By Frank Bosse and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt, No Tricks Zone
In March our supplier of energy was more inactive than in the previous months. The sunspot number was only 2,5, which is only 8% of what is normal for this month into the average cycle (month 112).Only solar cycles 5 and 6 were weaker.
A sunspot was detected only on 6 of 31 days.
An observation made on April 10, 2018, allowed us to say that at approximately 30° southern heliospheric latitude the SDO solar research satellite saw a tiny spot (it was too small to be officially counted as a sunspot) that certainly belonged to the next approaching solar cycle no. 25.
Sunspots are magnetic phenomena. The thermally conveyed plasma at the sun’s outer layer generates electric currents. Each of these currents produces a magnetic field. Depending on the direction of the current, the magnetic field is polarized and changes on the sun with each change of cycle.
The SDO instrument is able to determine the polarity of the magnetic field for each sunspot, and provided this image:
Is that the end of cycle 24, some 20 months before the expected month no. 132?
Certainly not. And solar cycle 25 has yet to begin as more spots with the same SC 24 signature are still in the pipeline. Moreover solar cycle 24 could resemble the end of solar cycle 5, see Figure 1. In the months during a minimum, spots can appear that belong to the next cycle, as there is a transition phase where spots of both cycles appear.
The solar minimum has started
It can still take quite some time before the next cycle makes its debut. Whether the current solar cycle turns out to be both an especially weak one and a short one is still unknown. Historically weak solar cycles have lasted longer than strong ones, It is difficult to say if solar cycle 24 will be an exception. We’ll keep you up-to-date!
Next is a comparison of the deviation from the mean (112 months into the cycle) of all the solar cycles recorded thus far since the 18th century:
For estimating the strength of the upcoming cycle 25, we regularly cast a look at the sun’s polar fields. The current data are suggesting that solar cycle 25 will be similar to the current solar cycle 24. Thus we have to anticipate that the solar activity will not be returning to normal levels until at least 2031 – the year solar cycle 25 should end.
The good news is that it is highly improbable the sun will enter a Grand Minimum, such as the one that occurred from 1645 – 1715, the period known as the Little Ice Age.
Bonus:
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The good news is that it is highly improbable the sun will enter a Grand Minimum, such as the one that occurred from 1645 – 1715, the period known as the Little Ice Age.
Sorry, but why would this be good? Rather bad, I would guess.
The thought is that the LIA corresponding with a Grand Minimum was not a coincidence.
Therefore, another Grand Minimum would also correspond with another LIA.
If that is highly probable to happen again it would be bad news. But it is highly improbable.
Fortunately.
M,
There will be another Grand Minimum. But I agree it’s unlikely to happen soon.
Based upon past cycles, the Modern Warm Period still has a good run left in it. Thank God.
But the longterm trend is down, so the next cool period and GSM are liable to be worse than the LIA and the Maunder GSM.
Let’s hope that by then humanity has nuclear fusion or some other advanced technology to compensate for the cold climate brought on by the spotless, cue ball sun.
Based upon past cycles
Except that you can’t base this on ‘past cycles’.
lsvalgaard April 28, 2018 at 5:58 pm
Maybe you can’t, but I can look at the past as a guide to the future, and so can some of your colleagues. And by looking at other stars.
The fact is that during the Holocene and prior interglacials, even glacials, the same alternation between warmer and cooler cycles are associated with a more active and less active sun. In the Holocene, the Optimum was about 5000 years ago, the Egyptian Warm Period about 4000, the Minoan WP about 3000, the Roman WP about 2000 and the Medieval WP about 1000 years ago. Each warm interval was associated with a more active sun, and each intervening cool interval with a less active sun.
The LIA is a good example. The preceding Medieval WP enjoyed a more active sun. Then solar minima, to include the Maunder GSM during the depths of the LIA, became more frequent, and humanity suffered centuries of cold.
What’s past is prologue. I can’t say when the next GSM will occur, but odds are not for a long time. However your colleague, solar physicist Mark Giampapa, of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona, expects a neo-Maunder soon, because they happen up to 15% of the time.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2014/01/20/sun-flatlining-into-grand-minimum-says-solar-physicist/#56f5dd4c18de
neo-Maunder soon, because they happen up to 15% of the time.
First of all, they don’t. That number is based on flawed data as most of stars were no ‘solar like’. And your ‘up to’ is a give-away, could be 2%, 10%, etc. They are all ‘up to’ 15%. Like in a sale: ‘up to 50% savings’.
And about the ‘soon’: if I flip a coin and no matter what the outcome is, I’ll predict that it ‘soon’ will be heads.
Totally vacuous.
@ur momisugly M …look at the OOrt which arrives in the middle of the MWP, As a result of that GM occurring in the midst of a Warm Period the cooling effect of the GM is diminished, imo. So if we are about to see the next GM, then it is very likely that its cooling effect will also be minimized, as the Gm is starting from a higher base temp.
lsvalgaard Used to be someone I actually listened to and thought was highly qualified. I no longer feel that way. Something has changed in his demeanor that makes him sound more like a zealot than a scientist. Shame really.
lsvalgaard April 28, 2018 at 6:18 pm
Sad that late in your life and career you have become such a CACA tool.
The range for GSM percent isn’t two percent to 15%. It’s ten to 15%, as you’d know had you bothered to read the link or the literature.
The range for GSM percent
Regardless, the study was not of solar-like stars to begin with so is not applicable to the sun.
lsvalgaard April 28, 2018 at 10:15 pm
Actually it was of stars in the sun’s class. But that is really less important than the fact that GSMs can be detected in Earth’s own climate history. Your d@nial of this fact naturally raises suspicions that you are (SNIPPED), with your colleagues who have suspiciously tried to rewrite the history of SSNs.
(Making personal attack like you did can get you into serious trouble, don’t do it anymore!) MOD
Actually it was of stars in the sun’s class
The Astronomical Journal, 128:1273–1278, 2004 September
DO WE KNOW OF ANY MAUNDER MINIMUM STARS?
J. T. Wright
“Most stars previously identified as Maunder minimum stars are old and evolved off the main sequence. Analysis of activity measurements from the California and Carnegie Planet Search program stars and Hipparcos parallaxes implies that the canonical relation between age and chromospheric activity breaks down for stars older than ~6 Gyr when activity is calculated from Mount Wilson S-values. Stars only 1 mag above the main sequence exhibit significantly suppressed activity levels, which have been mistaken for examples of Maunder minimum behavior.”
