Guest essay by David Archibald
The latest image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows our sun as a blank canvas. No sunspots. Solar cycle 24 activity continues to be lowest in nearly 200 years
According to NASA’s Spaceweather.com:
Sunspot number: 0
Updated 30 Jun 2016
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 7 days
2016 total: 11 days (6%)
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%)
The last time sunspots vanished for a whole week was in Dec. 2010–a time when the sun was bouncing back from a long Solar Minimum. In this case, the 7 week interregnum is a sign that a new Solar Minimum is coming.
The sunspot cycle is like a pendulum, swinging back and forth every 11-years or so between times of high and low sunspot number. The next low is expected in 2019-2020. Between now and then sunspots will become increasingly rare with stretches of days, then weeks, then months of “billiard-ball suns.”
The F10.7 flux has been in a disciplined downtrend for nigh on 18 months now. It is now only nine units above the immutable floor of activity of 64:
Figure 1: F10.7 flux 2014 – 2016
We have F10.7 data from 1948. Plotting up the whole solar cycles since then, Solar Cycle 24 has been following Solar Cycle 22:
Figure 2: F10.7 flux of Solar Cycle 24 and Solar Cycle 22
In Figure 2 above, Solar Cycle 24 (red line) has been following the activity of Solar Cycle 22 (black line) for the last two years. If it keeps following Solar Cycle 22’s activity, that will make it a weak, short cycle. Strong cycles such as Solar Cycle 22 are generally shorter than average and weak cycles are generally longer. The other solar cycles are shown as dotted lines.
The solar polar field strength divergence continues to build and is unprecedented in the record:
Figure 3: Solar Polar Magnetic Field Strength by Hemisphere
Finally, Figure 4 following shows that the peak of the F10.7 flux in Solar Cycle 24 was in February 2014. The Oulu neutron count duly turned up a year later (inverted in Figure 4) in March 2015.
Figure 4: F10.7 Flux and Inverted Oulu Neutron Count 1964 – 2016
What is interesting from Figure 4 is that there has been a consistent increase in the neutron count relative to F10.7 flux over Solar Cycle 24 relative to the relationship in the previous four cycles.
David Archibald is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery).
Clyde Spencer June 30, 2016 at 12:50 pm
I have no idea, Clyde, but if you will post a link to the dataset that you were analyzing, I’m happy to take a look at it.
Regards,
w.
I used two different sets of BEST land surface temperatures. If you need more specific information, I’ll have to dig into my files because I haven’t done anything with it for several months. I have corresponded with David Evans and he agreed that the 11 and 22-year periodicities are present, with large Fourier coefficients. Only periods with much longer times have larger coefficients.
Thanks, Clyde. I just took a look at the BEST global land temperatures Jan 1750 – May 2016. The full dataset has no significant cycle at 11 years. It does have a pretty large cycle at 24 years … but the solar data doesn’t contain such any such cycle.
In addition, when we split the dataset into two halves in order to see whether the 24-year signal persists through the two halves, it gets odder. The last half of the data has a signal at 25 years … but in the first half of the data, the signal cycle is much shorter, only 20 years.
All of which is clear evidence that there isn’t any solar signal of any significant strength in the BEST data. If there were we’d see persistent signals at ~ 11 years, and MAYBE at 22 years … but we find nothing like that at all. Instead, we’re finding a signal at 20 and 25 years, and nothing at all at 11 years. In fact, it was this lack of an 11-year signal that led David Evans to postulate his curious “solar notch” theory of climate.
Finally, although David Evans is a good guy, his advice on matters mathematical and solar is … well … let me just say you might want to get a second opinion. The previous discussion of Evans’ “solar notch” model spanned three threads, First, Second, and Third. Read all the threads through including the comments and you’ll get a sense of arguments as well as of David’s hypothesis.
w.
At least the average of 20 and 25 gives you 22.5 which brings you close to the Hale cycle?
Willis,
Doing a 1024-sample DFT on the BEST high, land-temperature monthly averages from 1929 through 2014, the third highest coefficient is for 21.3 years, and the fourth highest is for 28.4 years per cycle. There is a significant spike at 10.7 years with a slightly smaller spike at 12.2 years per cycle.
Doing the same for the BEST low, land-temperature monthly averages similarly produces the third highest coefficient at 21.3 years with the fourth highest at 28.4 years per cycle. Again, there is a spike at 10.7 years, and a slightly lower spike at 12.2 years.
Doing a 2048-sample DFT on the BEST average, land-temperature monthly averages from 1843 through 2013 Produced a periodogram with the 6th highest spike at 21.3 years, comparable in height to the spike at 1.0 year per cycle. There is, again, a spike at 28.4 years that is the 7th highest of the long-period cycles. There is also a subdued spike at 24.4 years. The spike at 10.7 years is much lower than in the previous DFTsl
No zero padding was used in any of the decompositions, which is why the start and end dates vary in the DFTs.
I suppose it could be entirely coincidence that there are periodicities near the nominal sunspot cycle values. On the other hand, the spikes in the vicinity of 11/22 years could be reflecting the variations between cycles as recorded by temperatures, rather than the somewhat subjective definitions of the length of asymmetrical cycles used by solar observers. In any event, if we aren’t seeing sunspot influence at periods of approximately 20 to 28 years, the question of what IS responsible begs to be answered.
@clyde spencer
perhaps I should also explain to you that the main solar cycles that we are certain of
11 year (Schwabe)
22 year (Hale or Hale- Nicholson)
87 year (Gleisberg}
210 year (de Vries)
these cycles can be proven from various records
(ask me if you don’t know)
HenryP,
I was unaware of the Gleisberg solar cycle. I have a strong period of a little over 85 years on all periodgrams. Since this is a DFT instead of an FFT, the periods are going to be affected by the number of discreet samples and the length of time. So, 85 years may be close enough to 87 for government work.
http://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/17/585/2010/npg-17-585-2010.html
the persistence of the gleissberg is unmistakable
http://iie.fing.edu.uy/simsee/biblioteca/CICLO_SOLAR_PeristykhDamon03-Gleissbergin14C.pdf
note the tables II and III
http://virtualacademia.com/pdf/cli267_293.pdf
I am guessing the average is about 86.5?
