The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center released their January 2014 solar data, and it has one small surprise, the 10.7 radio flux is the highest ever in cycle 24, the other metrics, not so much.
SSN has been about where the much adjusted prediction line says it should be for the last four months.
The 10.7cm radio flux hits a new high.
Meanwhile, the Ap magnetic index continues its slump as it has since October 2005, bumping along the bottom.
lsvalgaard says:
February 4, 2014 at 8:59 pm
I was agreeing with you.
Sparks says:
February 4, 2014 at 9:10 pm
It needed saying! a bit of a roasting among friends did no one any harm!
It would be better if you were responsive to the issue at hand. The harm is in polluting the forum.
Sparks says:
February 4, 2014 at 9:14 pm
I was agreeing with you.
In that case there should be no need for argument as what I said was a riposte to Carla:
Carla said: February 4, 2014 at 6:04 pm
“It’s part of a rotating body and that’s an important factor here too, twisting up the fields ”
All I was pointing out was that there is no ‘twisting up’ as the Earth is just like that toy magnetic spinning in air. It also does not twist up anything.
@Sparks says:
February 4, 2014 at 9:10 pm
With “roasting” like that you probably will not remain “friends” for long.
Your choice of course — …and the moderator’s
lsvalgaard says:
February 4, 2014 at 9:18 pm
The “twisting up” isn’t a thing.
A magnet does not wind up its own field.
Sparks says:
February 4, 2014 at 9:33 pm
A magnet does not wind up its own field.
Let us hope Carla is paying attention.
however, a magnet embedded in a plasma does wind up its field: the spiral field lines in the solar wind…
That is the crucial difference between a conducting and a non-conducting environment.
Leif,
Could you give an example of magnetic scale!
Sparks says:
February 4, 2014 at 9:49 pm
Could you give an example of magnetic scale!
There are many examples depending on the purpose of asking, here is one:
http://www.aip.de/~staude/ASP358.pdf
I am amazed by this discussion. I have little knowledge of solar and astrophysics but substantial knowledge of magnetism and electricity.
It would never occur to me to debate with Lief about a subject related to these topics without first studying the subject very thoroughly.
Some of the posts sound like first graders arguing with the math teacher about the rules of arithmetic.
I am also amazed at Lief’s patience. I sure wish I could take one of his courses.
Policycritic says:
Inflation is caused when there is full employment, everyone has money in their bank accounts, and there aren’t enough goods and services produced in the economy to meet the need. The classic definition. Or it’s caused by cost or supply shocks, like a rapid rise in the price of oil (again, that is gamed by futures traders in my opinion, which Congress refuses to fix). Or if asset prices rise and, yes, banks have been part of that.
Just wondering where you get your definition of inflation from. Every economics text I’ve read defines inflation as an increase in the money supply.
Although I admit I haven’t read any Keynes thus far – still on my ‘to read’ list.
Although I admit I haven’t read any Keynes thus far – still on my ‘to read’ list.
Dunno about his economics work, but the man was a god of probability and statistics. His classic stats text is one of the foundations of modern Bayesian reasoning and is in the direct line of the ancestors of the Cox axioms and Cox-Jaynes explanation of a homomorphism of probability theory as the proper basis of science and epistemology. The man was pretty smart.
As for inflation, I’d say increase in the relative money supply, wouldn’t you? It isn’t necessarily that too many dollar (etc) bills are being printed, it is that there are increasingly many relative to the things one can buy with them. Although it is often the case that the government simply prints too much money and deflates its debt as a form of hidden regressive tax, it can also come about through manipulation of the Fed’s interest rates (and by inheritance all interest rates) or just by confluence of circumstance (or, one suspects, highly skilled and deliberate manipulation) in the highly nonlinear and unpredictable market.
But yes, inflation is literally too much money for what one can buy with it, driving the prices for “scarce” commodities up. Kind of scary; it implies that it is impossible for us to ever build a society where everbody is equally rich until there is literally no scarcity. Which makes a sad kind of sense.
rgb
My understanding of inflation is simply, and only, an increase in the money supply. What we CALL inflation (i.e. the increase in commodity prices) is a symptom of that – a symptom that can also be caused by other factors, and also mitigated by other factors. The texts I’ve read define inflation as only the increase in supply, and deflation as a decrease in the supply. (much as you can inflate or deflate a balloon) The Fed was, in theory, supposed to help smooth out economic bumps by inflating or deflating, as dictated by the specific economic factors of the time. In practice, however, it hasn’t quite worked out that way.
Prices are dictated simply by supply & demand, until government regulation gets involved. The reason prices go up under inflation is because the supply of money increases (the definition of inflation), and since money is in greater supply, the law of S&D indicates its relative value will go down. Its value goes down in relation to commodities, therefore, commodity prices increase.