Lief,
Your 2004 link is old hat. The past 14 years of observations of sunlike stars shows it up for the obvious CACA special pleading that it was.
Mods,
No need to eject me. I’m happy to excuse myself from this antiscientific blog, which allows ignorant, arrogant megalomaniacs like Willis and tools like Leif free rein, while blocking real scientists.
WUWT richly deserves all the opprobrium that CACA acolytes spew upon it.
(You are entitled to post your opinion and beliefs on any topic, but NOT personal attacks) MOD
As Niels Bohr said “Prediction is simple as long as it does not involve events in the future”
What is CACA?
CACA is the Central Arkansas Cricket Association.
Not sure why that’s relevant ;(
I don’t think we know enough to say that it is highly probably or highly improbable, since we still don’t understand the mechanism driving all of this.
since we still don’t understand the mechanism driving all of this.
But we do. There is, of course, still unanswered things about the details, but progress is being made.
The probability of a grand minimum is low because the first quasi-sunspot of cycle 25 has already been observed. A grand minimum supposedly would be without an observable cycle 25. You are correct in doubting we know enough to be using “highly” probable/improbable nomenclature.
Chimp
April 28, 2018 at 11:32 pm:
Chimp, some of that needed saying, but please stick with us. The fact is, neither you nor Willis should be derogatory. Leif is more polite, and disagreement is normal. Needed even……Brett from NZ
Sorry Leif …. but …. no you do not know what is driving all of this. You r a good, maybe even great scientist, but as noted, just one experiment can disprove everything you think you have proven. The fact is a single detail could turn everything you think you know upside down. You know that that is how science works. The proper tools for studying solar science are relatively new, and given that solar science moves at a snails pace due to the long transition periods, there hasn’t been enough time to tease out how all this works. New tools could come into existence that invalidates everything we think we know. New and more valid interpretations of proxy readings can completely change the interpretation of the data.
Science, real science, does not strive to protect a particular perspective, but rather, it strives to disprove it, and in the process, validates it. You’ve done your part in challenging old perspectives, but you shouldn’t become defensive, saying “we know” when other scientist go about challenging yours.
New tools could come into existence that invalidates everything we think we know. New and more valid interpretations of proxy readings can completely change the interpretation of the data
Every bit of ‘theory’ or ‘knowledge’ has a ‘validity domain’. And knowledge gained will still be valid within its domain. Newton developed his theory of gravity and that is still valid to the accuracy of the time. Apples still fall from trees as Newton saw, regardless of Einstein.
What is important is how well we can use our knowledge to predict what will happen in the future. More than 50 years ago, Babcock and Leighton outlined how the solar cycle could work as an interplay between toroidal [east-west directed] and poloidal [north-south directed] magnetic fields. The cycle in their view would convert toroidal fields to poloidal fields and those poloidal fields would subsequently be converted to toroidal fields, completing the cycle. We observe that directly, both on the Sun and on other stars. This is very unlikely to be overthrown, and is in any case what we observe. Central to the theory is the notion that what is left over from the previous cycle is the ‘seed’ of the next cycle. We can directly observe the magnetic ‘debris’ of the previous cycle and also how it moves to the solar poles, from where it sinks into the interior to be amplified into the new cycle fields by application of known physics [Faraday’s law of induction].
So, by measuring the polar fields we can directly determine what the sun has to work with in generating the next cycle. We proposed 40 years ago that the polar fields therefore would be a good predictor of the size of the next cycle, and this has now held up for five cycles and we expect it to also hold up for the developing cycle 25. If it does not, we shall learn what other factors might influence the process. At this point in time, no other factor seems necessary, but in a sense, the next cycle will by important. It is a ‘do or die’ cycle. We also said that about cycle 24 which was predicted correctly.
The Sun is governed [we assert] by the same physical laws [Newton’s and Maxwell’s] and we apply those to the observed polar fields and plasma motions. If we do so, we find that they factually explain the evolution and size of the solar cycle for every cycle for which we have polar field data [the last five]. So we are justified in claiming that we know how this works, with the usual understanding that all knowledge can be amended as time passes based on new observations. But hard-won old knowledge usually is still valid and will not be overturned [the earth goes around sun, the earth is round, apples fall to the ground, the sun is magnetic, the sun and stars cycle their magnetic field between toroidal and poloidal modes, etc].
but you shouldn’t become defensive, saying “we know” when other scientist go about challenging yours
The current theory [what we ‘know’] for solar activity is not controversial and is not challenged by ‘other scientists’. Even though there will always be debate about the details of the process.
lsvalgaard April 29, 2018 at 7:44 am
“validity domain”
The concept carried by the expression “validity domain” is an idea I am pondering on for some time now. Although I was not aware of this expression itself. Googling it learns me it is mainly used in the physical sciences. My interest is more general in trying to identify different domains of mental activity, related to the various human social activities, like art, science, politics, religion… You may observe a dominating tendency stemming from specializing in one of these domains, in trying to stretch the boundaries too wide of your own familiar domain and crossing into others. Like a scientific oriented person brushing aside all religious belief or vice versa. Or a political fanatic too blind to see facts plainly visible for others. My naive idea being that maybe you can plot the main characteristics and mechanisms of these various “mental validity domains”. And if so as a consequence maybe avoid confusion stemming from using the same words and expressions over boundary lines, having different meaning and use within the various domains.
I guess you would need a universal “validity domain translator” for this, like the universal translator in Star Trek. Not an easy task, but who knows. Anyhow, a useful concept. Thanks, Leif.
When Dr S’s observations didn’t agree with what I had been led to think by earlier reading, I was disgruntled by it and it took some realization through checking citations that my own mindset was affected by confirmation bias. I have known too many souls with 130+ IQs to take any offense at Willis’s or Leif’s way of expressing themselves. It’s good to grow a thick skin in academia and particularly science, but introspection is the most advantageous growth process.
but introspection is the most advantageous growth process.
As Richard Feynman has said “the easiest person to fool is yourself”…
The LIA actually began circa 1315-1320, over 300 years preceding the Grand Minimum. The time frame you outlined is considered part of the coldest decades globally for the LIA, circa 1660-1700. The earth’s cooling began much earlier than the Maunder Minimum.
