Guest essay by David Archibald
Recently, a number of newspaper articles spoke of the potential of cycle 25 to be “Weakest Solar Cycle In Almost 200 Years”. “We’re in a new age of solar physics,” said David Hathaway of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Here is a collection of solar measurements that illustrate the current state of cycle 24, as well as provide insight into cycle 25.
Figure 1: Oulu Neutron Count 1964 – 2013
This graph suggests that it may be a further six months or more to solar cycle maximum. Neutron count tends to follow the solar cycle with up to a one year lag so it may be another 18 months before we get to the minimum neutron count for Solar Cycle 24.
Figure 2: Oulu Neutron Count for Solar Cycles 20 to 24 aligned on month of minimum
In terms of neutron count, Solar Cycle 24 isn’t much weaker than the previous four cycles at a similar stage of development.
Figure 3: Ap Index 1932 – 2013
The Ap Planetary Magnetic Index has now spent the last couple of years below the levels of previous solar cycle minima, including an all-time record low for the data set.
Figure 4: Heliospheric Current Sheet Tilt Angle
Solar minimum is marked by the flattening of the heliospheric current sheet tilt angle. This tends to be quite sharp. Solar maxima are a lot broader with the current maximum the broadest of the instrument record. There is no indication yet from this measure that solar maximum is over.
Figure 5: Monthly F10.7 Flux 1948 – 2013
The F10.7 flux shows that Solar Cycle 24 is quite a weak cycle relative to the ones that have preceded it in the instrumental record.
Figure 6: F10.7 Flux of Solar Cycles 19 to 24 aligned on month of minimum
In terms of F10.7 flux, Solar Cycle 24 peaked two years ago. The relationship between F10.7 flux and sea level rise indicates that a flux of 100 is the break-over between climate warming and cooling. The flux level has been at about that value for the last three years.
Figure 7: Interplanetary Magnetic Field 1966 – 2013
The 1970s cooling period had a weak and flat interplanetary magnetic field over Solar Cycle 20. Solar Cycle 24 could produce a similar result with a slightly lower average value over the cycle.
Figure 8: Solar Cycle 24 sunspot count relative to the Dalton Minimum
All things considered, the current solar cycle is tracking Solar Cycle 5, the first half of the Dalton Minimum, fairly closely.
Figure 9: Predicting the year of maximum of Solar Cycle 25
Just over two years ago, Richard Altrock of the National Solar Observatory at Sacramento Peak published the latest version of his green corona emissions diagram.
He stated at the time that the progression of the Solar Cycle 24 was 40% slower than the average of the previous two cycles. That would make it 15.5 years long. Given that the cycle started in December 2008 and solar maximum is in 2013, that makes the Solar Cycle 24 fall time 11.5 years.
Figure 9 shows the strong relationship between fall time and the time from maximum to maximum. Based on that relationship, the Solar Cycle 24 fall time derives a period of 17 years from the Solar Cycle 24 maximum to the Solar Cycle 25 maximum – putting it in 2030.
Should read Lief or anyone!
The Russians build icebreakers because they have a lot of waterways where ice is an issue.
They don’t necessarily need any assumptions about global temperature change.
I believe we need to think a bit more about the leads and lags in the solar dynamo. A few days ago I was reading John Eddy’s book “The Sun, Earth and Near Earth Space”. He suggested that it took 100,000 years for a photon generated at the sun’s core to reach the surface of the sun.
