“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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What if David Archibald’s book The Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short turns out to be right?,” asks Newman, former ABC chairman and chairman of the Australian Prime Minister’s business advisory council.
“What if the warmth the world has enjoyed for the past 50 years is the result of solar activity, not man-made CO2?”
Newman points to Russian scientists at the Pulkovo Observatory, who “are convinced the world is in for a cooling period that will last for 200-250 years.”
He also refers to respected Norwegian solar physicist Pal Brekke, who “warns temperatures may actually fall for the next 50 years.”
A return of the Dalton Minimum “more likely than not”
“Leading British climate scientist Mike Lockwood, of Reading University, found 24 occasions in the past 10,000 years when the sun was declining as it is now, but could find none where the decline was as fast. He says a return of the Dalton Minimum (1790-1830), which included “the year without summer”, is “more likely than not”.
“If the world does indeed move into a cooling period,” says Newman, “its citizens are ill-prepared.”
Dr Norman Page says:
August 20, 2014 at 8:08 am
The Clette et al paper is not necessarily the last word on the sunspot record see e.g.Lockwood et al
Lockwood et al. have a record of playing catch-up and they usually do it poorly. Their paper on this is a good example of the attempts to save the Grand Maximum. As always, L et al. will come around eventually. Usoskin also has new papers on this, and I expect more from the usual suspects.
Stephen Wilde:Leif’s continuing dismissiveness is, in my humble opinion, misguided.
I expressed a similar opinion, at least once. I thought that Leif Svalgaard dismissed hypotheses when I thought that the evidence for a confident dismissal was inadequate. (My analogy was Rutherford’s confident yet mistake dismissal of Wegener’s hypothesis: he asserted that there was no adequate source of power, whereas he ought to have asserted that an adequate source of power was not [yet] known.) On the whole, however, I think that the balance of the evidence supports Leif Svalgaard. Some time in the future there may be enough evidence to support the existence of one of the these mechanisms that is said to produce a strong association between small solar variations and the larger climate variations revealed in the record — but for the time being the evidence is spotty at best. A number of writers have asserted that the evidence will become available in the next 10 to 50 years, and that we should therefore believe as though the evidence were available now; but the complement is possible as well, namely that it will become clear in the next 10 to 50 years that the hypothesized mechanisms just are not there, or are not adequate.
If the sun continues to produce low sunspot numbers and the global mean temperature declines, that will provide a lot of information. If the sun continues to produce low sunspot numbers and the global mean temperature rises, that also will provide a lot of information.
Bob Weber you are 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.
MY REPLY
Then in addition and even more important was the sun’s magnetic field strength last century was very strong.
If one contrast the Dalton Solar Minimum and the quiet solar period 1890-1910 and the now present very quiet solar period post 2005 one will easily see how active most of the last century was in comparison to these quiet solar periods which is at the heart of the matter and which is what matters.
Any way you slice it that is what the data is going to show.
If the sun continues to produce low sunspot numbers and the global mean temperature declines, that will provide a lot of information. If the sun continues to produce low sunspot numbers and the global mean temperature rises, that also will provide a lot of information.
My reply
EXACTLY
The data below shows solar/global temp. in my opinion. If one looks at this data and super imposes solar activity on it, one will see a correlation exist between the global temperature TREND concurrent with either long active periods of solar activity or long inactive periods of solar activity.
http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/iceagebook/history_of_climate.html
Salvatore, I’d suggest you give it a rest. Let other people talk. Your machine gun style of commenting looks a lot like thread bombing and creates extra work for moderators.
Dr Norman Page: The Clette et al paper is not necessarily the last word on the sunspot record see e.g.Lockwood et al
Do you have reasons for thinking that the Clette et al paper is not in fact the best summary to date?
Dr Norman Page says:
August 20, 2014 at 8:08 am
The Clette et al paper is not necessarily the last word on the sunspot record see e.g.Lockwood et al
Lockwood et al conclude:
“We have studied the putative discontinuity in the international sunspot number record in around 1 January 1946. Our results confirm the conclusion of Svalgaard [2011] that the discontinuity is present in the widely used data set that is available from most data centers. However, Svalgaard’s estimate that a 20% correction is here shown to be an overestimate.”
The last statement is incorrect. The best and simplest way of measuring the size of the discontinuity is to use the observations of the difference between direct counts by Locarno. We did that in the discussion around Figures 42-44 in the Clette paper. And the conclusion stands that 20% is what direct measurements show as the average correction.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 20, 2014 at 8:52 am
Then in addition and even more important was the sun’s magnetic field strength last century was very strong.