Did You Know the Greatest Two-Year Global Cooling Event Just Took Place?
Would it surprise you to learn the greatest global two-year cooling event of the last century just occurred? From February 2016 to February 2018 (the latest month available) global average temperatures dropped 0.56°C.
Butt wait there’s more..
French wine output lowest in 60 years…
“The drop in production will be mainly on account of the hard spring frost,” the ministry said. “The persistent drought in the Southeast further reduces production.”
https://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/1337991/french-wine-output-lowest-in-60-years?utm_source=bangkopost.com&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=most_recent_box
https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2018/04/24/did_you_know_the_greatest_two-year_global_cooling_event_just_took_place_103243.html?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=5497cafc89-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_04_26&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-5497cafc89-36424221
A 0.5 or 0.6C drop in temperature over 1 year is just weather. A 0.8C rise in temperature over a century is surely man made climate change.
R. Shearer,
The current rise in temperature since the last LIA looks to be quite natural. Humans are a bit-part player in climate effect. Our changes in land usage play a much larger role than any CO2 we have exhausted into the atmosphere in slightly altering the climate.
think all these roads might have something to do with it?
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/08/25/16/438CF4F000000578-4823464-image-a-28_1503675897650.jpg
Conversely, a 0.6°C rise in temperature over one year is climate change, but a 0.8°C drop in temperature over a century is merely weather.
So let it be written.
Latitude April 28, 2018 at 3:08 pm
Interesting question. For this kind of question, I do a “back of the envelope” calculation. Here’s how that works.
There are about 1.9 million km of paved road in the US plus about 76 thousand km of expressways. Assuming that the average road is maybe two lanes each way and a lane width of 3.6 metres, that’s about 28,000 square km.
On the expressways, assuming 3 lanes each way and the standard width of 3.75 metres, that’s another 1,700 square km. This gives us a total of 29,700 square km of road for the US.
Now, the area of the contiguous US is 7,663,941 square km. And this, in turn, means that the roads cover about 0.4% of the land area. Four-tenths of one percent.
So my guess would be that the roads don’t have much to do with it.
w.
PS—After running the numbers myself, I like to see what anyone else says. I find this:
They get a slightly larger number than I got, but it’s still far less than 1% of the US area.
A couple of comments Willis.
First, since the reference found a higher percentage with a lower area, they probably excluded areas covered by water from the total.
Secondly, I don’t think 0.4% is insignificant when we are talking about an area of high absorption of sunlight compared to the unpaved area. If for example the unpaved area averages 20% absorption while the paved area averages 80% absorption, the net effect is then 1.2% more sunlight absorbed. I believe that’s the same ballpark as a doubling of CO2.
While cool looking, the road map is very deceptive. It makes it look almost the entire US is paved. But the thickness of the road lines are necessarily EXTREMELY exaggerated at that “zoomed out” scale.
In spite of the envelope calculations, I can testify that during some summers in Las Vegas, one can feel themselves dehydrating while crossing one of their parking lots.
Only Death Valley and some ravines just outside of Death Valley beat those Las Vegas parking lots for generating heat from sunlight.
Well, the trilobite diggings in Antelope Springs area in Utah are equitable to LV’s parking lots. All that black slate and shale.
0.8 degrees…..you’ve got to get to those thermometers somehow
Painting our roofs white will save us……but there’s not enough roads, parking lots, runways, etc to make a difference…screw UHI…ha! probably all of global warming is adjustments and asphalt…LOL
RE: Roads.
The 0.4 percent of paved surface is very likely to have some contribution. Remember that contrails were missing from the skies after 9/11 and that seemed to have quite a significant effect on temperature.
Australia said painting the asphalt in one city would lower temps 44F…..I think that’s saying asphalt is making that city 44F hotter
At latitude 3:08
the big purple map
Here is a good read:
http://www.markmonmonier.com/how_to_lie_with_maps_14880.htm
back at ya John: I didn’t make the map…any moron can see the lines are all the same size and big
Here’s where it came from….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4823464/Artist-creates-stunning-map-road-North-America.html
Willis, a lot of those roads are two lanes, one lane in each direction.
If we change the albedo of the country by 0.5%, and the increased energy is all radiated as blackbody, then the temperature should change by 0.12% to compensate. For an average temperature of 288 K, that works out to 0.36 K (C).
MarkW April 28, 2018 at 7:58 pm
True dat, but I like to err on the conservative side when doing such back-of-the-envelope calculations.
w.
MAKE LA WHITE AGAIN!
Oh … wait …
unknown502756: The warmer weather in the contiguous US on and during the few days after 9/11 was not due to lack of contrails. The lack of contrails during that nationwide warm spell was due to the terrorists planning their attack for a spell of nice weather when more people would be outdoors with their cameras, and early in that “nice weather window” they found an opportunity to follow through on one of their attack plans.
There is often a significant temperature anomaly for the whole contiguous US, and often that persists for a few days, sometimes much longer. That’s part of normal American weather. Normal American weather includes “acting normal” just enough to get Americans thinking that there is such a thing as “normal weather” in America.
Willis,
A pixel is wider than a road and it makes it look like more road area than there really is. Kind of like anomalies where the delta is insignificant relative to the absolute value.
If it were possible to measure, I would venture that one would find plowed fields and irrigation to have a greater man-made impact on localized temperatures than paved roads.
Willis Eschenbach April 28, 2018 at 8:39 pm
In this case, true conservatism would mean relying not only on two lanes, but four or six.
Yet again, you methodology is found ludicrously wanting.
Chimp April 28, 2018 at 10:11 pm Edit
Four or six lanes as an average width for US roads? Have you lost it totally? That would indeed be ludicrous. In any case, it was a back-of-the-envelope calculation, not an attempt at total precision.
Look, Chimp, those that can, do; and those that can’t, well, they sit on the sidelines and endlessly criticize, carp, and whine. You are destroying your reputation with your foolish attacks on anything and everything that I say … dude, you are a sick stalker following me everywhere and trying unsuccessfully to bite my ankles. Go produce something yourself.
Javier writes posts and I respect him for it. I often disagree with him, but he’s willing to do the hard yards and put his ideas out there for people to take apart. That earns him props on my planet.
You, on the other hand, write childish, nasty attacks and I laugh at you for it.
w.