Further, I have been getting my head around upper atmospheric chemistry. It is very short wave-length photons (in the EUV, high energy range) that cause oxygen atoms to split and hence precipitate the creation of ozone and provide the heat that causes the stratosphere to rise in temperature with height. But because the ozone layer is relatively thick (due presumably to dynamic processes in relative equilibrium) short term changes in EUV emissions don’t change the level of ozone or the temperature very much. But long term changes in EUV emissions must change both ozone levels and stratospheric temperatures. EUV data for cycles 23 and 24 are available at: http://www.usc.edu/dept/space_science/semdatafolder/semdownload.htm
This shows that EUV emissions to this point in cycle 24 are almost 40% down on cycle 23. By extrapolation using F10.7 data (which is often used as a proxy for EUV) it seems that EUV emissions so far in cycle 24 are only about 40% of those emissions in cycle 22. The changes in the suns output in this spectrum also change the temperature and thickness of the thermosphere and above. See this presentation from NASA at a UNCOPUOS meeting.http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/pdf/pres/stsc2011/tech-14.pdf
The paper “Explosive volcanic eruptions triggered by cosmic rays: Volcano as a bubble chamber” Gondwana Research (2010) provides part of the explanation for the additional volcanic activity during strong solar minimums. But the volcanic activity is also seems related to a slight increase in tectonic plate movement that seems to occur. The 6-7 fold increase in category 8+ earthquakes since 2004 suggests that the forces which cause the sun to change its orbit of the SSB also act on Earth’s mantle presumably by slightly increasing its heat – at least in some places – presumably similar to what happens on Io but obviously to a relatively minor degree.
I think what I have read above just confirms my belief that there is much that we do not know. I suppose mankind will still be saying that on WUWT in another hundred years.
Leif Svalgaard, thank you for your many posts today. I have a question about this: And if visible light does not interact with water, it should penetrate all the way to the bottom of the ocean, but it [as should be well-known?] does not penetrate that far as it is pitch dark down there: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/light_travel.html
I thought that the interaction was with stuff dissolved and suspended in the water. Clean water such as that found in swimming pools (and swimming pool reactors) hardly intercepts visible light at all, Right?
We were watering trees by bucket brigade again on top of the Ozarks. We lost maybe a hundred million trees to drought last summer. Texas lost 301 million trees the year before. Couldn’t buy a cloud. Wondering where the monsoons went. (I know Bob Tisdale pretty well explains the drought) Then Mexico’s Popocatépetl blows a huge honker and clouds and rain everywhere. Thank God!
http://www.intellicast.com/National/Precipitation/Weekly.aspx
Happens like this far back as I can remember. Not the losing millions of trees part, but the rains a couple of weeks following good size volcanic eruptions somewhere near Central America.
Leif, I’ve never seen you comment much on this. Is there anything to more volcanic activity lower solar cycles and solar cycle minima? There are a few papers on the subject, as you probably know.
Matthew R Marler
Clean water such as that found in swimming pools (and swimming pool reactors) hardly intercepts visible light at all, Right?
====
Even pure water absorbs red light, hence it’s blue appearance:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~etrnsfer/water.htm
taxed says, July 28, 2013 at 9:51 am:
“lf the less active sun does cause cooling, then am beginning to understand how it could do it and that the cooling could be sudden. Because during summer we have been getting a Polar jet that has been splitting in two. Where you get these splits you often have areas of high pressure sitting in the middle of them. What would be a real worry is that this pattern lasts into the winter. As these highs will set up large pools of cold air, due to drawing cold air down from the north and heat loss by clearer sky’s.
But because you got the jet running to the north and south of them. Then you will have areas of low pressure running to the north and south of them as well, along with the weather fronts they bring.”
Splits in the jet stream are nothing new. High pressure areas in the splits are nothing new.
As for storms – problems with those tend to be around where the north branch is northbound. There is a tendency for dryness around where the north branch is southbound, and well within an associated high pressure area. When this sets up as a protracted pattern, the north branch often resembles an upper case Greek letter omega, the high pressure area is referred to as an “omega high”, and the blocking pattern is referred to as an “omega block”.
When an omega block occurs, drought can occur not only in the omega high and where the north branch is southbound, but also often in some of the other areas deprived of intermittent approach by non-southbound jet stream. All of this is well known temperate zone weather, especially north temperate zone weather, that has always happened probably for millions of years.
Brent Walker said:
“I have been getting my head around upper atmospheric chemistry. It is very short wave-length photons (in the EUV, high energy range) that cause oxygen atoms to split and hence precipitate the creation of ozone and provide the heat that causes the stratosphere to rise in temperature with height. But because the ozone layer is relatively thick (due presumably to dynamic processes in relative equilibrium) short term changes in EUV emissions don’t change the level of ozone or the temperature very much. But long term changes in EUV emissions must change both ozone levels and stratospheric temperatures.”
