UPDATE: Some commenters got the wrong idea about this article, see the footnote.
Our resident solar physicist Dr. Leif Svalgaard is one of the scientists involved in the effort
Dear SILSO user,
Mon, Jun 22, 2015 11:42 am
Over the past 4 years a community effort has been carried out to revise entirely the historical Sunspot Number series. A good overview of the analyses and identified corrections is provided in the recent review paper:
Clette, F., Svalgaard, L., Vaquero, J.M., Cliver, E. W.,“Revisiting the Sunspot Number. A 400-Year Perspective on the Solar Cycle”, Space Science Reviews, Volume 186, Issue 1-4, pp. 35-103.
Now that the new data series has been finalized, we are about to replace the original version of our sunspot data
by an entirely new data set on July 1st. On this occasion, we decided to simultaneously introduce changes in several conventions in the data themselves and also in the distributed data files.
There are so many diverse changes that we cannot guarantee that everything will work perfectly on the first try.Our team is too small to make full prior simulations. Therefore, multiple careful consistency checks will be done on July 1st itself, which will slow down the processing. So, please anticipate some delays compared to an ordinary month.
The most prominent change in the Sunspot Number will be the choice of a new reference observer, A.Wolfer (pilot observer from 1876 to 1928) instead of R. Wolf himself. This means dropping the conventional 0.6 Zürich scale factor, thus raising the scale of the entire Sunspot Number time series to the level of modern sunspot counts. This major scale change may thus strongly affect some user applications. Be prepared!
Regarding data files, various files will be replaced by new ones, with new more homogeneous names and new internal column formats. The included information will sometimes change: combining data (e.g. hemispheric numbers together with total numbers), separating data (monthly smoothed numbers in a separate file) or adding new values that were not provided previously (standard errors).
All those changes will be explained in the information accompanying our data, on the web site of the World Data Center SILSO. While the primary files will all be replaced in early July, some other changes will still occur in the next two or three months. During this transitory phase, we thus invite you to visit the SILSO Web site to keep track of the changes, as we are preparing this major transition now scheduled for July 1st, 2015.
An important remark for our faithful observers: the current transition in the sunspot number processing does not change anything to the way you enter your data. So, just proceed as usual on July 1st. Your past k personal
coefficients will simply be recomputed relative to the new re-calibrated sunspot number. We are working on this right now. By the way, the new processing software will open the way towards a better determination of the evolution of each station and so, a better feedback to our observers will become possible in the future.
In the coming weeks, please visit our SILSO Web site:
____________________
Dr.Laure Lefevre
Royal Observatory of Belgium WDC-SILSO
UPDATE: A number of commenters got the wrong idea about this article, conflating the process with the sort of questionable adjustment techniques For example, Dr. Svalgaard comments:
As the text says all observers should continue the way they have always done. There is no such as ‘the traditional count’ for observers. That concept is completely local to the SIDC [now SILSO]
Frederick Colbourne adds:
These adjustments (at the very least) compensate for the faulty decision by one important observer to use an instrument that did not have sufficient resolving power to count the sunspots properly.
Willis Eschenbach sums it up:
Dear heavens, this resistance to correcting the mistakes of the past is most peculiar. Mosh is quite correct. The sunspot count of the past was differently calculated, due to changes in counting methods which are both well known and well explained.
What they have now done is to use the same methodology from start to finish.
Look, there have been some bogus “adjustments” to climate records by various miscreants. But that doesn’t mean we can just use what we have in front of us in any field. Sunspots are a good example. We know where we changed methodology in the past. We know the dates that calculation method changed, and how the method changed. As a result of the change we have two incompatible sets of numbers.
So should we just continue to use the existing sunspot dataset, which consists of two sets of DIFFERENT NUMBERS which were calculated in DIFFERENT WAYS and then just spliced together? That would be nuts, no?
Instead what we need to do, and what Leif and the others did, was to go back to the underlying observations, and to use a single unified clearly-defined method of counting sunspots from the start of the record to the end of the record. This single internally coherent dataset replaces the SPLICED DATASET of the past.
Anyone who thinks that using the same counting method from start to finish is somehow bad and wrong, well, they’re free to use the old spliced dataset … and if you do, I’m free to laugh at your adherence to past mistakes.
Note well that this says nothing about the endless adjustments to the temperature record, which may or may not be justified in any particular case, and which are nowhere near as clear-cut and clean as the sunspot count.
