So Constant And Unspotted Didst Thou Seem1
Guest essay by David Archibald
The image of the Sun today is spotless.
This is the first spotless day of the 24-25 solar minimum. Not a great deal can be read from that. According to Wilson, for cycles 9-14, sunspot minimum followed the first spotless day by about 72 months, having a range of 62-82 months; for cycles 15-21, sunspot minimum followed the first spotless day by about 35 months, having a range of 27-40 months. So we could still be six years from minimum making Solar Cycle 24 about 13 years long. Longer is weaker in the following cycle, and colder.
When the Sun goes blank we still have what the professionals use – the F10.7 flux:
Figure 1: F10.7 Flux 2014 – 2016
Figure 1 shows that the F10.7 flux has been in a couple of parallel downtrends since early 2015. The Interplanetary Magnetic Field is still going the other way though:
Figure 2: Interplanetary Magnetic Field 1966 – 2016
Cloud droplet nucleation initiated by galactic cosmic rays has been getting a favourable press again, so let’s see how that’s going:
Figure 3: Oulu Neutron Count 1964 – 2016
Figure 3 shows a strong rise in the neutron flux that has its source in the constant flux of galactic cosmic rays entering the solar system. The count is now higher than that during the downramp of Solar Cycle 20 of the 1970s cooling period – very promising.
Solar wind flow [pressure] is one of the factors that modulates that constant flux:
Figure 4: Solar Wind Flow Pressure 1971 – 2016
Solar wind flow pressure appears to have peaked for this solar cycle. Perhaps the most interesting story with respect to the Sun at the moment is the increasing hemispheric asymmetry. The following graph shows that using very fresh data up to 2nd June:
Figure 5: Solar Polar Magnetic Field Strength by Hemisphere 1976 – 2016
Asymmetry has reached a new peak for the modern instrument record and is still climbing:
Figure 6: Solar Polar Magnetic Field Strength Differential
Polar magnetic field strength is translated into sunspot number and sunspot area. Unfortunately NASA hasn’t updated hemispheric sunspot area since December 2015 with that data shown in this post. They may be too busy on Muslim outreach to do basic science.
- Shakespeare in the movie adaptation of Henry V
David Archibald is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery)
Gently putting foot in mouth and says, rooks rike intastella maga field variatin’ being processed tru helio squelchin fere.
Removing for from mouth. Ah, that’s better.
Hmmm… still no sun spots:
http://spaceweather.com/
What’s happening??
Maybe tomorrow.
The strongest 63-year string of solar cycles in 11,400 years occurred from 1933~1996 (Solanki et al 2003). These strong solar cycles can easily explain much of 20th century warming.
When these strong solar cycles ended in 1996, so did the global warming trend, despite 30% of all manmade CO2 emissions since 1750 being made over just the last 20 years (excludes end 2015 El Nino spike):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.6/to:2015.7/plot/rss/from:1996.6/to:2015.7/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.6/to:2015.7/normalise/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.6/to:2015.7/normalise
Here is the 20-yr trend with the end-2015 El Nino spike:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.6/plot/rss/from:1996.6/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.6/normalise/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.6/normalise
The 2015/16 El Nino spike will be offset by the coming La Nina by early 2018, at which time, the global temp trend will resume a 22+ year flat trend.
The next solar cycle is projected to be the weakest since the Dalton Minimum started in 1790, and the SC starting around 2035 is projected to be the weakest since the Maunder Minimum started in 1645, and may well be the start of another Grand Solar Minimum lasting 50~100 years.
Since 1850, global temps have always fallen when the PDO is in its 30-year cool cycle:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:1880/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:1880/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1880/to:1921/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1880/to:1921/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1921/to:1943/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1921/to:1943/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1943/to:1977/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1943/to:1977/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1977/to:2005/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1977/to:2005/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2005/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2005/trend
The current PDO cool cycle started in 2008, but the PDO global cooling has been offset by 2 El Nino cycles. Once the 2015/16 El Nino spike is offset by the 2016/18 La Nina cycle, a falling global temp trend from 2008 will likely appear and last for another 20 years.
CAGW’s projections vs. reality are already off by 2 standard deviations (RSS data). In 5~7 years, they’ll be off by 3+ standard deviations for 22+ years, which is when the CAGW hypothesis can be officially disconfirmed.
