It is looking more and more like a double sunspot peak for solar cycle 24.
Sunspot count is down again:
A similar drop occurred in radio flux.
The Ap magnetic index remains low, but is up 3 units from last month:
On July 1st, solar scientist David Hathaway has updated his prediction page:
|
The current prediction for Sunspot Cycle 24 gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 67 in the Summer of 2013. The smoothed sunspot number has already reached 67 (in February 2012) due to the strong peak in late 2011 so the official maximum will be at least this high. The smoothed sunspot number has been rising again over the last four months. We are currently over four years into Cycle 24. The current predicted and observed size makes this the smallest sunspot cycle since Cycle 14 which had a maximum of 64.2 in February of 1906. |
dp says:
July 11, 2013 at 10:56 am
As a matter of curiosity is the complete red plot available to present a complete view of the scale of error over time in the predictions?
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/index.html
lsvalgaard
For Cycle 25 and beyond, the sunspot number will [in my assessment] drop to levels not seen since the Maunder Minimum.
… It is this reassembly process that seems to be weakening causing the Livingston and Penn effect [why it is weakening is presently not known].
Is there a relationship implied or theorized between whatever might be causing the Livingston and Penn effect and potential CMEs, (either size increases or frequency)?
lsvalgaard says:
“the Sun will not be spotless by the end of the year.”
“During the coming minimum the Sun will certainly be spotless for extended periods ”
So are you saying the minimum will not be with the end of the year and/or that the sun will not be spotless from now until such end of year? Will you be eating your shorts should you be shown wrong and thus shown to have a lack of understanding of said sun?
Walt Stone (@Cuppacafe) says:
July 11, 2013 at 11:04 am
Is there a relationship implied or theorized between whatever might be causing the Livingston and Penn effect and potential CMEs, (either size increases or frequency)?
It is too early to be more definitive as we have only observed those since about 1995, but one ting is clear: CMEs have not become rarer with the decrease of the sunspot number form cycle 23 to cycle 24; if anything CMEs have become a bit more common.
temp says:
July 11, 2013 at 11:43 am
So are you saying the minimum will not be with the end of the year and/or that the sun will not be spotless from now until such end of year?
Yes
Will you be eating your shorts should you be shown wrong and thus shown to have a lack of understanding of said sun?
Absolutely [and my old hat as well], and that should apply to William too.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/21dec_cycle24/
For those of you interested in how wrong the predictions of the “experts” can be, here’s a link to David Hathaway’s 2006 prediction that Cycle 24 “looks like its (sic) going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago.”
I think the estimate is still high. I believe the peak has already occurred and the cycle will be shorter than usual. Instead of an 11 year period It looks like a 9.5 to 10 year period.
Just in time for a 2020 freeze-up.
Good to know we have some stored solar power (coal) to get us through the upcoming lean times.
Greg Locke says:
July 11, 2013 at 11:57 am
For those of you interested in how wrong the predictions of the “experts” can be…
http://www.leif.org/research/Predicting%20the%20Solar%20Cycle%20(SORCE%202010).pdf slides 24-26 explains where Hathaway [as he now recognizes] went wrong. A wrong prediction [made on reasonable grounds] is valuable too as it eliminates a branch of the decision tree.
http://www.leif.org/research/Predicting%20the%20Solar%20Cycle%20%28SORCE%202010%29.pdf
was mangled by wordpress
lsvalgaard says:
July 11, 2013 at 12:11 pm
“A wrong prediction [made on reasonable grounds] is valuable too as it eliminates a branch of the decision tree.”
____________________
Worth repeating.
Daniel Vogler says:
July 11, 2013 at 12:32 am
Just multiply the older sunspot numbers before 1947 by 1.20 to get the current inflated adjusted sunspots.
Here you can see how the SIDC-SSN record looks after the simple correction (made after Leif’s suggestions) – as we can se on the graph the SC24 SSN average (monhly SSN averages averaged for whole the cycles) so far (in the current peak of the cycle period) is higher than the SSN average of the SC5, but it is clearly already under the SC14 level, with further decline of course expected towards the end of the cycle – so we can conclude the SC24 indeed will have SSN average very likely closer to SC5 than to SC14 and it is still not impossible the SC24 could have the SSN average even lower than the SC5 – close to the level of the SC6.
So Talbloke is likely right “that this cycle is around the same magnitude as cycle 5” – although I’m really not sure about the validity of his argument why it is so.
Daniel Vogler says:
July 11, 2013 at 12:32 am
so we can conclude the SC24 indeed will have SSN average very likely closer to SC5 than to SC14 and it is still not impossible the SC24 could have the SSN average even lower than the SC5 – close to the level of the SC6.
The problem is that the uncertainty on the SSN for SC5 and 6 is too large for a simple comparison. Here is an estimate of the errors: http://www.leif.org/research/Sunspot-Groups-Small.png and those are 1-sigma error bars. We simply cannot make such comparisons with confidence and they are sort of meaningless anyway in detail. All we can say is that the cycles were small [similar within error bars] for SC 5&6 and SC 12&13&14 and SC 25&[25?&26?], or that we have had a group of small cycles every ~100 years.
All we can say is that the cycles were small [similar within error bars] for SC 5&6 and SC 12&13&14 and SC 24&[25?&26?]
Leif
Do you have any comment on the apparent asymmetry of the activity of this cycle between the northern and southern hemispheres? This would seem to be outside of the realm of the Livingston/Penn effect.