A measure of the Sun’s magnetic field is the magnetic field of the solar wind. The latter we can infer from the geomagnetic record. You hero Lockwood now agrees that the solar wind magnetic field in the 19th century was on par with that in the 20th, see e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Error-Scale-Values-HLS.pdf
If one contrast the Dalton Solar Minimum and the quiet solar period 1890-1910 and the now present very quiet solar period post 2005 one will easily see how active most of the last century was in comparison to these quiet solar periods which is at the heart of the matter and which is what matters.
Any way you slice it that is what the data is going to show.
I am repeating this because I think it is VITAL to the whole point of this discussion and it is the basis for my whole argument.
Bob Weber: 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.
No doubt there are selected epochs when sunspot numbers were low and recorded climate was cool; and selected epochs when sunspot numbers were high and climate was warm. What is lacking to date is a showing of a consistent relationship throughout the entire record. The late 20th century warming and the early 20th century warming were very similar, despite the dissimilarity in sunspot counts (and CO2, as noted in other comment threads.)
I will. Thanks.
Salvatore Del Prete: http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/iceagebook/history_of_climate.html
Thank you for reposting that link. I do not see a “TREND” in those plots, I see inconsistency. Across the full record, what are the R^2 value and coefficients of any estimated relationship between sunspot and either (a) rate of mean temp change or (b) mean temp? Anyone making a claim for a relationship should supply such statistical analyses.
Matthew R Marler says: August 20, 2014 at 8:50 am
f the these mechanisms that is said to produce a strong association between small solar variations and the larger climate variations
Unmentionable says: August 20, 2014 at 8:22 am
(1) geology controls all ocean circulation.
Solar magnetic field cannot penetrate to the depths of the Earth’s core, and yet the solar magnetic field (22 year cycle) and a much larger magnetic ripple superimposed on the Earth’s field (orders of magnitude greater than the heliospheric field at the earth’s orbit) have same frequency and are in phase.
To add to string of coincidences tectonic activity (according to data 1860 to present) in the N. Atlantic – Arctic environs follows the closely (not exactly) integrated sunspot number for the period.
Secular magnetic field delta (usually an indication of the earth’s crust-mantle events ) for the area (from both paleo and instrumental records) also closely matches the Loehle’s (non tree rings) GT reconstruction.
And finally, Denmark straits, the major future of the area, is the main bottleneck on the superhighway in the oceans global circulation. On both sides to the north and the south of the straits the Great Ocean Conveyer belt
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/slides/large/04.18.jpg
releases massive amounts of heat (several hundred watts/ m2).
Energy in the equal measure across the centuries, comes from the above, but the ‘control knob’ most likely comes from the below.
Thank you for the slide set, Lief! On Slide 10, you presented this:
Wolfer’s Change to Wolf’s Counting Method
• Wolf only counted spots that were ‘black’ and would have been clearly visible even with moderate seeing
• His successor Wolfer disagreed, and pointed out that the above criterion was much too vague and instead advocating counting every spot that could be seen
• This, of course, introduces a discontinuity in the sunspot number, which was corrected by using a much smaller k value [~0.6 instead of Wolf’s 1.0]
• All subsequent observers have adopted that same 0.6 factor to stay on the original Wolf scale
for 1849-~1865
I’m not an astronomer, so it appears to me that sunspot numbers are an inaccurate and highly subjective proxy for changes that occur within the sun’s magnetic fields and photosphere. Should we be considering a new way to measure this? The fact that sunspot records represent the longest continuous record in science is impressive and elegant, but I wonder if modern instruments would allow us to gather more useful data. Cheers & best, Charles
CRS, DrPH says:
August 20, 2014 at 9:50 am
it appears to me that sunspot numbers are an inaccurate and highly subjective proxy for changes that occur within the sun’s magnetic fields and photosphere.
On the contrary, sunspots [in spite of their subjective derivation] is a very precise proxy for the Sun’s magnetic field. Jan Stenflo says it well: slides 7 to 10 of http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Stenflo.pdf
Should we be considering a new way to measure this?
We have several other ways to measure this [e.g. the 10.7 cm radio flux, and the sunspot areas, and simply the magnetic fields that we now can measure], but they all show that the SSN is a very good proxy, so we need to keep the SSN for the sake of the historical record and also for its simplicity and intuitive appeal.
…and where CO_2 is canonically believed to have been essentially unchanged up until roughly 1950, even though around half of the warming preceded this. Indeed, almost all of the observed warming in the CO_2-forced era occurred in a single block of time roughly 15 years long, with easily half of that warming associated with a single discrete non-solar non-CO_2 event — the 1997-1998 super El Nino. A very reasonable estimate for CO_2-forced warming might be 0.1C/decade, with a plausible error at least that large, but resolving this from the natural variations from all causes is essentially impossible.
