparison is not too meaningful.
5) I already commented on the discrepancy between Figures 9 and 11: http://www.leif.org/research/Solanki-Steinhilber-Disagree.png
Bill H says:
February 25, 2013 at 8:33 am
With all due respect, two waves operating at closely the same frequency, and with inverted polarities will indeed have a negative effect.
Assuming that both have an effect, which in Vuk’s case they do not.
vukcevic says:
February 25, 2013 at 8:57 am
Sun has strong magnetic link with number of planets, the Earth happened to be the first in the line of action.
this your premise is already wrong as you assume the link is two-ways and it is not.
the solar and climate scientists should be looking into reasons for it.
We look into things that are plausible, meaningful, and make sense. Yours do not.
@Bill H “magnetic rope holding the planets in their orbits”
What are you talking about? The planets are held in their orbit by gravity, and the inverse square law.
“two waves operating at closely the same frequency” The earths magnetic frequency is DC. it changes like every 10thousand years. There is no frequncy. The sun’s field changes ever 12ish years, again, no frequency.
From Dr Svalgaard’s site, this figure shows that the F10.7 flux is hovering around 100, which is the breakover point between sea level rising and sea level falling. In turn that also means it is the breakover point between the planet warming and the planet cooling.
Really? How is it known that 100 in the F10.7 is the “breakover point”?
Jeff in Calgary says:
February 25, 2013 at 9:27 am
There is no frequency. The sun’s field changes ever 12ish years, again, no frequency.
Apart from that there is no coupling between the solar field and the main magnetic field of the Earth, generated in the core. The skin-depth of the Earth is too shallow to allow the [100,000 times weaker] solar field to penetrate to the generating region in the core.
The arctic sea ice melts from the bottom up. Its thickness can decrease 90% with no melt pools on the top to indicate that it is indeed melting. You actually have to measure it to tell that it’s melting.
So we have a chicken and egg problem. Is the ice melting because of the higher air temperatures or are the air temperatures higher because the sea ice is thinner and the ocean is warming the air?
If you doubt the influence of ocean currents on the thickness of sea ice, please explain polynyas to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynya In any event, the arctic air temperature, per se, isn’t particularly strong evidence for global warming.
oops: “F10.7 flux”, not F10.7.
commieBob says:
February 25, 2013 at 9:35 am
the arctic air temperature, per se, isn’t particularly strong evidence for global warming.
But would [by most people here] be considered strong evidence for global cooling if the Arctic were cooling…
Leif, great feedback. Now, Archibald asserts affects by GCR rates (Svensmark) are correlated with global temp drop/rise. He also predicts a rise in GCR starting in a year, then rise to set a new instument record. He and others who propound this effect are projecting global temp decrease as the GCR rate increases. What is your prediction of GCR rates in the furure and if any what effect?
MC
Thanks, commie! I sort of get it. But I thought ***surface*** sea ice extent was declining and not just its thickness. I’m also still confused by the claim that we’ve had numerous “record high” temps this decade at the same time we’re experiencing an overall cooling or flat trend. Just random statistical flux?
Not trying to bait anyone. I’m skeptical about the extent of AGW and believe that natural cycles — ie, the colar cycle — likely control over anthropomorphic influences.
Leif,
Why do you discount the exchange of energy in both directions? Even on earth a minor weak radio station will disrupt a much larger one.. It can even shut down the transmitter due to the conflicting waves reentering the unit which causes an imbalance in the transmitter. We know this from actual experience. Competing waves can and do cause a reflective paradox. As i said before they also remove power from the advancing waves.
I believe its a bit too early to just ignore them and throw them aside with slight of hand.
MC says:
February 25, 2013 at 9:49 am
He also predicts a rise in GCR starting in a year, then rise to set a new instument record. He and others who propound this effect are projecting global temp decrease as the GCR rate increases. What is your prediction of GCR rates in the furure and if any what effect?
Archibald does not make valid predictions. Much of his temperature stuff relates to a single station in New Hampshire, if memory serves. GCRs will indeed start to rise when we begin to approach the next solar minimum. [this is not ‘his’ unique prediction, they always do that]. The link between GCR and temperature is debunked enough that there should be no need to beat a dead horse here [although many people still hold up the cadaver for further beating]. The GCRs will continue to modulate with the solar cycle as always, so you are really asking for what the prediction for the solar cycle is. I don’t think we can say that more than a cycle ahead [although some silly people claim they can predict the cycle with great precision 3000 years ahead]. During the Maunder Minimum, GCR modulation was even stronger than today, so even if a new MM would be looming, I don’t expect GCRs to be much different [again, many people would object to this as it will not fit with their agenda and beliefs – it is useless to try to get them off that idee fixe].