Solar cycle update – sun's magnetic activity still in a slump

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
May 7, 2013 at 1:02 pm
What is this 28-day cycle you speak of?
Happens in every solar cycle [and is not related to solar neutrinos]:
http://www.leif.org/research/Long-term%20Evolution%20of%20Solar%20Sector%20Structure.pdf

jimarndt says:
May 7, 2013 at 1:19 pm
What causes the large TSI drop off on the SORCE daily average graph?
Large, dark sunspots.

geran says:
May 7, 2013 at 1:58 pm
Then, you are basically wrong. A “fairly good indication” is not a prediction.
The ‘goodness’ can be measured by how useful the prediction is. For the purposes of predicting the effects on the Earth of solar activity a 15% error is considered ‘fairly good’ and useful. Our prediction of almost ten years ago seems to be accurate to that precision, so is ‘good enough’.
Your move, predict the next five years of solar activity.
http://www.leif.org/research/Active%20Region%20Count.png

geran says:
May 7, 2013 at 3:08 pm
okay, I know math is hard. I often get the figures confused myself. This year is 2013, plus 5 is 2018.
The top panel goes through 2019, so I failed to predict only through 2018….
Perhaps you are done embarrassing yourself…

geran says May 7, 2013 at 3:08 pm
…
Your link does not project solar activity to 2018. …

Recommend a change in eyeballs or monitor; perhaps the Samsung Siii does not have the resolution to see the data-line out to 2019?
.

geran says:
May 7, 2013 at 4:20 pm
I was expecting more than the conventional graph. But that was my fault.
You got more than the conventional graph. You got activity separated by cycles [different colors].
The “monitored wavelengths” referred to NASA data
what NASA data? I’m on the NASA/NOAA panel predicting solar cycles and I have no idea what you are talking about.
NZ Willy says:
May 7, 2013 at 4:21 pm
Hi Leif, appreciating your Research page and your patient answers here. Hoping you will soon update your WSO-Polar-Fields chart, counting down to the polar field flip.
Ii is: http://www.leif.org/research/WSO-Polar-Fields-since-2003.png

