Sun said to be “bi-modal”
While many, including the IPCC, suggest the modern Grand Maximum of solar activity from 1950-2009 has nothing to do with the 0.4C global warming measured over that time frame, it does seem to be unique in the last three millennia.
from CO2 Science: A 3,000-Year Record of Solar Activity
What was done
According to Usoskin et al. (2014), the Sun “shows strong variability in its magnetic activity, from Grand minima to Grand maxima, but the nature of the variability is not fully understood, mostly because of the insufficient length of the directly observed solar activity records and of uncertainties related to long-term reconstructions.” Now, however, in an attempt to overcome such uncertainties, in a Letter to the Editor published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, Usoskin et al. “present the first fully adjustment-free physical reconstruction of solar activity” covering the past 3,000 years, which record allowed them “to study different modes of solar activity at an unprecedented level of detail.”
What was learned
As illustrated in the figure below, the authors report there is “remarkable agreement” among the overlapping years of their reconstruction (solid black line) and the number of sunspots recorded from direct observations since 1610 (red line). Their reconstruction of solar activity also displays several “distinct features,” including several “well-defined Grand minima of solar activity, ca. 770 BC, 350 BC, 680 AD, 1050 AD, 1310 AD, 1470 AD, and 1680 AD,” as well as “the modern Grand maximum (which occurred during solar cycles 19-23, i.e., 1950-2009),” which they describe as “a rare or even unique event, in both magnitude and duration, in the past three millennia.”
Further statistical analysis of their reconstruction revealed the Sun operates in three distinct modes of activity – (1) a regular mode that “corresponds to moderate activity that varies in a relatively narrow band between sunspot numbers 20 and 67,” (2) a Grand minimum mode of reduced solar activity that “cannot be explained by random fluctuations of the regular mode” and which “is confirmed at a high confidence level,” and (3), a possible Grand maximum mode, but they say that “the low statistic does not allow us to firmly conclude on this, yet.”
What it means
Usoskin et al. (2014) write their results “provide important constraints for both dynamo models of Sun-like stars and investigations of possible solar influence on Earth’s climate.” They also illustrate the importance of improving the quality of such reconstructions, in light of the fact that previous reconstructions of this nature “did not reveal any clear signature of distinct modes” in solar activity.
Unfortunately, it was beyond the scope of this paper to address the potential impact of solar activity on climate. Yet the reconstruction leaves a very big question unanswered — What effect did the Grand maximum of solar activity that occurred between 1950 and 2009 have on Earth’s climate? As a “unique” and “rare” event in terms of both magnitude and duration, one would think a lot more time and effort would be spent by the IPCC and others in answering that question. Instead, IPCC scientists have conducted relatively few studies of the Sun’s influence on modern warming, assuming that the temperature influence of this rare and unique Grand maximum of solar activity, which has occurred only once in the past 3,000 years, is far inferior to the radiative power provided by the rising CO2 concentration of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Reference
Usoskin, I.G., Hulot, G., Gallet, Y., Roth, R., Licht, A., Joos, F., Kovaltsov, G.A., Thebault, E. and Khokhlov, A. 2014. Evidence for distinct modes of solar activity. Astronomy and Astrophysics 562: L10, doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/201423391.
Abstract
Aims. The Sun shows strong variability in its magnetic activity, from Grand minima to Grand maxima, but the nature of the variability is not fully understood, mostly because of the insufficient length of the directly observed solar activity records and of uncertainties related to long-term reconstructions. Here we present a new adjustment-free reconstruction of solar activity over three millennia and study its different modes.
Methods. We present a new adjustment-free, physical reconstruction of solar activity over the past three millennia, using the latest verified carbon cycle, 14C production, and archeomagnetic field models. This great improvement allowed us to study different modes of solar activity at an unprecedented level of details.
Results. The distribution of solar activity is clearly bi-modal, implying the existence of distinct modes of activity. The main regular activity mode corresponds to moderate activity that varies in a relatively narrow band between sunspot numbers 20 and 67. The existence of a separate Grand minimum mode with reduced solar activity, which cannot be explained by random fluctuations of the regular mode, is confirmed at a high confidence level. The possible existence of a separate Grand maximum mode is also suggested, but the statistics is too low to reach a confident conclusion.
Conclusions. The Sun is shown to operate in distinct modes – a main general mode, a Grand minimum mode corresponding to an inactive Sun, and a possible Grand maximum mode corresponding to an unusually active Sun. These results provide important constraints for both dynamo models of Sun-like stars and investigations of possible solar influence on Earth’s climate.
