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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Leif Svalgaard says:
“Because that is what the cosmic record tells us. The period was slightly longer than it has been lately.”
So how did Walmeier produce his dates for maxima at 1615.5, 1926, 1639.5, 1649, 1660, 1675, 1685, 1693, 1705.5?
Can we tell the polarity was during the very early 17th century so as to confirm whether say 1605 or 1615 was an odd or even numbered cycle?
Edim says:
March 8, 2013 at 10:11 pm
So Leif, you do agree that there’s a correlation between global climate and solar cycle frequency (or scl inverse)?
No, there is no such correlation: http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%20Length%20Temperature%20Correlation.pdf
vukcevic says:
March 9, 2013 at 3:59 am
“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.
That is not data measured by TIM, but simply Lean’s old, obsolete reconstruction using the Group Sunspot Number. Read Vaquero’s paper from the Sunspot Workshop http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Vaquero2.pdf or his paper with Usokin et al.:
Revisited Sunspot Data: A New Scenario for the Onset of the Maunder Minimum
Vaquero, José M.; Gallego, M. C.; Usoskin, Ilya G.; Kovaltsov, Gennady A.
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 731, Issue 2, article id. L24, 4 pp. (2011).
Abstract
The Maunder minimum forms an archetype for the Grand minima, and detailed knowledge of its temporal development has important consequences for the solar dynamo theory dealing with long-term solar activity evolution. Here, we reconsider the current paradigm of the Grand minimum general scenario by using newly recovered sunspot observations by G. Marcgraf and revising some earlier uncertain data for the period 1636-1642, i.e., one solar cycle before the beginning of the Maunder minimum. The new and revised data dramatically change the magnitude of the sunspot cycle just before the Maunder minimum, from 60-70 down to about 20, implying a possibly gradual onset of the minimum with reduced activity started two cycles before it. This revised scenario of the Maunder minimum changes, through the paradigm for Grand solar/stellar activity minima, the observational constraint on the solar/stellar dynamo theories focused on long-term studies and occurrence of Grand minima.
Also at http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.1520
As I said, when I tell you something, pay attention and learn.
Ulric Lyons says:
March 9, 2013 at 5:03 am
So how did Walmeier produce his dates for maxima at 1615.5, 1926, 1639.5, 1649, 1660, 1675, 1685, 1693, 1705.5?
We do have sunspot data for the 17th century, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Vaquero2.pdf and http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.1520
Can we tell the polarity was during the very early 17th century so as to confirm whether say 1605 or 1615 was an odd or even numbered cycle?
Miyahara concludes that the polarity changes were normal during the MM: http://www.leif.org/EOS/IAU2011_Miyahara.pdf
lsvalgaard says:
March 9, 2013 at 6:34 am
“We do have sunspot data for the 17th century,”
Thanks, that confirms what I suspected, there were 9 cycles (max to max) from 1605 to 1705, which shows no drift away from the Jupiter-Earth-Venus syzygy cycles:
ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SUNSPOT_NUMBERS/ANCIENT_DATA/earlyssn.dat
Ulric Lyons says:
March 9, 2013 at 7:49 am
Thanks, that confirms what I suspected, there were 9 cycles (max to max) from 1605 to 1705,
Possible Confirmation Bias [you see what you want to see]. There were 7 cycles from 1605 to 1687, so 7 cycles in 82 years. Average 11.7 years. http://www.leif.org/research/Maunder-Minimum-Cycles.png It is uncertain if there were one or two cycles in the interval 1687-1705. See slide 8 of http://www.leif.org/EOS/IAU2011_Miyahara.pdf
lsvalgaard says:
March 9, 2013 at 8:15 am
“Possible Confirmation Bias [you see what you want to see].”
Waldmeier says 1685 not 1687, which I presume is from sunspot observations and not a proxy. A max to max cycle of 20yrs from 1685 to 1705 is not realistic.
Ulric Lyons says:
March 9, 2013 at 8:36 am
Waldmeier says 1685 not 1687, which I presume is from sunspot observations and not a proxy. A max to max cycle of 20yrs from 1685 to 1705 is not realistic.
