Guest essay by David Archibald
The following is a series of graphs that depict the current and past state of the sun.
Figure 1: Solar Cycle 24 relative to the Dalton Minimum
Solar Cycle 24 had almost the same shape as Solar Cycle 5, the first half of the Dalton Minimum, up to about six months ago and is now a lot stronger.
Figure 2: Monthly F10.7 Flux 1948 to 2014
The strength of the current solar cycle is confirmed by the F10.7 which is not subject to observer bias. Solar Cycle 24 is now five and a half years long.
Figure 3: Ap Index 1932 to 2014
The biggest change in solar activity for the current cycle is in magnetic activity which is now at the floor of activity for the period 1932 to 2007.
Figure 4: Heliospheric Tilt Angle 1976 to 2014
Peak of the solar cycle has occurred when heliospheric tilt angle reaches 73°. For Solar Cycle 24, this was in February 2013. It is now heading down to the 24/25 minimum.
Figure 5: Interplanetary Magnetic Field 1966 to 2014
This looks like a more muted version of the Ap Index. The main difference between them is that the IMF was a lot flatter over Solar Cycle 20 than the Ap Index.
Figure 6: Sum of Solar Polar Field Strengths 1976 to 2014
This is one of the more important graphs in the set in that it can have predictive ability. The SODA index pioneered by Schatten is based on the sum of the poloidal fields and the F10.7 flux. This methodology starts getting accurate for the next cycle a few years before solar minimum. If Solar Cycle 24 proves to be twelve years long, as Solar Cycle 5 was, then the SODA index may start being accurate from about 2016. In terms of solar cycle length, the only estimate in the public domain is from extrapolating Hathaway’s diagram off his image. Hathaway’s curve-fitting suggests that the Solar Cyce 24/25 minimum will be in late 2022. If so, Solar Cycle 24 will be thirteen years long, a little longer than Solar Cycle 23.
It seems that Livingstone and Penn’s estimate of Solar Cycle 25 amplitude of 7 remains the only one in the public domain. The reputational risk for solar physicists in making a prediction remains too great.
David Archibald, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Regnery, 2014).
Good for you. Nothing I have said makes any reference to any figure that you have plotted. I reference Figure 1 above. Contrary to your claims, Figure 1 above presents SIDC data (hint: it’s the red curve).
And he did plot SIDC numbers. See Figure 1 above. Conversely, I have never said that DA did not plot GSN. Yet you claim I have. You don’t listen any more precisely than you speak, and your reasoning is less precise still. A person such as yourself who exhibits such sloppy discourse ought not snottily condescend to others for speaking imprecisely (as you did above to William Astley) or accuse people of “bending the truth” for a simple error (as you did to David). But you do these things. Snotty Leif is a hypocrite.
Snotty Leif runs from his imprecise snottiness and his hypocrisy, but does not change it.
BTW, you still have not answered my question, posed three times above – Is the Group Sunspot Number Higher than the Total Sunspot Number? Well is it? If so, for what periods?
Pamela Gray says:
June 19, 2014 at 5:24 pm
For the life of me, I can’t find that article (woman author?) which was a landmark calculation on the strength of each separate factor involved in a warming trend. Leif first brought my attention to it. Maybe he can put the link to it in this thread if he knows which one I am talking about.
Judith Lean http://www.leif.org/EOS/LeanRindCauses.pdf and
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL038932.pdf
David Archibald says:
June 19, 2014 at 5:56 pm
The Sun has been more active for the last 150 years so the climate and sealevel has equilibrated on a sunspot number of 40.
Not so. that is a popular myth, but recent work has shown that there is no Grand Modern Maximum,
e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/The%20long-term%20variation%20of%20solar%20activity.pdf
Pamela Gray says:
June 19, 2014 at 7:03 pm
Bob, I don’t think Leif will mind if Lockwood is on the list. Lockwood’s recent papers are in agreement with Leif regarding calibration problems with the Zurich sunspot number. “We analyse the widely-used international/ Zürich sunspot number record, R, with a view to quantifying a suspected calibration discontinuity around 1945 (which has been termed the “Waldmeier discontinuity” [Svalgaard, 2011])…and that R is indeed too low before 1945.”
