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
Erwin says:
There is a nice paper about predicting a double peak of solar cycle 24:
You would have needed to be a genius with a profound understanding of solar physics to “predict” that out come in 2011, However, the paper looks interesting. Thanks.
How terrible, no new ice age but instead the release of the giant virus, buried for 30.000 years in the fast melting ice….. Scaaaryyyy.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-giant-virus-revived-20140302,0,4662287.story#ixzz2uvwls53Y
Richard M:
I said this back in May 2008,
“1) Active sun in cycles 18 and 19 then a less active sun in cycle 20 plus a negative PDO = cancelling out of expected warming followed by cooling when the sun gets less active in cycle 20 (1940 to 1975).
2) Active sun during cycles 21, 22 and the double peak of 23 plus positive PDO = significant warming. (1975 to 1998)
3) Slightly quieter sun during extended tail end of cycle 23 plus positive PDO = stable temperatures. (1998 to 2007).
4) Quiet sun as cycle 23 fizzles out and cycle 24 is deferred plus a negative PDO = Rather chilly in my opinion. (2007 to 20 ?)
from here:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/the-real-link-between-solar-energy-ocean-cycles-and-global-temperature/
The period of roughly stable temperatures is going on longer than I expected back then due to the thermal inertia of the oceans but cooling should become more apparent after the passing of the peak of cycle 24.
I am still baffled:
I remember as a youg boy and even not too many years ago, you could actually see ss with your naked eyes on sunrise or sunset (or on very dusty days like the last couple of days here in Israel).
In the last decade or more one could hardly detect any ss at all!
Yesterday I was straining to see one – but they were way too small to detect.
It seems to me in the 17th and 18th century this type of spots would be missed altogether.
Concidering this is supposed to be the peak of the sun’s activity, This cycle is defintely well below the previous ones.
There wasn’t any 1970s cooling. There was a cooling which began in ~1945 and ended in the 1970s. So the cooling began about 2 decades before the onset of Solar Cycle 20 (the weak one). Furthermore, the cooling continued throughout SC 19 (the strongest cycle ever recorded).
It’s the same story for the Dalton Minimum. If you look closely at some of the old longer temperature records, e.g. the CET, you will notice that there is a temperature decline which began before 1780 – i.e. well before the Dalton cycles. The decline was actually taking place during 1778 which was the year with the highest recorded sunspot count (See Leif’s post above).
CET record is here.
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Hos_1.png
Unless earth’s climate is able to predict future solar activity then I’m not sure there is much of a connection between the two.
Eyal Porat says:
March 4, 2014 at 12:38 am
I am still buffled:
I remember as a youg boy and even not too many years ago, you could actually see ss with your naked eyes on sunrise or sunset (or on very dusty days like the last couple of days here in Israel).
Be careful you don’t damage your eyesight looking at the sun. The mathematician Leonhard Euler lost the sight in his right eye by looking at the sun too much.
http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/men/euler.html
But the oceans are still gaining heat.
Also this is not correct
The cooling clearly began in the 1940s. The 1970s were, if anything, warmer than the 1960s.
Solar Cycle 20 began in 1964 and ended in 1976. Can anyone provide any data to show there was cooling over this period. Oh, and make that any data which covers more than 2% of the earth’s surface.
Edim says:
March 3, 2014 at 11:42 pm
“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?2
The solar maximum was reached in 2013, this is when the solar poloidal field reached a point of reversal, it’s not a forecast, prediction or model it’s an actual observation, once a solar cycle gets underway the forecasts are usually more accurate, there maybe another long deep solar minimum coming up, if there is then we should see another weak solar cycle for SC25. fwiw, it is my opinion that a long extended solar minimum is what occurred during the maunder minimum, resulting in no magnetic field reversal and incredibly low sunspot number, unfortunately, there is no way of confidentially forecasting prolonged solar minimums, only that our records show that they do occur and they do effect our climate.
lsvalgaard says:
March 3, 2014 at 6:35 pm
Cycle 14 had three months with sunspot number greater than 100 [and that is not even correcting for the Waldmeier effect].
I don’t like much the comparison between cycle 24 and cycle 14. Each cycle is different and has its own characteristics.
– Cycle 14: showed three peaks greater than 100 in a period of 1 year and 4 months: Nov 1905, Jul 1906, Feb 1907.
– Cycle 24 had until now only two peaks: 96.7 in Nov 2011 and 102.8 in Feb 2014, i.e. in a period of 2 years and 4 months.
Something strange can be seen in the double peaks of the latest solar cycles. See http://users.skynet.be/fc298377/Sun/SC21-23.jpg. The second peak (total smoothed sunspot number) is shooting up in comparison with the first peak: the difference with the first peak becomes smaller during each following cycle. Now, we see that the second peak is surpassing the first peak. It seems that some pattern can be discovered in this series of solar cycles. Is such explanation meaningful?
I think that the current solar cycle can be described as follows.
First the Northern Hemisphere was active, showing a peak from Sep to Nov 2011. From Oct 2013 on, the Southern Hemisphere showed a much greater activity. I expect that this high activity will still persist for about two or three months. After that period, (i.e. 5 years and 6 months after the beginning of the cycle, about the half of the cycle), the activity in both hemispheres will decrease gradually.
(See my update of the current cycle: http://users.skynet.be/fc298377/Sun/SunFeb14sm.jpg)
Roha
“So are sunspots what dooms us?”
sunspots are used as a proxy- “the increased/decreased magnetic activity which accompanies sunspot maxima/minima directly influences the amount of ultraviolet radiation which moves through the upper atmosphere.”