Willis,
Clearly you’ve never built a road, or it appears, driven on one. Practically all highways in the US are two lanes or more. You have city streets confused with roads.
It appears that you are not of this world.
[??? .mod]
Chimp April 28, 2018 at 11:34 pm
Ah, I see the problem. We’re talking past each other. You are referring to a road with one lane each way as a “two lane” road, while around here they call that a “one lane” road. So when I said a “two lane road” I meant a road with two lanes each way.
And on the basis of that misunderstanding you jumped to assumptions and roundly abused me … charming.
w.
What a mess…..it’s an artist rendering of roads…no one thinks all roads are the same size and miles wide
He didn’t do residential streets, parking lots, driveways, storage yards, airports, alleys, etc etc
Willis Eschenbach
April 28, 2018 at 4:40 pm :
“Now, the area of the contiguous US is 7,663,941 square km. And this, in turn, means that the roads cover about 0.4% of the land area. Four-tenths of one percent.”
Interesting point that Latitude raised.
Somebody said the devil is in the detail…
Whilst all that roads make up 0.4% of the whole land area I wonder how much of the area around those pesky thermometers is it?
Btw, there was that Watt’s et all 2012 draft paper a bit around this idea 🙂
W,
Your calculation fails to account for weather station location relative to road location. Of course, the presence of roads often precedes albedo-altering structure building.
A more reliable indicator, would be to calculate road density per area. In large metro areas, these numbers would bulk quite large.
Lars, but that’s not all asphalt…..he only did roads….not residential streets, parking lots, etc
I would be willing to bet if you added asphalt and concrete, along with farming like noaap said…..you would find more global warming than they have measured.
Some study I read said they think they can lower Sidney’s temp by 44 degrees F….just by painting the roads white…..that sounds outrageous to me…..but still, that is also saying Sidney has at least 44 degrees F of UHI
So …. Willis ….. 0.4% heat absorbing pavement is irrelevant, but 0.04% CO2 is the almighty god of global temperature.
Interesting.
Even IPCC says half the warming. Remember we didn’t have much impact until after about 1950. The world population was a third of what it is today. In 1900 it was a fifth and we had more than half that warming by the mid 30s-40s. Temperature dropped back down between then and and 1975 before turning up again – we were concerned about global cooling then (don’t believe the revision of history attempted by the campaigners). So it is a trivial truth that natural variability is, indeed a significant factor in temps – cooling us off after the 30s 40s high and assisting the warming in the 80s and 90s. The Pause was pretty well right on schedule.
We didn’t even have electric lights much before 1900 and much of the farmsteads in Saskatchewan were still using kerosene lamps in the 1950s. Horses still pulled bread, milk and ice-block delivery vans in the 1950s when I was a teenager and fewer than about 10% of people had a family car.
When I traveled to Europe in 1963, I could have flown, but I would have had to get to New York, stop to refuel in Reykyavik and then to Europe. I rode on a CN locomotive for free (arranged by my father a ‘hoghead’) from Winnipeg to Halifax where I boarded a Holland America passenger ship to Southhampton, England. Two years later, because of marriage, lack of cash, I took a job with the Geological Survey of Nigeria because they agreed that when my 3Yrs was up they would send us back to Canada. We sailed from Liverpool to Lagos, Nigeria. I hope this helps you visualize that we didn’t have the activity to warm much in those days. And I trust I have some authority with you having been born in the 1930s “high” which families talked about for over 40yrs afterwards. GY
RobR April 29, 2018 at 5:10 am
Thanks, Rob. I was responding to a claim that the “current rise in temperature” was due to roads. If the claim had been regarding a rise in temperature READINGS I would have addressed that, and as you point out, that’s a whole other question.
Instead, I was looking at how much effect the roads would have on the actual temperature, not what the weather stations reported.
Regards,
w.
Willis, I had a min so I tried to find this out…
Your back of the envelope seems about half right……28,000 + 29,700 = 57,700 sq km
Internet says there’s somewhere between 61,000 and 65,000 sq miles…61000 is ~98,170 sq km of paved roads….not including residential, parking lots, airports, etc etc the usual disclaimer
That would make it about 0.8%, right??
I think Georgia is around 60,000 sq miles….so imagine the entire state of Georgia paved over
I am a cartographer. (And a S/W architect for the first PC GIS system.)
I also just returned from an adventure in rural SE Colorado, near the CO/Kansas/OK border.
I assure you:
1) According to the map, all of Kansas and much of eastern Colorado is covered with roads.
2) In reality, those are incredibly rural areas. There’s a paved road every 20-30 miles (at most)… and usually a dirt road about every mile. (Because land is divided into “sections” of 640 acres, approximately one mile square.
3) Clearly, the map shows every road, including dirt roads. Otherwise, you would more clearly see a lot of blank space in the area we just visited.
4) The uncolored areas are either major water features, or complete wilderness (mountains, desert, etc.)
Latitude April 28, 2018 at 3:08 pm
“think all these roads might have something to do with it?”
Brimfield Illinois I 74 overpass
East Peoria McCluggage east bridge ramp In the river valley of course
East Peoria I-74 / I-474 very large field in the middle of the interchange Best sited weather station aways from the bluff
Galesburg, IL overpass. on I-14 NE of city center
So all vehicles park on the streets and highways and not in ubiquitous parking lots (?).
/sarc
Interesting but tricky statistic. The large cooling event was due to a preceding fairly large warming event that I know you noticed.
It would be impressive if it instead had dropped that much from the average level of the last 5 years and stayed down. Not to knock it, it is a great observation in perspective.
We actually need a continuation of the current La Nina or a new La Nina to drop temperatures further than this back towards the pause to be dancing.
This is the same as the warmists cheering on an El Nino but never mind.
Why has the UAH satellite data not shown this?
w.
the prospect of a solar minima, similar to the Little Ice Age ones, has been suggested many times in the last few years,
why is it now highly improbable ?
Because it has been suggested without any evidence, and we now have some evidence that says the opposte.
I have been saying for over a year that a grand solar minimum at this time is inconsistent with solar cycles. We are at a solar maximum.
Actually, solar physicist and occasional commenter here Lief Svalgaard has disputed the existence of a “grand minimum” during the LIA
“1645-1715, the period known as the Little Ice Age”? The LIA was quite a bit longer than that,~1350 to ~1850, so the correlation to sunspots is not quite there.
