The data from SWPC is in, and it is lethargic at best. Sunspot numbers took a hit, down to about 42, a delta of ~50 lower compared to the red prediction line.
10.7 cm solar radio flux took a similar hit:
The Ap Geomagnetic index was up slightly, but still anemic….
And the most interesting indicator, the plot of solar polar fields, shows a clear zero line crossing, suggesting that Solar max has been reached:
Solar Polar Fields – Mt. Wilson and Wilcox Combined -1966 to Present
Image from Dr. Leif Svalgaard – Click the pic to view at sourceThough in spite of that, NASA is now suggesting a “double peak”:
Solar Cycle Update: Twin Peaks?
Something unexpected is happening on the sun. 2013 is supposed to be the year of Solar Max, but solar activity is much lower than expected. At least one leading forecaster expects the sun to rebound with a double-peaked maximum later this year.
The quiet has led some observers to wonder if forecasters missed the mark. Solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center has a different explanation:
“This is solar maximum,” he suggests. “But it looks different from what we expected because it is double peaked.”
Conventional wisdom holds that solar activity swings back and forth like a simple pendulum. At one end of the cycle, there is a quiet time with few sunspots and flares. At the other end, Solar Max brings high sunspot numbers and solar storms. It’s a regular rhythm that repeats every 11 years.
Reality, however, is more complicated. Astronomers have been counting sunspots for centuries, and they have seen that the solar cycle is not perfectly regular. For one thing, the back-and-forth swing in sunspot counts can take anywhere from 10 to 13 years to complete; also, the amplitude of the cycle varies. Some solar maxima are very weak, others very strong.
Pesnell notes yet another complication: “The last two solar maxima, around 1989 and 2001, had not one but two peaks.” Solar activity went up, dipped, then resumed, performing a mini-cycle that lasted about two years.
The same thing could be happening now. Sunspot counts jumped in 2011, dipped in 2012, and Pesnell expects them to rebound again in 2013: “I am comfortable in saying that another peak will happen in 2013 and possibly last into 2014,” he predicts.
Another curiosity of the solar cycle is that the sun’s hemispheres do not always peak at the same time. In the current cycle, the south has been lagging behind the north. The second peak, if it occurs, will likely feature the southern hemisphere playing catch-up, with a surge in activity south of the sun’s equator.
Pesnell is a leading member of the NOAA/NASA Solar Cycle Prediction Panel, a blue-ribbon group of solar physicists who assembled in 2006 and 2008 to forecast the next Solar Max. At the time, the sun was experiencing its deepest minimum in nearly a hundred years. Sunspot numbers were pegged near zero and x-ray flare activity flat-lined for months at a time. Recognizing that deep minima are often followed by weak maxima, and pulling together many other threads of predictive evidence, the panel issued this statement:
“The Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Panel has reached a consensus. The panel has decided that the next solar cycle (Cycle 24) will be below average in intensity, with a maximum sunspot number of 90. Given the date of solar minimum and the predicted maximum intensity, solar maximum is now expected to occur in May 2013. Note, this is not a unanimous decision, but a supermajority of the panel did agree.”
Given the tepid state of solar activity in Feb. 2013, a maximum in May now seems unlikely.
“We may be seeing what happens when you predict a single amplitude and the Sun responds with a double peak,” comments Pesnell.
Incidentally, Pesnell notes a similarity between Solar Cycle 24, underway now, and Solar Cycle 14, which had a double-peak during the first decade of the 20th century. If the two cycles are in fact twins, “it would mean one peak in late 2013 and another in 2015.”
No one knows for sure what the sun will do next. It seems likely, though, that the end of 2013 could be a lot livelier than the beginning.
Author: Dr. Tony Phillips |
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vukcevic says:
March 7, 2013 at 9:05 am
Dr. S. data disagrees with your comment.
Further to modulation during the Maunder Minimum: http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle-10Be-Maunder-Min.png the power spectrum peaks nicely at 12.5 years. A bit too long for the planetary hypothesis, one may note, while I’m at it [but otherwise irrelevant]. So, listen and learn.
vukcevic says:
March 7, 2013 at 10:13 am
In Maunder Minimum, poleward migration rate of magnetic fields was about 0.7 m/s and solar cycle length was about 20 yrs.
Same problem as with your other comment. The 11-yr cycle is suppressed due to 14C storage. When will you learn?
lsvalgaard says: March 6, 2013 at 11:13 pm
“And, by the way, what flips at solar maximum are just the polar caps, not the rest of the Sun.”…
I interpret this to mean that the polarity of the individual spots in each hemisphere do not reverse, when viewing the magnetograms at SOHO?