My viewpoint is that this adjustment corrects a clear mistake, and therefore should be welcomed. – Anthony Watts
Climategate should be further searched for “solar activity” and “sunspots,” because as this email shows, solar activity is a discussion that draws so many people to look at the theory of manmade gw from a different poise in the first place. This conversation was discouraged and limited from the beginning. I think the adjustments to the solar data is a bad development.
I personally wish I had solar and gm data that wasn’t filtered through Stanford.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/climategate/#comment-249580
Katya Georgieva December 6, 2009 at 6:46 am
However, though all the presentations were on planetary influences on
> solar activity, all the questions and discussions following them were on
> solar influences on global climate change, and most of the numerous public
> had come exclusively for this discussion. Unfortunately, no real debate on
> this subject happened last April because this was not the topic of the
> session, and because the panelists who were present were not prepared to
> speak about this. Therefore, we have never had a real debate on
> attributions of climate change in EGU, while there is much interest in
> such a debate both in the scientific community and in general public. I am
> sure a debate explicitly devoted to this topic is inevitable, whether as a
> part of an EGU General Assembly or not, so I felt such a great debate in
> EGU 2010 would answer the scientific and public interest.
Katya goes on to say,
As you know, Kyoto protocol is soon expiring, and negotiations are about
> to start for the new treaty following it. The obligations undertaken by
> the countries which will sign this treaty will mean enormous resources
> spent on reducing greenhouse emissions at the expense of economical
> growth, overcoming starvation, fatal epidemic diseases, illiteracy. Maybe
> this sacrifice is vital for the survival of the civilization because human
> activity is what is causing global climate change, or maybe these are
> futile efforts because climate change is due to natural factors beyond our
> control. As scientists, we have the moral duty to give a clear answer to
> the question whether global climate change is due to human activity or to
> natural factors, and consequently, what measures can and must be taken to
> reduce it or to mitigate it, respectively. Or, if we do not have a clear
> answer yet, we must honestly state this instead of hiding behind the
> nonexistent “scientific consensus”, and postpone the practical measures
> until we reach a higher level of understanding.
>
> Unfortunately, this problem is strongly politicized, and severely
> censured. There are many examples when purely scientific discussions like
> the proposed EGU 2010 great debate have not been allowed, and the chance
> has not been given for alternative views to be presented.
Well they can’t adjust it too much since what we’ve got agrees with proxy cosmic ray data.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GVoICgC3wYw/U814VbROIgI/AAAAAAAAATc/oU8xcjSpCnQ/s1600/steinfig3.gif
It does, It does.
http://www.leif.org/research/Comparison-GSN-14C-Modulation.png
“1) Does solar system dynamics significantly affect solar and planetary
dynamos? If it did, could this affect the Earth’s climate dynamics?
2) Does solar activity result in geomagnetic field variations? Does it
change the Earth’s rate of rotation? Do variations in the Earth’s
geomagnetic field and/or variations in the Earth’s rate of rotation
affect the planet’s climate dynamics.”
The adjustments to data could potentially erase important relationships in the earth-sun connection. There are also scientists who worked with daily, regional temperatures in order to look for possible connections to daily solar activity. Brian Tinsley is one.
Adjusting the past is no biggy. I file several form 1040X’s every year for past years and my taxable income always goes in the same direction. Never once has the IRS asked why.
And that leaves CO2.
Glad you mentioned CO2, the Wonderwoman of gases (sarc off). If we haven’t drunk the koolaid, the mention of summer cloud increases blocking sunspot sightings in the 1500’s however, should make our ears prick up…
Let them count Sunspots; “Use the Flux, Luke” for all comparisons from 1949 into the future.
Maybe they should run an adjustment check on early telescope records of sunspots against Beryllium 10 and Carbon 14 from ice core samples, then connect up for a longer combined record, yet latter proxies available, seems Medieval Warm Period likely had record sunspots like we just had in cycle 22.
http://sites.gsu.edu/geog1112/files/2014/07/SolarEvents_small-29h97e9.png
JPinBalr,
I need verification of the atmospheric C-14 concentration determination method.
I presume that C-14 % varies.
Is there an objective measurement that can me made that lays out the historical C-14 concentration over the past 10,000 years? 100,000 years?
Since C-14 decays, how does one know either the initial C-14 mass fraction or the initial date of the C-14 mass. You’d have to know one of them correct? Is tree ring proxy dating all we got?