Yes, the authors should have said “during the period known as the LIA”.
But the whole LIA does indeed correlate well with intervals of low SSN. Unlike the preceding Medieval and following Modern Warm Periods, the LIA was characterized by repeated solar minima, to include the prolonged Maunder GSM. Before the Maunder were the Wolf and Spörer Minima, separated by countertrend warming cycles, and it was followed, after another warming cycle, by the Dalton Minimum.
By contrast, the Modern Warm Period enjoyed the solar maximum from c. 1950 to 2009. It was weaker and shorter than the long Medieval Maximum, c. AD 1100 to 1250, but still better than cold.
Bad news, Frank and Fritz. Your “BONUS” graph is using the old sunspot numbers, not the new SILSO numbers … and that makes your whole post suspect.
w.
http://www.sidc.be/silso/IMAGES/GRAPHICS/wolfaml2.png
Willis, can you point out the bad news? Does the above graph represent what you might be referring to?
Also, I was not aware that we correct historical sunspot-number counts now. This seems suspect — I don’t mean as in dishonest, but as in “we really don’t know, and so we come up with a convincing way to make ourselves believe that our best guess is more correct than ever before.”
Thanks, Robert. The bad news is that if you are using outdated numbers that do not represent current thinking about sunspots, you may well come to incorrect conclusions. In passing, it also means that you haven’t kept up with current sunspot science … not a good look for someone writing about sunspots.
Regarding your other question, SILSO is the organization that curates the sunspot record. A while back it was recognized that there were errors made in earlier assembling of the sunspot data. After much analysis, including an examination of Wolf’s original telescope used to look for sunspots back in the day, the errors in the earlier numbers were corrected.
There’s a discussion of what was done here. If Leif Svalgaard shows up to comment I’m sure he’ll have better references, as he was involved in the process.
w.
Willis Eschenbach, paraphrasing… If we have not had an opportunity to robustly adjust the past, we are not able to scare you sufficiently with our bullshit. What was measured in the past always can be adjusted such that we can get any result we want. If we want it to appear as though the sun does not drive climate, we can simply adjust a few numbers, and suddenly the correlation that used to exist goes away. The sun has only had cycles for the last 300 to 400 years, before that, before anyone ever actually counted sunspots, you can trust that we found perfect proxies that indicate that the sun only came into these 100 year cycles the moment that someone starting looking at the spots and counting them. Before that, it was totally chaotic or something.
This is very similar to the unbelievably, in its truest sense, fact that all daily low temperatures that were measured before 1960 were all measured at the wrong time of the day. And all daily high temperatures were measured by people too short to properly read the thermostat and that means that it is OK that we lowered past temperature readings by a degree or so.
The have their old bogus data and it fits their story, so what if years of research show thye are wrong. They grabbed data, never checked for updates, and ran with it.
I do believe you are last true skeptic standing Willis
Yes Willis is. Mr. Mosher, not so much, ever since he went to work for BEST. Now he’s just another cog in the wheel of climate.
Yes Steve. You used to be a semi-credible skeptic. You are now a card carrying member of “Deep Climate”
Mosher was never a skeptic, but a contrarian.
Im a Pyhronist
That’s funny. Most of the alarmists are Peronists.
mosher is to Eschenbach as macron is to Trump.
pyhron is Pyrrhon with dandruff.
Pillage Idiot April 28, 2018 at 8:57 pm
Mosh is many things, but “alarmist” is not among them …
w.
More like a philosophunculist, from what I’ve seen.
Yes, he’s merely irritating, not alarming.
Mr. Eschenbach,
I was attempting to use subtle wordplay to make a pithy comment about the authoritarian nature of many of the alarmists.
I did not refute in any way the term that Mr. Mosher used for his self-description. Nor did I intend to label Mr. Mosher as an alarmist.
If you read his comment out loud, then read my comment out loud, the joke should become much more obvious.
Mr. Mosher,
I did not intend to label you as an “alarmist”.
However, some people are interpreting my comment as insinuating exactly that.
Therefore, I officially apologize to you for my unintentional gaffe.
Sorry – Pillage.
You fail to demonstrate that it affects their point. Just raising suspicions is not science.
Plus the bonus chart is Anthony’s contribution and not present in the original NotTricksZone article. Barking at the wrong tree, as usual.
(you’d of thought that svalgaard would’ve ponied up for a new graph for anthony by now… ☺)
That graph still greets you when you go to Solar Cycle at Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle
A nest of sunspot deniers.
Perhaps this would help? Using the same technology over time to try and provide consistency in the record.
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/50
Hey Willis, you mean the numbers that were doctored in order to fiddle the books??
Thankfully, the sun is checking its toxic solarinity and helio-spreading.
Max, you just won the thread … that was hilarious.
w.
And Sol-splaining?
By the way, can someone please point the QLav the other way? It always feels kind of … menacing — like a strict school marm looking over your shoulder as you work an algebra problem.
You might contact their ad agency or department.
🙂 ~ ctm
OK, you win the intrawebsthingy for the day.
Previously in my WUWT QLav Tribute Series:
1. Wind Power Woof [captioned by indefatigablefrog] “Clean, fresh, personal energy, at home or on the go…”
2. Hockey Stick: Coincidence??
3. Tropical Storm Nate, at home or on the go
Bonus image: Hide The Paws
Always a “no sunspot” crowd pleaser,
v
I always sensed the QLav was a brown-noser.
They actually made a movie about the QLav Original. (It really cleaned up.)
http://naturewalkswithmark.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/war-of-the-worlds.png
So it’s not just me. I was wondering what I had done to get that advert.
‘Is that the end of cycle 24, some 20 months before the expected month no. 132? Certainly not.’
I thought the definition of the end of a solar cycle was the first sign of the next one, so cycle 24 has ended.
Nope. You don’t have that correct. They smooth the monthly data with a box-car filter and pick the month with the lowest count, or if several zeros the central one. It requires that at least 5 months have passed since the actual minimum.
It could still be one or even two years away.
solar cycle 25 has yet to begin
There is this faux notion that solar activity is cyclic and that a new cycle begins when the old one ends. This is not correct [although people with cyclomania still are hung up on the strict cycle-idea].