I can live with 1685 [although Hoyt&Schatten record zero spots for that year], but there really were almost no observations of sunspots at that time [and Hoyt&Schatten and Vaquero and others have dug up more data than Waldmeier had, so Waldmeier is not Gospel Truth], so direct observations are not reliable enough to pin down the cycles. And 1705 is also uncertain [again: no data].The bottom line is that there is no good sunspot data for that period, so we can’t really tell. Proxies may be the best bet. The cycle length has not been constant over time, e.g. was above 12 years during the 19th century [where we do have reasonable data].
lsvalgaard:
There does seem to be standard Hale periodicity through the period in question.
Page 16: http://www.leif.org/EOS/IAU2011_Miyahara.pdf
Stanford Sage : when I tell you something, pay attention and learn.
Learning is for the acquiescent, outliers of science are domain of my interest.
lsvalgaard says:
March 9, 2013 at 10:31 am
” The cycle length has not been constant over time, e.g. was above 12 years during the 19th century [where we do have reasonable data].”
11.53yrs average from May 1798 to Feb 1902:
http://www.solen.info/solar/cycl5.html
http://www.solen.info/solar/cycl13.html
Ulric Lyons says:
March 9, 2013 at 10:55 am
There does seem to be standard Hale periodicity through the period in question.
Page 16: http://www.leif.org/EOS/IAU2011_Miyahara.pdf
Yes, with a 14-year period. Just shows how uncertain all this is.
vukcevic says:
March 9, 2013 at 11:50 am
Learning is for the acquiescent, outliers of science are domain of my interest.
That is OK, as long as they are treated scientifically, which you do not, so they are not of interest to science and wrongful conclusions are worthless [but can be entertaining].
Ulric Lyons says:
March 9, 2013 at 12:10 pm
” The cycle length has not been constant over time, e.g. was above 12 years during the 19th century [where we do have reasonable data].”
11.53yrs average from May 1798 to Feb 1902
Not constant, so a long-term average is meaningless. You have to look at the distribution:
http://www.leif.org/research/Distribution-Cycle-Lengths-3.png
It is not clear what you so desperately are try to get at. The fact is that the solar cycle length is not constant over time, but has long-term variations.
lsvalgaard says:
March 9, 2013 at 12:37 pm
“It is not clear what you so desperately are try to get at.”
It’s very clear what I am getting at, which is that the cycles follow Ju/Ea/Ve syzygies for many hundreds of years. If there is any desperation, I would say it is your inflation of the average cycle length to attempt to disprove this fact.
Ulric Lyons says:
March 9, 2013 at 1:04 pm
the average cycle length to attempt to disprove this fact.
The data speak for themselves, so your idea is hardly a fact.
Lief:
I see several very distinct “groups” of data: But, what year was that single “square” cycle at 13.5 year length?
RACookPE1978 says:
March 9, 2013 at 1:23 pm
I see several very distinct “groups” of data: But, what year was that single “square” cycle at 13.5 year length?
The cycles that peaked in 1870.5 and 1884.0. Lengths depend on if you measure from max to max or from min to min. People will usually pick the measure that tends to confirm what they want to see. Pick you own.
lsvalgaard says:
March 9, 2013 at 1:20 pm
“The data speak for themselves,”
But you did not speak for the data, you started at 12.5yrs, then reduced than swiftly to 11.7yrs when challenged, and as you can go with 1685, that’s down to 11.43yrs.
Dr. S.
That is OK, as long as they are treated scientifically, which you do not, so they are not of interest to science and wrongful conclusions are worthless [but can be entertaining].
So let’s be entertained (with the respect of Dr.S’s sensitivity to some items I am using conditional ‘if’)
Miyahara is mildly enthusiastic about the cycles’ polarity, current sheet and the Parker spiral. Many have suggested astronomical planetary alignments, but as possible drivers do not allow for such wide variation of the solar cycles. When I constructed formula depending on Jupiter orbit + Jupiter/Saturn synodic period, it was obvious that the direct alignment is not a viable solution (eliminating factors such as gravity, acceleration or tides).