86.5 average?
tables II and III
http://virtualacademia.com/pdf/cli267_293.pdf
HenryP,
It looks like it is worth my time to read your link more carefully later this evening. As a passing remark, The author characterizes a typical sunspot cycle as being between 10 and 11 years. I’d say that my observed spikes at 10.66 years seem to fit that. Doubling that to 21.32 seems a good match for the the magnetic cycle, despite not being ‘exactly’ 22 years. More importantly, the Fourier coefficients for these periods are quite strong, generally well above what appears to be largely noise. I’m at a loss as to why Willis and others report they can’t find the solar periods in the temperature data.
HenryP and others,
Judith Curry has an interesting article about long-term variations in solar activity that fits in with the discussions here: https://judithcurry.com/2016/06/27/are-we-headed-for-a-new-solar-minimum/#more-21782
Incidentally, the author formally cites a sunspot cycle as being 10.5 years. My 10.7-year cycle from DFT analysis of BEST temperature data is looking even better.
Clyde, when you use a discrete fourier transform (DFT) on a 1024-month sample, the sample is decomposed into underlying sine waves with the following periods, in years:
> matrix( 1024 / (12 * c(1:10)) , ncol=1) [,1] [1,] 85.3 [2,] 42.7 [3,] 28.4 [4,] 21.3 [5,] 17.1 [6,] 14.2 [7,] 12.2 [8,] 10.7 [9,] 9.5 [10,] 8.5And indeed, these are the frequencies that you say in your comment that you found , viz (emphasis mine):
However, note that the length of these periods you’ve found (e.g. 28.4 years, 21.3 years, etc.) is solely the result of the length of your sample. It has nothing to do with whatever frequencies might actually be present in the signal you are analyzing. You will find those same frequencies in a DFT analysis of ANY 1024-month signal.
To avoid this problem, you can zero-pad the data. I’m not fond of this method, however. Instead, I use a Fourier analysis method I developed myself that I called the Slow Fourier Transform (SFT), only to find out that it was first developed in the 1970s and is called the Date-Compensated Discrete Fourier Transform, or DCDFT (Ferraz-Mello, S. 1981, Astron. J., 86, 619). (h/t to tamino for pointing out the previous art.) I love it when that happens, when something I developed myself was actually discovered previously by another researcher. It proves I’m on the right track, that I actually understand the subject. But I digress …
The Slow Fourier Transform has some big advantages over DFT. It is linear in period rather than in frequency, and more importantly, it is tolerant of missing data.
Using the Slow Fourier Transform allows me to use the monthly data and analyze periods of all lengths, month by month. This is called a “periodogram”. When I do that, I don’t find anything significant in the Berkeley Earth data at either the ~11 or the ~22-year period lengths.
Best regards,
w.
Willis,
Thank you for the more detailed explanation of what you have done. But, I get similar results with a 2048-sample decomposition. I’m not an expert in FFTs, but I think that I see some issues with your explanation. If I were to do an analysis of just any 1024 samples, then I would expect to get 512 unique cycles that had no basis in time. But, when I then take into account the number of years that those samples span, that is when the arbitrary cycles get converted to a period in years. So, I accept that because the sampling is discreet, there may be some rounding that gives results that are slightly different from a continuous FFT result. That is why I have made reference to adjacent spikes on the time line. Incidentally, I see a strong spike at 1.00 year per cycle that I interpret as being annual variations in temperature. I would not expect to see that 1.00-year spike if there was no relation to actual time.
If I remember correctly, in my exchange with David Evans, he finds similar periods and observes that the nominal 22-year period is much stronger than the 11-year. Incidentally, he has similarly developed code to do a real FFT that is slow, like yours. You have already cast aspersions on Evans’ competence and I don’t think it would serve you or your claims well to repeat them. I think that the burden of proof is on you to prove that you haven’t made a mistake. What kind of periods are you finding?
I’m dubious of any FFT being tolerant of missing data. The implication is that if there is missing data then a contribution to reconstruct that data will also be missing or at least have the wrong coefficients. Do your FFT, delete some data, and then re-do the FFT. I would expect you will find differences. The differences might depend on just what data is missing.
I have an inherent distrust of zero padding, which is why I have not explored it.
I think that this issue is too important to dismiss lightly. When I get some free time, I’ll revisit the work that I did several months ago.
Clyde and Henry, I discuss the Slow Fourier Transform here.
w.
hi Willis
like I have said before, it is clear to me that the last Gleissberg was from ca. 1927 to 2014.
Hale and Nicholson never believed in looking at the Schwabe cycle, they always looked at the Hale cycle when the sun has run the whole plus and minus cycle as explained before.. I agree with them.
For example, here is a graph on rainfall patterns in South Africa from a station with good rainfall data going back to before 1927
You see the chaos of rainfall in the first graph but the trend line over the last Gleissberg cycle is exactly zero! If you group the data according to Hale, you notice the emergence of the pendulum. The weather (rainfall) is exactly constant over a period of 87 years. (4 Hale cycles) and it is possible for me to predict the average rainfall for the next Hale cycle.
I have repeated this test with rainfall of a good station in the UK and NZ and found the same results. In the case of Wellington, the pendulum was just up side down, a parabola rather than a hyperbola.
The weather (rainfall) is constant if you look at it in periods of 4 Hale cycles……
.