March 7, 2013 at 7:28 am. “If one wishes to [over]simplify, one can describe the solar cycle as a conversion from poloidal fields (at solar minimum) [running North-South] to toroidal fields (at solar maximum) [running East-West] back to poloidal fields. But even that picture is too crude. The wound up [toroidal] fields disintegrate and the debris moves to the poles where it slowly cancels out the old polar fields and builds a new one with opposite polarity, which is then wound up again. There is no ‘unwinding’.”
This seems to describe a magnetic field that is gimbaled and flips around, subjected to gyroscopic precession. Is there an electromagnetic equivalent to precession or P-factor that exerts a 90 degree torque toward the magnetic axis?
Richard G says:
March 7, 2013 at 11:10 am
“And, by the way, what flips at solar maximum are just the polar caps, not the rest of the Sun.”…
I interpret this to mean that the polarity of the individual spots in each hemisphere do not reverse, when viewing the magnetograms at SOHO?
That is right. The spots do not reverse at solar maximum [but at solar minimum]
This seems to describe a magnetic field that is gimbaled and flips around, subjected to gyroscopic precession. Is there an electromagnetic equivalent to precession or P-factor that exerts a 90 degree torque toward the magnetic axis?
Both analogs fail. The Sun does not work that way. Here is an explanation of the basics: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Solar_dynamo
lsvalgaard says:
March 7, 2013 at 10:15 am
Further to modulation during the Maunder Minimum: http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle-10Be-Maunder-Min.png the power spectrum peaks nicely at 12.5 years. A bit too long for the planetary hypothesis, one may note, while I’m at it [but otherwise irrelevant]. So, listen and learn.
Well, I am sure you must have noticed that there is very little or no difference between 10Be and C14 for the principal part of the Maunder Minimum between 1660 and 1700 (see graph)
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MMc.htm
main differences are before 1660
Since V. I. Makarov & A. G. Tlatov agree with me; you do have to do better.
In Maunder Minimum, poleward migration rate of magnetic fields was about 0.7 m/s and solar cycle length was about 20 yrs. http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jaa/21/193-196.pdf
vukcevic says:
Well, I am sure you must have noticed that there is very little or no difference between 10Be and C14 for the principal part of the Maunder Minimum between 1660 and 1700
And since 10Be shows a 12.5 yr period during that time what do you conclude about 14C if there is no difference?
Since V. I. Makarov & A. G. Tlatov agree with me; you do have to do better.
First, their data is old. Second, they did not take into effect the attenuation and delays caused by 14C storage. You still don’t learn anything. Here is some advice: when I tell you something take it to heart. Perhaps my good friend Miyahara could tell you some more: http://www.leif.org/EOS/IAU2011_Miyahara.pdf She finds periods from 9-14 years for Grand Minima.
The bottom line is that 14C is very much attenuated for periods as short as 11 years, and even delayed [20 year cycles are delayed 5 years, and 100-year cycles by 20 years] and thus are not very good for determining such periods. 10Be should be used. And there is a good solar modulation of cosmic rays during the MM.
ukcevic says:
Well, I am sure you must have noticed that there is very little or no difference between 10Be and C14 for the principal part of the Maunder Minimum between 1660 and 1700
And since 10Be shows a 12.5 yr period during that time what do you conclude about 14C if there is no difference?
Since V. I. Makarov & A. G. Tlatov agree with me; you do have to do better.
First, their data is old. Second, they did not take into effect the attenuation and delays caused by 14C storage. You still don’t learn anything. Here is some advice: when I tell you something take it to heart. Perhaps my good friend Miyahara could tell you some more: http://www.leif.org/EOS/IAU2011_Miyahara.pdf She finds periods from 9-14 years for Grand Minima.
The bottom line is that 14C is very much attenuated for periods as short as 11 years, and even delayed [20 year cycles are delayed 5 years, and 100-year cycles by 20 years] and thus are not very good for determining such periods. 10Be should be used. And there is a good solar modulation of cosmic rays during the MM.
lsvalgaard says:
March 7, 2013 at 11:23 am
Thanks for the reference.
lsvalgaard says:
March 7, 2013 at 11:50 am
The bottom line is that 14C is very much attenuated for periods as short as 11 years, and even delayed [20 year cycles are delayed 5 years, and 100-year cycles by 20 years] and thus are not very good for determining such periods. 10Be should be used. And there is a good solar modulation of cosmic rays during the MM.
But there is no significant difference between C14 and 10Be data during 1660-1700 period, the principal part of the Maunder Minimum. See graph:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MMc.htm
You may whish to evade that part, it is your choice.
vukcevic says:
March 7, 2013 at 12:33 pm
But there is no significant difference between C14 and 10Be data during 1660-1700 period, the principal part of the Maunder Minimum.
10Be shows an 11-year cycle and you say that 14C does not: http://www.leif.org/research/Maunder-Minimum-Cycles.png and in true ‘hide the decline’-style you omit the first half of the interval in your graph. You are becoming tedious. There is nothing shameful in you being wrong: you have been so often that it ought to be second nature by now.