Does a pore count as sunspot?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/solar/
Any comment concerning the tiny pin prick sunspots?
The idiotic hiding of the solar magnetic cycle interruption would be humorous, if there were no climate consequences. Unfortunately it appears we are going to experience a solar magnetic cycle interruption which causes the cooling phase of a Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle or a Heinrich event.
I am truly curious how the media will respond to global cooling.
As the magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots decays linearly (See link to Livingston & Penn’s paper below. Seems innocuous does it? Why would an interruption to the solar magnetic cycle make any difference to us?), the magnetic ropes that rise up from the solar tachocline (tachocline is name for the thin region that separates the solar convection zone and the solar radiative zone) through the convection zone, are being torn apart by turbulence in the convection zone.
What is left are tiny sunspots which the specialists call ‘pores’.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0784v1
Long-term Evolution of Sunspot Magnetic Fields
Independent of the normal solar cycle, a decrease in the sunspot magnetic field
strength has been observed using the Zeeman-split 1564.8nm Fe I spectral line at the
NSO Kitt Peak McMath-Pierce telescope… ….This trend was seen to continue in observations of the first sunspots of the new solar Cycle 24, and extrapolating a linear fit to this trend would lead to only half the number of spots in Cycle 24 compared to Cycle 23, and imply virtually no sunspots in Cycle 25.
There are hundreds of individual published papers that layout the theory (there is cyclic climate change in the paleo record and each and every time the climate changes there is an accompanying change to the solar magnetic cycle) and the mechanisms (by which solar magnetic cycle changes modulate planetary climate), however, there is a very vocal group that are stating catastrophic warming at a volume and consistency that drowns out or intimidates anyone connecting the dots to predict global cooling.
The paleoclimatic record shows cycles of warming followed by cooling Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles and the more sever Heinrich events. The D-O cycles have a periodicity of 1450 years plus or minus a discrete change of 500 years (i.e. 950 years, 1450 years, and 1950 years). Roughly every 8000 years to 10,000 years there is a very, very strong D-O cycle which is called a Heinrich event. This is Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, from Richard Alley’s paper. You can see the D-O cycles in this data.The late Gerald Bond has able to track 23 of the D-O cycles/Heinrich events through the current interglacial and into the last glacial phase.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://rivernet.ncsu.edu/courselocker/PaleoClimate/Bond%20et%20al.,%201997%20Millenial%20Scale%20Holocene%20Change.pdf
A Pervasive Millennial-Scale Cycle in North Atlantic Holocene and Glacial Climates
http://rivernet.ncsu.edu/courselocker/PaleoClimate/Bond%20et%20al%201999%20%20N.%20Atlantic%201-2.PDF
http://www.climate4you.com/
This paper provides the observational evidence to support the assertion that the last Heinrich event 12,900 years before present at which time the planet went from interglacial warm to glacial cold when insolation at latitude N65 in June and July was at maximum with 90% of the cooling occurring in less than a decade correlates with an unknown massive change in C14 which correlates with a solar magnetic cycle change.
Reduced solar activity as a trigger for the start of the Younger Dryas? (William: The Younger Dryas is a Heinrich Event. The mechanism that causes a Heinrich event is an interruption to the solar magnetic cycle not a reduction in total solar irradiation. The re-start of the solar magnetic cycle causes a geomagnetic excursion. There are burn marks on the surface of the earth that correlate in time with the geomagnetic excursions and the Heinrich events.)
http://www.falw.vu/~renh/pdf/Renssen-etal-QI-2000.pdf
The following is more information concerning how unusual the 20th century period of high solar activity was and what to possibly expect if the sun moves abruptly into a deep minimum.
Curiously there are geomagnetic excursions that coincide in time with the abrupt climate change Heinrich events. There are also geomagnetic excursions that correlate with the termination of past interglacial periods.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/003358947790031X
The Gothenburg Magnetic Excursion
The Gothenburg Magnetic Excursion in a broad sense ranges from 13,750 to 12,350 years BP (William: This is weird. The Gothenburg Magnetic excursion occurred at the same time as Younger Dryas Heinrich event.) and ends with the Gothenburg Magnetic Flip at 12,400−12,350 years BP (= the Fjärås Stadial in southern Scandinavia) with an equatorial VGP position in the central Pacific. The Gothenburg Magnetic Flip is recorded in five closely dated and mutually correlated cores in Sweden. In all five cores, the inclination is completely reversed in the layer representing the Fjärås Stadial dated at 12,400−12,350 years BP. The cores were taken 160 km apart and represent both marine and lacustrine environments. The Gothenburg Magnetic Flip represents the shortest excursion and the most rapid polar change known at present. It is also hitherto the far best-dated paleomagnetic event. The Gothenburg Magnetic Excursion and Flip are proposed as a standard magnetostatigraphic unit.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0706.0385
Grand minima and maxima of solar activity: New observational constraints I.G. Usoskin, S.K. Solanki, and G.A. Kovaltsov
…We present an updated reconstruction of sunspot number over multiple millennia, from 14C data by means of a physics-based model, using an updated model of the evolution of the solar open magnetic flux. A list of grand minima and maxima of solar activity is presented for the Holocene (since 9500 BC) and the statistics of both the length of individual events as well as the waiting time between them are analyzed….
…Solar activity on multi-millenial time scales has been recently reconstructed using a physics-based model from measurements of 14C in tree rings (see full details in
Solanki et al. 2004, Usoskin et al. 2006a). The validity of the model results for the last centennia has been proven by independent data on measurements of 44Ti in stony meteorites (Usoskin et al. 2006b). The reconstruction depends on the knowledge of temporal changes of the geomagnetic dipole field, which must be estimated independently by paleomagnetic methods. Here we compare two solar activity reconstructions, which … …the more recent work of Korte & Constable (2005) may underestimate it. Thus we consider both models as they bound a realistic case. We note that the Yang et al. (2000) data run more than 4000 years longer and give a more conservative estimate of the grand maxima.
See figure 3 in this paper. It shows that solar activity in 20th century particularly in the last half of the 20th century was the highest in 12,000 years and more importantly the duration of the high period was the longest in 12,000 years.
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years by S. K. Solanki, I. G. Usoskin, B. Kromer, M. Schussler & J. Beer
Here we report a reconstruction of the sunspot number covering the past 11,400 years, based on dendrochronologically dated radiocarbon concentrations. We combine physics-based models for each of the processes connecting the radiocarbon concentration with sunspot number. According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode…
The cyclic abrupt climate change in the paleo climatic record were caused by an interruption to the solar magnetic cycle.
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html
Sudden climate transitions during the Quaternary
According to the marine records, the Eemian interglacial ended with a rapid cooling event about 110,000 years ago (e.g., Imbrie et al., 1984; Martinson et al., 1987), which also shows up in ice cores and pollen records from across Eurasia. From a relatively high resolution core in the North Atlantic. Adkins et al. (1997) suggested that the final cooling event took less than 400 years, and it might have been much more rapid… …The event at 8200 ka is the most striking sudden cooling event during the Holocene, giving widespread cool, dry conditions lasting perhaps 200 years before a rapid return to climates warmer and generally moister than the present. This event is clearly detectable in the Greenland ice cores, where the cooling seems to have been about half-way as severe as the Younger Dryas-to-Holocene difference (Alley et al., 1997; Mayewski et al., 1997). No detailed assessment of the speed of change involved seems to have been made within the literature (though it should be possible to make such assessments from the ice core record), but the short duration of these events at least suggests changes that took only a few decades or less to occur.