Leif you said
“. The minimal solar activity, which measurements show to be frequently observable between active‐region decay products regardless of the phase of the sunspot cycle, was approached globally after an unusually long lull in sunspot activity in 2008–2009. Therefore, the best estimate of magnetic activity, and presumably TSI, for the least‐active Maunder Minimum phases appears to be provided by direct measurement in 2008–2009.”
I thought you were implying that 2008-9 provided a floor for solar activity. That is the matter I was referring to that might be settled. I think that it is possible ,if not likely that e.g. the neutron count in 2020 – 21 will be higher than in 2008-9.
As one can see the solar lull of 2008-2010 produced a very meridional atmospheric circulation as was forecasted by those of us who monitor solar /climate connections.
This trend will continue only being slightly moderated during this recent solar maximum.
Watch EUV levels once around 100 units or lower impacts will become increasingly evident, as what happened during the recent solar lull.
All my solar criteria with the exception of the solar wind speed was meant during the most recent solar lull.
Found you, Ireneusz, interesting wow! @ren
Following from Leif and rgb @ur momisugly 3:19 – Aug 7. Words from each —
“. . . when there is one result not in alignment with many other, quite independent ones, one has to be very careful about overstepping the bounds of the assertions.
As in my view EVERYTHING must fit together, when something doesn’t fit we can learn something.”
I have used the analogy of a tapestry.
Pamela Gray says:
August 8, 2014 at 8:36 pm
It’s not ad hominem to point out that you have not been able to present a single paper or any other sort of evidence in support of your plainly false on its face baseless assertion.
Now at last you have finally produced one, but it is hopelessly flawed. It is Mannian in its reliance on modeling and trying to infer temperature from tree rings. Its temperature reconstruction flies in the face of the CET reconstruction and other North Atlantic region proxy data.
If the effect of one large eruption clears in at most a few years, then your conjecture requires major eruptions every few years. That is not what the record shows. After 1257, there wasn’t another VEI 6 until c. 1280, then not again until during the real LIA, ie in 1452, 1477, 1580, 1600, 1650 and c. 1660. This lame excuse simply won’t wash.
It’s clearly part and parcel of the revisionism by the Team into which you have bought. You’ll have to better than this if you want to convince any skeptic that the LIA began in 1257 thanks to volcanos.
Dr Norman Page says:
August 9, 2014 at 7:37 am
I thought you were implying that 2008-9 provided a floor for solar activity. That is the matter I was referring to that might be settled.
I implied that. And that includes the Maunder Minimum. Thus no 1000-yr cycle.
I think that it is possible ,if not likely that e.g. the neutron count in 2020 – 21 will be higher than in 2008-9.
I think not. There is a 22-yr cycle in cosmic rays [and we know why], such that the minima in 1964, 1986, 2008 were high and 1954, 1976, 1996, [and 2020] were low.
What the co2 driven global warming advocates don’t discuss is that if the ocean has started eating global warming since the trade winds changed during the negative phase of the ocean’s ~60 year multi-decadal cycles, they also emitted excess energy during their positive phase from 1975-2005. The implication is that the oceans are capable of storing energy on long timescales, and releasing it on long timescales too. And they store a lot of energy. The top two metres alone contain as much energy as the entire atmosphere above.
We know that the oceans keep the air temperature up over night as the release some of the energy the Sun poured into them during the day. We also know that there is a lag of a couple of months between the longest day of the year and the peak in surface air temperatures near coasts. This is thermal inertia and heat capacity at work. On longer timescales, we have recently confirmed that runs of El Nino events which release a lot of energy from the oceans are initiated on the falling side of the solar cycle, never on the upswing.
So we can go a stretch further and combine what we know. When solar activity falls, energy comes out of the ocean, not just over the period of the decline of a single 11 year solar cycle, but if the Sun stays low in activity terms, for many years. An integration of the sunspot number shows us that the ocean heat content rose all the way from 1934 to 2003. This is the real cause of ‘global warming’. A lot of excess energy is still retained in the upper ocean. We can expect the effect of a couple of low solar cycles to be softened by a proportion of that excess heat returning to space via the atmosphere warming it on the way.
In developing my understanding of the Earth’s systems, I developed a couple of very simple models to help me fathom the way the surface temperature stays fairly constant as the solar cycles wax and wane. Back in 2009, by analysing the data, I found that the global average sea surface temperature, the SST, stays fairly constant when the Sun is averaging around 40 sunspots per month. By calculating the running total departing from this figure in a simple integration I found that combined with the ~60 oceanic cycles (also solar influenced), I could reproduce the temperature history of the last 150 years quite accurately. By adding in a nominal forcing for co2 (or an allowance for the infamous ‘adjustments’ to the data), I was able to get a match to monthly data which has a Pearson R^2 value of 0.9.