For Paul Westhaver
Wikipedia has a reasonable summary of C14
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14
Approximate atmospheric abundance 1 part per trillion [US trillion]
Half life 5730 years
Usefulness for dating……somewhere between 45,000 and 60,000 years so no good for dating around 100,000 years
But you are right…..C14 must be calibrated against known dates where possible as C14 levels apparently fluctuate by as much as 5%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14
Whoops
the second link should have been…http://www.c14dating.com/int.html
Thank-you GregK,
I suspected that would be calibration technique or an alternative date method, maybe non-carbon radioactive decay, or some other thing. I know there is suspicion around tree ring data for dating in terms of error.
OK so if the C-14 absolute % cannot be established, is that error adequately reflected in the C-14 plot?
Seems to me the error band is absent.
Here is a Modern version of that graph since 1600:
http://www.leif.org/research/Comparison-GSN-14C-Modulation.png
Odd the cosmogenic isotope data has been manipulated to make the solar modulation of planetary climate go away. Odd that there were hundreds of peer reviewed papers written that show the past warming and cooling cycles and abrupt cooling events correlate with massive changes to the cosmogenic isotopes.
The sun is a serial climate changer. The majority of the warming in the last 150 years was caused by the sun. An abrupt change to the sun causes the glacial/interglacial cycles. The solar cycle changes cause both the small, medium, and super large cyclic climate change events in the paleo record.
The climate wars are about to come to an abrupt end. Abrupt cooling correlating with an interruption to the solar cycle.
P.S. The cult of CAGW has not acknowledged that there has been no warming for 18 years. How long will it take them to acknowledge in your face cooling?
Will abrupt cooling of the earth be a small thing or big thing?
P.S. There are now more than a hundred paradoxes in cosmology (In peer reviewed papers that are directly related to the physics of what is happening to the sun. The discovery that the sun and stars are significantly different than the standard model will be the most important scientific discovery in the history of science.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
I wonder what caused cyclic warming and cooling on the Greenland Ice sheet in the past? Curious that the same periodicity (time between events, 1500 years with a beat of +/- 400 years) between all warming and cooling events/cycles (including the massive ‘Heinrich’ Event is the same (same periodicity, same forcing function) is observed in both hemisphere.
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper. William: As this graph indicates the Greenland Ice data shows that have been 9 warming and cooling periods in the last 11,000 years.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
Everyone of course is aware that there is now above normal total sea ice (sum of sea ice both poles). There is record sea ice in the Antarctic every month of the year and sea ice is recovering.
Snowfall is above average on the Greenland Ice sheet.
Checkout the lack of melting on the Greenland Ice sheet as compared to the last 20 years.
http://beta.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
I, for one, welcome our new Maunder Maximum!
We haven’t left 1984 yet. The past continues to be what the “more equal” members of the farm want it to be.
Only BTW: You are mixing here the contents of “1984” and “Animal Farm”. But that’s not really important of course…
However, I think the new adjusted sun spot numbers cannot wipe out the hypothesis of an probable important influence of the Sun’s changing activity on the climate system, because the cosmic isotope proxies do still correlate well enough with the known climate records so far…
Well as Leif says over and over again, the sun has no impact on the earth’s climate, so this is all very interesting but irrelevant.
Progressives rewriting history…soon, they will say that day time CO2 heats are patio every afternoon…not the sun, and the sheeple will fall inline, pay their tax to the new science; the Al Gorian science.
Yeah, well Leif is wrong.
That is not what he says and you know it.
How this all plays out in reality cannot be changed. The public’s perception of reality is what is variable. If a star is the ultimate controller of it’s heliosphere will be much more evident in a couple of decades, as the future unfolds. The biggest problem humanity faces, meanwhile, is impatience!
(… impatience spawned by ignorance)
Many comments here demonstrate a lack of proper due diligence in following the process, both the reasons for the reconstruction to clear calculation calibration differences (due to previous weighting of sun spot numbers/groups), and the process used to re-calibrate the various data sets. Complain all you want, but if your comment reveals such a decided lack of self-education, your complaints will look more like a spoiled child’s tantrum. The process has been very open, transparent, and well-presented in this blog and in other websites with lots of links to studies you can read for yourself. So do your fricken homework instead of talking out of your arse.
She said sweetly.
Thanks Leif!
~~~~~~~~~~~~
There must be a dozen or so posts on WUWT regarding this issue. I sense from the comments so far that many people have not read the background on the topic. The name Zoë Schlanger comes to mind.
http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/42000/42067/europelsta_tmo_2009345_lrg.jpg
Deadly Cold Across Russia, 2009
Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe, so maybe the Russians aren’t as convinced as everyone else that low solar activity will not mean more wobbles in the polar vortex.
100%
Just checked Dr. S.’s web site and he has been busy. My reading list just grew again..