William Astley says:
May 7, 2013 at 5:39 pm
solar activity in 20th century particularly in the last half of the 20th century was the highest in 12,000 years
Actually, that is not the case as I have pointed out to you a number of times already.

Stephen Rasey says:
May 7, 2013 at 7:25 pm
Indeed Hathaway does the right thing by updating the prediction (or is it projection?).
What geran and others object to is Hathaway’s erasing of his prior predictions.
Nobody is keeping track of old weather predictions [except the forecasters themselves in order to improve them] and it is similarly not interesting to keep track of last years solar predictions.

“geran” says May 7, 2013 at 7:50 pm …
– gag –
Clean up needed on this thread …

The maximum annual sunspot number will either in 2014 or 2015. Next minimum not before ~2021. The cycle is weak and that means long. The cooling starts after the peak and by ~2020 the 30-year trend will be flat.

I thought Hathaway predicted “a big one” for SC24, exceeding SC23. Most would accept a !5% error, but not an error in the order of 100%.

Leif writes:
< Except there might be half a dozen peaks as in cycle 14.
Do you mean peaks in the monthly means (of the sunspot numbers) or in the SMOOTHED monthly means?

vukcevic says:
May 8, 2013 at 5:37 am
Your link needs .pdf included
http://www.leif.org/research/Predicting%20the%20Solar%20Cycle%20(SORCE%202010).pdf
So does yours :-).
Here is how to fix it:
http://www.leif.org/research/Predicting%20the%20Solar%20Cycle%20%28SORCE%202010%29.pdf

William Astley says:
May 8, 2013 at 4:44 am
As can be seen in figure 3 of this paper solar magnetic cycle activity in 20th century (based on an analysis of C14) is the highest in 8000 years. In addition the duration of the period of high activity is the highest in 11,000 years.
You keep saying the same thing does not make it so. The most recent data [as was discussed in Bern last week] does not support the notion that recent activity was the highest in 10,000 years. Closer to today, the data [both based on cosmic ray data and on a re-assessment of the sunspot number] shows that activity during the 18th century was just as high as in the 20th.