Note well that I’m not disagreeing with you. The problem is that the Earth’s climate is clearly following a longer term canonical trajectory with considerable empirical variation, and we cannot AFAIK either explain the past trajectory or predict the future trajectory based on any of the assumptions that go into the existing climate models. We are omitting something really important, something that we don’t even know HOW to include. Until we figure that out, it is going to be very difficult to try to separate out human from natural effects in the observed variation. And if the omitted thing is pure nonlinear dynamic chaos in a highly non-Markovian system — a distinct possibility — and hence essentially unpredictable within some range, we might never really manage it, at least not without a serious breakthrough in the accessible scale of human computation.
rgb
RGB You do not have necessarily to understand the periodicities in the temperature data in order to make possibly skillful forecasts see Figs 5,6,7,8,and 9. in the last post at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
for evidence of a 960 year periodicity in the temperature data and forecasts derived therefrom.
The same periodicity is seen during glacial times check the 480 year peak (960/2) seen in Fig S4
top and bottom panels at
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/08/new-paper-shows-solar-activity-is-linked-to-the-greenland-climate-even-20000-years-ago/#more-37812
Just scroll down the link to find the Figure.
Matthew R Marler says:
August 20, 2014 at 9:12 am
Bob Weber: 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.
No doubt there are selected epochs when sunspot numbers were low and recorded climate was cool; and selected epochs when sunspot numbers were high and climate was warm. What is lacking to date is a showing of a consistent relationship throughout the entire record. The late 20th century warming and the early 20th century warming were very similar, despite the dissimilarity in sunspot counts (and CO2, as noted in other comment threads.)
Using the freezing up of the Delaware above Trenton as an indicator of ‘climate’ is very misleading. As is the famous painting of Washington’s crossing since that is a painting of ice on the Rhine in Germany, the floes on the Delaware look very different. The Delaware frequently freezes there, most recently this year but also in 2003, very different years as far as SSN is concerned. W. wouldn’t have needed boats this year: http://www.larkandlace.com/2014/01/icy-river.html
Here’s another:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/01/11/article-2537831-1A93B0D500000578-252_634x417.jpg
Lund U. researchers find solar link to regional climate change. Maybe their careers would have been at stake had they found a global link:
http://www.gizmag.com/suns-activity-influences-natural-climate-change/33409/
350 year long coincidental temperature/sunspots/tectonics correlations not as good as some of the climate experts may insist on, but often their products are not either.
Correlation Graphs
The climate discussions are so frustrating… it’s as if everyone is pushing an agenda. It is very obvious that people discussing climate have taken their eyes off the ball and I can’t really blame them… Here are the facts that nobody wants to talk about… MAY/June/July collectively we have record warm ocean temps… Ok? This should be the end of any discussion on what is happening….it’s over! What part of record ocean temperatures are you not getting?
Why it is happening is open for debate as usual. Why? Let us find common ground.
Anybody attempting to prove how and why the oceans are at record warmth cannot be seriously engaging in a true climate discussion if they leave out the following:
1) Our magnetosphere is weaker!
2) Arctic Temps not just Global Temps
3)Arctic Methane not just Global Methane
4) Solar Irradiance is simply not tracking downward with the sunspots and solar forcing is still above the solar constant both on Earth and From the Sun.
5) Volcanism’s role in Maunder Minimum…
Ok! So….Anybody claiming to know anything about climate science who leaves out irradiance, Arctic Methane and Weaker Magnetosphere needs to go jump in a Lake…PERIOD!… and that lake will be very warm and at record low water levels I willing to be you. Glancing over these comments it seems many have strayed off the path of this kind of data and onto the path of smearing anyone who disagrees.
Dr Norman Page: RGB You do not have necessarily to understand the periodicities in the temperature data in order to make possibly skillful forecasts see Figs 5,6,7,8,and 9. in the last post at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
That is true, but the qualification “possibly skilful” is extremely important. We do not now have any *demonstrably skillful* forecasts, hence no reason to think that the “possibly skillful” forecasts that you speak of have any relationship to the developing climate. This can be said of all forecasts to date: e.g. it is possible that a few of the GCM forecasts are “possibly skillful”, but no reason to think so of any particular few.
RGB All forecasts are can only be judged against future observations- in my forecasts at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
I give estimates of future temperatures at various times and say
“Global temperature trends, solar activity and the climate and weather patterns since the original 2010 forecast have simply strengthened confidence in the forecast of both imminent decadal and long-term centennial cooling as outlined above.
