While we’ve known about this for quite some time at WUWT, going back to August 2013, the story is now starting to make the rounds in the MSM.
And, NASA has created a cool visualization of the event. Video follows. From the NASA video description:
This visualization shows the position of the sun’s magnetic fields from January 1997 to December 2013. The field lines swarm with activity: The magenta lines show where the sun’s overall field is negative and the green lines show where it is positive. A region with more electrons is negative, the region with less is labeled positive. Additional gray lines represent areas of local magnetic variation.
The entire sun’s magnetic polarity, flips approximately every 11 years — though sometimes it takes quite a bit longer — and defines what’s known as the solar cycle. The visualization shows how in 1997, the sun shows the positive polarity on the top, and the negative polarity on the bottom. Over the next 12 years, each set of lines is seen to creep toward the opposite pole eventually showing a complete flip. By the end of the movie, each set of lines are working their way back to show a positive polarity on the top to complete the full 22 year magnetic solar cycle.
At the height of each magnetic flip, the sun goes through periods of more solar activity, during which there are more sunspots, and more eruptive events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. The point in time with the most sunspots is called solar maximum.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/PFSS
The WUWT solar reference page has this revealing plot from Dr. Leif Svalgaard:
Solar Polar Fields – Mt. Wilson and Wilcox Combined -1966 to Present
Leif Svalgaard – Click the pic to view at source
Carla says:
January 2, 2014 at 6:23 pm
What I do know is that there has been a 40% reduction in solar outputs
No, you don’t know that, as it is not true. There is a subtlety hidden in the plural ‘solar outputs‘. If the sun has several outputs. Output A being 1000, output B being 20, output C being 0.001 [for a total of 1020.001] there might be a 40% reduction in output C to 0.0006 for a total of 1020.0006. Is that what you ‘know’? If so, then the total has not varied much indeed.
lsvalgaard says:
January 2, 2014 at 6:30 pm
Carla says:
January 2, 2014 at 6:23 pm
What I do know is that there has been a 40% reduction in solar outputs>/i>
No, you don’t know that, as it is not true. There is a subtlety hidden in the plural ‘solar outputs‘. Let the sun has several outputs: Output A being 1000, output B being 20, output C being 0.001 [for a total of 1020.001] there might have been a 40% reduction in output C to 0.0006 for a total of 1020.0006. Is that what you ‘know’? If so, then the total has not varied much indeed.
lsvalgaard says:
January 2, 2014 at 6:30 pm
Carla says:
January 2, 2014 at 6:23 pm
What I do know is that there has been a 40% reduction in solar outputs
No, you don’t know that, as it is not true. …
____________________________________________________________________
WUWT recently had an article that used the 40% reduction thingy..
And you might want to re- read the following if you want to get picky about it..
WEAKEST SOLAR WIND OF THE SPACE AGE AND THE CURRENT “MINI” SOLAR MAXIMUM
D. J. McComas et al. 2013 ApJ
The last solar minimum, which extended into 2009, was especially deep and prolonged. Since then, sunspot activity has gone through a very small peak while the heliospheric current sheet achieved large tilt angles similar to prior solar maxima. The solar wind fluid properties and interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) have declined through the prolonged solar minimum and continued to be low through the current mini solar maximum. Compared to values typically observed from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s, the following proton parameters are lower on average from 2009 through day 79 of 2013: solar wind speed and beta (~11%), temperature (~40%), thermal pressure (~55%), mass flux (~34%), momentum flux or dynamic pressure (~41%), energy flux (~48%), IMF magnitude (~31%), and radial component of the IMF (~38%). These results have important implications for the solar wind’s interaction with planetary magnetospheres and the heliosphere’s interaction with the local interstellar medium, with the proton dynamic pressure remaining near the lowest values observed in the space age: ~1.4 nPa, compared to ~2.4 nPa typically observed from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s. The combination of lower magnetic flux emergence from the Sun (carried out in the solar wind as the IMF) and associated low power in the solar wind points to the causal relationship between them. Our results indicate that the low solar wind output is driven by an internal trend in the Sun that is longer than the ~11 yr solar cycle, and they suggest that this current weak solar maximum is driven by the same trend.
http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/779/1/2
and I still think the Voyager 1 got shrunk out of the heliosphere. Because a 40% reduction might just mean that the heliosphere bubble is considerably smaller now than it had been..