I think this is the nub of the issue but there is a problem.
We see more EUV when the sun is active, EUV splits oxygen to create ozone and more ozone warms the stratosphere.
The trouble is that the mesosphere and stratosphere cooled when the sun was active (more EUV) and may now be warming with the quieter sun (less EUV).
A recent finding was that unexpectedly, between 2004 and 2007 ozone actually increased above 45 km (around the stratosphere / mesosphere boundary) despite less EUV from the quieter sun.
I am led to think that there is something wrong with current assumptions about the ozone creation / destruction balance above 45km and that it is what goes on up there that ultimately controls the ozone content of the entire stratosphere.
My interim solution is to propose that it is not EUV alone that controls stratosphere temperatures but rather the overall mix of particles and wavelengths. Someone else will have to sort out the relative dominance of all the processes involved in upper atmosphere chemistry.
The significance of all that is the potential effect on the tropopause height gradient between equator and poles.
It is the slope of that gradient which controls latitudinal climate zone positioning, jet stream behaviour, cloudiness and ultimately the amount of solar energy able to get into the oceans to fuel the climate system.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 28, 2013 at 3:53 pm
No electric or magnetic influence can travel upstream in the 11 times supersonic solar wind.
If you consider magnetosphere tail reconnection, you will find the process releases huge amount of energy, which regular solar wind doesn’t poses. Velocities within the solar CME’s electromagnetic circuit are far greater than those of solar wind ( It is still mystery how these disturbances lightup the aurora so quickly– NASA). Solar wind is swept out of the way, hence it has no effect on the closed electric and magnetic circuits:
http://ase.tufts.edu/cosmos/pictures/Sept09/Fig8_7.MagCloud.gif
apart from the fact that the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Saturn are much too tiny to have any effect.
Nope, Jupiter magnetosphere is about 5AU and is the largest entity within heliosphere it stretches all the way to the Saturn’s orbit and its magnetosphere at the times of the solar minima.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
Having a life,so we went to the City [San Francisco] with some children and grandchildren.Now, as Arnold said “I`m baaaack”.
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u.k.(us) says:
July 28, 2013 at 4:18 pm
“Actually there are many billions of dollars riding on this”
On what ?, the predictions ?
Yes, just to take one [real] example. A satellite operator wants to sent up a 500 million dollar bird. His bank wants the bird insured for the duration of its life [like your home has to insured if you have a bank loan on it]. The premium is set according to the risk of the satellite becoming non-functional because of a solar storm. The risk of a storm depends on the sunspot number, thus the premium depends on what somebody [usually the government] says that the sunspot number will be in the future, hence on prediction.
The guesses are all over the board, some better than others admittedly, why throw the billions back in our faces ?
Some are better than others and the insurers know which. From a scientific point of view a failed prediction has value too in that we will know what doesn’t work.
Melbourne Resident says:
July 28, 2013 at 4:23 pm
But please why did Archibald use as his first graph the one from the Mail on Sunday with all its inaccuracies?
Archibald is well-known for his inaccuracy, so don’t be surprised.
Richard M says:
July 28, 2013 at 4:36 pm
A series of strong volcanic eruptions cools the Earth leading to a cool period like the LIA and then as the dust settles so to speak, the Earth warms back up to its equilibrium temperature.
Volcanoes certainly have an effect, but it has been hard to determine precisely how much going back in time.
David Archibald says:
Thank you for your kind words. Hathaway’s mistake was to presume that 24 would be strong simply because the previous two cycles were strong.
Not true. He had [what he thought was] a good reason for his prediction.
He guessed a number just under Dikpati.
Also not true.
In fact, given that Dikpati was NASA’s golden child at the time, he wouldn’t have been allowed to have a prediction that diverged too much from hers or otherwise it would have lessened the credibility of Dikpati’s forecast.
Not true. Presumption on your part.
Schatten makes a living from predicting solar activity and in 2006 said that solar activity looked like falling to Maunder levels. Anyone in this field should have asked themselves what was the basis for Schatten’s prediction.
