“AZleader” writes at “Inform the pundits”.
Austin, August 16, 2014 – A rare spotless day on the sun on July 17-18, 2014 triggered public speculation that an already stunted Cycle 24 was nearly over. Such is not the case. Defying the odds for so late in a sunspot cycle, another solar sunspot maximum was set last month. Another one is coming this month.
In other major news, a long needed revision to the 400-year sunspot record was proposed. It’ll be the first change made to the sunspot record since it was first established by Rudolf Wolf back in 1849. The changes will affect long-term climate and other dependent scientific studies.
One effect of the proposal will be to reduce modern sunspot totals. That will wipe out the so-called “Modern Maximum” and make the current sunspot cycle, Cycle 24, the weakest in 200 years.
Cycle 24 solar sunspot progression
After four straight months of steep declines in monthly sunspot counts, July reversed the trend and increased slightly.
The Royal Observatory of Belgium released July’s average monthly sunspot count on August 1, 2014. Despite the mid-month spotless day, the sunspot number increased and it grew solar maximum again for the sixth straight month.
…
Extended periods of inactivity – like the Spörer, Maunder and Dalton minimums – were all accompanied by cooler earth temperatures. Conditions today mimic Cycles 3, 4 and 5 which marked the beginning of the Dalton Minimum.
Revising the 400-year sunspot record
The 400-year sunspot record is the longest continuously recorded daily measurement made in science. It’s used in many scientific disciplines, including climate science studies. It hasn’t been adjusted since Rudolf Wolf created it over 160 years ago.
Over the centuries errors have crept into the record, degrading its value for long-term studies. New data and discoveries now allow scientists to detect and correct errors. The first serious look back at the long-term record since Wolf in 1849 came without even a press release last month. It’s a modestly titled new paper called “Revising the Sunspot Number” by Frédéric Clette, et al., submitted for publication to the journal Solar and Stellar Astrophysics on July 11, 2014.
Some outcomes of the new paper include:
- The so-called “Modern Maximum” disappears
- Sunspot activity is steady over the last 250 years
- Three detected “inhomogeneities” since 1880 are corrected
- Cycle 24 will become the weakest in 200 years
The new paper describes the current state of understanding of the long term record. It isn’t a complete revision of the entire record, but a first level recalibration going back to 1749. The Royal Observatory of Belgium plans to release this and other revisions incrementally over time.
Solar physicist, Dr. Leif Svalgaard of Stanford University, organized a series of four workshops beginning in 2011 designed to review and revise the long term record. This new paper is the first fruit of that labor. Primarily, it removes “inhomogeneities” and brings the International Sunspot Number and newer Group Count record and solar magnetic history in sync.
Full story here: http://informthepundits.wordpress.com/2014/08/17/sunspots-2014-two-big-surprises/
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Let me get this straight …
We are discussing counting sun-spots, visable phenomena that we observe on the 50% of the sun that is facing us at any point in time, that covers less that 0.01% of the Sun’s surface less than 1% of the time that at best can be seen as a proxy, but we are not sure what it is a proxy of because we are unsure of which of myriad of Sun outputs affect our climate and how they are connected to sun-spots.
Have I got this right?
Leif: Let me congratulate you on the successful prediction of the 1st (Northern Solar) Hemisphere Sunspot Maximum, and the Solar Max Sunspot # prediction.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 19, 2014 at 6:27 pm
David A says:
August 19, 2014 at 6:19 pm
Does it not depend on the residence time of the insolation entering the oceans? If the energy accumulates for years, perhaps decades, within the oceans then a little daily can be a lot over time.
A steady inflow and outflow of water of = GPM will neither raise or lower a pool. However just a very small increase of inflow, over decades, will become perceptible.
============================================
Leif says…The climate system is not like a pool.
(It is called an analogy, and IF the residence time of energy within the defined system, which cannot be destroyed, increases, while input remains steady, the system will contain more energy.)
It also radiates heat back into space at close to the same rate as heat flows into the system.
(Close to is not the same as = to, and the point of my post was that a small input change with a long residence time energy, can accumulate for the entire time of the increase.) ( a all flame may never boil a large thin pot with no top. Place the flame in the middle of a thick walled sealed top pot, and it may well boil due to the increased residence time of the energy within the pot, while input remains constant.)
So if solar activity was the same in the first 133 years of our data as in the last 133 years, I would think there would be very little difference.
(It is not the same. The difference is small, but it is not the same. The point of understanding residence time of energy is that a small change can accumulate.)
The small inflow to your pool is balanced by evaporation from the pool, unless you have a way of preventing that.