Good night
Mario Lento,
re TSI monitoring, see http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SORCE/sorce_07.php and
from http://www.acrim.com/
Just in case you missed it
temperature (~40%)
Carla says:
January 2, 2014 at 6:36 pm
WUWT recently had an article that used the 40% reduction thingy..
And you might want to re- read the following if you want to get picky about it..
They were referring to the solar wind, not the solar output. The solar wind carries less than one millionth of the solar output. I wonder how you can be brazenly ignorant [willful?], but most of your comments are of such a nature: conflating tiny variations with world-shaking events. Very sad.
Carla? You appear to be asserting either that the Sun’s temperature output is 40% less (in which case we would all be dead from cold) which is ridiculous or
you are mistaken in a manner far beneath what your demonstrated (from past posts) intelligence level could possibly allow absent some mental distress.
That is, I hope you return to clarify what you actually meant to say, for at this point you appear to be very troubled.
Hoping all is well,
Janice
****************************************
Just a little note to my dear allies in the battle for truth in science:
I am so grateful to Dr. Svalgaard for his enduring efforts to educate, here, that I must speak out on his behalf. He is regularly misunderstood and, then, based on that misunderstanding, wrongfully castigated.
I think that
severalmany WUWT commenters (generally, not limiting this observation to this thread alone) conflate Dr. Svalgaard’s refusal to make a positive assertion as to what precisely drives climate change with his positive assertions made simply to correct errors about solar facts. That is, his:A. backing up his position with rock-solid physics and data that the Sun maintains earth’s homeostasis (and is, thus, the reason we are all alive!) within very small variations and that it likely does not drive climate shifts
while at the same time saying
B. little or nothing about what DOES drive climate shifts (e.g., the Medieval Warm Period)
does NOT equal his saying that human CO2 drives climate.
Further, while this was a rare occasion, he has said, I remember this distinctly, that other forces than human CO2 are much more likely to drive climate, for example ocean variations such as El Nino events.
I made this same mistake about Dr. Svalgaard for awhile. If you read his comments carefully and read enough of them you, too, will realize that what I am saying above is true.
Remember, “whoever is not against you is for you.”
Please do not feel that I am singling any of you out (other than poor Carla above); MANY people make this mistake about Dr. Svalgaard. And, of course, he does not need me to defend him. I just naturally come to the defense of anyone whom I see being treated unfairly as he is week in, week out. It’s in my blood! say, that reminds me…..
… (only a very crude analogy): my heart = the Sun, only maintaining my body temp. within a small range, it did NOT drive this post I am typing now. It was my muscles that drove my fingers. My heart is just beating away, sometimes a little more powerfully, sometimes less. Just — like — the — Sun.
We must not try to build an anti-AGW edifice on the sand of Sun-as-climate-driver. First of all, we don’t need to! The burden of proof is on the AGW speculators. Second, such a position will only stand temporarily — in the end (for, one day, it will again be warm even though the Sun is “kalte”) our argument-of-sand will only leave us less able to stand for truth against the l1es of the Cult of Climatology. Focus on the oceans! (See Bob Tisdale’s books)
And thank you, Dr. Svalgaard, your grateful student, Janice.
Janice:
The burden of proof is on the AGW speculators…
+++++++++++
You’re absolutely correct – except, not everyone in the jury thinks rationally.
Thanks, Mario, yeah, you are SO right. And that is why, no matter how good they think their case is, when a client asks, “So, what are my chances of winning?” a wise attorney always responds: “Fifty-fifty.”