In reply to:
lsvalgaard says:
May 8, 2013 at 7:01 am
William Astley says:
May 8, 2013 at 4:44 am
As can be seen in figure 3 of this paper solar magnetic cycle activity in 20th century (based on an analysis of C14) is the highest in 8000 years. In addition the duration of the period of high activity is the highest in 11,000 years.
You keep saying the same thing does not make it so. The most recent data [as was discussed in Bern last week] does not support the notion that recent activity was the highest in 10,000 years. Closer to today, the data [both based on cosmic ray data and on a re-assessment of the sunspot number] shows that activity during the 18th century was just as high as in the 20th.
William:
It appears we only agree on fact the sun is going into a very deep minimum and this will be an ‘interesting’ time for solar physicists. As there will significant planetary cooling, this will also be an ‘interesting’ time for climatologists if they can keep their jobs.
I would expect the public will demand a group be held responsible for this fiasco and will demand mass firings of those directly involved in the cover up and manipulation of data.
I provided links to peer reviewed papers that provide data to support the assertion that based on an analysis of cosmogenic isotopes – dendrochronological analysis (tree cores), C14 – solar activity in the 20th century was the highest in 8000 years.
What new data or analysis overturns the 2004 paper finding “… the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago …”?
I see the attempt to overturn data that supports the assertion that“… the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago …” as a pathetic warmist effort to overturn reality.
The science does not support the assertion that the rise in atmospheric CO2 caused the 20th century warming. The 20th century warming happened for a reason. There are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleoclimatic record. All of the past warming and cooling periods happened for a reason. The physical reason was not changes to the levels of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Changes to the solar magnetic cycle were the physical driver for past warming and cooling cycles (see paper excerpts and links below).
Solar magnetic cycle changes that modulate the amount of low level and high level clouds caused the 20th century warming and caused the past warming and cooling cycles. The sun is heading into a very deep magnetic cycle minimum which will by the mechanisms cause the planet to cool.
Low level planetary clouds will increase and high level clouds will decrease both changes cause the planet to cool. The reduction in high level cirrus clouds will cause significant cooling in the Arctic and over the Greenland Ice sheet. The reduction in cirrus clouds has less effect over the Antarctic ice sheet as the very low temperatures (average temperature of -50C) over the Antarctic ice sheet limit the amount of moisture available to even form cirrus clouds. The very cold temperature over the Antarctic ice sheet is due to extreme southern latitude and its elevation (around 15,000 feet). The Antarctic ice sheet has covered almost all of the mountains on that continent.
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/
At the above site, the following graph, a comparison of the past solar cycles 21, 22, and 23 to the new cycle 24 is provided. That graph is update every six months or so.
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
This is a graph, that is also located at the above site, that compares solar cycle 24 to the weakest solar magnetic cycles in the last 150 years.
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_similar_cycles.png
Evidence that the 20th century warming (1984 to 2000) was caused by a reduction in low level clouds.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.org/5/1721/2005/acp-5-1721-2005.html
Analysis of the decrease in the tropical mean outgoing shortwave radiation at the top of atmosphere for the period 1984–2000