( I said, ” A steady inflow and outflow of water of = GPM will neither raise or lower a pool.” Please do not be pedantic, the out flow is evaporation, or whatever, the assumption is they are = at the beginning, ust as you illustrate, and then there is an increase in input however small, if it continues to pour into a large heat reservoir, it can accumulate for years, decades, maybe even centuries. Evaporation only takes place at the surface. The sunlight penetrates to over 800 ‘.)
At least, nobody has identified with any confidence where any extra heat might be hiding. Perhaps you would know? (That is a big duh Leif, nobody knows. However a large chunk of heat left the earth, ocean atmosphere system with the 98 El Nino, did it not? So you tell me, given your expertise, you still show a rise in solar activity for several decades. Just to set some parameters, assume 100 percent of the increase in surface insolation over the oceans, went into the oceans for the largest TSI thirty year period in your record, every day a small increase accumulating. How much energy was this? We know 100% in fact did not enter the oceans, but lets us at least establish an outside parameter)
========================================\
Also Leif do you have error bars on your estimates of solar activity, and how would you express the reasons for those error bars. (Be your own best critic for a moment)
Truthseeker says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:08 pm
but we are not sure what it is a proxy of because we are unsure of which of myriad of Sun outputs affect our climate and how they are connected to sun-spots.
We are very sure that the sunspot number is an accurate proxy for the sun’s surface magnetic field. So whatever depends on or are caused by or driven by the sun’s magnetic field is very well described by the sunspot number. See for instance slide 7ff of http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Stenflo.pdf
rbateman says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:12 pm
Leif: Let me congratulate you on the successful prediction of the 1st (Northern Solar) Hemisphere Sunspot Maximum, and the Solar Max Sunspot # prediction.
Thank you, Robert, for your kind words. It is nice when the Sun cooperates [hopefully it will continue to do so 🙂 ].
From Bob Weber on August 19, 2014 at 8:58 pm:
That is NOT like what I wanted to know, I was asking about the properness of further 12-13-mo smoothing of the already 12-13-mo smoothed SSN as I see commonly done, as I have done, and likewise smoothing of the SSN over longer periods or if I should go to daily to start.
David A says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:13 pm
“So if solar activity was the same in the first 133 years of our data as in the last 133 years, I would think there would be very little difference.”
(It is not the same. The difference is small, but it is not the same. The point of understanding residence time of energy is that a small change can accumulate.)
Any difference is smaller than the error bar, so we cannot even say if it was smaller or larger…
August 19, 2014 at 10:17 pm
Also Leif do you have error bars on your estimates of solar activity, and how would you express the reasons for those error bars. (Be your own best critic for a moment)
Of course, as explained here: http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Svalgaard11.pdf slides 13, 23, and 24. The standard deviation is determined from the spread of the individual observatories that went into the composite [each of these with it own error bar] in the standard way of propagating errors. This is the statistical error. The systematic errors of data taken 200 years ago is much harder to judge, so will itself have an error bar and so on in a infinite recursion.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:25 pm
That is NOT like what I wanted to know, I was asking about the properness of further 12-13-mo smoothing of the already 12-13-mo smoothed SSN
The values on my graph are not ‘smoothed’ in a strict sense, but are the yearly average of the 12 monthly averages of the daily values [when observed]. This strange way of getting a value compensates for the fact that often there is a lot of data missing [overcast, other things to do, etc] in the record for each observer. Experience shows that even if 90% of the data is missing, the average is usable.
I hope they will not revise the sunspot number to erase the Maunder Minimum. This is like the Hockey Stick erasing the Medieval Warm Period with tree rings. Change in TSI during the Little Ice Age and the present may be small. But the change in TSI in the Milankovitch eccentricity cycle is equivalent to a radiative forcing of 0.45 W/m^2. This is enough to cause the ice ages.
In the end this exercise is irrelevant because the observed changes in global temperature remain sufficiently well correlated with Leif’s new description of variations in solar activity to allow a suspicion of causative influence to be reasonable.
Simply pointing out a single cold winter or even a run of cold winters at a time of increasing solar activity is not sufficient to justify ignoring the issue because ocean cycles modify the solar effects.
Leif’s continuing dismissiveness is, in my humble opinion, misguided.
Minor changes to the SSN numbers are of no particular relevance to the terrestrial events, the solar impact from the sunspots is most likely, for the most of the time, below threshold of climate sensitivity.
However, on few occasions a year for a short time (and therefore will seldom register in any monthly or annual averaging), the threshold may be greatly exceeded, acting as a trigger to terrestrial events having an effect on the individual components of the climate system such as polar vortex.
