The updates from NOAA’s SWPC are now available, and there are big jumps all around in February 2014.
Sunspot number reaches the highest ever for SC24:
10.7cm radio flux reaches the highest ever for SC24:
Ap magnetic index, while up, has not surpassed previously higher values in SC24
In other news, Davis Archibald offers this update:
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Solar Update March 2014
David Archibald
Figure 1: Oulu Neutron Count 1964 – 2014
With Solar Cycle 24 maximum in March 2013 (see the heliospheric current sheet tilt angle in Figure 5 below) and a one year lag between solar activity and neutron count, we have probably seen the minimum neutron count for this cycle. The minimum count is well above the minimum value for Solar Cycle 20.
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: Solar Wind Flow Pressure 1971 – 2014
What is really interesting is what has happened to the solar wind flow pressure. Despite a high sunspot number and F10.7 flux for this cycle, in January 2014 the solar wind flow pressure fell to a new low of 1.2 nPa for the instrumental record. With another 10 years of solar cycle fall time ahead of us, this suggests that the neutron count is going to be impressive by the end of the decade.
Figure 4: Ap Index 1932 – 2014
Similarly, despite high sunspot numbers and F10.7 flux values, the Ap Index appears to be in a new regime with current values around the previous apparent floor level of activity for the instrumental record.
Figure 5: Heliospheric Current Sheet Tilt Angle
Based on the heliospheric tilt angle, Solar Cycle 24 maximum was in Carrington rotation 2134, which is March 2013. With the Solar cycle 23/24 minimum in December 2008, Solar Cycle 24 rise time was 4 years and three months.
Figure 6: Monthly F10.7 Flux 1948 – 2014
The F10.7 flux is having a new peak of activity.
Figure 7: Interplanetary Magnetic Field 1966 – 2014
As with the solar wind flow pressure and Ap Index, the interplanetary magnetic field appears to be in a new regime in Solar Cycle 24 in which peak activity is at about the level of the previous floor of activity.
Figure 8: Solar Cycle 24 relative to the Dalton Minimum
Solar Cycle 24 had been tracking Solar Cycle 5, the first half of the Dalton Minimum, quite closely in terms of monthly sunspot number. It is now somewhat stronger at the same stage of the cycle.
Figure 9: Solar Cycles 1749 – 2040
Livingstone and Penn’s forecast of a Solar Cycle 25 maximum amplitude of 7 is still the only prediction of the size of that cycle from the solar physics community. We are still a few years out before solar poloidal field strength can be used to estimate the size of the next cycle.
Figure 10: Predicted Solar Cycle 24 peak sunspot number
Of 54 predictions of Solar Cycle 24 peak amplitude, the six at the bottom of the range could be considered to be in the ball park of the achieved result. This suggests that the solar physics community’s understanding of the Sun, and thus climate, has the potential to evolve further. From: Pesnell, W.D., Predictions of Solar Cycle 24, Solar Phys., 252, 209-220, 2008
James Abbott: . . . .and the second is basic physics
And what was the basic physics of the similar 30 year warming at the same rate 1915-1945?
Bob Weber says:
March 3, 2014 at 6:08 pm
Looking at Figure 9: Solar Cycles 1749 – 2040, the four top most active cycles out of all 24 occurred since 1949, cycles 18, 19, 21, and 22. Add in cycles 17 and 23 to get the top 6 out of the top 11 of all 24 cycles, which puts us back into the 1930′s, when we had the highest recorded temperatures in the US.