Clyde Spencer July 2, 2016 at 3:24 pm Edit
Thanks, Clyde. However, I fear I haven’t made my point clear. The periods that you find are uniquely determined by the series x, x/2, x/3, x/4 and so on, where “x” is the length of the dataset in years.
And since 2048 is two times the previous number of months (1024), it will contain the following frequencies.
> round(matrix(2048 /(12* c(1:18)),ncol=1),1) [,1] [1,] 170.7 [2,] 85.3 [3,] 56.9 [4,] 42.7 [5,] 34.1 [6,] 28.4 [7,] 24.4 [8,] 21.3 [9,] 19.0 [10,] 17.1 [11,] 15.5 [12,] 14.2 [13,] 13.1 [14,] 12.2 [15,] 11.4 [16,] 10.7 [17,] 10.0 [18,] 9.5As you can see, this contains all of the frequencies that you found in your 1024-month analyses, plus intermediate points.
You go on to say:
I did not say that there was “some rounding”. I said that the periods (e.g. 28.4 years, 21.3 years) are uniquely fixed by the length of the data. So even if the underlying signal is 63 years exactly with nothing else going on, a 1024 or 2048 month DFT will NEVER have a peak at 63 years. It is an inherent problem with the DFT. It decomposes a series into the addition of specific sine waves of specific sizes … but that does NOT mean that such sine waves at those frequencies are physically present. Those frequencies are FIXED by the length of the dataset.
I have not said there is “no relation to actual time”. A signal at any frequency gets aliased to the nearest intervals. Suppose there’s a signal at 26 years. Since with 1024 data points the decomposition gives periods of 28.4 year and 21.3 years, those two will get the majority of the power that exists in the 26 year signal.
As to why there is a strong 1-year cycle, it’s because down at the short-period end the intervals are very narrow, e.g.
So unlike the situation where 26 gets aliased as 21.3 and 28.4, down near 1 year there is an interval very near to exactly one year.
Here are the periodogramss for the sunspots:
Note that the peak size of the ~ 11-year-period waves is around 30% of the total signal size for the full dataset. Note also that in the full dataset (red line) we can see more detail, in that over the full period there’s been a combination of ten and eleven year signals.
And here are the corresponding periodograms for the Berkeley Earth mean temperature:
The first thing to note is that the scale on the vertical axis is much different from the sunspot periodogram. As you note, in the full dataset there is no significant signal at all at 11 years (~ 1%). David Evans ascribes this lack of an 11-year signal to a natural “Notch Filter” that cuts out the 11-year signal. You’re free to believe him.
As to the ~ 22-year signal, neither the halves nor the full dataset have a peak at 22 years. Using the full dataset, there is a peak at ~24 years which is about 3% of the signal. Even if this 24-year peak persists, it is trivially small.
Now, the error increases as the length of the period goes up (right side of the graph). On that right side of the graph, we’re estimating periods that are up to a quarter of the length of the dataset. So although there is a small 24-25 year cycle in the full dataset, I wouldn’t trust that result a whole lot.
You are correct that the differences do depend on what data is missing, and I have done that very “knockout” exercise on both observational and synthetic datasets. The algorithm is indeed surprisingly robust, particularly if the knockouts are random.
This is because of the brute-force method I used. I simply do a “best-fit” of a sine wave of each frequency to the dataset. Put them together and voilá! Periodogram. And that method is resistant to missing data.
Yeah, I’m not all that fond of it either, which was one of the things that impelled me to develop an improved method.
Thanks,
w.
The Sun is not quite blank, there is a developing region in the south-eastern hemisphere [and, of course, there is the backside too with spots]:
http://www.leif.org/research/2016-07-01-HMI.png
Leave it to Lief to upset the apple cart 🙂
Sorry, I meant “Leif”.
“I” before “E” except when spelling Leif.
Yes – that’s what happens when someone who truly is an expert in the science turns up here.
He is one of the very few who do.
Only Leif did not upset any carts, and nothing happened, except some nauseous fawning.
So, some small sunspot is developing on the almost spotless side of the Sun. So what, spaniels?
Not just spots, but CMEs too. CACTus is still seeing activity on the far side, like this one today-
http://www.sidc.be/cactus/out/CME0017/CME.mp4
Thanks, WordPress, for that botched embedded video…
A large CH will develop to its west during the next 28 days.
Global oceans make fine batteries. Trouble is, research came to a screeching halt with regard to just how long oceans hold onto heat, having been put on the shelf to make room for scary human caused boiling cauldrons of oceans. This link does a pretty good job of highlighting what was possible before the train left the tracts. The global oceans as storage batteries:
“Simpson (4) conducted the first study of Earth’s heat balance which concluded that the Earth system is not in local radiative balance, and therefore transport of heat from the tropics to the poles is required for the Earth system to be in global radiative balance. Identifying the mechanisms by which heat is transported from the tropics to the poles is one of the central problems of climate research. In addition, Rossby (5) drew attention to the fact that because of its large specific heat capacity and mass, the world ocean could store large amounts of heat and remove this heat from direct contact with the atmosphere for long periods of time.”
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/noaa_documents/NESDIS/NODC/journal_articles/science_2000_warming-world-ocean.pdf
Yes, I think we see a short term battery effect in the ENSO patterns. The challenge is to find the longer term storage mechanisms. Human enlightenment is too recent to see chronic patterns on the millenial scale.
The oceans do not have time to equilibrate to interglacial temperatures. They are much closer to glacial temperatures even now. Average ocean temperature is about 3.9°C. There is no enough warming in an interglacial to seriously affect that. Only when the planet starts getting out of the Quaternary Ice Age will the oceans start to rise their average temperature significantly.