Such an event took place last night
http://www.n3kl.org/sun/images/noaa_kp_3d.gif
but because of the Arctic summer on this occasion its effect will be minimal. In the Arctic winter combined with the SSW (earth originated N. Hemisphere winter events) strong impacts initiates splitting of the polar vortex and consequently weeks of the polar jet stream displacement.
@ur momisugly Leif Svalgaard on August 19, 2014 at 10:37 pm:
I’m not worried about the new GN numbers, but the usage of the old International numbers. Since the monthly Smoothed Sunspot Number is described at WDC-SILSO as having the “raw” monthly values already run through what sounds like a centered 12-mo running mean, what is the appropriateness of running the SSN through another 12 or 13 month running mean for a smoother line?
I’ve done it, “authoritative” sources do it, as with picking solar minimums. But does that make it right?
Likewise I was wondering about other lengths of running means. I see that SILSO has the un-smoothed monthly available. So I could do a running mean of the length I want from that, or do it with the SSN like on woodfortrees.
I know a certain person who will do three running means of different lengths on the same data to give himself the results he desires, which should be a clue right there. I know of the problems with too much smoothing, and have heard stern warnings about doing further averaging on already-averaged time series data. What is your opinion?
You’ve managed to work that phrase into your replies twice now. It comes off as dripping with contempt for those of us who protect data for a living and naturally respect the real Sciences. So what on Earth could you possibly be trying to imply with those scare quotes and that sarcastic tone? That contemptuous phrase is beneath you and is exactly what I would expect from some arrogant wannabe scientist wanting to play God with someone else’s historical data they had nothing to do with, not you Leif Svalgaard who enjoys a healthy reputation here and elsewhere. Actually that phrase is pretty much exactly what I would expect from a Mosher these days. So please do explain what you could possibly be trying to say using the phrase: ‘the precious historical record’. I’m baffled by it.
You went off the rails there straight into Lewandowsky crazy land. Continental drift and Apollo are facts that will still be in Science books and recorded history 100, 500 1,000 years from now and beyond because they are real. But using the latest cosmological conjecture du jour is what is actually crazy. The Big Bang is a quasi-religious belief and it will change yet again and again. Humans purporting to know what happened at the beginning of time must be the most patently absurd thing imaginable yet we can easily find Scientists that treat it as ‘settled’ and turn their noses up to the heretics that don’t worship alongside them. Furthermore, the implication that the cranks are here on the skeptic side is offensive. Lewandowsky only writes that nonsense to deflect from the fact that the psychopaths are his own very allies, you know, the Erich von Däniken ancient alien believers, holocaust revisionists, Apollo deniers, grassy knollers, 9/11 nutjobs, etc. If you mean to conflate WUWT and other skeptics to that crowd of kooks then it’s time for a stroke test.
P.S. for the love of God please use a BLOCKQUOTE tag pair. If you wonder why I say this, consider the fact that you already go to the trouble of using ITALIC tag pairs in lieu of proper quoting, and while that’s a good start you always fail to hit an extra CRLF (the ‘ENTER’ key) so that you create walls of text. It’s so unprofessional in communication and usually means someone that doesn’t pay attention to detail or proofreads their output. If I get a resume that is that sloppy that person gets an immediate strike, and the same goes for perusing articles and forums. But on the bright side at least your replies are comprehensible, unlike Mosher’s ridiculously sloppy efforts.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:31 pm
David A says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:13 pm
“So if solar activity was the same in the first 133 years of our data as in the last 133 years, I would think there would be very little difference.”
(It is not the same. The difference is small, but it is not the same. The point of understanding residence time of energy is that a small change can accumulate.)
Any difference is smaller than the error bar, so we cannot even say if it smaller or larger.
================================================
Yet you are defining the period. Of interest is the energy difference between the low decades at the turn of the last century, and the high decades that followed.
David, we know what that energy difference is within one cycle. Even a crazy busy cycle has a minimum with no spots. TSI can be directly measured now between the two conditions. At issue is whether or not the change in W/m2 within one cycle or over several is enough to show up as a change in oceanic temperatures (since simple daytime heating is not stored over land surfaces for any appreciable length of time). The same is true for any other aspect of solar influence. I doubt any accumulative affect in direct solar impact on the atmosphere. There isn’t any storage capacity there like we have in the oceans. And the only thing the oceans can store is heat. So we are back to W/m2. It’s a BIG BIG BIG volume of water that is quite leaky in terms of evaporation. It seems to me, just on a paper napkin, that we are talking such a small change in ocean heat content due to solar variability over time as to not be discernable on temperature sensors and needing several decimal places on a calculator.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 20, 2014 at 2:57 am
What is your opinion?