Bottom line: there is a vigorous cosmic ray modulation caused by the Sun during the Maunder Minimum, albeit with a little bit longer period [12-14 years] than we have had the past, say 50 years.
As Berggren et al. put it: “10Be deposition is anti-correlated to solar activity over the 11-year Schwabe solar cycle, and correlated to neutron monitor data. Periodicity in 10Be during the Maunder minimum reconfirms that the solar dynamo retains cyclic behavior even during grand solar minima.” http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL038004-Berggren.pdf
lsvalgaard says:
March 7, 2013 at 1:13 pm
10Be shows an 11-year cycle and you say that 14C does not: http://www.leif.org/research/Maunder-Minimum-Cycles.png
Maunder Minimum was 1650-1700, and not 1600-1700.
There are only two cycles for 40 years (out of 50) for the part of MM 1660-1700 in both 10Be and C14 data (minimum to minimum 1660 to 1676 and 1676 to 1700).
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MMc.htm
In Berggren paper only graph d (Fig.2.) only one out of six, shows any meaningful response during MM, but than it shows 5 cycles (10 years each) not 4 as you also wrongly suggest in http://www.leif.org/research/Maunder-Minimum-Cycles.png so I conclude that the Berggren result is due to filter ringing. I am interested in facts as contained in the data, the rest I’ll leave to you.
vukcevic says:
March 7, 2013 at 2:24 pm
I am interested in facts as contained in the data, the rest I’ll leave to you.
So you didn’t learn anything…
In Berggren paper only graph d (Fig.2.) only one out of six, shows any meaningful response during MM, but than it shows 5 cycles (10 years each)
5 cycles in 50 years is 10 year per cycle. And you didn’t read the text of the paper. Only Figures 2d and 2f are relevant. The others show the concentration of 10Be, but that has to be corrected for the thickness of the layers to get the flux which is what we are interested on. And 2f is marred by the poor data from Dye-3 as they explain in paragraphs [13] and [14]. So, the only one with good data is 2d. This is also explained in slides 16 and 17 of http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Svalgaard12.pdf
So one more time:
Bottom line: there is a vigorous cosmic ray modulation caused by the Sun during the Maunder Minimum, albeit with a little bit longer period [12-14 years] than we have had the past, say 50 years. As Berggren et al. put it: “10Be deposition is anti-correlated to solar activity over the 11-year Schwabe solar cycle, and correlated to neutron monitor data. Periodicity in 10Be during the Maunder minimum reconfirms that the solar dynamo retains cyclic behavior even during grand solar minima.”
vukcevic says:
March 7, 2013 at 2:24 pm
Maunder Minimum was 1650-1700, and not 1600-1700.
Neither, new data [Vaquero et al. 2011; see Miyahara’s talk I linked to] puts the start of the MM at 1619. The cosmic ray record is contaminated by volcanic activity near and around 1700, so the data from the last decade of the 17th century are not reliable. The mark of a true pseudo-scientist is to cling to obsolete data as long as they ‘fit’, long past their ‘sell-by date’. You do a good job at that.
So not only two Russian papers (from 1995 and 2000) and the scientists from Solar Station of the Pulkovo Observatory, claiming :
In Maunder Minimum, poleward migration rate of magnetic fields was about 0.7 m/s and solar cycle length was about 20 yrs. http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jaa/21/193-196.pdf
but NASA is also wrong that the Maunder Minimum (updated 2013/03/01) started in 1645 http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_yearly.jpg
If data doesn’t fit the ‘Stanford ideology – sun has nothing to do with it’, tell everyone data is ‘obsolete’.
lsvalgaard says: March 7, 2013 at 3:15 pm
Bottom line: there is a vigorous cosmic ray modulation caused by the Sun during the Maunder Minimum, albeit with a little bit longer period [12-14 years] than we have had the past, say 50 years. As Berggren et al. put it: “10Be deposition is anti-correlated to solar activity over the 11-year Schwabe solar cycle, and correlated to neutron monitor data.
Thus you take Berggren et al paper as a final arbiter on this matter, and (btw) you extensively quote in number of your papers and presentations.
It can be easily demonstrated that the Berggren et al paper is worthless.
You said:
And 2f is marred by the poor data from Dye-3 as they explain in paragraphs [13] and [14]. So, the only one with good data is 2d. This is also explained in slides 16 and 17 of http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Svalgaard12.pdf
– graph 2d shows 5 cycles in 50 years is 10 year per cycle.
– you said the Sun during the Maunder Minimum, albeit with a little bit longer period [12-14 years]
– Two Russian papers claim: In Maunder Minimum, poleward migration rate of magnetic fields was about 0.7 m/s and solar cycle length was about 20 yrs. http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jaa/21/193-196.pdf
Berggren et al paper shows oscillations of 10 year period at MM.