All cloud types show a linearly decreasing trend over the study period, with the low-level clouds having the largest trend, equal to −3.9±0.3% in absolute values or −9.9±0.8% per decade in relative terms. Of course, there are still some uncertainties, since the changes in low-level clouds derived from the ISCCP-D2 data, are not necessarily consistent with changes derived from the second Stratospheric Aerosols and Gas Experiment (SAGE II, Wang et al., 2002) and synoptic observations (Norris, 1999). Nevertheless, note that SAGE II tropical clouds refer to uppermost opaque clouds (with vertical optical depth greater than 0.025 at 1.02μm), while the aforementioned synoptic cloud observations are taken over oceans only. The midlevel clouds decreased by 1.4±0.2% in absolute values or by 6.6±0.8% per decade in relative terms, while the high-level ones also decreased by 1.2±0.4% or 3±0.9% per decade in relative terms, i.e. less than low and middle clouds. Thus, the VIS/IR mean tropical (30_ S–30_ N) low-level clouds are found to have undergone the greatest decrease during the period 1984–2000, in agreement with the findings of Chen et al. (2002) and Lin et al. (2004).
Evidence that solar magnetic cycle activity in the 20th century was the highest in 8000 years.
See figure 3 in this paper, Nature 2004. It shows that solar activity in 20th century particularly in the last half of the 20th century was the highest in 12,000 years and more importantly the duration of the high period was the longest in 12,000 years.
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years by S. K. Solanki, I. G. Usoskin, B. Kromer, M. Schussler & J. Beer
Here we report a reconstruction of the sunspot number covering the past 11,400 years, based on dendrochronologically dated radiocarbon concentrations. We combine physics-based models for each of the processes connecting the radiocarbon concentration with sunspot number. According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode…
http://cio.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/root/1999/QuatSciRevvGeel/1999QuatSciRevvGeel.pdf
“The role of solar forcing upon climate change”
When solar activity is high, the extended solar magnetic field sweeps through interplanetary space, thereby more effectively shielding the Earth from cosmic rays and reducing the production of 14C. Low solar activity lets more cosmic rays enter the Earth’s atmosphere, producing more 14C. So the 14C record is a good proxy for the solar radiant output (Bard et al., 1997). … ….However, explaining the observed changes in 14C concentration by production-rate variations alone is too simple an assumption, the more so when rapid 14C concentration changes appear to be coincident with significant changes in climate.
However, if we observe sudden, major 14C increases like the ones starting at c. 850 cal. BC and at c. 1600 AD (about 20 per mil), it is hard to imagine any change in the global carbon cycle that can bring about such a drastic fast change, simply because there is no reservoir of carbon with higher 14C concentration available anywhere on Earth. Even a sudden stop of the upwelling of old carbon-containing deep water could not cause the sudden (within decades) 14C concentration increases that are documented in the dendrochronological records. So, if we observe that such a sudden 14C increase, which must be caused by a production increase, is accompanied by indications for a change towards colder or wetter climate, this may indicate that solar forcing of the climate does exist. In theory, increased production of cosmogenic isotopes can also have a cause of cosmic origin such as a nearby supernova (Sonnett et al., 1987). We consider this scenario unlikely, and note here that events such as the 850 cal. BC peak are present in the dendrochronological curve with a periodicity of about 2400 years (Stuiver and Braziunas, 1989; see below).
“A number of those Holocene climate cooling phases… most likely of a global nature (eg Magney, 1993; van Geel et al, 1996; Alley et al 1997; Stager & Mayewski, 1997) … the cooling phases seem to be part of a millennial-scale climatic cycle operating independent of the glacial-interglacial cycles (which are) forced (perhaps paced) by orbit variations.”
“… we show here evidence that the variation in solar activity is a cause for the millennial scale climate change.”
Last 40 kyrs
Figure 2 in paper. (From data last 40 kyrs)… “conclude that solar forcing of climate, as indicated by high BE10 values, coincided with cold phases of Dansgaar-Oeschger events as shown in O16 records”
Recent Solar Event
“Maunder Minimum (1645-1715) “…coincides with one of the coldest phases of the Little Ice Age… (van Geel et al 1998b)
Periodicity
“Mayewski et al (1997) showed a 1450 yr periodicity in C14 … from tree rings and …from glaciochemicial series (NaCl & Dust) from the GISP2 ice core … believed to reflect changes in polar atmospheric circulation..”
William: The 20th century warming was caused by a change in amount of low level and then high level clouds. The change in planetary cloud cover was caused by solar magnetic cycle changes.