“Average ocean temperature is about 3.9C.” I did not realize that the average temperature was so cold. Where do you find data like this. I am interested because of the characteristics of salt, sodium chloride. Sodium chloride is a hydrate that takes approximate 4 kilojoules per mole from water when it is dissolved. This energy must be removed from the hydrate before water can freeze and is the reason salt water has a lower freezing point. When water reaches near 4C, the energy of hydration starts to be removed and makes it require additional energy be removed to continue to lower the temperate. This requirement for increased energy removal makes it harder for the temperature to get colder.
It is pretty much everywhere:
Wikipedia: Below the thermocline, water is very cold, ranging from −1 °C to 3 °C. Because this deep and cold layer contains the bulk of ocean water, the average temperature of the world ocean is 3.9 °C
Temperature of the Ocean: The Physics Factbook: The average temperature of the ocean is 3.9 °C (39 F).
Windows to the Universe: Temperature of Ocean Water: 90 % of the total volume of ocean is found below the thermocline in the deep ocean. The deep ocean is not well mixed. The deep ocean is made up of horizontal layers of equal density. Much of this deep ocean water is between 0-3 degrees Celsius (32-37.5 degrees Fahrenheit)! It’s really, really cold down there!
Sally: If anyone had told me I’d be waiting in a pumpkin patch on Halloween night, I’d have said they were crazy.
Linus: Just think, Sally, when the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch, we’ll be there to see him. What’s that? Was that… I hear the Great Pumpkin! There he is! There he is!
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r103/HocusLocus_photos/GreatPumpkin.gif
Too funny 🙂
Love it! Here’s a Charlie Brown sun to go with that…
This has been all over the Australian MSM too. In articles posted at News.com.au and SMH.com.au the claim is this could be the start of another mini-ice age (What about the one we are in right now?). And here is me thinking the science was settled, climate is driven by ~3% of ~400ppm/v CO2.
Now there was me wanting to make a serious comment!
I don’t get the solar/non solar divide! WattsUpWith y’all?
Pretty much all the energy we know about comes from the sun, but why anyone would expect to see air temperature correlate with short-term TSI is beyond me. Simple correlation is not the way the climate system works. It’s not in equilibrium (anywhere, anytime – no matter how much steady-staters might wish it to be so) and so any quantity we ever measure is in a state of flux. So do we make fast measurements? No, we resort to ever longer averages to try and get rid of the ‘noise’. But the noise is actually the signal. The planet is integrating everything involving energy over every millimeter of it’s spherical surface and oceans and atmosphere every millisecond of every day.
But to go to the other extreme and think TSI has no effect on temperatures seems even more bizarre. It seems to me that the sun is rather like a huge bonfire and the Earth is happily warming itself by it. The bonfire flickers away doing it’s very complex and very beautiful thing, but whether Earth gets hotter or colder depends on how long since a log was last chucked onto the fire (lets not worry about ‘who’ or ‘what’ did that, it’s an analogy folks) and whether you are putting clothes on or taking them off (ocean currents). A brief consideration of the energy buffers, or reservoirs, as I think Pamela was mentioning, means you’d expect NOT to see any correlation between air temps and long term TSI changes because of the immense lags you’d expect from geological processes and ocean circulation
Classic reductionism isn’t going to solve this – at least not in the 40 odd years left of my lifetime.
if you do it right, you will get the right results….
e.g.
looking at 44 years of minimum temperatures at 54 stations, balanced by latitude, – not caring about longitude as long as we look at the rate of change in K/annum –
I obtained the following results:
seeing that AGW is supposed to affect minimum temepratures, I conclude:
there is no discernible man made global warming.
Note that he drop in minima corresponds exactly with the drop in the strengths of the solar polar magnetic fields.
henryp,
Your graph doesn’t look anything like the BEST minimum temperature data I plotted and posted here several months ago. Are you sure that 27 stations was enough to avoid bias from local variations?
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Regional/TMIN/Figures/northern-hemisphere-TMIN-Trend.pdf
You did not do it right!
Dear Youngster,
You said, “…but why anyone would expect to see air temperature correlate with short-term TSI is beyond me.”
In the early ’90s some friends and I flew down to La Paz (Baja) to observe a long, total solar eclipse. During the totality, the air temperature dropped about 1° F per minute. I’d call that an excellent correlation between short-term TSI and air temperature. Of course, one can observe a similar effect when a puffy cumulus floats overhead in the Summer in an otherwise clear blue sky.
Chuck orbital variation into that mix as well since that’s probably another significant one. Large volcanoes too…etc…there’s a post on here somewhere of all the drivers and how big they might be…
http://www.physics.nus.edu.sg/~crisp/cd2001/tutorial/atmos.gif
Sunspot counting, GSN, its all irrelevant.
F10.7 is the true measure of modulations (over centuries) to our climate.
TSI is the true measure of modulation (over multi-millenia, including orbital effects aka Malinkovitch).
Stop wasting time on counting pimples.
EUV (with the F10.7 proxy) is where it is for (answers in) changing climate in the Holocene.
F10.7 has been well below 100 for over a full solar rotation. La Nina is developing. She asks for warming UV with her clear tropical skies. Sol (unlike 99-01) takes a pass. La Nina 16-18 will be step-down in GMST.
I apologize for not having read every comment here but it seems to me that it would be easy enough for someone who is knowledgeable to check the climate models and see if this seemingly well understood phenomenon is included in the model.
If it is, and the temperature anomaly goes down while the prediction goes up then it would be another indication that the models are flawed. If the anomaly goes up, and the model predicts that, then it would support the model…right?
Let’s say the sun spot activity is quieter and the minimum goes on longer than the model anticipates but the temperature anomaly rises. That would mean that the Earth is warming enough to overpower the cooling effects of the Sun inactivity. That being the case, the models might be predicting something useful.
After all, the models are the sum total of the “evidence” for AGW.
The temperatures will not be going up as we head into the future.