Samples are from Greenland, where precipitations are direct function of what is happening just of its south western coast in the North Atlantic (sub-polar gyre) the source of the AMO oscillations, with periods of varying between 9,2 and 10.1 years.
10Be nucleation process is strongly affected by rate of the precipitations, so Berggren et al paper discovered the AMO and not the solar cycles in their analysis.
Let’s see what Dr. L Svalgaard has to say:
WUWT reader: Be-10 is a more direct proxy for solar output in general
L. Svalgaard: January 4, 2013 at 4:29 pm
No, 10Be depends on the geomagnetic field [the biggest factor], climate [the next biggest], and finally solar activity.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/04/counting-sunspots-and-sunspot-inflation/#comment-1189981
My dear Dr. S you got yourself in a bit of a muddle in there.
However I agree with:
10Be depends on the geomagnetic field [the biggest factor], climate [the next biggest], and finally solar activity.
Lets consider them all in the reverse order:
– ‘solar activity’ [least] : it was non existent no modulation found.
– ‘climate [the next biggest]’ : was perceptible in samples as discovered as Berggren et al (2d graph) and coincidental with the AMO at 10 year periods, but much shorter than Dr. L.S. estimates at 12-14 years.
– ‘geomagnetic field [the biggest factor]’: most obvious and likely modulator at about 20 years as per two Russian papers quoted above.
m.a. vukcevic suggests that the solar magnetic field is not but the Earth’s field (which oscillates at about 21 or so years) is the modulator of 10Be and C14 during Maunder Minimum.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MMc.htm
Why all this matters:
– If it can be shown that the solar magnetic cycling was normal during the Maunder Minimum which coincided with the coldest part of the LIA, than it follows that recent decades of warming are not related with the high solar magnetic activity, i.e. reinforces the often repeated ‘the sun has nothing to do with it’.
– If solar magnetic oscillations were not present during coldest period in historical time, than it is plausible that the warmest period in the last three centuries could be related to more intense recent solar activity, and ‘the sun has lot to do with it’.
The choice is yours.
End of the essay (must be my longest post).
vukcevic says:
March 8, 2013 at 3:08 am
The choice is yours.
The choice is easy. There is general agreement among cosmic ray physicists that the solar dynamo cycled normally during the MM with a period a couple of years longer than it has been in the 20th century. This conclusion is based on modern measurements of the last decade. There is also general agreement that because the residence time of 14C is so long [400 years for the atmosphere and 1300 years for the oceans] the amplitude of 11-yr variations will be somewhat [a factor of two] suppressed compared to 22-yr variations. It is also becoming clear that the MM started earlier [1620] and ended earlier than commonly believed. You see, science does make progress.
You see, science does make progress.
Agree, all interested should read the above essay by vukcevic and disregard the agreement among cosmic ray physicists that the solar dynamo cycled normally during the MM
vukcevic says:
March 8, 2013 at 6:59 am
all interested should read the above essay by vukcevic and disregard the agreement among cosmic ray physicists that the solar dynamo cycled normally during the MM
DK-syndrome strikes again….
lsvalgaard says:
“..the power spectrum peaks nicely at 12.5 years.”
So how can you be sure that there were 8 solar cycle maxima from 1605 to 1705 and not 9?
Ulric Lyons says:
March 8, 2013 at 1:12 pm
So how can you be sure that there were 8 solar cycle maxima from 1605 to 1705 and not 9?
Th issue is not 8 or 9, but is there were 4 or 5.
lsvalgaard
You said:
“Further to modulation during the Maunder Minimum: http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle-10Be-Maunder-Min.png the power spectrum peaks nicely at 12.5 years.”
so that would 8 per 100yrs, how do you know it is 8 rather than 9 as would be expected from the normal average period?
lsvalgaard says: “There is general agreement among cosmic ray physicists …”
Presumably this means that some disagree???
Ulric Lyons says:
March 8, 2013 at 2:39 pm
so that would 8 per 100yrs, how do you know it is 8 rather than 9 as would be expected from the normal average period?
Because that is what the cosmic record tells us. The period was slightly longer than it has been lately.
Jon says:
March 8, 2013 at 3:55 pm
“There is general agreement among cosmic ray physicists …”
Presumably this means that some disagree???
You are presumptuous. I don’t know of any who disagree.
So Leif, you do agree that there’s a correlation between global climate and solar cycle frequency (or scl inverse)?
It is said that
new data [Vaquero et al. 2011; see Miyahara’s talk I linked to] puts the start of the Maunder Minimum at 1619.
Data from Colorado University (the TSI people) strongly dispute such assertion as unfounded.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/dTSI.htm