Also, in looking at the SSN for each month, only two out of the last 16 months have been over the putative SSN peak of 69 and many months have been well below. It is going to take several months of much higher activity to push the SC24 SSN peak over 69. Is that how you see it?
denniswingo says:
July 11, 2013 at 2:52 pm
Do you have any comment on the apparent asymmetry of the activity of this cycle between the northern and southern hemispheres? This would seem to be outside of the realm of the Livingston/Penn effect.
Such asymmetry is quite normal. See http://www.leif.org/research/ApJ88587.pdf or http://www.leif.org/research/Talking_Points_for_Asymmetric_Reversals.pdf for http://www.leif.org/research/Asymmetric-Solar-Polar-Field-Reversals-talk.pdf
I therefore don’t think the asymmetry is related to the L&P effect.
Also, in looking at the SSN for each month, only two out of the last 16 months have been over the putative SSN peak of 69 and many months have been well below. It is going to take several months of much higher activity to push the SC24 SSN peak over 69. Is that how you see it?
The south is picking up so we shall see. Here is what SC14 looked like http://www.leif.org/research/SC14-24-Groups-Months.png but I think that SC24 is afflicted with the L&P effect and that the SSN thus is a bit too low [and the difference might get larger] compared to ‘true solar activity’ [whatever that is].
Thanks, Leif.
tumetuestumefaisdubien1 says:
July 11, 2013 at 1:39 pm
Here you can see how the SIDC-SSN record looks after the simple correction (made after Leif’s suggestions)
…….
Even after the Dr. S’s correction there is still somewhat disconcerting fact that the North Atlantic tectonics has closely followed solar activity for the last 130 years except for short period around 1960 (SC 19)
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN-NAT.htm
Correlation before 1880 is more sporadic, perhaps Dr.S needs to correct earlier data too.
Leif said “For Cycle 25 and beyond, the sunspot number will [in my assessment] drop to levels not seen since the Maunder Minimum.”
Sorry, just had to repeat that, I enjoyed it so much.
Sshh, don’t tell the climate modellers, then we can all laugh even more as the gap between their religious beliefs and reality grows ever starker.
vukcevic says:
July 11, 2013 at 3:16 pm
Correlation before 1880 is more sporadic, perhaps Dr.S needs to correct earlier data too.
It is the typical mark of a spurious correlation as it breaks down eventually. [and perhaps to require adjustments to the data – a la climate science – to make things fit]. To remind everybody: no public data, no science.
You can’t easily kill a religion. If the world doesn’t end on schedule you just claim you got the date wrong and think up a new date. I expect they will try to claim that the massive warming they predicted is merely being concealed by the ‘Svaalgard minimum’, and the world will end as expected when solar activity returns to normal.
cynical_scientist says:
July 11, 2013 at 4:13 pm
” I expect they will try to claim that the massive warming they predicted is merely being concealed by the ‘Svaalgard minimum’, and the world will end as expected when solar activity returns to normal.”
They pretty much are however they are being more vague and claiming its just some minor natural unaccounted for factors like the ocean and they promise in 20-30 years we will all die… again.
They will have a hard time claiming only the sun because they’ve been claiming the sun has had no effect on weather or climate for awhile now. Will be hard for them to retrace that path.
Do I remember seeing a chart of earth “mean” temperatures that ran parallel to the solar outputs? Could someone please point me to it?
Anthony: Given the timespan that has to be applied to represent the natural smoothing that the Earth does to the Solar input. Would in not be sensible to express the whole ~11 year cycle in overall RMS terms, with the sunspot contribution being the degree of ‘noise’? This IS just energy after all.
Wolfhound says:
July 11, 2013 at 4:22 pm
Do I remember seeing a chart of earth “mean” temperatures that ran parallel to the solar outputs? Could someone please point me to it?
You might be thinking about this one http://www.leif.org/research/Temp-Track-Sun-Not.png where the ‘solar radiation’ is an obsolete TSI version by Hoyt&Schatten. The red and blue curves at the top shows modern reconstructions. Now, there is a new reconstruction by Shapiro et al. which also has a large variation, but this one is not generally accepted as it is in sharp disagreement with observations of the magnetic network on the Sun, see Slide 44 of http://www.leif.org/research/The%20long-term%20variation%20of%20solar%20activity.pdf As Foukal concludes “iv) Arguments for a sharp TSI rise in the first half of the twentieth century (e.g., Shapiro et al., 2011) require complete disappearance of the photospheric magnetic network going back in time from the 1950s toward 1900. Such a disappearance is contradicted by the presence of a fully developed network in Ca K spectroheliograms obtained at Mt.Wilson and Meudon Observatories since the 1890s. This casts serious doubt on the basic model of Shapiro et al. and its claims for strong irradiance forcing through the Holocene.” http://www.leif.org/EOS/Foukal-2012.pdf
lsvalgaard says:
July 11, 2013 at 2:37 pm
That was actually me who did the comparison in reply to Daniel Vogler.
Fair enough to raise the question of uncertainty.
But I’m quite not sure if the error bars in your linked picture are really 1 sigma.
The SC14 corrected-SSN average is 38.74 and the calculated 1 standard deviation for the SC14 monthly corrected-SSN values comes out 31.74 while the SC5 corrected-SSN average is 27.11 and the calculated 1 standard deviation for the SC5 monthly corrected-SSN values comes out 22.64 – which nevertheless anyway means you’re right that all we can say for sure is that we have the small cycles every 100 years.
It however doesn’t exclude the possibility the current cycle could in reality have simmilar magnitude as the SC5 and 6 and in fact the statistical probablility it is so is really astronomically higher (like 10^100++ : 1 times) than that the real SC5 and SC14 SSN monthly values were really all at the 1 sigma boundaries and changed so the SSN averages considerably.