Schatten explains painstakingly what the basis was. Pay attention to what he says.
My advice to anyone who wants to predict solar activity is to go to Ed Fix’s model and continue its development.
Ed’s model is not ready for prime time and is very likely pseudo-science.
It is fabulous that we can predict the year of Solar Cycle 25 maximum.
We cannot; we can only guess.
That prediction is derived from Altrock’s green corona emissions diagram, now over two years old.
And later data disagrees.
Solar maximum has occurred 15 months after “the rush to the poles” is completed.
Has already happened [last week for the South, last year for the North].
If there is no or very little activity evident from the plot, that means that Solar Cycle 25 will be next to non-existent.
You cannot use his plot to determine the size of the next cycle.
But Altrock can’t release his diagram again while there is a war on coal underway.
Baloney. And his plot can be constructed from other coronal data, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/ApJ88587.pdf
Luther Wu says:
July 28, 2013 at 5:12 pm
but where is the data to support your conjecture that the sun (operating within observed parameters) does affect our climate in any meaningful way?
Yes, where?
David Archibald says:
July 28, 2013 at 5:25 pm
The Solar Cycle 25 forecast of 7 is from Livingstone and Penn. No one else has made a prediction of the amplitude of that cycle yet.
That number is highly uncertain. All we can say is that the sunspot number will be very low. This does not mean that solar activity or its magnetic field will disappear. The cosmic ray modulation during the Maunder and Spoerer minima was as strong as it has been the past several cycles. What we predict is a disconnect between sunspot number and solar ‘activity’. But even that is speculation.
milodonharlani says:
July 28, 2013 at 5:54 pm
“Climate scientists” tried to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period. Can you understand how skeptics might be suspicious of an attempt now by solar scientists to get rid of the Modern Solar Grand Maximum?
That is because they are lazy or worse [a Modern Grand Maximum is what they want]. The laziness becomes in this way: all the data we relay on, all the analysis we do, all the conclusions we draw can be duplicated by simply reading the material [I hate to sound like Scafetta: “read my papers”], but all our stuff is out in the open and the findings can be duplicated [or at least followed] by anybody without undue effort.
proposals for enforcing among solar scientists uniform acceptance of whatever new orthodox system emerges sounds troubling.
We do not try to ‘enforce’ but to convince and agree.
This effort also comes after discovery in the past decade from the SORCE program …
This has very little to do with re-assessing solar activity and, in any event’ at most will have an effect of the order of 0.1C, so is a straw man.
Stanford Linear Accelerator Web site has taken down the IMO good material it had on solar magnetic field modulation of cosmic rays & the possible effect such fluxes could have on cloud formation.
Lack of funding is always a problem, but there are about a hundred other instruments in the world producing good data.
I hope you can forgive some cynicism as to scientists’ motives.
Cynicism has no place in this. The thing to do is to study the material, check the derivation, then make up your mind.
I hope that you too feel that at times you’ve gained something from participating in discussions here.
Every time one prepares a lecture, one learns something. If nothing else, at least during the lecture where people have difficulties understanding your message.
Richard M says:
July 28, 2013 at 7:11 am
(greater frequency of el Nino – tendency to warming)
If longer cycles were less likely to produce this range of tilt angle -might this mean greater frequency of La Nina, period of cooling? Have you looked at this?
One generally looks into something that seems to have some chance of yielding a publishable result, so: no.
GeoLurking says:
July 28, 2013 at 6:36 pm
Then I switch to the weather guy in the next city since he seems to be more pragmatic and less stuck on himself.
Then go with what he says…
Ian H Australia says:
July 28, 2013 at 7:00 pm
Cycle 24 is closest to cycles 12 & 14 when I plotted them recently, Too high for 5.
So no Dalton Min yet…Why does cycle 25 appear so low on Davids diagram prediction. What are the reasons behind that very low cycle 25 prediction, Leif or anyone?
David’s prediction is hardly science, so not really worth discussing at length. Our own prediction of a low sunspot number [but not necessarily low solar activity] is slightly more scientific, but is also just speculation [albeit well founded].