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/fsd/?n=sunspots
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml
so its not the sunspots per se but what that tells us about the activity of the sun and the potential impact on the earth. Sunspot cycles have been correlated with tree rings which would imply trees are sensitive indicators and shows sun cycles are in tune with plant life which usually means ‘what the weather was like’ during the cycle. So looking into a connection between sun cycles and weather is not barking. Climate would have to be some longer cycle?
.also right now the earth magnetic shield is weakening which protects the earth so one might assume more rays will get thro so that might be an added complication etc
so in one sense with a weakening shield a sunspot might doom us by blowing out the power grid for months [with huge political and social consequences]
co2ers say its all irrelevant as co2 will trump any other cause although the eco utopians would probably love for the power grid to be blown out so we can live in de industrialised mud hutted eco heaven where everyone is called by names like crow and raven and keeper of the talking stick 🙂
RoHa says:
March 3, 2014 at 9:41 pm
So are sunspots what dooms us?
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No, the politicians have that responsibility.
John Finn duly ignores the modulating effects of the ocean cycles even though that modulating effect was the very point being made.
@Alcheson says: March 3, 2014 at 10:41 pm
Seems to this lay person that the further back you look the less significant the Late 20th Century Warming period would seem to be. Is it not true that the past 5000 years of the Holocene show cooling? In which case, the current furore is quite clearly nothing to do with science. We really should be spending money working out how to adapt to cooling, not warming.
https://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198.abstract
“Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed records. Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (<5000 years ago), culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago. This cooling is largely associated with ~2°C change in the North Atlantic. Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of the Holocene temperature history. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change model projections for 2100 exceed the full distribution of Holocene temperature under all plausible greenhouse gas emission scenarios."
daddylonglegs says:
March 4, 2014 at 1:28 am
Too late… 🙁
As a teen I tried to see a solar eclipse without shades…
I specificly said you can see the ss on dusty days.
Sparks, in spite of the difficulty with the criteria of defining when a maximum (or a minimum) really occurs (it’s somewhat arbitrary anyway), I strongly disagree that the SC24 solar maximum was reached in 2013. The solar polar field reversal does not define the cycle maximum, it only occurs around the maximum. Furthermore, this reversal is still ‘ongoing’.
http://www.leif.org/research/WSO-Polar-Fields-since-2003.png
This solar cycle seems to be very weak and that usually means very long. The previous cycle (#23) was weak and long too. Solar cycle frequency slowed and I think some type of a grand minimum will occur in the next decades. How grand depends on the next few cycles (#25, 26…).
highflight56433 says:
March 3, 2014 at 8:34 pm
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.
I wasn’t trying to imply an all or nothing situation. Just above and below average. And, there is yet to be determined the mechanism for the sun adding more energy. I suspect it has to do with clouds.
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John Finn, if you look at the raw data you will see it matches what I said much better.
And my point was that OHC is still increasing. More energy is entering the oceans than is leaving.
>goldminor says:
>>Mario Lento says:
Your analogy to a lawyer defending a client is excellent.
+++++
That is the difference between advocacy and judgment. A skeptic can be a pretty good judge, an advocate cannot.
jai mitchell says:
it seems that the end of the little ice age has absolutely nothing to do with the solar cycles. . .what else could have caused it to end?
==========
1. the same thing that caused it to start – which climate science hasn’t yet found an answer to
2. there is no evidence the little ice age has ended – that is simply an assumption
what we do know is that climate models cannot replicate the little ice age, which means that it is a result of a forcing unknown to climate science.
‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
John Finn says:
March 4, 2014 at 5:34 am
And my point was that OHC is still increasing. More energy is entering the oceans than is leaving.
============
what you mean is that there is evidence to support this belief. and the belief may be correct, or it may not be, within the error limits of the measurements.
Just like Dr S predicted, a subdued but drawn-out, variable maximum just like some previous ones.
Ha. One spike in the sunspot number and we have some folks declaring victory and others pointing fingers all over the place. Be patient. It’s not a trend, yet. Anything could still happen.
@Jai Mitchell
Not search too simple solutions …
(http://www.pages-igbp.org/download/docs/Gonzales-Rouco%20et%20al._2011-1%287-8%29.pdf) Medieval Climate Anomaly to Little Ice Age transition as simulated by current climate models, González-Rouco et al., 2011.:
“Therefore, under both high and low TSI change scenarios, it is possible that the MCA–LIA reconstructed anomalies would have been largely influenced by INTERNAL VARIABILITY. […]”
(http://hakangrudd.blogspot.com/p/publications.html).
“The impact of volcanic eruptions is clear, and a delayed recovery from pairs or multiple eruptions suggests the presence of some positive feedback mechanism.”
Mid- to Late Holocene climate change: an overview. Wanner et al., 2008. (http://www.novaquatis.eawag.ch/organisation/abteilungen/surf/publikationen/2008_wanner.pdf):
“On decadal to multi-century timescales, a worldwide coincidence between solar irradiance minima, tropical volcanic eruptions and decadal to multi-century scale cooling events was not found.”
(http://folk.uib.no/ngfhd/Papers/otteraa_etal_2010.pdf) External forcing as a metronome for Atlantic multidecadal variability, Otterå et al., 2010.: “We find that volcanoes play a particularly important part in the phasing of the multidecadal variability through their direct influence on tropical sea-surface temperatures, on the leading mode of northern-hemisphere atmosphere circulation and on the Atlantic thermohaline circulation.”
The problem with the second peak in 24 cycle, lies in the fact that the theory of AGW proponents believe that despite the fact that it occurred, we have harsh winters in the U.S. … – the sun has no significant effect (according to theory of AGW proponents) on climate …
James Abbot:
The prediction was that cycle 24 would be a flop. Even with the current second peak, the current cycle is by any measure, a flop.
So please tell us how the predictions at WUWT have been disproven.