As I said, I don’t do smoothing, but averaging. The basic data is the daily, raw data.
Blade says:
August 20, 2014 at 5:54 am
You’ve managed to work that phrase into your replies twice now. It comes off as dripping with contempt for those of us who protect data for a living and naturally respect the real Sciences. So what on Earth could you possibly be trying to imply with those scare quotes and that sarcastic tone?
That phrase [‘the precious historical record’] is what I have been met with on several occasions. And I do hold it as contemptuous and my comment was meant to convey that. Your explicit comment designed to imply that I do not wish to ‘protect raw data or respect real sciences’ is ludicrous and uncalled for.
The Big Bang is a quasi-religious belief
I disagree, but realize that Big-Bang denial is also quasi-religious and I don’t enter into matters of such.
P.S. for the love of God please use a BLOCKQUOTE tag pair.
I don’t see the benefit and it has nothing to do with professionalism or lack thereof.
philjourdan says:
August 20, 2014 at 6:47 am
once the new numbers were created, there would be no need to maintain the raw data.
The raw data is the most important thing we have. Experience shows that raw data disappear with time. This is sad, but it is so. And there is nothing one can do about that.
David A says:
August 20, 2014 at 6:54 am
Of interest is the energy difference between the low decades at the turn of the last century, and the high decades that followed.
That is cherry picking, but people are good at that, and I realize that one cannot make people see the folly thereof.
Stephen Wilde says:
August 20, 2014 at 12:28 am
Leif’s continuing dismissiveness is, in my humble opinion, misguided.
I dismiss what I see as poor science, or pseudo-science. You can disagree with that, but as you point out that disagreement is just your humble opinion and must therefore be treated just as that.
Some points to consider concerning the “big bang” theory, so named by Sir Fred Hoyle, its famous detractor:
Its possible to accept many of conclusions that cosmologists have postulated, including the age of the observable universe, its apparent acceleration, and the observation of superluminal speeds, while discarding the catechism of the “big bang.”
@Leif
It is sad, And in today’s computer/low storage cost world should not be happening. However I understand that what I (and others) see as important is not always so with the data keepers. I appreciate your clarification.
With regard to those who adhere to solar-initiated ozone changes as a factor in cloud formation, I refer you to a new paper that does a great job of describing the diurnal cycle of ozone production and destruction in the stratosphere. It should inform your speculation quite a bit. I will leave its interpolation into your speculations without spoken prejudice.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/7645/2014/acp-14-7645-2014.html
I learned from your reconstruction Leif that the average yearly SSN from 1975 to now was 29% higher than the previous 200 years, since the founding of our country, and no one should be thanked more than you for all your work in arriving at that decisive determination.
My reply
Exactly the data shows that the sun was in a very active period most of the last century.
To make it even clearer all the graphs for temperature data show a decline in the global temperature trend with each and every prolonged solar minimum event. That is 100%.
In addition solar variability has been shown clearly recently due to the solar lull from 2008-2010 and the general quite solar conditions post 2005, in contrast to the active solar period last century. That is enough solar variability to cause a climate impact which we are already beginning to see this current century as the ACI index has become more meridional and the global temperature rise has come to a halt despite increasing CO2 concentrations. This is tied to the extreme low solar activity post 2005. Least in 200 years according to the latest research.
FACTS
Solar activity has gone from active to inactive especially after year 2005.
The global temperature rise has stopped concurrently with reduced solar activity.
The atmospheric circulation has become more meridional concurrent with reduced solar activity.
The global temperature trend was up last century concurrent with an active solar period.
The global temperature trend during the last prolonged solar minimum period( the Dalton) was lower.
Those are the facts and they all make a strong case for solar /climate connections through primary and secondary effects.
The more I review all of the commentary and data the more positive I become this is the correct stance.
I am quite sure the global temperature trend going forward will be down in response to the current prolonged solar minimum which shows no signs of ending.
Blade says:
August 20, 2014 at 5:54 am
you always fail to hit an extra CRLF (the ‘ENTER’ key) so that you create walls of text. It’s so unprofessional in communication and usually means someone that doesn’t pay attention to detail or proofreads their output.
As screen real estate is precious, using blockquotes and/or extra blank lines forces the reader to scroll too much. What I do is deliberate and is paying attention to that detail.
As I have said going forward before this decade is out it will be quite clear that solar is the primary driver of the climate and CO2 is a non factor. It has been trending in this direction for at least 18 years and counting. This trend will only intensify going forward. I have stated my solar criteria which would cause solar to have an effect upon the climate which will be being visited once again as this decade proceeds.