Each ‘cycle’ [and there is nothing wrong in calling it a cycle as long as we know it is not. C.f. we still talk about ‘cosmic rays’ even though they are not ‘rays’] erupts [that is: ‘starts’ or ‘begins’] before the old one ends, so the two eruptions overlap by several years. For purely nomenclature reasons we chose the introduce arbitrary and artificial transitions from one ‘cycle’ to the next at the time where approximately there are as many ‘new’ cycle sunspots as old cycle spots.
Yes, we know how it works, but the thing is that for any practical effect, the location of the sunspots and their magnetic orientation (thus their belonging to a cycle) is irrelevant. Total solar irradiation, F10.6 flux, solar flares, and nearly everything that we can measure cycles with an average periodicity of 11.7 years. That’s why it is called the 11-year cycle. We will change from a cycle to the next when we get to the minimum, defined by the people that keep track of sunspots.
the thing is that for any practical effect
With one VERY important exception: To predict solar activity we must know how each individual eruption goes. We cannot get predictions by applying cycles which don’t really exist. And that is the important point when we begin to speculate about what the next ‘cycle’ will bring. The Sun doesn’t care about what “the people who keep track of sunspots” think.
Each individual eruption is the result of what only the previous one leaves behind. Already Waldmeier [in 1935] and Gleissberg [1943] knew this.
That can’t be true. Otherwise the 100-year cycle would not be possible. Something else determines the secular cycles in the Sun.
That can’t be true. Otherwise the 100-year cycle would not be possible.
In fact, there is no 100-yr cycle. There has been a ~100 year cycle the past 300-400 years, but that is easily explained as a simple stochastic effect. As I have explained to you so many times: The build-up of the polar fields that determine the size of the next eruption has a large random component as only a very small amount of dead-sunspot-magnetic-field makes it to the poles. It is like flipping a coin: you can easily get four heads in a row.A large eruption has more magnetic flux than a weak one, so the process that more flux to work with. So generally, we will have several large consecutive ‘cycles’ in a row, until by random luck less flux makes it to the poles and we get several successive small cycles, etc. This can be modeled and is well-understood.
Now, people affected with cyclomania will usually ignore our understanding of this, as we all know.
Solar proxies show the 100-year cycle for several millennia.
And as usual you say one thing and the opposite without problem.
Leif Svalgaard in 2013:
“There is a 60+year cycle in climate which is very clear, but no clear 60+cycle in solar activity:
The dominant cycle is ~100 years. That is the one that counts.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/04/the-great-climate-shift-of-1878/#comment-1435423
That’s the one that counts.
For the actual observational epoch [400 years] there has been a quasi-period of about 100 years rather than 60 years [or 85 years, or whatever]. The chance that a random fluctuation can break the sequence of [say] high eruptions must depend on fundamental properties of the sun, so it would not be a surprise to find a similar quasi-periods at other times in the past. But this is very different from assuming that there is a real cycle caused by some cyclic physical process.
Exactly. SC24 came right on schedule.
And we know from solar proxies that the same has happened for the past thousands of years.
Most people call that a cycle. You can call it what you want. I am not going to argue about a name.
The 100-year cycle is real and is in the data. Some measurements show it very clearly, like the Ap index.
Exactly. So people, keep your predictions at bayes.
lsvalgaard: “random luck”?????
like, if you throw snake eyes three times in a row…
happenstance: noun accident, accidental occurrence, casualty, chance, chance happening, circumstance, coincidence, fate, fortuitousness, fortuity, inexpectation, involuntariness, random luck, serendipity, unexpected occurrence, unforeseen occurrence, unpredictability [Burton’s Legal Thesaurus].
like, if you go fishing and catch a poisson
Lol! When fishing, I usually catch a rock in every 25 or so, give or take, averaged over years, close enough for guvmnt work, etc…casts, which leads me to state there is a 25 cast cycle that is causing my rock catching episodes. And I can prove it with very little smoothing of the data, so it must be so. I will let the scientists figure out the exact mechanism, and if they don’t agree, they are just blinded by their biases.
“There has been a ~100 year cycle the past 300-400 years, but that is easily explained as a simple stochastic effect.”
But properly explained by the planetary ordering of sunspot cycles and solar minima.
Yes.
Bloke down the pub April 28, 2018 at 12:08 pm Edit
The cycles overlap at the minima. The new cycle is determined by the polarity of the spots. At the minimum, there are both old spots from the previous cycle, and new, different-polarity spots from the new cycle.
w.
I think that what I care about is the TSI. The TSI tends to drop slightly during a minimum. Is the current TSI dropping? Has it dropped lower than previous minimums?
The TSI annual drop for the last years of a cycle are small compared to the first few years of annual drops after the cycle TSI maximum. The large 2-year TSI drop 2016-17 is responsible for the large temperature drop since then, and since the annual change in TSI will be small for this and next year, the temperature won’t change so much either. SORCE 1au TSI in all tables shown,
?dl=0
?dl=0
?dl=0
TSI is now just slightly, barely trending upward the past 90 days. F10.7cm nor SORCE have drifted down to the low levels of the last minimum. 2007-2009 was lower in TSI by at least 0.1W than now, and now there is the degradation issue to consider since the last minimum, as SORCE is 15 years old now.
Leonid (?) showed at the recent LASP sun-climate symposium that TSI could actually be lower now than the last minimum (in SORCE), so it depends on who you ask!
We are also finishing the sixth month of F10.7cm solar flux under 72 sfu, with April @ur momisugly~ 70 not shown:
One could say that the current sun cycle is almost as weak as Warmist science.
But I won’t.
You may very well think so, but I couldn’t possibly comment.
Too late, you both already did
@Bosse&Vahrenholt
You are implying that “sunspot number” has something to do with the sun’s supply of energy. The term “solar activity” as used by solar scientists is used to refer to the sun’s magnetic, which is driven by the solar dynamo. This a a different process from the sun’s thermonuclear process, which provides the energy which warms the Earth.
For example, solar activity vanishes every 11 years or so. Yet there is no clear signal of this cycle in the climate temperature records.
And it does have something to do with the sun’s supply of energy. Total solar irradiation and spectral irradiation both change with the solar cycle.
http://www.solarsystemcentral.com/images/sunspot_data.jpg
Slight correction, for clarity, you mean the Sun’s “output” of energy. Sunspots have no apparent effect on the amount of energy contained within the star we affectionately call Sol. Or perhaps they do!?!? I bet you could get Uncle Sugar to give you a weighty grant to research that one.