Taking into account and correcting for the over-count introduced by Max Waldmeier in 1947 [see e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/CEAB-Cliver-et-al-2013.pdf ], the 30 years with the highest yearly sunspot number average since 1749 were [values in the last third of the 265 years covered are in bold]:
1778.5 199.7
1957.5 190.2
1958.5 184.8
1870.5 176.7
1837.5 176
1787.5 166.8
1788.5 164.9
1959.5 159
1779.5 157.9
1989.5 157.6
1848.5 156.3
1979.5 155.4
1980.5 154.6
1836.5 152.4
1947.5 151.6
1789.5 146.8
1991.5 145.7
1990.5 142.6
1937.5 142.1
1956.5 141.7
1981.5 140.5
1871.5 138
1948.5 136.3
1938.5 135.4
1949.5 134.7
1769.5 131.5
1917.5 128.1
1838.5 127
1872.5 124.3
1770.5 123.8
Too bad Figure 6: Monthly F10.7 Flux 1948 – 2014, doesn’t go back to 1749 too.
But we have a good proxy back to 1844: slide 15 of http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic%20Calibration%20of%20Sunspot%20Numbers.pdf
About the Double Peak: weak cycles have several pronounced peaks. Cycle 14 had a dozen, and Cycle 24 will undoubtedly have several more peaks to go before it is done. Cycle 14 had three months with sunspot number greater than 100 [and that is not even correcting for the Waldmeier effect].
James Abbott says:
March 3, 2014 at 4:24 pm
dbstealey
You don’t appear to have looked at the link I posted which showed that WUWT stated, clearly, that the current cycle max had passed (last year) and that the current cycle was a flop.
++++++++++++
James: That you “deny” CAGW has been falsified, makes you unable to have a balanced discussion. You give up because you have no facts. As dbstealey stated, without skeptics, you get drivel like you see in the MSM and IPCC – and this is a sign that the so called science you believe in is broken. Science is not about belief.
Skeptics argue profusely with each other to find the truth. People like you want to believe in something without the advantage of critical thinking. You’re like a lawyer defending a client. You are not looking to find truth – you are looking for an outcome. SKEPTICS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE JURY – seeking truth.
dbstealey:
I should correct my sentence. My first paragraph should have been written:
“James: That you “deny” CAGW has been falsified, makes you unable to have a balanced discussion. You give up because you have no facts, as dbstealey showed you. Without skeptics, you get drivel like you see in the MSM and IPCC – and this is a sign that the so called science you believe in is broken. Science is not about belief…”
James Abbott says:
March 3, 2014 at 5:36 pm
actuator
Its not “patently obvious” at all. There is a shed load of evidence, which I have produced on this site many times. I just know what the response will be. I could equally ask you to produce evidence of sceptic assertions that there is no GW and no link between warming and GHGs. Warming has clearly taken place since about 1970 (all major global data sets) and the second is basic physics.
++++++++++++
James: You should know this, but I’ll help. You’re looking for only correlations over short time periods and are blinded by your “belief”. You do understand that throughout historical timelines where CO2 levels are plotted against temperature, the correlation between CO2 and temperature is that CO2 has followed –not led temperatures. Knowing this is all too inconvenient to you, but ignoring the evidence makes you look pretty bad here. How do you leave out the truth in your diatribes? Either you don’t know – or you deny evidence.
Mario Lento says:
March 3, 2014 at 6:41 pm
——————————————
Your analogy to a lawyer defending a client is excellent.
There’s really a pretty reasonable explanation for the climate changes we saw in the last 100+ years. Of course, AGW fanatics like James Abbott will deny them. The key to look at both the sun and the oceans (PDO) together.
-PDO and weak sun early 1900-1910s …. cooling
+PDO and active sun lasted until 1940s …. warming
-PDO and active sun of 1950s …. small cooling
-PDO and weaker sun in 1960s-1970s …. more cooling
+PDO and active sun of 1980s-2000s …. warming
-PDO and weaker sun should point to more cooling in the future
The PDO controls how much energy can be released from the oceans. The sun provides the energy but cannot warm without the oceans releasing the energy. The oceans alone cannot release much energy if the sun does not provide any.
Thank you goldminor… it just came to me… I have James Abbott to thank, as he was my inspiration.