Lockwood et al. have a history of trying to play catch-up. They eventually get it right. In this particular case, their suggested factor is too small. The best estimate we get simply by asking the observers to count with and without weighting. Heere is what we get:
http://www.leif.org/research/Weighting-of-Sunspot-Counts.pdf
JJ says:
June 19, 2014 at 9:49 pm
Good for you. Nothing I have said makes any reference to any figure that you have plotted. I reference Figure 1 above. Contrary to your claims, Figure 1 above presents SIDC data (hint: it’s the red curve).
D.A. claims that the data [to me that means all of it] is SIDC data, and the important blue curve that he compares with is not SIDC. As simple as that. And that makes any comparison meaningless.
BTW, you still have not answered my question, posed three times above – Is the Group Sunspot Number Higher than the Total Sunspot Number? Well is it? If so, for what periods?
This is an imprecise and misleading question. The Group Sunspot Number is meant to be the Total, True Sunspot Number, by definition. After about 1885 the official [SIDC] sunspot number and the group sunspot number agree pretty well [as they were made to do by careful calibration]. Before ~1885 the Group Sunspot Number is seriously too low [by some 50%] due to a flaw in its construction. Very early on [such as during cycle 5] the Group Sunspot Number is very noisy and does have a spike or two larger than SIDC, but this is not a signal, just noise.
And mind your manners.
Bob Weber
I am a clairvoyant and I predict that the already this winter in the south will show the strength of the sun.
Let’s see current temperatures on land.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/mspps/np_images/amsua_ts_des.gif
This is curious. GSN was mentioned, I Googled for the data so someone could make their own comparisons.
I found the IPCC TAR, WG1, “6.11.1.2 Reconstructions of past variations of total solar irradiance”:
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/245.htm
Graph: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/fig6-5.htm
Hoyt and Schatten are in their own class, about 4.5 W/m^2 higher than Lean, Solanki and Fligge, and Lockwood and Stamper who group similarly in the 20th century. Lean is longer than H&S, which is 2nd longest, but the bumps do not align.
There is also another line presented without a proper scale, purportedly the H&S GSN. It succeeds in showing the H&S GSN has little to do with the H&S TSI reconstruction except often simultaneously wiggling through the sunspot cycle.
Pamela Gray says:
Vuk, you always jump WAAAAYYY over mechanism.
…..I consider Bob Tisdale’s work as key to understanding the one area .. in terms of the warming trend of the past 50 years: the ENSO step function.
……………………………………………………………………….
Ms. Gray, you jump WAAAAYYY over mechanism. ENSOetc
step up in one = step down in the other, and vice versa.
high threshold = cooler water forced to the surface = cooling
low threshold = Pacific is at peace = solar warming
JJ says:
June 19, 2014 at 9:49 pm
“A person such as yourself who exhibits such sloppy discourse ought not snottily condescend to others for speaking imprecisely (as you did above to William Astley) or accuse people of “bending the truth” for a simple error (as you did to David). But you do these things. Snotty Leif is a hypocrite.” and “Snotty Leif runs from his imprecise snottiness and his hypocrisy, but does not change it.”
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JJ could you please direct me to your page of published research so that I may compare that to Leif’s (http://www.leif.org/research) in order for me to make an informed decision as to whom I shall give more credence.
It can be seen that the growth of ice around Antarctica this year is much faster than in the previous year. The anomalies demonstrate clear trend.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
Tom in Florida on June 20, 2014 at 5:42 am:
Please, climate skeptics have been battered with “If that was true it’d be published”, “Where are your peer-reviewed publications?” and all those related issues combating an entrenched “consensus” view for far too many years to insist on published research.
At least a coherent presentation with references and code and data available with methodology specified as needed, that can be asked for, as that is what we ask among ourselves.
Besides, we’ve all seen how being published is no guarantee what was published is not onzin.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/26/how-computer-generated-fake-papers-flooding-academia
Etc.
Many of the posters of quality has left your site because of the arrogance of Leif who is a relic of the past (obsolete)
I POST ON TALKBLOKES TALKSHOP FAIR AND BALANCED. NOT BIASED IN FAVOR OF THE LIKES OF LEIF.
@ur momisugly Salvatore Del Prete on June 20, 2014 at 10:31 am:
Then enjoy yourself on that site of “Transcendent Rant and way out there theory” where you may freely and continually discuss Iron Sun, Sky Dragon Slaying, the riding of pseudocycles even in Central England, and whatever else you desire.
Go now. Be free! Enjoy and celebrate your choice!
Anthony thanks for posting that. I appreciate it. All I ever wanted was a fair playing field. I sincerely did not think that was the case. Reason being many of the post I wrote were had were not put on only selective ones. Perhaps I could have also approach this in a different manner from my end.