Congratulations to Dr. Svalgaard, I know he has worked long and hard on the sunspot number series.. Hope you had a good time with it Dr. S.
Skeptics have no need to worry so much about the Cha Cha Cha Changes..
Over the last is it 10,000 years the cycle has exhibited a Ceiling in solar cycle high activity and a Floor in low solar cycle activity.
But wait..solar cycle 24 hit the FLOOR in low solar activity. And next cycle, solar cycle 25, is expected to be even lower (by approx. third) than solar cycle 24.
Instead of watching sunspots we’ll be watching the helmut streamers, pseudo streamers and the streamer belt during cycle 25, (not many sunspots)
I was wondering what the “streamer belt’s” relationship was with the Hale Sector Boundary?
Activity like Dr. Janet Luhmann spoke about at the AGU2012 Parker Lecture which she had the honor of giving.
I think Dr. Luhmann will see the Astro physical community get there heads wrapped around the idea that the sun is not a simple dipole..
One of my favorite lines from the lecture..
“Where does the ah.. solar dipole anchor?” said Dr. Luhmann
Well now, where does the solar dipole anchor? Is the anchor location in a state of perpetual change due to?
This adjustment better be right.
I’m tired of history being re-written just to serve someone’s personal viewpoint.
There should be a point where criminal consequences are used for people who adjust history just because their personal opinion goes a certain way without proving it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
All of these adjustments to history are now costing the human race $100 billion at a time which rises to the level that adjustments better be f’ing right or there needs to be very very serious consequences.
It is a community-wide effort. Of course, there are still a few rear-guard dissenters as there will always to anything.
The Spanish Inquisition was a ‘community-wide’ effort. All honesty, I think this is a terrible choice of euphemisms for stating that there is a ‘consensus’ and that the ‘science is settled.’
You make that connotation, we do not. On the contrary, we emphasize that this is ongoing work: “As pointed out on several occasions in this chapter, several issues remain open and require deeper analyses that may still span many years. The revised series will thus be open to future improvements as new results are published and new historical documents are progressively recovered. Therefore, in order to properly document future occasional modifications, the WDC-SILSO will implement a versioning system, with an incremental description of changes added to each version.”
“You make that connotation, we do not”
This may be the most concerning comment of the thread. If you don’t understand how “community-wide” effort has been misused in the past then I don’t know how to trust you. When Jquip mentioned the Spanish Inquisition (topical given the recent silliness from the Pope) he makes an excellent point.
In the future the idea of “community wide effort” might become reassuring, but it is not such at this time.
Thank you, Dr. Svalgaard, for using a version control. My objection against “temperature adjustments” is that they rewrite the history in a way that George Orwell would be proud of. I like to see for myself what has changed, not just what the latest politically correct version is.
Well this is interesting, however like a lot of folks have already said, not very useful. The past is the past, with the exception of reading someone’s observation book and adjusting based on someone else’s misread. But if there was no observation the only way to infil that is using some rules and thoughts based on what we think of as normal (todays observations). But normal may not be. Anything created out of nothing is a reflection of the authors bias. Leif is obviously biased, anyone who has ever had an exchange with him knows that. The problem is that Leif doesn’t think he is biased, just like a great many other climate scientists. Even Dr. Mann does not think of himself as biased or wrong. That is just human behavior which is why things like a new data set going back into history isn’t data! its an opinion, calling it a data set is a travesty as bad as karl et al 2015.
Yes, I am VERY biased in the direction of getting things right. You are welcome to study the material linked before you shoot your mouth off.
That is what I mean, you assume I know nothing, you are biased based on your study and observations. But you can’t know what was in the past. You can guess and estimate but its not observations, its not data. That is the point. You don’t get historical do overs. I am not “shooting my mouth off” I am affirming the general dislike of the idea that we can go back in time and change things that are inconvenient to what we believe.
The old data has not been changed, only the errors that have crept in over time in constructing a sunspot series from them. Since you have obviously no studied what has been done, your opinion has no value.
Leif, I read the study. It is interesting but it doesn’t change the fact that you are changing others biased views of the data with your own. Neither necessarily right or wrong. A lot of work no doubt but its still impacted by your and your fellow authors personal bias. The really interesting thing is you can assume others made large errors and that everything you have done so far is error free or nearly so. Your paper is not very convincing in that direction. In fact there seems to be a huge amount of additional work that may turn what you have done upside down, or not. Reading old manuscripts and making assumptions about the language of the time and the reinterpreting of those old manuscripts is heavily dependent on the readers personal bias. That is why when you talk history, and that is what we are discussing here, the interpretation of events by two different readers can be completely and utterly different.