Part two: Do the cosmic ray count maximum periods that are in phase with solar minimums (see Figure 1: Oulu Neutron Count 1964 – 2014) cause increased cloud cover as Svensmark’s cosmoclimatology theory says, thereby cooling the planet (allowing fewer photons through to the surface)? And conversely, during solar max, do fewer cosmic ray counts create an atmosphere with fewer clouds that pass more photon energy to the surface?
It still comes down to the Sun as the driver/modulator.
Thanx Dr. Svalgaard. Still digesting previous information you provided. The more I look into solar and geomagnetics, the more interesting it gets.
dbstealey on March 3, 2014 at 4:11 pm
jai mitchell,Thanx for the carefully selected passage. But what you left out was the sentence preceding your cherry-pick:
Quote:
…the causes of superposed century-scale cold summer anomalies, of which the Little Ice Age (LIA) is the most extreme, remain debated,largely because the natural forcings are either weak or, in the case of volcanism, short lived.
End quote
Thanks dbstealy for putting the record straight.
How can climate scientists casually state that “natural climate forcings are weak” in a “science” that is utterly devoid of any serious hypothesis or understanding of what causes climate variation over all timescales. This is fatuous and banal wishful thinking, and exposes what is wrong and sick in climate science.
Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow by Ed Lorenz in 1962 was the high water mark of scientific understanding of chaotic climate variability. Since then the herd has moved in the wrong direction into a CO2 dark age.
The null hypothesis of climate science is that climate is always changing in a log-log fractal manner due to normal chaotic-nonlinear oscillation. CAGW not only fails to nullify this null hypothesis – its practitioners fail to understand what a null hypothesis is.
Richard M says:
March 3, 2014 at 7:05 pm
“The PDO controls how much energy can be released from the oceans. The sun provides the energy but cannot warm without the oceans releasing the energy. The oceans alone cannot release much energy if the sun does not provide any.”
Not to sure what you said. However….a lack of heat is why water becomes ice in your freezer. The cold does not freeze the water. Right? Likewise the oceans are constantly releasing heat they hold which has been absorbed from the sun. The oceans release energy independently of what the sun is providing in return. If there is no sun, the ocean heat just keeps on releasing until it is exhausted. At some point there is a balance of heat absorbed and heat released. At that point, the releasing of energy is in balance with the absorption of energy. If the sun did not vary in its output, and the orbits were circular and the earth axis not changing and the continents on roaming around, the oceans would be less variable against what we actually see. Much more complex than the freezer activity, but the same is happening.
So now that I have confused myself, I do believe the PDO is an artifact or product of the ocean dynamics. The PDO follows or is a result of something that has changed, not leading. The weather can be an artifact or product of the PDO or something that is changing, the weather follows, not leading. The temperature of the atmosphere is an artifact, the atmosphere follows it’s inputs; just as the oceans do. Just like the ice cubes do.
There is no pause or hiatus in global warming. It has stopped. Unless someone has categoric proof it will start again please let us stop using the warmies words of “pause” and “Hiatus” let’s use CEASED – If the global climate starts to move again one way or another – as it will – that will be a new movement.
Please let’s call a spade a spade – it has stopped.
Alan,
Couldn’t have said it better myself. We will only know that global warming has paused if and when it resumes. But until then, global warming has stopped for the past 17+ years.
So are sunspots what dooms us?
Vukcevic forecasts are accurate.
http://www.solen.info/solar/polarfields/polar.html
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PF-latest.gif
Therefore, cosmic rays increase. Neutrons are only part of secondary radiation.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/monitor.gif
Jai Mitchell says:
March 3, 2014 at 2:26 pm
The 1890s were very cold due to weaker solar output due to a de Vries cycle low. We see that in the Be10 record. The aa Index had started increasing from the 1860s rising to its peak in the second half of the 20th century.
Mike Jonas says:
March 3, 2014 at 2:54 pm
We only have a few cycles of record. In the scheme of the variability of the Sun, even the 400 years of sunspot observations aren’t much. As with things like the Ap Index, there had seemed to be a ceiling. We are in new territory now. Given that there is a one year lag between solar activity and the neutron count, someone with the time and inclination could calculate what the count will be one year out.