lsvalgaard says:
The most recent data as was discussed in Bern last week does not support the notion that recent activity was the highest in 10,000 years.
I hear that workshop was held in the Bern munster, so that any dissent from the unreservedly agreed consensus could be throttled out of existence.
http://d1ezg6ep0f8pmf.cloudfront.net/images/slides/a5/8645-bern-munster-dance-death-window.jpg
🙂

Stephen Rasey says:
May 8, 2013 at 10:45 am
Current official curve has the same amplitude as the April 2007 Low view ,
Because we decided back then to go with the low view [which is still too high for my taste] and not issue any further predictions after all. The Hathaway forecast is his own, private one, not ‘official’ in any way, shape, or form.

Bob from the UK says:
May 8, 2013 at 2:23 pm
says “will cling to the old stuff for another generation. So be it, their loss.”
Old? A History of Solar Activity over Millennia – published March 2013
Indeed, old. He is one of the ‘clingers’.

Stephen Wilde says:
“Yes there was a solar peak of activity in the late 1700s. It seems that it got just as warm then too until solar activity dropped again giving us a cool trough by the 1880s.”
The 1730’s were warmer: http://snag.gy/2q2kT.jpg (CET 1730-1930)
There are a number of cool troughs before 1880, the one from 1836-1845 is curiously during a very large cycle: http://www.solen.info/solar/cycl8.html
S.W.:
“If solar predictions are comparable to weather predictions they are not true predictions at all.”
Weather forecasts can be deterministic if they are based on predicted solar activity, such as we discussed here: http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/met-office-flapping-on-winter-201213-but-mention-ssw/comment-page-1/#comment-51007

Bob from the UK says:
May 8, 2013 at 2:23 pm
says “will cling to the old stuff for another generation. So be it, their loss.”
Old? A History of Solar Activity over Millennia – published March 2013
You can see the problem in Figure 2 of http://www.leif.org/research/Svalgaard_ISSI_Proposal_Base.pdf where the dashed light-red curve represents the old data and the blue and red curves the new data. The ‘break’ around 1950 is the basis for the notion that activity recently has been the highest ‘ever’. Better cosmic ray data and new sunspot reconstruction show that the old curve is not correct. Our meeting in Bern was precisely to visit that problem and we have succeeded in resolving the problem. But, as I said, it will take some time before the last of the ‘rear-enders’ give up the ghost.

lsvalgaard says:
May 8, 2013 at 3:50 pm
Stephen Rasey says:
May 8, 2013 at 3:35 pm
The webarchive shows the first appearance of the “final” red curve to be May 27, 2010. (See my 1:30pm above) It is different than the previous May 9, 2009….
I give up. No, it isn’t. I’m on the Panel and know what we do. If there is any difference it is an error in the plotting routine.
It is people like you that waste valuable time for the rest of us by not doing your homework [or ignoring the facts]. Here I compare the May 2009 red line with the April 2013 version http://www.leif.org/research/NOAA-Prediction-Unchanged.png they are identical. So, could we please stop the nonsense. Our users know what they need and want and do not agree with your assessment of what is important to them.

Stephen Rasey says:
May 8, 2013 at 10:08 pm
You say that one of them is from May 2009, but it visably isn’t the May 9 2009 curve and you don’t provide a link to a May 2009 curve you used.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/

Stephen Rasey says:
May 9, 2013 at 9:23 am
The next chart in the web archive is not until May 27, 2010, using the red curve from May 8, 2009 which is used from then on.
None of this really matters, as there is and has always been only ONE low prediction [Rmax=90]. As per NOAA’s policy they don’t change that one EVER. But at this point in time, the old 2009 prediction is not of interest anymore. We are so far into the cycle that one can get a good prediction [as Hathaway does] by just fitting the observations since 2009 to a standard sunspot curve parameterized by Rmax. At this point there is no more any theory involved, just fitting to a known [standard] statistical shape. This method has proven its worth in the past, so that is what is used.