Right, Proud Skeptic. The next decade or two are crucial for the two competing explanations for global warming. The increase in CO2 demands an acceleration of the 21st century warming trend, while the quieter sun and decreasing AMO require that the rate of warming does not accelerate. Natural versus man-made.
Then I should assume that the models generally have at least attempted to include the coming downturn in sunspot activity.
If the models predict “up” and the temperature goes up then it still resolves nothing but gives the models more credence. If the models predict “down” (which I understand they don’t) and the temperatures go down then the same is true. If the models predict “up” and we get a leveling out or a drop in temperature then it is bad news for the models. If they predict “down” and the temperature goes up then they will be wrong but will still be able to spin it effectively.
If the models have failed to predict the decrease in sunspot activity or predict it incorrectly then the models need to be adjusted to reflect reality. That could result in a whole new effort to rejigger them to make them look credible.
Pretty sad stuff. The timeframe for this kind of science goes well beyond years or decades. Talking about what happens from year to year is a waste of time.
It doesn’t matter if the models include or not a decrease in solar activity, because they rely only on total irradiation changes that are very small, so the effect in the models is very small, about 0.1°C. It gets completely swamped by CO2 forcing. If temperatures don’t go up they’ll have to change the current assumptions about forcings and climate sensitivity. The main consequence would be that global warming would not be as dangerous as purported, No way about it.
“I apologize for not having read every comment here but it seems to me that it would be easy enough for someone who is knowledgeable to check the climate models and see if this seemingly well understood phenomenon is included in the model.”
the models are not interested in predicting the temperature over short time scales.
The way solar forcing is handled is basically two approaches.
1. Pick a nomimal TSI and use that for the future
2. modulate TSI in a simple 11 year cycle
You can also do a what if? LIA in the future… answer the planet still warms
“After all, the models are the sum total of the “evidence” for AGW.”
err No.
the models are not evidence for AGW.
the evidence for AGW is physics we have known for over 100 years.
“the evidence for AGW is physics we have known for over 100 years.”
No it isn’t .
If it is , show us the equations and experiments demonstrating them .
What is shown and known is that the equilibrium temperature of a radiantly heated body is a function of the correlation between the spectrum of the body and its radiant sources – and this applies to gases just as to any other materials . In a computable APL notation this equilibrium can be expressed as
T:dot[ sourceSpectrum ; objSpectrum ] = dot[ Planck[ T ] ; objSpectrum ]where
dot[ ; ]is simply the ubiquitous sum over products of corresponding , in this case , frequencies .This is the equation which produces the 255K value which is as magically inviolable as the 97% meme when a step function spectrum of 0.7 over the peak of the solar spectrum , and a 1.0 over the longer wavelengths is plugged in for the object spectrum . This is the relationship which has been understood , more or less for over a century but is all too poorly taught today . It should be taught and demonstrated even at a highschool physics level and should be an absolute required fundamental for anybody claiming an undergraduate degree in “climate science” .
It provides no mechanism explaining why the bottoms of atmospheres are hotter than their tops , 3% in the case of the Earth , 125% in the case of Venus . And it is that falsehood promulgated by James Hansen in particular upon which this hysteria is based . If you have equations which explain that , or experimental demonstration of the phenomenon , PLEASE present them .
I’m an APL programmer . ( See my remote demo last Saturday at Silicon Valley Forth Interest Group Hangout , https://youtu.be/Mi_xfD9cURI?t=1h37m24s ) I understand things one equation at a time . And I’m interested in the next equation to implement which explains that excess 3% for Earth and 125% for Venus before even attempting to get into the details of the 0.3% variations we have recorded . One takeaway for me from this discussion of sunspot cycles , fascinating tho it is , is that they make damn little difference in solar output — to little to explain even that 0.3% .
So , if you claim that the physics has been known for more than a century , please show us your calculations deriving the 400K excess of Venus’s surface temperature over the 335K gray body temperature in its orbit .
I agree with Bob! Tyndall and Arrhenius looked at closed box experiments but in practice this is not at all what is happening. For example, to detect the presence of CO2 on other planets, they look at the deflection of sunlight in a certain UV range, meaning that this light is being bounced off …..i.e. cooling.
What I have been asking since: where is the balance sheet, showing how much cooling and how much warming is caused by each green house gas?
As it happens the SIDC (SILSO) has just published the June sunspot number, which in the old Wolf numbers is about 14.6, while the Svalgaard number is quoted as 20.9
As it can be seen from the graph below
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN0616.gif
SC24 is nearly done, and contrary to some claims (‘weak cycles tend to be long ones’ to which I don’t subscribe) the SC24 may be a weak and a short cycle.
The weak solar activity’s imperative: Cool summers in the N. Hemisphere in the years to come.
Yes, thank you. The cool summers in the NH multiplied by X number of years represents the lack of cognition in the models.
This looks a lot like the AMO but with more turning points.
Who cares about Sunspots, other than a Solar activity gauge? For actual energy reaching the surface of the Earth, use the 10.7 cm Flux!
By the way, it is well documented that the average Earth temperature difference between the Solar Peak and the Solar Minimum is about -0.1C.
My model shows Earth average temperature changing at (-0.1C)/(2.5syears) as long as the Flux is consistently less than 80sfu for the 2.5 year period. {Need to remove the temporary effects of El Nino or La Nina}.
That’s the ticket. Get rid of confounding factors using filters and whatnot to rework your data. Rinse. Repeat.
The advantage is the 10.7cm Flux is a proxy for the energy actually reaching the Earth’s surface.
Ask Dr. Isvalgaard, that where I got it from.
To be precise: F10.7 is a proxy for the magnetic field of the sun [see e.g. http://hmi.stanford.edu/hminuggets/?p=1510 ], that in turn determines the [very small] variation of the total energy output of the Sun.