Good luck going forward in the climate debate.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
June 20, 2014 at 8:38 am
re:
Tom in Florida on June 20, 2014 at 5:42 am:
” JJ could you please direct me to your page of published research so that I may compare that to Leif’s (http://www.leif.org/research) in order for me to make an informed decision as to whom I shall give more credence.”
Please, climate skeptics have been battered with “If that was true it’d be published”, “Where are your peer-reviewed publications?” and all those related issues combating an entrenched “consensus” view for far too many years to insist on published research.
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Sorry that you missed the sarcasm. I had quoted JJ’s vicious attack on Leif. As you know Leif not only provides excellent information about the Sun but also valuable insight into the processes he is actively involved in. It was a non confrontational way of trying to get JJ to realize who he was defaming.
@ur momisugly Tom in Florida on June 20, 2014 at 11:54 am:
Understood. But I think certain people just tear into Leif because they know damn well who he is.
Huh, just had a brain tickle. If someone defames Leif then apologizes, have they refamed him? Wouldn’t Leif first have to have fame before he could be defamed?
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
June 20, 2014 at 12:15 pm
“Huh, just had a brain tickle. If someone defames Leif then apologizes, have they refamed him? Wouldn’t Leif first have to have fame before he could be defamed?”
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Cute. But just in case someone doesn’t get it, defamation has nothing to do with fame itself.
However, I think Leif is well known enough in his field to say he has fame.
Then there is also this:
“In the sixties Svalgaard and Mansurov discovered that the shape of diurnal variations of a magnetic field in high latitudes depend on the sign of IMF sector structure. Later this dependence was named as Svalgaard-Mansurov effect. We use the technique based on the Svalgaard-Mansurov effect for the sector structure sign definition.”
And JJ is now infamous for ringing the shit out of “snotty” quips.
From Tom in Florida on June 20, 2014 at 12:55 pm:
Sure it does. You can’t defame an unknown nobody, no one would care.
Although the attempt might bring them fame. Remember, fame is absolute, there is no negative fame, only positive.
(1.3 of the remaining 11 readers of this thread will get that joke, on average.)
Why must you remind me he is old? The first paper on his publications list is from 1968! His career already spans four and a half sunspot cycles!
LOLOLOL!!!! “WRINGING” the shit out of “snotty”. Can you tune shit?
Salvatore Del Prete says:
June 20, 2014 at 10:31 am
I POST ON TALKBLOKES TALKSHOP
Well, good riddance from WUWT.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
June 20, 2014 at 1:30 pm
His career already spans four and a half sunspot cycles!
As my [old!] colleague Ken Schatten once remarked “solar physics is so difficult, that it takes a lifetime to master” 🙂
Carla says:
June 18, 2014 at 5:54 pm
vukcevic says:
June 18, 2014 at 5:34 am
..I would estimate that Livingstone and Penn’s estimate of 7 for SC25 is far too low, and would go for a symbolic SSN=25 for the SC25.
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Unofficially, that’s pretty good Vuks.
Has anyone yet asked Dr. S., if he sees enough magnetic flux on the sun, to make the L&P estimate of 7 a reality, for solar cycle 25? You know more or less.
No way is this an exact science yet, the prediction of solar cycle amplitude.
Which multipole, of the solar multipoles, and at which latitude seem ahhh.. damped.
Maybe we should be looking at MRI magnetorotational instability, along side the accretion models, because both can be occurring simultaneously. Both meaning MRI and accretion.
Could be a slow down in the polar rotation, for some unknown reason. (huh) Which will affect where accretion to a solar disk or extended corona occurs.
MRI-driven Accretion onto Magnetized stars: Axisymmetric
MHD Simulations
M. M. Romanova,1?, G. V. Ustyugova,2y, A. V. Koldoba2, R. V. E. Lovelace 1;3
Feb, 2011
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.1089v1.pdf
ABSTRACT
We present the first results of a global axisymmetric simulation of accretion onto rotating
magnetized stars from a turbulent accretion disk, where the turbulence is driven
by the magnetorotational instability (MRI). Long-lasting accretion is observed for several
thousand rotation periods of the inner part of the disc. The angular momentum
is transported outward by the magnetic stress of the turbulent flow with a rate corresponding
to a Shakura-Sunyaev viscosity paramete.