Brent Walker says:
July 28, 2013 at 7:46 pm
This shows that EUV emissions to this point in cycle 24 are almost 40% down on cycle 23. By extrapolation using F10.7 data (which is often used as a proxy for EUV) it seems that EUV emissions so far in cycle 24 are only about 40% of those emissions in cycle 22. The changes in the suns output in this spectrum also change the temperature and thickness of the thermosphere and above.
Very true for the thermosphere and above, but that does not translate to similar changes at the surface.
The 6-7 fold increase in category 8+ earthquakes since 2004 suggests that the forces which cause the sun to change its orbit of the SSB
The sun is in free fall, as is the Earth, and neither feel any such forces.
Matthew R Marler says:
July 28, 2013 at 8:01 pm
I thought that the interaction was with stuff dissolved and suspended in the water. Clean water such as that found in swimming pools (and swimming pool reactors) hardly intercepts visible light at all
In the free ocean far from land the water is very clear and very clean, and pure water does attenuate the light, especially when you have lots of water, like five kilometer’s worth.
Ed Mertin says:
July 28, 2013 at 8:09 pm
Leif, I’ve never seen you comment much on this. Is there anything to more volcanic activity lower solar cycles and solar cycle minima? There are a few papers on the subject, as you probably know.
I have commented on this and there are papers debunking that idea. A good way to see that, is to see if there is more tectonic or seismic activity near solar events, and there are not.
vukcevic says:
July 28, 2013 at 11:30 pm
If you consider magnetosphere tail reconnection, you will find the process releases huge amount of energy, which regular solar wind doesn’t poses
No, the energy extracted by reconnection from the solar wind is less than a tenth of the energy of the solar wind falling on the magnetosphere…
Solar wind is swept out of the way, hence it has no effect on the closed electric and magnetic circuits:
apart from sounding wrong, the acceleration takes place in the magnetosphere, not in the solar wind.
Nope, Jupiter magnetosphere is about 5AU and is the largest entity within heliosphere it stretches all the way to the Saturn’s orbit and its magnetosphere at the times of the solar minima.
Nix, Jupiter’s magnetosphere is dragged out radially from the Jupiter by the overpowering solar wind. You can picture that as a thin pencil stretching from Jupiter away from the Sun. There are more than a million such ‘pencils’, so Jupiter’s pencil is completely insignificant.
I am predicting cooling but not anything spectacular.
As Leif says the sun is big and changes slowly. The earth is also big relative to our imaginations. It has taken 300 years to rise a degree and a half from the Maunder Minimum and it appears it took at least 400 years to dive down into that minimum via several of those major minimums occurring after 1200ad.
Plus we probably have ocean momentum still from that recovery that is going to take perhaps one or two hundred years of cooling to play out. That should dampen cooling progress over the first century of cooling. I suspect cooling a degree might take a hundred years even with some the variable ocean states lining up to temporarily rush it along. Sure something faster could occur like one of those Bond events but I am not sure how anyone might surmise when something like that occurs. Climate changes, always has. People have more intense experiences from normal year over year local weather changes (not to even speak of seasonal change) than they are likely to experience in their lifetime as general climate change.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 28, 2013 at 11:54 pm
……………
You are not making distinction (on purpose or otherwise) between solar wind and CMEs flux ropes, which sweep solar wind out of the way and propagate at least at twice the speed.
http://ase.tufts.edu/cosmos/pictures/Sept09/Fig8_7.MagCloud.gif
vukcevic says:
July 29, 2013 at 12:40 am
You are not making distinction (on purpose or otherwise) between solar wind and CMEs flux ropes
On purpose, of course [everything I say is always on purpose]. Because it it completely irrelevant. First, most CMEs travel at or only slightly above solar wind speed [actually mostly dragged out by the solar wind]. A few travel faster, but are rare so don’t matter.
Second, The CME drapes itself around the blunt nose of a magnetosphere which, in a way, simply ‘bores’ a whole in the CME. So, the tiny part of the CME that encounters the magnetosphere simply becomes part of the pencil stretching away from Jupiter among the million others that are not attached to Jupiter. Therefore, any influence by Jupiter is of the order of 1/millionth of the energy and particles in all of the pencils stretching away from the Sun.