Nice to hear from you and also grateful to know that my post was read!
I didn’t read many comments on this thread, I saw one you wrote, though, that showed that you guys really know what you are doing at that ol’ office. Keep up the good work!
Keith Minto says:
January 2, 2014 at 6:38 pm
Mario Lento,
re TSI monitoring, see http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SORCE/sorce_07.php and
Self-calibrating irradiance sensors are thermal detectors that compare the heating effects of solar irradiance and electrical heating on a cavity detector
from http://www.acrim.com/
++++++++
Keith, your right, and my opinion was wrong. I’m glad I said, “I don’t think”… rather than “You’re wrong” since I did not know for sure. I thought that since TSI measures all wavelengths all the same time that it would require other instruments to find the breakdown of frequencies.
So it is the Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SIM) that does this measurement (but, no I never heard of that until today). It did not make sense to me that heating an element could accurately discern all of the frequencies of radiation that come from the sun. Anyway, the SIM uses photo diodes and prisms to measure the frequencies, and is not a direct measure of heat.
That all said, it does seem apparent that the total TSI is measured by the voltage required to bring the heated cavity back to the reference temperature. But it alone does not seem capable of knowing what frequencies heated it. I did not read enough, but I am unclear about whether the TSI alone completely quantifies the complete energy of the sun.
“I’m glad I said, “I don’t think”… . ” (Mario Lento)
Of course. You are a genuine scientist-engineer. A climastrologist, on the other hand, would have said, “we voted on it and a consensus of us says the answer is 92.”
Thank you dear Janice 🙂
Mario Lento says:
January 2, 2014 at 9:48 pm
but I am unclear about whether the TSI alone completely quantifies the complete energy of the sun.
It does. Or to be more precise: TSI quantifies the capacity of the Sun to heat something: the instrument and the Earth.
lsvalgaard says:
January 2, 2014 at 10:09 pm
Mario Lento says:
January 2, 2014 at 9:48 pm
but I am unclear about whether the TSI alone completely quantifies the complete energy of the sun.
It does. Or to be more precise: TSI quantifies the capacity of the Sun to heat something: the instrument and the Earth.
++++++++++
It does make sense technically Leif. And that is all that matters. If the energy does not heat something, then it will not directly contribute to heat on the earth. It’s amazing, that these devices can be sensitive enough to be heated by such a wide range of frequencies. The technology was only generally explained, and not specific enough (at least for me to digest). More technical information would be nice, but I got lazy. It might be there, but I did not find it.
Thank you for your patience.
Janice Moore says:
January 2, 2014 at 10:02 pm
“I’m glad I said, “I don’t think”… . ” (Mario Lento)
Of course. You are a genuine scientist-engineer. A climastrologist, on the other hand, would have said, “we voted on it and a consensus of us says the answer is 92.”
++++++++
No the consensus is either, 97%, 90% (AR4) or 95% (AR5) and the 95% is within a confidence interval that more than 1/2 is caused by CO2 input by man. Whereas 90% was the confidence interval that MOST was caused by man’s CO2 🙂 /sarc off 🙂
OoooOOOOOOOooooh, so THAT is what the answer is. Thank you VERY MUCH, Mario Lento. (smile)
And, re: above, prego, de niente.
Mario, I occasionally bring up this topic only to be sent back to my kennel by Leif. I guess it is time to accept that any radiance decay to heat is readable, and that is that.
Leif did reply to my question in July last year, this is my question, and his reply.
Q. is this heat monitor a true indication of the sun’s output.?
Yes, the sensor is open to space [and the Sun] so whatever energy is coming from the Sun enters the sensor, is absorbed, and heats the sensor. To measure the heat, the sensor is kept at a constant temperature [about 30 deg C] by an electric current in a wire wound around the sensor. The amount of current necessary to keep the sensor at its constant
temperature is measured. The sensor is calibrated in the laboratory so that we know what current corresponds to what Wattage. There are four identical sensors. All sensors degrade with time in the harsh space environment. The degradation is carefully monitored [and corrected for] by exposing the sensors [with shutters] to the sun for different lengths of time [longer time = ,more degradation].
lsvalgaard says:
January 2, 2014 at 7:29 pm
Carla says:
January 2, 2014 at 6:36 pm
WUWT recently had an article that used the 40% reduction thingy..