We know that the neutron count was a lot higher in the LIA because the Be10 count was consistently higher. In fact that would be a good subject for a paper – integrating the neutron count with the Be10 record through the modern overlap.
James Abbott says:
March 3, 2014 at 5:36 pm
” There is a shed load of evidence… Warming has clearly taken place since about 1970 (all major global data sets) and the second is basic physics.”
So, your shed load of evidence is that warming has taken place since about 1970 and the fact that CO2 has been shown to be a “greenhouse” gas. Must be a really small shed.
Also, very few skeptics deny either of those assertions you claim as your shed load. What we are very skeptical of is the assertion that it is, or is going to be catastrophic. You have NO evidence for catastrophic… only models, which 95% of have already failed.
You cAWG cultists have predicted:
1) Rapidly accelerating sea level rise…. Is not happening, holding more or less steady at 1.8mm/yr since roughly 1850.
2) Complete loss of summer Arctic Sea ice by 2015…. prediction is looking very bad
3) Decrease in Antarctic sea ice… It is growing against the predictions of EVERY model
4) East Manhatten was to be going under water about now… still doing fine and no one panicking yet
5) Tuvalu was to be going below the ocean surface about now…. They just built a brand new +$100million airport and surrounding resort so doesn’t appear anyone really thinks its going under any day now
6) Hot spot in atmosphere…. not there
7) Surface temperatures according to the mean of the models was to have increased by 0.2C in last 20 yrs…. ouch, no change in 17yrs and counting
I can go on and on about all your failed predictions and projections. There is NOTHING that suggest catastrophic in ANY of the data. In fact, so far the increase in temperature and CO2 has been a net positive… that is unless you prefer temperatures of the LIA and 30% lower crop yields.
Chris Marrou says:
March 3, 2014 at 2:19 pm
There is another paper coming along which will be a significant advance. It vindicates my model output but with much higher resolution. I have already used it to predict annual crop yields for the Corn Belt out to 2040. Crop yield is proportional to heat when heat is the limiting factor. The nice thing is the aesthetics – instead of a blocky temperature forecast it is now a smooth line. Of course the hindcast match is good, including the pause.
Here is a plot of the SSN data with filter that does not get all the short term peaks in the wrong place:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=781
(Links to code provided)
There is a nice paper about predicting a double peak of solar cycle 24:
Kilcik, A. & Ozguc, A. (2014). One Possible Reason for Double-Peaked Maxima in Solar Cycles: Is a Second Maximum of Solar Cycle 24 Coming? Solar Physics, 289 (4), 1379-1386
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11207-013-0407-4
Preprint: http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4552
“… Thus, we conclude that i) one possible reason for a double maximum in solar cycles is the different behavior of large and small sunspot groups, and ii) a double maximum is coming for Solar Cycle 24.”
the 60 year cycle…30 years each of warming and cooling…cannot be caused by the 11 year sunspot cycle…it is deep ocean cycles…cooling started after 2010
The cycle is weak and long, as already observed (maximum should be at ~2014/15). The next minimum likely not before ~2021/22, assuming the cycle frequency remains low. Temperatures will plummet after the cycle maximum. The ‘postmodern’ minimum?
gopal panicker says:
March 3, 2014 at 11:37 pm
“the 60 year cycle…30 years each of warming and cooling…cannot be caused by the 11 year sunspot cycle…it is deep ocean cycles…cooling started after 2010”
Variations in the magnitude of the 11 and 22 year cycles over 60 year time-scales could be at least one factor affecting climate. It’s pretty clear that it’s not just one thing , whatever your favourite ‘forcing’ is.
Inter-decadal variations in horizontal displacement of water (and hence energy) by tides seem to be a significant factor but reductionist ideas like “it’s the sun, stupid” or “it’s not the sun” are very likely to be wrong.
Climate is complicated.