I didn’t see anything in the article to evidence this idea that SC25 will be tiny, even compared with the small SC24.
There’s seems to be 2 camps in the SC predictions. (a) That SC25 will be about the same size as SC24. (b) tiny SC25.
anyone got any strong arguments against one or the other?
Stanford University (Dr. Svalgaard)
Most CMEs travel at or only slightly above solar wind speed [actually mostly dragged out by the solar wind].
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The average solar wind velocity is 400 km/second
Solar flares, are usually followed by coronal mass ejections (CME’s), produce radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum as well as a proton storm. This radiation travels to the earth at the speed of light while the protons can travel as fast as a third the speed of light.
“you pays your money and you takes your choice”
No reaction from David Archibald to his faulty SC5 graph?
@ur momisugly Leif: thanks for your response. Do you know if deToma has a website where I can see his work?
pochas says:
July 28, 2013 at 3:28 pm
Further to my comment July 28, 2013 at 10:28 am
re ocean temperatures remaining stable or rising while northern continental interiors cool, the current UNISYS sea surface temperature anomalies in the northern oceans are positive, whereas those south of the equator are more or less neutral.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_daily.php?plot=ssa&inv=0&t=cur
I’m not saying this proves anything, but it is interesting.
I have a feeling the high NH SSTs are temporary, in a month or two they will be gone.
vukcevic says:
July 29, 2013 at 2:19 am
“Most CMEs travel at or only slightly above solar wind speed”
“you pays your money and you takes your choice”
http://www.leif.org/EOS/CME-Speeds.pdf :
“CMEs propagating in the interplanetary space, asymptotically approach the wind velocity due to the viscous drag high in the corona” They study 4315 CMEs, The most common projected speed [see their Figure 1] is 350 km/s. Corrected for projection the distribution peaks at 430 km/s.
I making tour choices it helps to know what you are talking about. You are a wee bit weak in that department.
jcarels says:
July 29, 2013 at 2:35 am
Do you know if deToma has a website where I can see his work?
No, she does not. I have her paper, but cannot release it as it was given to me in confidence.
meemoe_uk says:
July 29, 2013 at 2:00 am
(a) That SC25 will be about the same size as SC24. (b) tiny SC25
It is all guess work. Now that the polar fields have finally reversed, we should be able to follow their build-up. After a few years the new polar fields should stabilize and we can make a prediction, not before.
phlogiston says:
July 29, 2013 at 3:59 am
“I have a feeling the high NH SSTs are temporary, in a month or two they will be gone.”
Well, here’s how I’m tracking it (UAH tlt temperatures):
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk145/pochas_2008/NoExtLandOcean4PolyFit.png
If the heliosphere has shrunk considerably during this lower activity cycle, (due to lower polar field strength?) have we seen ‘temperature changes,’ within the solar corona, extended corona or at the solar surface?
If the there are changes in pressure around the bubble, wouldn’t that be reflected in something getting hotter nearer the solar surface or coronal heating? If pressure is applied something heats up because of resistance? The differential in heat causing shears, preventing the spots from forming?
I’m late, what about changes in length of rotation time(s) for the sun in this low activity period. Are there changes at the equatorial locations, or polar locations in length of rotation time for the sun now?
milodonharlani , Walker and Wilde on EUV.
This portion of the spectrum comprises 20% of the energy reaching the Earth. That portion reaching the surface penetrates to 300 meters in the oceans.
Mr. Wilde’s observation that ‘something is amiss’ is astute, beginning with TSI varying 0.1% over the SC.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 28, 2013 at 9:28 am
highflight56433 says:
July 28, 2013 at 9:23 am
The Russians are building new ice-breakers…hint hint! Why build ice-breakers? hint hint!
“So that they can exploit the Arctic sea routes opened up by global warming…”
More likely so they can reach destinations in the future which presently do not require an ice breaker to reach. If they truely believed in AGW they could waite a little while as the ice should be all gone very soon according to some of the AGW fanatics. Either way, living where they do the ships are a good investment.