You are very wrong. We compare numbers not words.
So methods and if zero really means zero is just comparing numbers? I don’t think so Leif.
It doesn’t matter what you think. The numbers speak for themselves.
You are correct now it works. Sigh Lots of reading.Thanks
lsvalgaard June 22, 2015 at 8:33 pm
It doesn’t matter what you think. The numbers speak for themselves.
/////////////////
I may be misunderstanding what David is arguing, but isn’t he arguing that there are significant periods when there are no numbers.
Maybe because of lengthy prevailing cloudy conditions in Europe obscuring solar observatories such that for lengthy periods people did not bother to actuatly and physically observe. To the extent that there are log/record entries during this period, they are simply guesstimates based upon assumed priors.
No, not since 1700.
During the Maunder Minimum there were extended periods were the observers said “I have not seen any spots this year”. Hoyt and Schatten treated such verbal descriptions a real observations and entered into their database an impossible 365 days of observations with zero spots. This is, of course, nonsense and tends to make the Maunder minimum seem much deeper than it really was. We have dropped such spurious ‘data’ as described in page 50-51 of http://www.leif.org/research/Revisiting-the-Sunspot-Number.pdf and see also slides 3 and 4 of http://www.leif.org/research/Another-Maunder-Minimum.pdf
Random sampling is used all over the place. You do not have to observe something obsessively to deduct activity levels. For example, if you look at the sun once a week and NEVER EVER see any sun spots then this means that the sun spot activity is much lower than during times when the sun constantly has sun spots.
‘Infilling’ data based on TODAY’S much higher sun spot activity is wrong.
You have clearly not even read the papers.
What was the most consecutive spotless days of the current/previous cycle?
We are now mid cycles and are starting to see spotless or near spotless days.
And we are only a bit removed from very active cycles!
Maybe there were no spotless years, but can anyone really say that they know how many spotless days are too many, just enough, or too few?
How many spotless days might we expect between now and the official end of 24?
And how many might we expect during the 24 to 25 transition?
More that the 23 to 24 transition?
And what about the cycles after that?
How long will this decline in solar activity go on for?
Who predicted it first, and when?
Who predicted all those spotless days in ’09 and ’10?
When was the earliest such prediction, if any?
Is this what anyone expects to see at this stage of 24:
http://solarham.net/regions/map.htm
What was the most consecutive spotless days of the current/previous cycle?
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2015 total: 0 days (0%)
2014 total: 1 day (<1%)
2013 total: 0 days (0%)
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
How many spotless days might we expect between now and the official end of 24?
can only give a statistical guess.
How long will this decline in solar activity go on for?
I the past is any guide, several cycles.
Who predicted it first, and when?
Ken Schatten [and myself] has been saying this for years
e.g. in 2003 “The surprising result of these long-range predictions is a rapid decline in solar activity, starting with cycle #24. If this trend continues, we may see the Sun heading towards a “Maunder” type of solar activity minimum – an extensive period of reduced levels of solar activity.”
Many spotless days have long been a stable feature of solar cycles.
Here are [the discoverer of the sunspot cycle] Schwabe’s observations:
1826 118 22 277
1827 161 2 273
1828 225 0 282
1829 199 0 244
1830 190 1 217
1831 149 3 239
1832 84 49 270
1833 33 139 267
1834 51 120 273
1835 173 18 244
1836 272 0 200
1837 333 0 168
1838 282 0 202
1839 162 0 205
1840 152 3 263
1841 102 15 283
1842 68 64 307
1843 34 149 324
2nd col = number of groups
3rd col = number of spotless days
4th col = number of days with data
The paper is a good read. But I like the data as is, since that is what I have been looking at for so long. So, maybe include the “old” with new methods of building data for period of time as to reflect the changes. Not just pull a Hansen where the old simply is gone. The word change has become ugly. Cheers!
Really? That is your level of scientific critique? I know of no one in my circle of colleagues who think like that. So maybe mothers should continue to be blamed for autism and hysterectomies performed on females who have emotional issues.
Come on man, rise to the occasion and build some scientific acumen.
Adjustments to the sunspot series do little to explain the Anomalously low solar extreme-ultraviolet irradiance and thermospheric density during solar minimum or the failure of Ionospheric total electron contents (TECs) as indicators of solar EUV changes during the last two solar minima.
The authors of these papers point to the degradation of the satellite EUV detectors and the increased cooling from increased CO2 concentrations as potential sources of the anomaly, however, they show that these are only secondary contributors.