And you might want to re- read the following if you want to get picky about it..
They were referring to the solar wind, not the solar output. The solar wind carries less than one millionth of the solar output. I wonder how you can be brazenly ignorant [willful?], but most of your comments are of such a nature: conflating tiny variations with world-shaking events. Very sad.
——————————————————————
Read again Dr. S., this is no small matter and a lot of time and effort by a gazillion people trying to figure out why the following solar parameters are so much weaker this cycle.
Or is McComas et al just a bunch of quacks that should be ignored is how you make sound.
late good day
…”””Compared to values typically observed from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s, the following proton parameters are lower on average from 2009 through day 79 of 2013: solar wind speed and beta (~11%), temperature (~40%), thermal pressure (~55%), mass flux (~34%), momentum flux or dynamic pressure (~41%), energy flux (~48%), IMF magnitude (~31%), and radial component of the IMF (~38%). These results have important implications for the solar wind’s interaction with planetary magnetospheres and the heliosphere’s interaction with the local interstellar medium, with the proton dynamic pressure remaining near the lowest values observed in the space age: ~1.4 nPa, compared to ~2.4 nPa typically observed from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s”””…
Carla says:
January 3, 2014 at 6:24 am
Read again Dr. S., this is no small matter and a lot of time and effort by a gazillion people trying to figure out why the following solar parameters are so much weaker this cycle.
Those ‘solar parameters’ have nothing to do with the solar output of energy. And this cycle is nothing special, there have been cycles like that before, e.g. cycle 14.
Or is McComas et al just a bunch of quacks that should be ignored is how you make sound.
The fault is not with McComas but with you, believing that the solar output has been 40% lower and then wondering why TSI has been almost constant. This is a common fault you have: to be unable to put things in perspective, and being unable to learn when corrected.
Keith Minto says:
January 2, 2014 at 11:00 pm
Mario, I occasionally bring up this topic only to be sent back to my kennel by Leif. I guess it is time to accept that any radiance decay to heat is readable, and that is that.
Leif did reply to my question in July last year, this is my question, and his reply.
Q. is this heat monitor a true indication of the sun’s output.?
Yes, the sensor is open to space [and the Sun] so whatever energy is coming from the Sun enters the sensor, is absorbed, and heats the sensor. To measure the heat, the sensor is kept at a constant temperature [about 30 deg C] by an electric current in a wire wound around the sensor. The amount of current necessary to keep the sensor at its constant
temperature is measured. The sensor is calibrated in the laboratory so that we know what current corresponds to what Wattage. There are four identical sensors. All sensors degrade with time in the harsh space environment. The degradation is carefully monitored [and corrected for] by exposing the sensors [with shutters] to the sun for different lengths of time [longer time = ,more degradation].
+++++++
Keith: That’s a very nice description and makes sense. Given that the temperature of the sensor is held constant, the sensors are probably very well calibrated. It’s more difficult to calibrate them over a range of temperature, I think.
Janice: De Nada 🙂
Carla: The ave. sunspot count is something like 40% lower than some previous cycles. No one is suggesting anywhere in science that the solar output 40% lower. The theory/hypothesis? is that higher sun spot counts tend to correlate with slightly increased TSI…
Many of us argue that there are secondary effects on the planet due to this small fluctuation in the sun’s output. Some include some frequencies (wavelengths) of energy changing much more than others, with these effects not being so trivial. There are the cosmic rays deflected due to the delta in our magnetic field due to the changes in the sun interaction with our magnetosphere. There are a number of ideas being tossed around.