Inflation seems to get worse under a fiat currency, since the available money supply can be so easily manipulated. It’s a lot more difficult to inflate your supply of gold, without mining more 🙂
I learned in my teens – shortly after the Carter years – that most people think “inflation” is the increase of prices over time, and that this is an incorrect understanding of the term. Seems that popular understanding of a lot of things tend to be incorrect…
Oops, I missed the point I was going to make. One way inflation can arise is by manipulating — surprise — the energy market. Since energy is a highly inelastic commodity, raising prices of energy both raises the prices of every single good or service that depend on it and forces individuals to spend more of their income on energy, leaving less for everything else that is more elastic. This in turn leads to excess supply in “everything else” compared to the money supply and energy-starving peasants. Since in a democracy, starving peasants are given pitchforks, torches, tar and feathers every two years, every government is faced with either increasing the money supply to effectively reduce the real cost of energy so everybody can get a raise and “catch up” to the increase and providing the illusion of prosperity or being ridden out of town on a rail. Easy choice. Of course if there is a real problem with the supply of energy, this triggers the tail chasing spiral of inflation — prices rise, the currency is inflated to match, but there is only so much to go around so prices rise again and the currency inflates a bit more etc. Welcome to the latter days of Jimmy Carter. Welcome, in fact, to the life work of the Fed. Welcome to the probable real cause of the CAGW scandal — not greens acting alone, not climate scientists acting without motivation, but greens playing into the hands of the energy industry, which is the only group that unambiguously benefits from the measures being taken and attention being paid to energy.
Why was unleaded gasoline always more expensive than leaded? Leaving out a complex additive made it more expensive at constant octane. Why did ethanol get added to gasoline? Who profits from CF light bulbs, from the coming LED bulbs? Follow the money. The tail does not wag the dog.
rgb
Fantasti response, Dr.Brown. Culture, class, education and true knowledge shining in contrast to the crude, juvenile, arrogant and hypocritical posts of self appointed climastrological adjustment experts, who’re basically peddling snake oil.
TonyG says
“Prices are dictated simply by supply & demand, until government regulation gets involved. The reason prices go up under inflation is because the supply of money increases (the definition of inflation), and since money is in greater supply, the law of S&D indicates its relative value will go down. Its value goes down in relation to commodities, therefore, commodity prices increase.”
Gold was over $1800 a while back and is now at about $1250 while the money supply has been continuously increased during that period by Fed intervention. Speculation has a tremendous effect as well as money supply. The $$ being created by the Fed do not get into the real economy but end up in the financial and commodity (or real estate) markets where the bubble is again inflating for the next bust.
rgbatduke says:
February 5, 2014 at 7:29 am
Why was unleaded gasoline always more expensive than leaded? Leaving out a complex additive made it more expensive at constant octane.
Because the ‘complex additive’ (tetraethyl lead) was a cheaper way to increase the octane rating of the gasoline than to refine the hydrocarbons to achieve the same effect.
@Anthony
> Meanwhile, the Ap magnetic index continues its slump
> as it has since October 2005, bumping along the bottom.
The ISES plot which Anthony always uses to demonstrate the alleged ‘continuing slump’ is highly misleading. It’s a plot of _monthly_ averages taken from the daily Ap reports (which in turn are averages of 8 magnetometers producing readings every 3 hours).
When you plot the _daily_ reports, the ‘slump since 2005’ disappears (red oval)
http://i57.tinypic.com/121vk3q.png [Ap index from 1932 to 2013]
Sure, overall Ap intensities are somewhat reduced, because CY24 is a rather small cycle. But note how the activity resumes since 2005. In fact the activity now is comparable to the Ap index around CY20, another small cycle (Blue oval).
So why does taking monthly averages make the resuming magnetic activity disappear? Because the Ap values above 50 tend to occur as isolated ‘noise-like’ spikes, which are decimated by averaging. In fact averaging is a common noise reduction technique. It called ‘smoothing’.
You can see this in these two plots which show the _daily_ activity for Sept and Oct 2005.
http://i59.tinypic.com/2gspo3k.png [Ap index sept oct 2005]
Note that there are several spikes between 40 and 100. But, the spikes lack statistical ‘mass’, so the montly average for Sept is only 20 (vs. 8 for Oct). The point is that there was a lot of activity in Sept 2005 that the ISES chart doesn’t faithfully represent. So nobody turned off a switch, changing the noise floor. Rather the spikes were smoothed down, making it look like a ‘slump’.