Magnetosphere of Jupiter is huge (extends to more than 5 AU reaching Saturn’s orbit) and ‘if there is an electro and magnetic link to the polar fields (seed of the next cycle) http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm, than it has to be a main player. Saturn’s magnetosphere on its own is probably of minor importance, but every 19 or so years two magnetospheres join into an awesome magnetic entity
I digress, back to Miyahara and the Parker spiral. ‘If the link is achieved along the Parker spiral, then there is an interesting alignment of two magnetic giants as I constructed some time ago
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/J-S-angle.htm
with odd and even cycles alignment switching every 100+ years (105-7 year cycle).
The 105 year periodicity is also present in http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC4.htm identifying various anomalies including the Maunder Min.
So far so good, but how to account for the variable SC length?
Solar wind velocity.
When slow and fast stream interact a ‘magnetic scattering region’ (also co-rotating interaction region) is created, location of its appearance along the Parker spiral is dependant of the ratio of the solar wind velocities in the two streams.
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-349/p96.jpg
Hopefully, Dr. S. as helpful as ever would in an unbiased manner (remembering conditional ‘if’) explain the ratios of velocities in the weak (longer) and the strong (shorter cycles).
Ulric Lyons says:
March 9, 2013 at 1:43 pm
you started at 12.5yrs, then reduced than swiftly to 11.7yrs when challenged, and as you can go with 1685, that’s down to 11.43yrs.
The power spectrum of the 10Be during the MM has a peak at 12.5 years. Counting cycles further back reduces that to 11.7 years. BTW, you are not ‘challenging’ anybody. I’m trying to tell you what the data show. I don’t know what period you are shooting for, but the data during the MM are not precise enough to pin down the cycle length with any precision, expect that it is likely a bit longer than recent values, just as it was during the 19th century. The cycle length is not constant but varies several years.
vukcevic says:
March 9, 2013 at 2:11 pm
Magnetosphere of Jupiter is huge (extends to more than 5 AU reaching Saturn’s orbit)
It is teeny tiny seen from the Sun [extends over something like a 1/50,000 of the sky].
and ‘if there is an electro and magnetic link to the polar fields (seed of the next cycle)
But since there is not, that idea is dead on arrival.
but every 19 or so years two magnetospheres join into an awesome magnetic entity
Nonsense.
‘If the link is achieved along the Parker spiral
But since there is no such link…
Solar wind velocity.
When slow and fast stream interact a ‘magnetic scattering region’ (also co-rotating interaction region) is created, location of its appearance along the Parker spiral
The solar wind expands radially, not along the spiral. The ‘spiral’ is just the location of where the region has been, not where it is. Garden sprinkler is a good illustration.
explain the ratios of velocities in the weak (longer) and the strong (shorter cycles).
Oversimplifying: stronger cycles come from a stronger solar magnetic field, but that doesn’t really matter as the solar wind speed does not vary as you think.
The best way to describe your nonsense it perhaps a comment by ‘Tom in Florida’:
Tom in Florida says:
March 7, 2013 at 5:33 am
Years ago I was stationed in Hawaii and my son was about 5 years old. He understood the correlation between putting up a Christmas tree and then having presents appear under it on the morning of Dec 25. His understanding was that Santa Claus came in the night and placed the presents there (theory). Then one Christmas morning he noticed the doors and windows were locked from the inside (real world data). He wanted to know how Santa could get in under those conditions. I realized it was time to explain the truth to him.
Moral of story: anything seems possible when you do not understand the science behind a theory.
Just wondering if David and Vuk know that the windows and doors are locked.
vukcevic says:
March 9, 2013 at 2:11 pm
“Magnetosphere of Jupiter is huge (extends to more than 5 AU reaching Saturn’s orbit) and ‘if there is an electro and magnetic link to the polar fields (seed of the next cycle) http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm, than it has to be a main player.”
It does not extend that far at all towards the Sun, so it cannot work like that. The only option open is that the Sun would be being effected by the angular arrangement of its own magnetic connections to the planets, and not by magnetic influence from the planets. The you don’t have to overlook the combinations that actually track the Hale cycle.
lsvalgaard says:
March 9, 2013 at 2:40 pm
” I’m trying to tell you what the data show.”
And I am having to continuously correct your miscalculations, e.g.:
“..was above 12 years during the 19th century”
when it was really ~11.53yrs on average between 1798 and 1902.
And:
There does seem to be standard Hale periodicity through the period in question.