Decline of the f0f2 critical frequency during the 2008-2009 minimum confirms the EUV flux anomaly, according to Does the F10.7 index correctly describe solar EUV flux during the deep solar minimum of 2007–2009? and The ionosphere under extremely prolonged low solar activity.
It is this F region of the ionosphere (and not the E region) that is significant when measuring ionization by EUV rays, according to Magnetoseismology, Ground-based remote sensing of Earth’s magnetosphere, noting in section 2.6 Formation and Properties of the Ionosphere:
“The most heavily absorbed part of the spectrum, and hence peak electron and ion production, occurs in the F1 region, including the He II Lyman α (30.4 nm, 130 km), He I (58.4 nm, 164 km), and H Lyman continuum (91.1–84.0 nm, 105–120 km).”
Also see slide 3 of Variability of the Solar XUV Irradiance from the SORCE XPS. At EUV wave lengths, peak absorption is at F region altitudes.
In contrast, sunspot numbers are highly correlated with E region conductivity measured by the various TEC, F 10.7, and solar quiet indices for this 13 year study from 1989 to 2001: Contribution of wind, conductivity, and geomagnetic main field to the variation in the geomagnetic Sq field.
In the F region, measurable electrical field strength is very high and conductivity is low, while in the E region, the opposite is true. Additionally, field strength and conductivity peak at different times. See The relationship between electric fields, conductances and currents in the high-latitude ionosphere: a statistical study using EISCAT data.
The source of the resonant 500HZ A/C hum in the ionospheric current, as noted in Ionospheric Irregularities, must depended upon a substantial dielectric charge, in addition to the induced current flow, and is subject to nonlinear impedance due to thermal turbulence.
Thus, the solar quiet variation, the basis for Dr. Svalgaard’s multi-century EUV reconstruction, is merely an induced alternating current phenomenon, and not a direct consequence of EUV flux.
It is this F region of the ionosphere (and not the E region) that is significant when measuring ionization by EUV rays
We have been down this road before and you seem not to have learned anything. The dynamo current causing the geomagnetic response which we can measure runs in the E-layer where the density is high enough. The air in the F-layer is simply too thin. The current depends critically on the conductivity which depends directly on the EUV flux.
The International Reference Ionosphere 2012 – a model of international collaboration by D. Bilitza et al, notes the importance of the F region in ionospheric EUV flux calculations.
You may optionally choose to ignore it, however in doing so, you can not reproduce satellite drag and the accumulation of space junk.
The dynamo runs in the E-layer and its magnetic effect is a measure of the ionization and of EUV. The F-layer is irrelevant for this.
You’re way behind the times, Leif.
Can’t predict satellite drag with your E region calculations.
Among other things, E region absorbs FUV radiation from the F region that is emitted by the recombination of Oxygen ions photodissociated by EUV flux.
See Remote Sensing of Earth’s Limb by TIMED/GUVI: Retrieval of thermospheric composition and temperature by Meier et al. [2015]
Your E region current is nothing more than an RLC circuit implemented in plasma which oscillates somewhat independent of EUV flux, thus the reported anomalies for the last two solar cycles.
That is because the models for the F-region ans above are not good. Has little to do with the EUV from the Sun. The effect of EUV [and UV and F10.7] on the E-layer gives us a magnetic deflection which is easily measured and is a VERY good proxy for those fluxes. Which is all I need to determine EUV back to 1740.
Your proxies simply confirm your biases, namely, the premise that solar activity has been essentially unchanged for centuries.
The advent of the SOHO SEM and TIMED SEE has brought about a much deeper understanding of the physics.
The reconstructed EUV flux is derived from data, as is the sunspot group number.
Which is all anybody could need.
Yes, that is what I am afraid of, that your quest for a quixotic EUV flux data that is centuries old has somehow corrupted your sunspot interpretation.
I hope that your adjustments to the sunspot series have no relation to your reconstruction of the EUV flux.
If you would care to read [or even skim] the papers describing the reconstructions you would know that the EUV reconstruction and the Sunspot revision are independent, the former based on terrestrial data and the latter on solar data, only.
http://www.leif.org/research/Reconstruction-of-Solar-EUV-Flux-1740-2015.pdf
http://www.leif.org/research/Backbone-Paper.pdf
But, your bias makes you make unwarranted assumptions and causes unnecessary fears.
EUV flux collected by the SOHO SEM and TIMED SEE satellite modules already contradict your premise, otherwise, you would not have had the need to mischaracterize these the data sets in your EUV reconstruction paper, rotating the satellite data in such that the solar minimum anomalies disappear.