I never used Sunspots. I always used the Flux. But, your brilliant sarcasm is appreciated. I never used a filter. I used standard control systems model for incoming energy and conversion to heat. What do you use? Shampoo for your Rinse, Repeat??
jlurtz July 1, 2016 at 6:10 am
I don’t understand this claim at all. The correlation between monthly sunspots and monthly 10.7 cm radio flux is an amazing 0.98, meaning they are moving almost exactly in lockstep. And given that we have sunspot records much further back than 10.7 flux records, just what is the advantage of using the flux data?
As far as I know, a global temperature change related to sunspots is not “well documented”. It is more accurately described as “often claimed but NEVER documented” …
However, a link to your “documentation” would settle the question easily, so just where is it “well documented”?
w.
There is a reason why there are piles and piles of incorrect theories in modern science. Observations which the current theories cannot explain are ignored, not included in text books, not summarized.
There must be a cause, a physical explanation for all observational paradoxes and anomalies.
In the case of the sun, there has been an astonishing gradual change in the appearance, the size and lifetime of the sunspots groups. What change in the sun to cause that observational change?
In the last month, sunspots have abruptly disappeared, three years before the solar minimum. Why?
What physically changed in the sun, to cause the solar sunspot mechanism to change from the production of large, long lasting sunspot groups, to the production of tiny, tiny, tiny sunspot groups that disappear in a few days, and now to a spotless sun.
As I have stated previously, the solar cycle has been interrupted, which is different than a slowdown in the solar cycle. There will be no solar cycle 25.
We are going to have a front row seat to observe how an interruption to the solar cycle causes a Heinrich event. There are piles and piles of astronomical and solar system observations that support the assertion that the sun is significantly different than the standard solar model.
I will explain in detail what is happening to the sun and how the sun is different than the standard model when there is the start of in your face planetary cooling. We live in surreal times.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/solanki2004/solanki2004.html
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003GL017115.shtml
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
Exactly William.
And the current solar data or I should say the solar data post 2005 supports what you have stated.
Dansgaard-Oeschger events are not solar in origin. There have been good advances in the understanding of D-O events these last years. You should keep current with the bibliography.
As Heinrich events are related to D-O events, they are not either solar in origin. And both D-O and Heinrich events are features of glacial periods. Neither has been described during an interglacial. The chances of having a Heinrich event during an interglacial are probably nil.
There is nothing unusual with the Sun. Solanki was wrong. That the Sun goes spotless is pretty common. As this cycle is the less active since we have modern instruments, we really don’t know how it should behave, but as far as we can tell everything looks as normal as around 1900.
I have repeatedly pointed out to William that he is wrong on several points, but nothing can shake the outwards confidence of a true charlatan who asserts that he knows everything. As far as we know, the sun is behaving [as you say] just as it did a century ago. The dynamo is not ‘interrupted’. The Standard Model is very successful in explaining what we observe, etc, etc.
@leif
could you perhaps help me?
I wonder why this graph showing the double polar exchange (around 2014) is not being updated/
clearly you can see that the average solar polar strengths are declining, like parabolic (south) and hyperbolic (north)
coming to some dead end stop in 2014…..
to be mathematically correct this statement
“clearly you can see that the average solar polar strengths are declining, like parabolic (south) and hyperbolic (north)”
should read
clearly you can see that the average solar polar strengths are [declining], like parabolic (south) and hyperbolic (north)
if you know what I mean
Partly because we have newer and better data, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Comparing-HMI-WSO-Polar-Fields.pdf
which may indicate that cycle 25 will not b e weaker than SC24, and very likely a bit stronger.
as we reached dead end stop in 2014 (end of Gleissberg cycle)
it seems obvious to me that indeed 25 will be stronger than 24
unfortunately the global cooling caused by the spotless sun will only hit us just about now and in the coming few decades….
We cannot pinpoint the ‘end of the about 100-year Gleissberg cycle to any precise year [“end of 2014”].
henry says
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/30/the-sun-is-as-blank-as-a-billiard-ball-solar-activity-dwindling-to-lows-not-seen-in-200-years/#comment-2250109
I have to correct myself again
having identified 2014 as the turning point for the Gleissberg, at the top of cycle 24, it stands to reason that if I apply the mirror rule, cycle 25 will be a bit stronger than cycle 24. So, my prediction is that cycle 25 will be similar to cycle 23.
@Clyde Spencer
I used 54 stations
balanced on latitude (close to zero)
and we look at the change in K/annum
like when I started here looking at temperatures in southern Africa
i.e. minima never increased here a bit meaning there is no man made global warming
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Regional/TMIN/Figures/africa-TMIN-Trend.pdf
sorry
I don’t trust Berkeley and I don’t trust any African measurements before 1975….
never mind that, I don’t trust ANY T measurements before 1950 as they did not start the re-calibrating of thermometers at regular intervals until the 1950s
show me a re- calibration certificate of a thermometer before 1948?
leif says
We cannot pinpoint the ‘end of the about 100-year Gleissberg cycle to any precise year [“end of 2014”].
henry says
if you had followed the discussion you would have known that gleissberg is about 86.5 years, on average,
and exactly half of the cycle is right there in front of you, i.e. the scissors graph….
1971/2 through to 2014
so, to correct myself on a previous statement, the next 43 years will be the exact mirror of the previous 43 years, meaning cycle 25 will be equal to 24…..
more spotless sun coming up
sorry to disappoint you
global cooling is coming
there is no other interpretation of the results
The Gleissberg cycle [if even a real cycle] has been about 100 years for three or four centuries, as you can see by eye right here:
http://www.sidc.be/images/wolfaml.png
aagh please
sunspots?
depending on the strength of eye sight and magnification
back to 1700
you have to be kidding
No kidding.