Page 16: http://www.leif.org/EOS/IAU2011_Miyahara.pdf
Leif replies:
“Yes, with a 14-year period. Just shows how uncertain all this is.”
And to remind you, we were discussing whether there were one or two cycles from 1685(1687?) to 1705, and the 10Be graph on page 16 does not show a 14yr Hale signal around those decades.
lsvalgaard says:
“.. but the data during the MM are not precise enough to pin down the cycle length with any precision..] The cycle length is not constant but varies several years.”
It’s not as if I wouldn’t have noticed the length variations! The issue was not the precise average length, but the number of cycles during the 17th century.
Ulric Lyons says:
March 9, 2013 at 4:46 pm
when it was really ~11.53yrs on average between 1798 and 1902.
One more time: the data is not good enough for a precise calculation. Good data starts in ~1820 with Schwabe’s observations. Dividing the [good] record into two halves and computing the power spectrum gives this:
http://www.leif.org/research/FFT-Daily-Sunspot-Number-1st-2nd-halves.png you should be able to see that the period in the 1st [red] half [‘the 19th century’] is significantly higher than in the 2nd [blue] half [‘the 20th century’]. This is the point: the solar cycle length has systematic long-term variations.
And to remind you, we were discussing whether there were one or two cycles from 1685(1687?) to 1705, and the 10Be graph on page 16 does not show a 14yr Hale signal around those decades.The data is not good enough to pin this down. Miyahara finds a 14-yr cycle in 14C. The 10Be data is not so clear. We simply do not know what the period was, or if there were one or two cycles, or three [as Usoskin suggests].
The issue was not the precise average length, but the number of cycles during the 17th century.
The correct answer is that we don’t know. There were 7 cycles 1605-1687, but we do not know how many cycles there were between 1687 and 1820. It could be two, three, or four. And if we knew the number of cycles we could calculate the precise average length during that period, so that IS clearly the issue. Now what average length would you like to see?
vukcevic says:
March 9, 2013 at 2:11 pm
When slow and fast stream interact a ‘magnetic scattering region’ (also co-rotating interaction region) is created, location of its appearance along the Parker spiral
To idealize a bit: solar magnetic fields are organized into large-scales structures: polar fields and ‘sector structure’ http://www.leif.org/research/Model%20Polar-Sector%20Solar%20Magnetic%20Fields.pdf and http://www.leif.org/research/A%20View%20of%20Solar%20Magnetic%20Fields%2C%20the%20Solar%20Corona%2C%20and%20the%20Solar%20Wind%20in%20Three%20Dimensions.pdf
Along the sector boundary in the corona the field is generally multipolar and ‘closed’ so the solar wind has a harder time to get out. This means that the solar wind speed near the sector boundary is low. In the middle of a sector the field is generally weaker and unipolar and more ‘open’ and a high-speed stream will usually emanate from such areas. So, near the Sun you will have an alternation of slow and fast winds [in an ideal case four of each as we cross a sector boundary four times]. This does not change with the cycles, there is no difference between even and odd, or strong or weak, or negative or postive, or whatever cycles.
Because of solar rotation, solar wind of different speeds are emitted in the same direction, so fast wind will run into slow wind and produce a compression region by scooping up the plasma followed by a rarefaction region [a co-rotating interaction region – the Sun, of course, knows nothing about this as the wind is streaming away supersonically]. With increasing distance these regions will steepen into shocks [which BTW scatter cosmic rays out of the solar system]. In the way out to the heliopause there will be about 25 of these shocks wrapping completely around the Sun that many times. The latitudinal extent of these shocks [and the sector boundary – the heliospheric current sheet] changes with the phase of the solar cycle: small [~10-15 degrees] at solar minimum and large [~80-90 degrees] at solar maximum. This variation is the cause of the solar cycle modulation of cosmic rays: http://www.leif.org/research/HCS-Nature-1976.pdf
This is how the solar wind speed varies.
Ulric Lyons says:
March 9, 2013 at 2:47 pm
vukcevic says:
March 9, 2013 at 2:11 pm “Magnetosphere of Jupiter is huge (extends to more than 5 AU reaching Saturn’s orbit)
…
It does not extend that far at all towards the Sun,
……………….
I assumed that was more than obvious, and it was not implied.