The above is part of an article ROG TALKBLOKE wrote from his web-site talkblokes talkshop.
I think this article presents a strong case for solar climate connections.
I am merely presenting the evidence and there is a lot of it.
What if …..
It is easy to look at a small amount of data and reach invalid conclusions. We have very little data on our sun from before the 17th century.
What if the Maunder Minimum was a period of solar regeneration (increases fuel availability)? What if the average solar output since that time is stronger than the mean over million of years? What if the regeneration produces fuel that lasts 400-500 (or so) years? What if solar output after that fuel start to run low becomes weaker?
Something like this conjecture would explain the various warm periods we’ve seen over the last 3000 years. However, there is no data available that supports or contradicts this wild guess.
Just sayin ….
tonyb says:
August 8, 2014 at 11:52 pm
The shameless attempt by the Team to rewrite climate history continues. The HS failed, so now they’re looking for other lame excuses to hand wave away the MWP & LIA, which are clearly just the latest prior two examples of the naturally occurring, centennial-scale fluctuations (I’m willing to call them cycles) so evident throughout the millions of years at the very least since the MIocene.
I’m sorry that Pamela has bought into this further corruption of science by the Team.
vukcevic says:
August 9, 2014 at 1:39 am
That is also what Robock, the most distinguished student of the “climatic” effects of volcanoes found.
The neutron count once this solar maximum ends will exceed 6500 counts per minute as it did during the recent but very short solar lull. This next solar lull will be much greater in duration and just as severe as the previous solar lull 2008-2010.
Still however not approaching Maunder Minimum levels. For more good information on that I refer the posters on this site to Professor Lockwood’s most recent study just released. I will post it again a must read.
http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~vy902033/Papers_PDFs/2014%20Lockwood%20and%20Owens,%20ApJL%202041-8205_781_1_L7.pdf
This is right on and is the trend in solar thinking.
http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/ccr2a/pdf/Chapter-3-Solar-Forcing.pdf
Another great study in support of solar/climate connections and this article.
The paper below is an earlier study which agrees with the most recent study done by Professor Lockwood.
Keywords:
Maunder Minimum;
coronal mass ejections;
heliospheric current sheet;
heliospheric magnetic field;
open solar flux;
solar cycle
[1] Open solar flux (OSF) variations can be described by the imbalance between source and loss terms. We use spacecraft and geomagnetic observations of OSF from 1868 to present and assume the OSF source, S, varies with the observed sunspot number, R. Computing the required fractional OSF loss, χ, reveals a clear solar cycle variation, in approximate phase with R. While peak R varies significantly from cycle to cycle, χ is surprisingly constant in both amplitude and waveform. Comparisons of χ with measures of heliospheric current sheet (HCS) orientation reveal a strong correlation. The cyclic nature of χ is exploited to reconstruct OSF back to the start of sunspot records in 1610. This agrees well with the available spacecraft, geomagnetic, and cosmogenic isotope observations. Assuming S is proportional to R yields near-zero OSF throughout the Maunder Minimum. However, χ becomes negative during periods of low R, particularly the most recent solar minimum, meaning OSF production is underestimated. This is related to continued coronal mass ejection (CME) activity, and therefore OSF production, throughout solar minimum, despite R falling to zero. Correcting S for this produces a better match to the recent solar minimum OSF observations. It also results in a cycling, nonzero OSF during the Maunder Minimum, in agreement with cosmogenic isotope observations. These results suggest that during the Maunder Minimum, HCS tilt cycled as over recent solar cycles, and the CME rate was roughly constant at the levels measured during the most recent two solar minima.
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More content like this
http://iceagenow.info/2011/11/russian-scientists-predict-100-years-cooling/
Yet another solar scientist in support of my claims. I think I presented enough for now but it goes on and on and on.
I wonder why? I know the answer we are all wrong it is in our imaginations. All the data is wrong ,all the studies are wrong.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/
See the spike this will be exceeded going forward.
Richard M says:
August 9, 2014 at 7:59 am
It is easy to look at a small amount of data and reach invalid conclusions. We have very little data on our sun from before the 17th century.