When a scientist feels the need to mischaracterize data sets for the purpose of countering needless fear mongering, as you have, the utility of science as a whole is discounted and fear mongering amplified.
The Maya did not abandon there cities because their priests were not accurate in their predictions, they abandoned their cities because they could no longer trust them.
jonesingforozone:
EUV flux collected by the SOHO SEM and TIMED SEE satellite modules already contradict your premise, otherwise, you would not have had the need to mischaracterize these the data sets in your EUV reconstruction paper, rotating the satellite data in such that the solar minimum anomalies disappear
my reply:
Nonsense. The TIMED SEE data are used as is. No change at all. The SEM data has been scaled to match the TIMED SEE data and F10.7.
Let’s try an analogy. The chickens remain in the barnyard and they haven’t changed. We’re just changing what we call “a really fluffy one”.
Coauthor Vaquero is quote as saying, “A proper estimate of the past and present activity of the Sun, … is crucial in understanding numerous phenomena that occur on Earth, especially to rule out the role of the Sun in global warming,” Was that a purpose of the corrections? To rule out the role of the sun in warming? That seems unscientific and biased to me.
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-sun-18th-century-similar.html
Nevertheless, looking at the graph in the link—which presumably shows the after-corrections data—there does seem to be a rough correlation of sun spot number and global temperature over the past 115 years.
Dr. Leif, could you provide graphs of the data before the corrections and after the corrections?
I could, but why don’t you read the paper and look at Figure 63.
Hello Dr Isvalgaard the second link http://www.leif.org/research/Reconstruction-of-Solar-EUV-Flux-1740-2015.pdf would not work for me.
The first one did. I need to read more about Wolf I just glanced at the issues. page 6
Okay there’s a problem. most likely many.
Doctor I am a very, very amateur astronomer, turned my first telescope to the heavens at age eleven, 46 years ago. I also fell in love with history. What your group is doing gives me the jitters. It is becoming less a matter of “facts” but instead one of trust. Because of what has happened trust is less freely given.
We live in a world where the discussion of all things related to climate is poisoned. Doctor, If you call someone an idiot and he or she is, in what manner can you expect them to react? Next if they are not an idiot, how will they respond?
Last though I have the jitters, I will not bump your elbow. Time in the end will tell
michael
Works for me [and many others] so should work for you. Try again.
It is becoming less a matter of “facts” but instead one of trust
It shouldn’t be as the data is available [the critical parts now, and all the tiny details shortly] and the analysis is straight forward and can be performed by anyone, even using Excel, in matter of hours. What usually stops people from actually looking for themselves is mostly just plain laziness: it is easier to whine than to do some work. Here is an example of the effect [from today] of sunspot weighting homogeneity introduced by Waldmeier in 1947:
http://www.specola.ch/img/lastsmall.jpg
At out insistence, the observers now reported both their [inflated] sunspot count in the column marked ‘f’ and the true number of spots in the column marked ‘LW’. The sunspot number is calculated using the bottom number in column ‘g’, here 2, multiplied by 10 and then adding the number in column ‘f’, here 48, for a result of SSN inflated = 2*10+48 = 68. This is the inflated number, the adjusted [real] number you get by using the number in column ‘LW’ SSN actual = 2*10 + 30 = 50, giving an ‘inflation factor’ of 68 / 50 = 1.36. It is that simple. As an average over all the year 1947-2015 the inflation factor turn out to be 1.20, so the obvious adjustment consists simply of dividing all the those values that are inflated by 20% by 1.20, that is all.
Here is a larger version
http://www.specola.ch/drawings/2015/loc-d20150622.JPG
click on the Figure to enlarge
sunspot weighting inhomogeneity, of course
What Jose means is ‘in order to rule out or rule in’ the sun’s role. The data does not seem to support the latter. In particular the sunspot number now is comparable to what it was a century ago, but the temperatures are not. On the other hand, people see what they believe regardless of graphs and data.
I have come to accept that belief always trumps data when it comes to the general human population. And I have taken my lumps for standing my ground and have lost jobs over it. Better that than lowering my gaze.
It takes several solar cycles for global temperatures to react to changes in solar variability and even then the reaction is irregular due to the thermal inertia of the oceans.
There is no reason why the sun / climate relationship need be fast enough to achieve the temperatures of a century ago when the cloudiness changes forced by the current level of solar activity only started to become noticeable around 15 years ago.
It is quite sufficient to note that the solar changes resulted in cloudiness changes that immediately put a stop to the previous warming trend (hence the pause).