Again, your chart implies that sunspots have a lot of correlation to the suns’s energy output. In reality, this correspondence is virtually negligible (~0.1%) in the sense that it generates no clear 11-year signal in climate data (in spite of all the hand-waving and speculation among the “It’s the Sun!” crowd).
Not surprising. This 1-watt change in TSI induced by solar magnetic activity is dwarfed by the change in TSI induced by eccentricity in the Earth’s orbit, which varies by 5 million kilometers from aphelion to perihelion. The orbital TSI change is on the order of 100-watts!
Ironically, this 100-watt signal is normalized out of final TSI calculation, which makes the sunspot contribution seem to dominate. (But only if your Y-scale is restricted to 1365 to 1367 wm2.)
😐
@Johanus, The problem isn’t the minimal signal from TSI in the record, it’s the focus on TSI as if that would be the only way for solar changes to effect Earth’s temperature, due to the outdated assumption that solar output at different wavelengths changed consistently with TSI.
The effect of CO2 is bounded by it’s absorption spectrum, so too the effect of the sun depends on changes in output at the wavelengths that pass through the atmosphere. Additional CO2 has limited effect because of the saturation in absorption spectrum, and TSI could theoretically go up by 10% without causing any significant change in temperature if it only increased at wavelengths that were already blocked by the atmosphere. Alternatively, if increases along the wavelengths that affect Earth the most were balanced by decreases on other wavelengths, there could be significant warming with no change at all in TSI.
There is little over a decade of data from NASA’s SORCE satellite, the first to take readings of solar output at different wavelengths on a daily basis. It has already shown that output at some wavelengths vary much more than others, and that output at some wavelengths will go the opposite direction of TSI. There just isn’t enough data to tell how much variation exists over a time span of decades.
https://m.imgur.com/GvY40Ix
Any input from all y’all solar peops about the top two graphs here (hadcrut4 & fourier) would be greatly appreciated. (willis, i’d be particularly interested in your take on it, thanx)…
The decadal variability of HadCRUT does not coincide with the 11-year solar cycle, so that periodicity might come from something else.
afonzarelli April 28, 2018 at 3:00 pm
My comment would be that you should never, ever, ever run an analysis on smoothed data. For a good discussion of why, see here and here for why. Also you might look at the Slutsky-Yule effect.
w.
Willis, i was wondering if fourier was actually done there on smoothed data. It would have had to have been smoothed just so the cycling would clearly show up in such a graph as the one on the left. (with the fourier no need to smooth the data and the indication that it was smoothed is lacking) Battery dead, gotta go…
I never understood the absorption argument for CO2 because isnt fresh(new) CO2 being cycled into and out of the atmsosphere all the time?
Alan,
CO2 is not a repository of energy. It is a converter. It can convert IR to heat and heat to IR.
The heat is stored in the overall atmosphere which is why a thermometer can actually measure it.
Note that in the stratosphere the more CO2 the cooler the atmosphere. You have to do statistical mechanics analysis at the molecular level to figure out if adding CO2 warms or cools.
Javier April 28, 2018 at 3:25 pm
Not that I consider HadCRU fit for any scientific purpose, but if its 11-year cycles are indeed valid in the real physical world, then a possible explanation is lag. Oceans are still giving off heat accumulated over the previous 11 and 22 years, even as the current solar cycle might be weaker.
The chart doesn’t imply anything. It is clearly labelled. The correlation is well known and the signal has been identified multiple times. It amounts to ± 0.1-0.2 °C. Whether it is negligible or not is a subjective opinion. It is included in every weather and climate model, so generally it is not considered negligible.
Javier, how do we know that it amounts to 0.1-0.2°C if it doesn’t show in the temperature record (as per your comment at 3:25 pm)?
Since we have several iterations of the solar cycle in the data, the statistics have been worked out by several authors. All the results agree that the effect is small, and are consistent with the radiative forcing change at the top of the atmosphere, so nobody has a problem with the result.
@Alfred Ledner “due to the outdated assumption that solar output at different wavelengths changed consistently with TSI.”
Who made that claim? We’ve known about variations in SSI for a long time. EUV emission increases with solar activity and causes clear and consistent changes in ionospheric RF propagation, for example. But such changes have not been observed clearly and consistently in the climate record.
[I misplaced this reply earlier, below]
@Alfred Ledner “due to the outdated assumption that solar output at different wavelengths changed consistently with TSI.”
Who made that ‘outdated’ claim? We’ve known about variations in SSI for a long time. EUV emission increases with solar activity and causes clear and consistent periodic (~11yrs) changes in ionospheric RF propagation, for example. But such changes have not been observed clearly and consistently in the climate record.
So, its a “yes&no” sorta proposition, neither fish nor fowl and certainly not beef. They have put a foot down on every side of the issue. Quite masterful, to say the least. And here we are, cold and damp at the end of April, and yet it does not mean anything its just the weather. Perhaps they could check and see if Guam has capsized from too many people yet, seems they got time on their hands.
Very late April in tornado alley.
There’s a slight chance of an outbreak of tornadoes by the end of next week in Oklahoma, but then after that there’s little chance of a significant outbreak in the southern part of tornado alley until the third week of May or later. This is surprising to me.
This could change very quickly due to the accumulation of small perturbations during the rapidly changing springtime dynamics with the returning Sun, but such a fluke hasn’t happened in a long time.
I think this is the research where they expected many tornadoes, spent loads of money and time, and encountered few.
Did get a couple of great results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VORTEX_projects#VORTEX2
Here in western PA many farmers are holding off planting, others have rolled the dice and put some crops in, looking at lows tonight in the 20s, this morning we had 28 here in Butler County.
Tornado alley is rather calm, my years in Oklahoma and Texas make me worry how bad it will get once the southern flow gets in high gear, what with the cold air flow still looking to persist into June.
At least two solar stories and I have not heard for Vuk???? amazing.
And we haven’t heard from Lief, AKA as Lord Kelvin, either Timo! I wait with bated breath to hear what our very own solar expert has to say. Not!
Willful ignorance is a mark of intellectual dishonesty.