The Clette et al paper is not necessarily the last word on the sunspot record see e.g.Lockwood et al
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014JA019970/abstract;jsessionid=20420DE94A17BDCFC2CE581422C6E1A5.f04t03
I see no other solar scientist showing much of an interest in this article.
It is a non event(the article) because it only tinkers with past solar conditions and still maintains the current solar minimum is the weakest in 200 years and goes further to state this could have a cooling impact upon the climate going forward.
I like this article’s conclusions for the most part.
Pamela Gray says:
August 19, 2014 at 7:58 pm
Wind and water are big ticket giants so you had better come to the table with equivalent calculations.
__
Very nicely stated, agree. If the sun’s energy is insufficient then maybe the driver that modulates process its coming from below. Given the winds are a product of thermal gradients, and I live on the coast and am kept warm at night in winter, and the jetstream keeps flowing just the same a night when the sun is doing stuff, then maybe its the ocean and what heats it directly, both day and night instead.
Some cheeky salient points for all to remember:
(1) geology controls all ocean circulation. Why? Because ocean basin topography is a result of on-going energetic geodynamics which produces all topographic features and continental placements, and is thus responsible for all past climate patterns. that topography modulates all circulation and resulting currents today. Thus geology is the PRIMARY controller of oceanic processes and therefore atmospheric gradients as well.
(2) Earth’s internal energy release is constantly secular heating the oceans too, directly, not indirectly, and it is also producing significant transient thermal pulses and chemical variability.
(3) SiO2 and CO2 are not just erupted above the waves, it is erupted below as well. If the ocean becomes less alkaline and CO2 is going up, lagging a global temp increase, there’s a good chance submarine volcanism [somewhere, probably several somewhere] has caused it.
4) The sun alters the mix of what the geology of the planet has already been doing.
(5) Ice covered moons elsewhere in the solar system are considered to probably have a liquid ocean below thick reworked ice surfaces – WHY?
Europa:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_%28moon%29
Ganymede:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganymede_%28moon%29
__
The Earth and Sol combined, clearly have the necessary energy and capacity to change ocean circulation patterns and thermal gradient of atmosphere – they are doing it. As long as Earth’s role in first growing and then secular-warming oceans is ignored, the circulation models will diverge from theory and model and will confound adequate explanation. Observational time series measurements of deep oceans, and lots of them, is what’s required.
Surely this is a HUGE shift in the way Svaalgard used to think about the Solar/Climate relationship(basically he said there was none, ie the sun had no effect on climate) If I recall correctly in many many posts here.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 19, 2014 at 9:36 pm
Bob Weber says:
August 19, 2014 at 9:20 pm
I learned from your reconstruction Leif that the average yearly SSN from 1975 to now was 29% higher than the previous 200 years, since the founding of our country, and no one should be thanked more than you for all your work in arriving at that decisive determination.
“But you draw the wrong [and misleading] conclusion therefrom. Since 1975 the sunspot number has been 68.2, while during a similar period 1768-1794 during the formative years of the US, the average sunspot number was 80.3, or 18% higher. It seems the climate back then was considerably colder than lately http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington's_crossing_of_the_Delaware_River#mediaviewer/File:Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware_by_Emanuel_Leutze,_MMA-NYC,_1851.jpg”
The 40-year average from 1975-2014 is not “similar” to 1768-1794 because your period is not 40 years long. There is no wrong conclusion.
Misleading? That is a baseless claim. The simple fact, computed from your data, that the total SSN since 1975 was on average 29% higher than the SSN average for the 200 years preceding 1975, correctly characterizes the modern maximum. It gives proper perspective to the extra solar activity observed during the modern satellite era compared to the previous 200-year average.
As for George Washington: he crossed the Delaware on Dec 25, 1776 in the depths of the solar minimum between cycles 2 and 3. Your SSN for 1776 was 20.7, 63% less than the 266-year average, which was also preceded by three years of low SSNs: 1775 was 22.6, 1774 was 43.8, and 1773 was 41.2. The average for those four years was 32.1, 43% less than the 266-year average.
The lesson from the severe US winter of 2013/14 was that severe widespread cold conditions can also occur when SSN is higher than average, as the SSN for 2013/14 was about 75 on average. Whether you were hot or cold depended on which side of the Rosby wave you were located, within the polar vortex area, or outside of it, as evidenced by the winter’s high and low temp records distribution. Which part of the Rosby wave covered Delaware on Dec 25, 1776? The cold side.