It will take a much longer period of less active sun to get us back to the temperatures of a century ago and in that time the sun could perk up again for a while. We may not yet be at the millennial peak of solar activity after all.
In all humility I’ll point out that your argument is nonsense. Since solar activity in every century since 1700 has varied the same way [high mid-century, low early and late] the temperature variation should also show the same variation, even with a ‘several cycle’ lag. Of, course, if the lag is REALLY long, e.g. a million years, my argument [and yours] will not hold.
The effect of the late 20th century high solar activity did not translate into increaseing cloudiness until around 2000 as per data from the Earthshine project. Thus far it has only put a stop to earlier warming. It is far too early to see the full and final effect of that step changre in solar energy penetrating the oceans.
One cannot realistically say that the 20th century showed low solar activity late in the century. All the cycles up to 23 were more active trhan those of the earlier centuries even according to your revised figures.
You are the expert in solar matters but not in climate and meteorology.
As I said, people see what they want to see, regardless of graphs and data.
Now, are you an ‘expert’ in climate and meteorology? The latter is actually my real expertise. The solar stuff is just an interest of mine that I have developed.
Which is my point
But the point is a misunderstanding. The Group sunspot number [matching F10.7, EUV, and UV measurements] is the real measure of solar activity and that is a very faithful representation of the magnetic field of the sun and its EUV-UV and particle emission [and inversely cosmic rays], if you would care to quote in full: “The Diurnal Range, rY, of the geomagnetic East component can be determined with confidence from observatory data back to 1840 and estimated with reasonable accuracy a century further back in time. The range rY correlates very strongly with the F10.7 microwave flux and with a range of measures of the EUV-UV flux and thus with the solar magnetic field giving rise to these manifestations of solar activity. The variation of the range also matches closely that of the Sunspot Group Number and the Heliospheric magnetic field”.
Your omission and selectiveness are typical and telling.
unfortunately Wilde clouds have not changed as you describe.
Leif, it is sad that you so readily resort to abuse.
Could you refer me to some of your work on climate and meteorology ?
I have only ever seen your solar material.
I did not misunderstand your link. You are saying that your group sunspot count is a better match to other solar variables than the relative sunspot count.
I say it doesn’t matter either way in climate terms because other variables alter proportionately more than the sunspot count however calculated.
Anyway, the whole point is that the cloudiness response provides a disproportionately large amplification of the solar variation and so it doesn’t matter how small you can get the solar variations to become (short of total elimination) because the cloudiness response will still occur whether you accept that or not.
“In all humility I’ll point out that your argument is nonsense.”
Oh well. That says a lot about you. A lot. But then, you are known for your “style” aren’t you.
Mosher:
Check out the Earthshine project which shows increasing cloud cover since around 2000 and previous articles here at WUWT discussed a cloudiness decrease when the warming was still in progress.
http://climate4you.com/images/CloudCoverAllLevel%20AndWaterColumnSince1983.gif
Hmmmm, a trend to rising clouds during the approx. period of the pause. Explanatory? Could be.
===========
Very interesting chart of clouds and atmospheric moisture.
Is it possible to obtain an up to date version?
Can you provide a link to the source of this information, how it was collected, etc?
Thank you.
who is this for?
If for me: clicking on the graph gives you http://climate4you.com/images/CloudCoverAllLevel%20AndWaterColumnSince1983.???
so you can take it from there
So will they now homogenize the sun?
So Leif and friends are trying to show the Little Ice Age had little to do with a weaker sun and that modern temps MUST BE DUE TO CO2!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
A fools errand for fools set by fools.
an commented upon by fools
For all those freaked out by the new reconstruction popping your Solar balloon, there are excellent papers regarding Earth’s natural intrinsic climate variability but you have to weed out the chaff from the solid research. If you have hung your hat on ol’Sol being the reason for recent warming, you have failed to rule out the first encountered pathology: Earth’s own intrinsic variability. So if you are among those who find this reconstruction very unsettling, you are no better than AGW catastrophists who also dismiss intrinsic variables in favor of minute amounts of anthropogenic CO2 being added to the gases in the atmosphere.
Plus the new reconstruction is not showing no variation it is showing a tighter variation. This does not mean that solar activity does not effect the climate it means that the climate may be much more sensitive to smaller variations in solar activity then previously thought, the only question is whether the 2 are linked or not.
TNX.
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Ok we got it the first, the second and third time. I’m sure Leif can speak for himself.
Oh, come on, Pamela! Donkey toot is better than “the AGW catastrophists”!