Looking at this from 30,000 feet:
The climate change cult predicts the future climate.
They’ve been wrong for 40 years, but that gets little attention in the mainstream media.
I believe the important lesson learned is:
Don’t make climate predictions, and don’t listen to people who do.
If we skeptics make climate predictions, then we can’t claim no one can predict the future climate, which I believe is true.
How can skeptics advise people not to listen to scary predictions from the climate change cult when they make climate predictions too?
Skeptics’ predictions lead to the classic battle:
My prediction is better than your prediction.
The bizarre human need to make predictions is one reason climate science is all fluxed up.
The obvious problem is we have no idea of exactly what caused climate change in the past, yet seem drawn toward making very specific climate predictions likely to be wrong — and even if they are right, we’ll have no idea if it was a lucky guess, or good science.
So it would seem the lesson that should be learned is:
(1) First, learn what caused climate change in the past, and
(2) Second, make a short-term prediction with that knowledge.
But good science does not require predictions of the future.
Many things in life can’t be predicted — they are random, non-cyclical events.
Knowing exactly what causes climate change does not mean the future climate will ever be predictable.
Having common sense means you should be enjoying the wonderful climate in 2016, and hope it does not get colder in the future. … My plants are also requesting more CO2 in the air.
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It’s imperative that scientists continue to make hypothetical predictions, providing hypotheses are abandoned or modified based on how well they match/describe reality.
CAGW’s advocates make the fatal flaw of adjusting raw data to match the hypothesis rather than adjusting the hypothesis to match observations….
All the physics and empirical evidence show CO2’s ECS forcing is 6~10 TIMES less than CAGW’s predictions. If the Scientific Method were rigorously adhered to, CAGW would already be a disconfirmed hypothesis… But, alas….
Anyway, CAGW’s predictions will soon exceed reality by 3+ standard deviations as the PDO/AMO both are in their 30-yr cool cycles and as the sun continues to approach a likely Grand Solar Minimum from 2035… There is no way non-climatology scientist will allow such an obvious disconfirmed hypothesis to continue…
If one does not understand the causes of past climate change, then a prediction of the future climate is just a wild guess.
If the wild guess happens to be right, that means nothing.
I stand by my claim that a process (climate change) must be well understood to predict the future … and if the future climate depended on variables that changed randomly, and were non-cyclical, the predictions would still be guesses — educated guesses this time … but perhaps not better than a coin toss.
“disk is still blank three days later.”
http://www.spaceweather.com/images2016/06jun16/hmi200.gif
VANISHING SUNSPOTS: Something interesting is happening on the sun. On June 3rd, the sunspot number dropped to 0, and the solar disk is still blank three days later. Latest images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory reveal no significant dark cores:
http://www.spaceweather.com/
you guys still don’t get it
we are at Gleissberg (GB) minimum (2014):
as evident from (both) solar polar magnetic field strengths, GB maximum was around 1971/2
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/04/solar-cycle-update-spotless/#comment-2230824
we are heading towards warming again, starting around 2036
http://oi60.tinypic.com/2d7ja79.jpg
my theory is quite simple:
as both the polar solar magnetic field strengths diminishes, more of the most energetic particles will be able to escape from the sun. Luckily, they are are intercepted by molecules in our atmosphere, making more ozone, nitrogenous oxides and peroxides….
as illustrated here…
perhaps,
what nobody told you, is that as ozone and others are building up TOA, more of the UV warmth (that is heating our oceans) will be sent back to space…..
so it IS going to get get cooler
soon….
I do have a question, that needs to be asked of the Solar/Astrophysics community.. involved with studying the Enigmatic IBEX ribbon, (now called “tube”) and shifts in the ISN flow thru the heliosphere.
Latest reports indicate that the Tube/Ribbon and flow have remained constant over the observations period for IBEX and Ulysses.
“agreement with the original analysis of ISN He observations
from IBEX and recent reanalyses of observations from Ulysses.”