We have ten thousand years of cosmic ray data from ice on the Earth and 3 billion years worth from rocks on the Moon…
sturgishooper says:
August 9, 2014 at 8:00 am
tonyb says:
August 8, 2014 at 11:52 pm
The shameless attempt by the Team to rewrite climate history continues. The HS failed, so now they’re looking for other lame excuses to hand wave away the MWP & LIA, which are clearly just the latest prior two examples of the naturally occurring, centennial-scale fluctuations (I’m willing to call them cycles) so evident throughout the millions of years at the very least since the MIocene.
Right on.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 9, 2014 at 8:05 am
This is right on and is the trend in solar thinking.
Lockwood et al. are just now catching up with what we published back in 2003 [ http://www.leif.org/research/Determination%20IMF,%20SW,%20EUV,%201890-2003.pdf ]. This is, of course, good for him, but then he throws away his accomplishment by screwing up his model for extending the result back to the Maunder Minimum. He will eventually also see the light about this.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 9, 2014 at 8:26 am
See the spike this will be exceeded going forward.
No, it will not. As I pointed out upthread there is a 22-yr cycle in cosmic ray intensity and at the next solar minimum, the cosmic rays will be less than at the 2008 minimum [and we know why]; check the top three curves on http://www.nwu.ac.za/sites/www.nwu.ac.za/files/files/p-nm/SRU%20Neutron%20Monitors%20Monthly%20Graphs.pdf
Perhaps you should pontificate a bit less about things you do not understand, rather than carpet-bombing the blog with unsupported self-congratulatory delusions.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 9, 2014 at 8:17 am
“Assuming S is proportional to R yields near-zero OSF throughout the Maunder Minimum. However, χ becomes negative during periods of low R, particularly the most recent solar minimum, meaning OSF production is underestimated. This is related to continued coronal mass ejection (CME) activity, and therefore OSF production, throughout solar minimum, despite R falling to zero. Correcting S for this produces a better match to the recent solar minimum OSF observations. It also results in a cycling, nonzero OSF during the Maunder Minimum, in agreement with cosmogenic isotope observations. These results suggest that during the Maunder Minimum, HCS tilt cycled as over recent solar cycles, and the CME rate was roughly constant at the levels measured during the most recent two solar minima.”
You are completely misunderstanding what the paper says. It does in fact argue that solar activity during the Maunder Minimum [CME rate] was at levels measured during the most recent two solar minima, implying that the solar magnetic field and TSI were also at that level..
Leif check Fig14 at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
The 2009 count is significantly higher than 1964 or 1986. I suggest that the 2005-6 drop in e g the Ap index – Fig 13 at same link represents a real regime change in solar activity.Again look at the Ap index for cycle 24 v 23. . There is no reason to suppose that the 24/25 minimum will not be deeper than 23/24. I do agree that what happens at the 23/24/minimum will be very illuminating-
hence my ” settle the matter ” comment
Leif,- sorry obviously I meant what happens at the 24/25 minimum will be illuminating.
sturgishooper says:
August 9, 2014 at 8:00 am
@vukcevic
That is also what Robock, the most distinguished student of the “climatic” effects of volcanoes found.
…….
Thanks, that is of some comfort to know.
I had to Google Scholar: Robock volcanic eruptions and climate.
Found numerous papers with astonishing amount of information.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 9, 2014 at 8:41 am
Richard M says:
August 9, 2014 at 7:59 am
It is easy to look at a small amount of data and reach invalid conclusions. We have very little data on our sun from before the 17th century.
We have ten thousand years of cosmic ray data from ice on the Earth and 3 billion years worth from rocks on the Moon…
OK, where is your 10,000 year reconstruction? Should be quite interesting.
Dr Norman Page says:
August 9, 2014 at 9:13 am
The 2009 count is significantly higher than 1964 or 1986.
Different stations show different trends. Thule [Greenland] has no trend [ http://www.leif.org/research/thule-cosmic-rays.png ], South-Pole has a decrease of 10% over the past 50 years. Hermanus has no trend [red curve on] http://www.nwu.ac.za/sites/www.nwu.ac.za/files/files/p-nm/SRU%20Neutron%20Monitors%20Monthly%20Graphs.pdf
That the stations have different trends can have many causes, some instrumental, some unknown. What they all have in common is that the count shows an alternation of high sharp peaks and broad shallower peaks. Since the 2008 peak was sharp, the next will be broad and lower.
Richard M says:
August 9, 2014 at 10:41 am
OK, where is your 10,000 year reconstruction? Should be quite interesting.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/PNAS-2012-Steinhilber,pdf
http://www.leif.org/EOS/PNAS-2012-Steinhilber.pdf