tumetuestumefaisdubien1 says:
May 11, 2013 at 4:04 pm
and only in may 2009 – half a year into the SC24 they shifted the curve and wiped the high prediction and consented at SSN 90 peak – which likely is still 35% higher than what actually happens.
I was actually on the Panel and I can tell you a bit about the history. Initially, most members were impressed by the Dikpati et al. prediction and argued for a high value [185 or so] [by the way I was a referee of their paper http://www.leif.org/research/Dikpati%20Referee%20Report.pdf ]. Myself and Pesnell argued that the weak polar fields indicated a much weaker cycle [ http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%2024%20Smallest%20100%20years.pdf and http://www.leif.org/research/Schatten-2003-prediction.png ], about Rmax 75 [later reduced to 72], which would make it the ‘smallest in a 100 years’]. During our deliberations we slowly convinced the rest of the panel [with one or two exceptions] that a high prediction was not tenable. Unfortunately, the panel did not have the courage to go all the way to 72 and settled for 90. I admit that not going all the way down to 72 was not based on science, but on political pressure. But that we managed to cut the alarming high prediction in half using sound science I consider to be a great success. The percentage error is not important when values are small. If we predicted 5 and it came out 10 [a 100% error] this is of no consequence at all. What is important is how much lower than the worst-case maximum we predict. And then going down from 185 to 90 or to 67 is only a difference of 13%, pretty good I would say.
I don’t blame anybody for anything, but to talk about policies and claim a “great success” looks rather more like an expression of loyalty to your field colleagues then a sober evaluation of the NOAA panel predictive capabilities based rather on consensus than prevalence of a major comprehensive theory. -Even the group which estimated the low cycle clearly still overestimated it considerably and only future will tell how much exactly.
The value 72 is based on a solid theory, e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/Choudhuri-forecast.pdf The 90 is a fluke that should not be taken as a measure of the theory, but as a weakness of doing science by consensus.
It were other people who warned that the sun – directly or indirectly, influenced by the planets or not, wobbling around barycenter or not, whatever theory one prefers
But not based on any [valid] physical theory why cycles should be weaker.
…is to show, that the sunspot activity generaly during the last warming period rised up until 2000′s, where it eventually leveled – as the global temperature anomaly did – and began a steep descent into a Dalton minimum levels)…etc
is just speculation and wiggle matching. Now as Schatten pointed out 10 years ago we may be headed into a Maunder Minimum [ http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Svalgaard12.pdf ] which will be a blow to alarmists who think we’ll freeze to death [when we don’t].
What really looks embarrassing is to change the past original prediction and pretend it is the same – although the curve was shifted already half a year after the SC24 started
What NOAA does is to show the prediction as agreed by the panel and we are allowed to change that as we see fit and as we promised up to the time where we said we were done. To erase the past prediction values is the correct thing to do as they are of no use [like last years weekly weather forecasts]
To keep up the unreal “low prediction smoothed” from the pair of the original two (when the observation – which already as you point out well could serve to predict the rest of the cycle – experienced even considerably lower activity) I find being a confusion of both the policymakers and public. In fact especially the SC24 even now just ~4.5 years to the cycle is so low, that no way there could be any significant warming next decade if the solar factor is the chief driver (as common sense would expect*) and in such case if the longer solar periodicity as in the past is still in place, then next half of the century.
The observed sunspot numbers are too low compared to the prediction, but that is probably due to the Livingston & Penn effect. TSI and the CME rate have not fallen below the prediction [ http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-not-following-SSN-F107.png ] and if the sun has any effect those variables may be what count.
To take this possible predictions seriously and direct the resources in acquiring better understanding of them is absolutely decisive for wide range of local and global issues
I agree that one should take our prediction seriously and would welcome resources directed our way.

tumetuestumefaisdubien1 says:
May 11, 2013 at 6:11 pm
Sorry, here’s the link I hope it works now.for you.
It did, but as I said, when we decided to go with the low prediction we also decided to shift it over. This is in keeping with our promise to update the prediction if warranted.