Human eye sight has not changed since antiquity and sunspots even today are [on purpose] counted with small telescopes as they were in the past. The sunspot record is a very good indicator of solar activity and also matches the cosmic ray record.
I remember they argued about how it should be done back in the 1920s
so I donot trust much from before that time.
Anyway, as shown before, the half Gleissberg runs from 1971 through to 2014, you can see the double pole switch both in 1971 and 2014 (from the solar polar magnetic field strengths’ data)
This means that the Cycle must have started around 1927.
Indeed, we do find a zero trend line if we look at SSN from 1927-2015
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1971/to:2015/offset:10/trend/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1927/to:2015/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1927/to:1971/trend/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1927/to:2015/trend
To illustrate that SSN follows the [natural] parabola, of the Gleissberg, I showed the linear trendlines
[I don’t think wft allows for approximation with quadratic functions like excel.]
I notice that in the 1940s, 50s and 60s there were increasing sunspot (high) numbers. Wasn’t this actually a global cooling period? I think Willis is right. The sunspot data doesn’t seem to support/link to global temperatures.
I’d said to Bob:
In response, I get the following:
Bob Weber June 30, 2016 at 1:40 pm Edit
Say what? You can’t find a single quote of mine to support your position, so you claim I “implicitly support” something? Just because you read something into my words does not make it something I implicitly support. Or to put it more clearly, the fact that you infer something is not evidence that I implied it.
And what is the “something” you think I “implicitly support”? Why, it’s the idea that there should be an “exact 11-year match in temps to TSI”.
Nope. Never said that, far as I know, and I never implied it. Which is why you are short of quotes.
However, I would point out that that is exactly the claim made by dozens and dozens of papers out there, that just such a match exists between TSI and temperature (or between TSI and some other variable).
But when I’ve investigated those claims, when I’ve gone to look for that putative match, I’ve not been able to find it.
Regards,
w.
h/t Leif Svalgaard
for patience and sovereignty.
Best regards – Hans
Some people claim it is only TSI that matters. Every few minutes there is a sun-earth’s poles magnetic link. Jupiter is five times further than the earth, so the link should be at least 25 (5^2, or even 125 = 5^3) times weaker than the one affecting the earth, so you might think the effect on the gas giant might be negligible. But according to the latest images from the NASA that may not be the case.
https://youtu.be/dplSgv6qlMk
more visuals here
https://youtu.be/3O8ds7_9n_o
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Actually, the magnetic field does not fall of as the square [or cube] of the distance because the rotation of the sun winds up the field, so that a large distance the field is no longer radial but azimuthal and thus falls of linearly with distance. Because Jupiter is so large, it intercepts two orders of magnitude of the solar wind, compensating for the weaker field. The magnetic flux intercepted is thus considerably more than that intercepted by the Earth.
come on doc let’s have some fun
“The main driver of all weather and climate, the entity which occupies 99.86% of all of the mass in our solar system, the great ball of fire in the sky has gone quiet again during what is likely to be the weakest sunspot cycle in more than a century.
The sun’s X-ray output has flatlined in recent days and NOAA forecasters estimate a scant 1% chance of strong flares in the next 48 hours.
Not since cycle 14 peaked in February 1906 has there been a solar cycle with fewer sunspots. We are currently more than seven years into Solar Cycle 24 and the current nearly blank sun may signal the end of the solar maximum phase.”
https://youtu.be/RQEvCTgirH0
So what? All this was predicted long ago. Unfortunately the climate system seems not to have gotten the memo as temperatures during this weak cycle have been among the highest measured.
The next cycle can already be predicted to be a bit higher than SC24 http://www.leif.org/research/Comparing-HMI-WSO-Polar-Fields.pdf and the polar fields are still growing [or at least not flattened out]
lsvalgaard July 2, 2016 at 9:48 am
“So what? …..as temperatures during this weak cycle have been among the highest measured.”
Only in the minds of those who believe in the mal-constructed so called global temperature.
In the real world where the data is even modestly scrutinised it is not so, fall in temperatures has followed the fall in the solar activity with about five years delay.
As you can see here the CET average (the real not some kind of imaginary temperature) has been declining pretty sharp since 2005.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-latest.gif
The sharpest short term drop in temperatures since 1875 !
Enough said!
http://www.leif.org/research/Global-Temps-Sat.png
I often wonder how some people can post obvious falsehoods and halftruths like you do here.
The CET temperature has gone up since 2005:
http://www.leif.org/research/CET-since-2005.png
I live on the terra firma.
Nonsense, nonsense
2005 10.48
2006 10.87
2007 10.50
2008 9.97
2009 10.14
2010 8.86
2011 10.72
2012 9.72
2013 9.61
2014 10.95
2015 10.31
2005 was 10.48C and average since 2005 is 10.19C, clearly fall not a rise as you show in your silly little graph
you said it “I often wonder how some people can post obvious falsehoods and halftruths like you do here”.
and it boomeranged back.
CET data http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat
your silly little graph
It is your silly graph:
Another falsehood:
The sharpest short term drop in temperatures since 1875 !
from 10.48 to 10.19…
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET%202005%20-2015.gif
And you call that “The sharpest short term drop in temperatures since 1875 !”
Pathetic falsehood.
lsvalgaard July 2, 2016 at 11:18 am
“Another falsehood”
Nonsense again
Short term average (11 year LPF) fell from 10.53C in 2005 fell to 9.97C by 2011
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-latest.gif
As a scientist you should check data before throwing misleading statements!
And has since risen to within 0.29 of the 2005 value.
The misleading statement was “CET average (the real not some kind of imaginary temperature) has been declining pretty sharp since 2005″.
As you can see it has not declined ‘pretty sharp”.