Quoted from:
INTERSTELLAR NEUTRAL HELIUM IN THE HELIOSPHERE FROM IBEX OBSERVATIONS. IV. FLOW VECTOR, MACH NUMBER, AND ABUNDANCE OF THE WARM BREEZE
Marzena A. Kubiak1, P. Swaczyna1, M. Bzowski1, J. M. Sokół1, S. A. Fuselier2,3, A. Galli4, D. Heirtzler5, H. Kucharek5, T. W. Leonard5, D. J. McComas2,3
Published 2016 April 14
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.01741.pdf
“The Sun moves through the surrounding interstellar cloud at a relative velocity of ∼5AU yr−1,
so that the forty-year historical record of the interstellar wind velocity sampled interstellar scale
lengths of ∼200AU.”
Quoted from:
CORRECTING THE RECORD ON THE ANALYSIS OF IBEX AND STEREO DATA
REGARDING VARIATIONS IN THE NEUTRAL INTERSTELLAR WIND
P. C. Frisch1, M. Bzowski2, C. Drews3, T. Leonard4, G. Livadiotis5,
D. J. McComas5,6, E. M¨obius4, N. Schwadron4, and J. M. Sok´ołl2
published 2015 March 4
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.00341v1.pdf
If, in 40 years the solar system has travelled 200AU and gone through 3+ solar cycles, how could there not have been, a shift in the ISN inflow direction???
And, where does all that ISMF flux, that gets piled up LAND???
Also, there is a model incorporating the HMF with ISMF in use with some of the newer papers concerning this matter.
THREE-DIMENSIONAL KINETIC-MHD MODEL OF THE GLOBAL HELIOSPHERE WITH THE HELIOPAUSE-SURFACE FITTING
V. V. Izmodenov1,2,3 and D. B. Alexashov1,3
Published 2015 October 20
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.08685.pdf
“”In this paper, our 3D kinetic-MHD model is extended by taking into account the
dynamic effects of HMF in the inner heliosheath region, as well as the effect of the latitudinal
variations of the SW parameters. Note that the model presented here has already been used
in a number of studies.””
As I have pointed out several times: what happens at 100 AU has no influence on solar activity.
lsvalgaard June 6, 2016 at 5:52 pm
As I have pointed out several times: what happens at 100 AU has no influence on solar activity.
———————————————–
That was not an answer to the question.
If, in 40 years the solar system has travelled 200AU and gone through 3+ solar cycles, how could there not have been, a shift in the ISN inflow direction???
And if there wasn’t any shifts, perhaps we don’t understand galactic scale magnetic pressures. Must have a mighty grip on the solar system that not even an inflow can shift. lol
@Carla
your questions are way beyond me
but if I were you I would stick with what I would be able to verify for myself:
I find: minima are dropping at a rate as shown here
although I have a reasonable idea about average T on earth, I cannot find a very high correlation, meaning I don’t know exactly what earth (inside& outside) is doing itself…
I do know that maxima are dropping as well..
NO SUNSPOTS: Sunspots vanished 4 days ago, and they still haven’t come back. As a result, the sun’s X-ray output is flatlining. There hasn’t been even a tiny solar flare since last week. Quiet conditions are likely to continue as long as the face of the sun remains blank.
http://www.spaceweather.com/images2016/07jun16/hmi200.gif
http://www.spaceweather.com/
2014 was like a dead end stop.
http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Polar-Fields-1966-now.png
the dynamo inside the sun (that produces the solar magnetic fields) must now start up again turning the other way…
That is going to take a while? So we sit with the quiet sun for some time.
If that dead end stop had not come we would all be dead… freezing or cooking to death.
No wonder the Egyptians thought the sun was God.
We know better. But it truly remains a very amazing instrument in God’s hand.
I wonder when NASA will start Photoshopping a few spots on the image to get it back to looking more “normal”?
No need to get too concerned, there is a tiny one at 2pm direction
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/img3.htm
one or two of the old ones surviving will soon reappear.
Still nothing at:
http://spaceweather.com/
They just have to use the rubber stamp tool from older images.
/scrc
Hold the phone…we have a spot!
http://www.solarham.net/regions/map.htm
@vukcevic
it seems from your comments that we are agreed now that it is the planetary movements that change the direction of warming and cooling, which
in the end
Is maintaining a balance to ensure life is able to carry on earth…
Richard says
If one does not understand the causes of past climate change, then a prediction of the future climate is just a wild guess.
henry says
the results are there
http://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/17/585/2010/npg-17-585-2010.html