The chief uncertainties relate to the exact timing of the current millennial solar activity peak and to the regionally variable lag time between the solar activity peak and its appearance as a peak in land temperatures and global SSTs. A +/- 12 year lag between the neutron count and the SST data has been used here following Fig3 in Usoskin et al:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2005ESASP.560…19U
Other investigators have suggested lags between 12 and 20 years. We will see.
How confident should one be in the predictions in this post? The pattern and quasi-periodicity method doesn’t lend itself easily to statistical measures. However, statistical calculations only provide an apparent rigor for the uninitiated and, in relation to an ensemble of IPCC climate models, are entirely misleading because they make no allowance for the structural uncertainties in the model set up. This is where scientific judgment comes in, as some people are better at pattern recognition and meaningful correlation than others. A past record of successful forecasting such as indicated above is a useful but not infallible measure. In this case I am reasonably sure (say 65/35) for about 20 years ahead. Beyond that certainty drops rapidly. I am sure, however, that they will prove closer to reality than anything put out by the IPCC, Met Office or the NASA group. In any case, this is a Bayesian type forecast in that it can easily be amended on an ongoing basis as the Temperature and Solar data accumulate. If there is not a 0.15 – 0.20 drop in Global SSTs by 2018 -20, I would need to re-evaluate.
“””””…..So what’s so great about water? Breaking the skin layer of water isn’t easy either. The surface tension of water is 72 dynes/cm at 25°C, meaning it would take a force of 72 dynes to break a surface film of water 1 cm long. That’s a tough surface! …..”””””
Pamela, you have a misunderstanding, of just what “surface tension” actually is. There really isn’t any “skin” layer to break.
Within the body of a liquid, the molecules attract each other and pull in every which way direction; the so-called Van der Waals forces. So on average, the molecules go nowhere in particular, and largely stay local, almost as in a solid, but with slow diffusion.
When you get to the surface, almost monomolecular layer, you have pulls in every direction on the surface, and downward pulls from the deeper molecules, but no longer are there liquid molecules pulling upward. So it is as if the surface molecules are being sucked down into the interior. This causes the surface molecules, to rush in to fill any void, that should appear, and as a result, the surface tries to arrange itself to a minimum surface area. If you can isolate a surface element , such as by having a sliding wire perpendicular to a three sided wire perimeter, lying in the surface, the surface tension, will pull that wire towards the other end of the rectangle trying to minimize the enclosed area. The force pulling on that wire is simply the 72 dynes per cm, for the length of the sliding wire, between the parallels. No matter how far you pull that wire against the surface tension, the force stays constant at that 72 value. So it is not like stretching the surface of a balloon, where the force increases, with the displacement , from the point of equilibrium. With surface tension, there is no point of equilibrium; the surface tension, will collapse the surface area down to zero, and still be pulling at the same force.
If you move the one cm wire along the parallel wire rails, by one cm, the you apply a force (t) over a distance one cm, so you do one (t) dyne.cm of work, in expanding the surface area, by one square cm.
In fact, the work done by expanding a surface area, is simply (t) times the increase in surface area. And nothing ever breaks.
When steam bubbles form in boiling water, the surface tension of the bubble surface, tries to collapse the bubble to zero radius. This is countered by an excess water vapor pressure, inside the bubble, over the ambient pressure in the liquid. A little algebraic prestidigitation, using the principle of virtual work (no it’s not what O’bama does), will show that the excess pressure required to support the bubble is just 2.t/r, where r, is the bubble radius.
There’s a dangerous gotcha, lurking in that equation. Notice as the bubble radius goes to zero, the internal excess pressure required to sustain the bubble goes to infinity, as (r) goes to zero.
So the bubble can’t even get started, as it would take an infinite water vapor pressure inside to do that, which means a superheated water, and superheated steam, in a very small bubble.
So in fact, it almost requires, a substrate nucleus, to start water boiling, so it doesn’t have to start bubbles at zero radius.
So if you put super clean, say de-ionized water (for your steam iron), into a microwave, and nuke it, it will tend to get much hotter than 100 deg. C, and still not boil.
So you bring it out into the kitchen, and a dust particle drops in it, and the damn thing explodes in your face, with super hot water and steam.
So don’t ever nuke a glass of water to make coffee, without putting the coffee (or tea) in first, to provide nucleation sites for steam bubbles so it can boil safely if you get it too hot.
Surface tension doesn’t break when you do a belly flop. The velocity of sound in water simply limits how fast the water can get out of the way, of your impacting belly (or noggin).
You’ve heard the kettle bump on the stove, when bubble nucleation gets a bit delayed, by lack of dust.