Here is the Satellite measured global temperature since 2005, no ‘pretty sharp decrease’ and no ‘largest decrease since 1875’:
http://www.leif.org/research/Sat-Temps-since-2005.png
sorry Leif
I don’t trust the satellite data either
e.g.
how do you protect the probes against the sun’s most harmful rays? No material can withstand for long. No wonder Roy Spencer is already on his version 6.0…..
the only way to do it right is to do it my way
looking at the rate of change in K/annum on a random sample of at least 50 weather stations balanced by latitude.
before I forget
the number stations NH must be equal to the number of stations SH
A clever man can easily figure out how I got to my results
here are the results of my home country
Your blue graph is not starting in 2005, you are misleading readers! I quoted you data since 2005 and the link were the data can be found.
CET average (the real not some kind of imaginary temperature) has been declining pretty sharp since 2005. By 11 year average (solar cycle length) LPF, the CET fell from 10.53C in 2005 to 9.97C by 2011, by more than 0.5C, the sharpest fall since 1875 (1870 -1882 recorded fall of 0.76C).
! Do the data !
The CET is as a real temperature data as you can get. I live on the terra firma not in some average ocean’s troposphere covering 75% of the earth’s surface.
Your blue graph is not starting in 2005
It shows that temperatures have recovered from whatever decrease you postulated [in 2010]:
As you can see here;
http://www.leif.org/research/Sat-Temps-since-2005.png
But perhaps you will dispute the satellite data and believe your own cherry-picked, favored data. If so, all bets are off. Perhaps you would respond to HenryP who said that “looking only at CET is exactly NOT doing it right….”.
indeed, I do think that looking at only one weather station only is not going to tell you much, and, as stated before, looking at data before 1950 is also a waste of time, mainly because of the differences in measuring and recording techniques.
You may try to wriggle out as much as you like. You know where to get the data, you know how to use LPF, you know solar cycle is 11 years long, do the data!
I am not going to participate in you futile exercise to mislead, just hope that you did your SSN reconstruction with a bit more accuracy than the above CET treatment.
Adios Amigo
https://youtu.be/ucvcoWMFmW8?list=RDucvcoWMFmW8
Good riddance. To close this aberration, let’s review the changes since 2005:
No, pretty sharp decrease.
Hi Vuk
indeed, TSI is also a waste of time,
first of all because I don’t trust any instruments not protected by an atmosphere, but also, as I explained before – or tried to explain –
the energy coming from the sun has a chi-square distribution but the top can shift a bit, to the left or to the right, depending on the solar polar magnetic field strengths.
As it shifts, the amount of energy below the curve (TSI) remains more or less the same but if the solar field strengths are lower, obviously more of the most energetic particles can escape. This affects all reactions TOA that produce ozone, peroxide and nitrous oxide.\
e.g.\
ozone is increasing
In turn these substances affect the amount of UV reaching the oceans, hence we are currently globally cooling.
Interestingly enough, after looking at the A-spectra of ozone and hydrogen peroxide I was stunned. They are exactly the same, i.e. they do exactly the same job {protect us from the most harmful rays coming from the spotless sun]. So there never a ozone “hole” either. Another big hoax. Obviously,above the oceans, more OH radicals are present and the peroxide is formed preferentially to ozone [doing exactly the same thing as ozone]
I’m not convinced that this was a result of solar wind like typical Aurora, there were no storms and the sun was actually blank of sunspots, this suggests of a polar field interaction caused by the suns recent polarity reversal… stunning though!
No, that has nothing to do with the polar field reversal.
Even if there are no sunspots, there is still a magnetized solar wind with interaction regions so jovian [and geomagnetic] activity still happen.
Lief,
Are you arguing against an interaction between the suns poles and the planets?
We just happen to be discussing this on a wuwt post that ironically claims the sun is “blank” .
Maybe it’s a common occurrence on Jupiter for a UV aurora to occur, it’s an interaction (fact) solar wind is ruled out, it has a UV signature therefore it is basic polarity interaction.
All this has been well-known for decades [partly due to research by yours truly].
The solar wind blows at all times [radially away from the sun], regardless of the sunspots. There are aurorae on the Earth and on Jupiter at all times. Sometimes weak, sometimes very strong. The solar wind magnetic field [not the ‘poles’] is the agent powering the aurora by interacting with the planet’s magnetic field. Since Jupiter’s magnetic field is much stronger than the Earth’s, its aurorae are more energetic, hence the UV. All this is old hat.
What would planetary stress look like? Do you want to see where the other planets are?
Your comment makes no sense. Go out at night and look up: http://earthsky.org/tonight
I was being serious, if you didn’t have access to the heliocentric positions of the planets when this event occurred, I was going to make them available for you. out of interest…
Aurorae are a permanent feature of a magnetic planet. There are ALWAYS an aurora http://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/aurora-forecast-northern-hemisphere.png.
You can get all the positions you want from http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/
And the Hubble telescope is not monitoring Jupiter constantly in UV.
So? It means that you are fooled into believing that there is only an aurora when Hubble is looking. But the solar wind as always interacting with Jupiter, so there are always [as on the Earth] aurorae.
In addition the moon Io also helps to intensify aurorae on Jupiter, as Io is also a source of charged particles.
Here you can see that Jupiter aurorae are always there:
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-jupiter-aurora-hubble-20160630-snap-story.html
“On Jupiter, never-ending auroras seem to be ‘throwing a fireworks party’ for approaching NASA craft”
Sparks,
Nothing happens out at Jupiter when we are not looking.
To illustrate, here is a video of a related phenomenon:
https://youtu.be/fzzjgBAaWZw
sorry Leif
looking only at CET is exactly NOT doing it right….
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/30/the-sun-is-as-blank-as-a-billiard-ball-solar-activity-dwindling-to-lows-not-seen-in-200-years/comment-page-1/#comment-2249495
Tell that to Vuk.
The sun is starting to head toward my criteria which should result in a global cool down. This initial cooling however all ENSO related.