FYI, the Ap Index is not really a “solar” index like SSN or SF. Rather it is a _geomagnetic_ index derived from readings of the Earths magnetic field, but which happen to be highly influenced by solar activity. Or more precisely, by the solar wind (driven by particles from coronal holes and streamer belts).
Another way to think about these 3 indices is that they’re all driven by ‘dark regions’ on the Sun: SSN and SF by sunspots (dark in visible light) and Ap by coronal holes (dark in EUV and X-Ray).
Question for Dr. Svalgaard: Are the large Ap spikes generated by a different process than the ‘background’? The solar wind has slow and fast components, so are the large spikes somehow associated with faster components (which have more variance I think)? And does the ‘background’ signal indicate the slower solar wind?
John Day says:
February 5, 2014 at 9:53 am
Question for Dr. Svalgaard: Are the large Ap spikes generated by a different process than the ‘background’? The solar wind has slow and fast components, so are the large spikes somehow associated with faster components (which have more variance I think)? And does the ‘background’ signal indicate the slower solar wind?
The ap and similar indices depends on the solar wind magnetic field B and speed V roughly as Ap ~ B V^2, so when both B and V are high [as in a CME] Ap has a spike. Over the solar cycle B varies with the square-root of the Sunspot Number B = a + b SQRT(SSN) so tends to maximize at solar maximum, while V is largest at some point later on during the declining phase, so you often see secondary peaks in Ap at that time.
@Leif
>… when both B and V are high [as in a CME] Ap has a spike. ..
> The ap and similar indices depends on the solar wind magnetic field B and speed V …
>… Over the solar cycle B varies with the square-root of the Sunspot Number
Ok, this is the part that I don’t quite understand. You say the Ap spikes are driven by CMEs, and that the magnetic field B varies with SSN. But what exactly is the connection between CMEs and SSN? I thought the fast solar wind B field originated from open lines emanating from the coronal holes (as this Wikipedia article implies:
Is the CME-SSN ‘connection’ due to the fact that coronal holes tend to hang out at the polar regions during solar minima, and wander down to the equatorial regions at solar max? Does that explain why CMEs are felt on Earth more during solar maxima?
Also, do you agree with my assessment of the Ap ‘slump since 2005’?
😐
John Day says:
February 5, 2014 at 10:49 am
Is the CME-SSN ‘connection’ due to the fact that coronal holes tend to hang out at the polar regions during solar minima, and wander down to the equatorial regions at solar max? Does that explain why CMEs are felt on Earth more during solar maxima?
If anything, it is the other way around. Coronal holes wander up to the poles [and the field in the CHs helps reverse the polar fields]. Reality is a bit more complicated [has to do with butterfly diagram and flux emergence], but those complications are just details.
Also, do you agree with my assessment of the Ap ‘slump since 2005′?
Yes, and I keep telling Anthony about it, but to no avail. There comes a point where one lets it ride…
😐
Aha! I knew it all along. But I forget what it means.
@Leif
> If anything, it is the other way around. Coronal holes wander up to the poles
> [and the field in the CHs helps reverse the polar fields].
I guess there are two ways to look at the coronal hole situation. The Wikipedia article on CH gave me the impression that the wandering took place at solar max:
In any case, all I wanted to know was if it was the relative increase of CH density in the equatorial regions was the reason CMEs are correlated to the sunspot number. In other words, if the SSN is at max, will there be more CHs aiming their CMEs at the Earth?
Or is there some other, less obvious mechanism which causes the correlation between the density of large Ap spikes measured on Earth and observed SSN?
John Day says:
February 5, 2014 at 2:13 pm
In any case, all I wanted to know was if it was the relative increase of CH density in the equatorial regions was the reason CMEs are correlated to the sunspot number. In other words, if the SSN is at max, will there be more CHs aiming their CMEs at the Earth?
CHs and CMEs are different animals. First CMEs: they are mostly caused by explosions [flares] in and above sunspots so have an obvious relationship with the sunspot cycle and lead to Ap-spikes if the CME with its high speed and strong magnetic field comes our way. CHs occur when sunspots decay and the debris drifts away from the spot to form what is called a UMR [Unipolar Magnetic Region]. The magnetic field in such a region is weaker so cannot hold the solar wind back [as the strong fields in a sunspot does] and the corona expands readily into interplanetary space. Adjacent CHs often have different expansion speed so solar wind is ejected into the same radial direction as the Sun rotates. This leads to the faster of the two catching up with and colliding with the slower and a ‘corotating interaction region’ forms with increased and disturbed and compressed plasma and magnetic field. When such a region sweeps over the Earth, Ap also has a spike, so there are two causes of spikes with somewhat different behavior over the cycle. I said it was a bit complicated [and there is more more complication at the next deeper level].