Close to the star
the disk is stopped by the magnetic pressure of the magnetosphere. The subsequent
evolution depends on the orientation of the poloidal field in the disk relative to that of
the star at the disk-magnetosphere boundary. If fields have the same polarity, then the
magnetic flux is accumulated at the boundary and blocks the accretion which leads
to the accumulation of matter at the boundary. Subsequently, this matter accretes to
the star in outburst before accumulating again. Hence, the cycling, ‘bursty’ accretion
is observed.
The magnetic stress is enhanced at the boundary, leading to the enhanced
accretion rate. If the disc and stellar fields have opposite polarity, then the field reconnection
enhances the penetration of the disk matter towards the deeper field lines
of the magnetosphere….
And get the kryptonite out.
Had to re-read
Dr. J. Linksy’s press release,
“Cloud Tripping Through the Milky Way.”
07-13-2009
http://jila.colorado.edu/news-highlights/cloud-tripping-through-milky-way
“”We’re now on a collision course with the G cloud, which stands between us and the galactic center. Linsky says we’ll enter the G cloud in less than 5,000 years — perhaps even tomorrow. Once that happens, there’s a chance the G cloud will affect the Sun’s solar wind and Earth’s climate.
For instance, a dense enough cloud could push in on the solar wind and pollute the interplanetary medium, decreasing the Sun’s intensity and cooling the Earth. A very dense cloud could even produce an ice age on the Earth. Luckily, the G cloud isn’t dense enough to cause an ice age. It would only cool the earth a little relative to the environment we’re in now.””
In the article Dr. Linsky refers to the resizing of the heliosphere in the event of density changes to our local interstellar environment close to the sun. Of course there would be an increase to the accretion/reconnection rate of the sun, through its own gravitational focusing and charge exchange with neutrals.
Damping of multipole fields occurs through this accretion/ reconnection phase shift…
oops there goes the solar cycle..
I would like to bring to attention ‘when’,
we might have entered an overlap of interstellar cloud background.
The solar polar field began its, “steady” decline in magnetic field strength in, solar cycle 21. I did say “steady.” It had a steep and abrupt decline in cycle 20. As seen in Leifs, polar fields graph.
http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Polar-Fields-1966-now.png
So, maybe instead of Dr. Linsky saying, “we’ll enter the G cloud in less than 5,000 years — perhaps even tomorrow.”
He should have said, we have been entering since solar cycle 21. Solar cycle 21, is that about the time they first discovered that the inflowing interstellar wind is coming from the constellation Ophiuchus?
There was an announcement about Ophiuchus in 2004, but they had lots of info before that press release. Good intro to helium focusing cone for any interested in the accretion to the entire planetary system. By the time of the announcement below the solar polar fields where well on the way down, down, down… I can feel their excitement..
A Breeze from the Stars
NASA spacecraft are monitoring an interstellar wind coming from the constellation Ophiuchus.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/17dec_heliumstream/
…One day the solar system might run into something more massive. There are clouds in the galaxy thousands of times denser than the Local Interstellar Cloud. University of Chicago astronomer Priscilla Frisch has studied what might happen if we plowed into one of those. Writing in the magazine American Scientist she reports, “a cloud with 1,000 atoms per cubic centimeter could compress the sun’s magnetic field to within a few AU of the sun. (1 AU or “one astronomical unit” is the distance between the sun and Earth). Planets such as Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto would be fully exposed to interstellar atoms and molecules. Interstellar gas would overwhelm the solar wind at 1 AU,” transforming the space-environment of our planet.
The first signs of such a transformation could be the helium breeze thickening or shifting directions, heralding something new to come.
ACE has already detected changes. “We see strange gusts, ebbs and flows,” says Gloeckler. “We doubt these variations are interstellar.” Instead, the sun is probably responsible. The helium breeze must blow through the much denser solar wind, which can push the breeze around. Sunspots also affect the breeze. Ultraviolet radiation shining from sunspots ionizes the breeze and changes the way it appears to instruments like SWICS….
Carla, does that mean more spots, less spots, greater or lesser Livingston and Penn effect, etc? It seems more like a link to a less-than-connected issue in this thread. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Quoted by Carla on June 20, 2014 at 4:37 pm:
In less than 5,000 years we will all be dead. I state that with 95% confidence. Thus it is possible 1 in 20 of us will still be alive in 5000 years.
I want my science to be more precise. Between tomorrow and less than 5000 years? Surely Linsky can do better than that.