Though, I am not convinced either way that we know with certainty what the climate will do I do tend to “feel” in my gut that it’s going to get a little cooler rather than a little warmer over the long term – with some ups and downs to keep things interesting. But as I’ve said before, my opinion and 25 cents still won’t buy you a cup of coffee.
Following up on my question: “… is it possible that the impact of electrons and protons in the solar wind on TSI instruments DO NOT warm the heat-absorbing material like the photons do?”
Regarding Dr. Svalgaard’s answer:
“Particles carry kinetic energy and will deposit that energy on anything they hit. Clap your hands furiously and note that they get warmer. Now, the solar wind is so tenuous that the warming is unmeasurable.”
It looks like the answer to my question is “no”, the solar wind ‘warming’ is virtually unmeasurable at the TSI satellite(s). It would “appear” to the instrument that the overall relative base and transient particle warming is exceedingly small as compared to steadier radiation warming at the instrument.
Not surprising considering the effective TSI measurement area is so small as to miss the vast amount of charged particles within reach of Earth’s magnetosphere when the particles are Earth directed. I think something is missing here in this analysis, something that explains why most of established science feels justified in saying that the apparently constant solar irradiance doesn’t account for weather or climate changes, notwithstanding issues with TSI satellite readings.
For the sake of this discussion, light “fills” space continuously (uniformly at all wavelengths?) while particle flows are considered to be “discrete” with non-uniform densities and speeds.
Photons enter Earth’s tropic’s thick atmosphere directly in a line-of-sight fashion straight from the sun at the speed of light, as electromagnetic radiation isn’t guided electrically and magnetically into the polar regions as are the electrically charged solar particles. The tropics have a much greater surface area to receive the warming photons than do the polar regions, which is why the tropics are warm and the poles are ice-covered.
Unlike photons, the solar wind protons and electrons that are deflected by the magnetosphere into the poles CONCENTRATE their kinetic energy cumulatively from nearly the entire elliptical magnetosphere into the thinner upper atmosphere at the poles, a much smaller area than the equator.
What happens to all the solar wind kinetic energy that gets concentrated into the poles? Can a thin cold polar atmosphere withstand transient impulses of charged particles without moving around, and if they move at all, where can the cold air go? Downward and southward.
What happens to the photon-warmed thicker wet tropical air? Where can it go? Upward and northward.
What happens when cold air meets warm wet air? Weather.
Where does extreme weather come from? Blobs of downwelled IR from co2? Is there any evidence at all anywhere that demonstrates how localized variable and MEASURABLE atmospheric co2 concentration differentials directly cause short-term large enough temperature differentials to move air and water with such power to alledgedly cause extreme weather events such as tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, snowmageddons, heavy rain, and ice and hail storms? If you are a true believer, show me that evidence. Prove it to ME.
This isn’t even the whole picture, because we can’t ignore the influence of the moon on the atmosphere. If anyone thinks the moon that has enough tidal influence on the oceans cannot drag the atmosphere northward or southward during ascending or declining phases, or that it doesn’t interfere with the solar wind charged particle interaction with the magnetosphere with those motions and positions such during as the full and new moon, I have a bridge to sell you.
The bridge I’m offering is not figurative, but one of understanding.
I was speaking from the perspective of being in the Northern Hemisphere. The principle applies to the Southern Hemisphere as well. At the equater, on the north side the warm moves northward, and on the south side it moves southward, both upwards. At the south pole the cold air can only move northward and downward. That explains some of the visual symmetry we often see with weather patterns on both hemispheres.
I look at that the atmosphere and magnetosphere act as a complex continuously changing filter, so that energy at different frequencies passes through to energize various matter. When the sun’s radiation frequencies change, it has to have some effect on Earth’s Albedo.
Somewhat conversely; if the Earth’s Albedo never changed, then I would rest easy thinking that measuring the slightly changing TSI (without concern to the mix of frequencies) in space, scales well with what Earth experiences.