+1
Oh wait … -272.15
“Willful ignorance” is Leif’s favorite defense against people who don’t want to take his arrogant opinions at face value. Asked to prove his stance, Leif resorts to self-references, painful explanations of the obvious that have nothing to do with the question askes, and more arrogant words. I agree with those who conclude that Leif is not a real scientist any more.
I agree with those who conclude that Leif is not a real scientist any more
You are not competent to pass judgement on this matter.
Alexander Feht April 29, 2018 at 7:58 pm
Let’s review the bidding. Some charming fellow named J. Hope said, without provocation:
Most unpleasant. In response, Leif said, in much milder tones than I would have used:
Since Leif had not yet contributed to the conversation, Mr. Hope’s comment was indeed willfully ignorant …
Now you come along to further accuse Leif, without providing a single actual example of what has your panties in such a twist, and to sanctimoniously pronounce that Leif is not a “real scientist” …
Really? You know this how? I assume that it is your extensive knowledge of solar physics that entitles you to pass that judgment on Leif, correct?
Alexander, let me offer you a rule of thumb that has served me well:
Just saying … “fools rush in”, etc., etc. …
w.
Some people think the Sun never changes.
Does it or not?
There is certainly an 11 year cycle, up and down, This can be extended to 2 cycles. .Then it was obviously at a different level in the Maunder Minimum. Then it has a long cycle as a main sequence star fusing hydrogen into helium, helium into heavier elements. Then it takes 200,000 years for energy generated in the core to be emitted at its surface at the level of 63,240,000 watts/m2.
It is not a 100.0000% stable ball of gas.
-Insert Mother-in -Law joke here-
OK…Take your pick –
Q: Do you know the punishment for bigamy?
A: Two mothers-in-law.
A man returned home from the night shift and went straight up to the bedroom. He found his wife with the sheet pulled over her head, fast asleep. Not to be denied, the horny husband crawled under the sheet and proceeded to make love to her.
Afterward, as he hurried downstairs for something to eat, he was startled to find breakfast on the table and his wife pouring coffee. “How’d you get down here so fast?” he asked. “We were just making love!” “Oh my God,” his wife gasped, “That’s my mother up there! She came over early and had complained of having a headache. I told her to lie down for a while.”
Rushing upstairs, the wife ran to the bedroom. “Mother, I can’t believe this happened. Why didn’t you say something?” The mother-in-law huffed, “I haven’t spoken to that jerk for fifteen years, and I wasn’t about to start now!”
Q: What should you do if you see your Mother-In-Law rolling around in pain on the ground?
A: Shoot her again
The definition of mixed emotions – seeing your mother-in-law drive over the cliff in your new car.
One cannibal says to the other: “I can’t stand my mother-in-law.”
The other says: “Why don’t you just eat the vegetables?”
Cannibal Chef says, “my mother in law made a great cannibal stew. (i’m really going to miss her)”
Did you hear about the cannibal that passed his mother-in-law in the woods?
Definition of mixed emotions,,
Watching your mother in law drive off a cliff in your new Cadillac
The discovery that the sun is a variable star was an important breakthrough for many scientific disciplines, even if it’s a lot less variable than some other main sequence stars.
You guys are “spot” on. Thanks
Dear Willis,
You should have realized that the bonus graph is not from the authors – whoever added it to our original post. In this case you are a sacrifice of your own strawman fallacy. When it comes to solar influence on climate , you switch to a tunnel view.
The original post is on http://www.kaltesonne.de from 24 th of April.
Prof. Vahrenholt
Fritz, thanks for this clarification. I’m the other author of the post and it was nothing else than an objective report about the state of the solar activity in march 2018. And the sentence in question ( LIA, Mounder) in the original post was in that way:” A great minimum as it was observed 1645-1715 ( Maunder Minimum during the LIA) is very unlikely”. This is correct in any meaning. We never made an attribution or a valuation like “The good news…”. The absolutely correctly meaning was “lost in translation” IMO.
PS: Perhaps we should make an authorised English version ourself to prevent misquoting?
It doesn’t matter. Some people here hate the idea that solar variability might have anything to do with climate change so much that they lose all objectivity. Unfair personal attacks are the norm to anybody that proposes it.
Far more (here anyway) hate the idea that apart from the fact that “solar variability” is a piddling 0.1% over 11 years… it currently shows an inverse correlation to global average temperature.
But it makes for great clickbait.
Well yes, but if you stay with TSI you miss the chance to see things like this:
Or to explain why this year the polar vortex was so weak and disorganized and we had such a miserable winter over the NH.
Overall TSI changes as a whole have very little to do with the overall temperature change of the globe.
It is instead the changes in EUV light and UV light and Near UV light(that part of TSI) that govern the atmospheric circulation patterns and the overall sea surface temperatures.
Then the other solar factors are the strength of the solar wind and the AP index which are tied to global cloud cover(galactic cosmic rays) and major explosive volcanic activity not to mention overall snow coverage which in turn will influence the earth’s albedo.
Given alL the above and given where we are with the state of the sun; the global overall sea surface temperature drop and overall surface temperature drop is in the 1st inning , we have a long way to go and this year is the transitional year.
The global temperatures have not changed much over the past several years , but I expect this will soon be changing and that change will be to the downside.
I expect weak solar conditions to continue as we move forward and the other factor which everybody ignores probably because they do not understand it’s role in the climate, is the earth’s geo magnetic field , which is now weakening rapidly and will compound given solar effects.
The next several years as far as the climate goes will be telling.
“Overall TSI changes as a whole have very little to do with the overall temperature change of the globe.”
?dl=0
?dl=0
The ocean is responding now to TSI as it did during the SC24 maximum.
“It is instead the changes in EUV light and UV light and Near UV light (that part of TSI) that govern the atmospheric circulation patterns and the overall sea surface temperatures.”
No. Overall TSI does this via solar radiation absorption at depth converted to sensible heat that upwells, heating the air that then rises and becomes “the wind”. UV is a very small part of the spectrum and effects the upper atmosphere first, and if you have evidence of it working on the ocean let’s see it.
There will be about a 0.1 to 0.18C drop from the change in TSI at most in HadSST3 in annual numbers before the next cycle, described here.
The climate is working now exactly as I have prescribed for the past 4 years.
TSI-insolation drives the climate.
Time will tell but I disagree with your premise that it is overall TSI that drives the climate.
What drives the climate are the strength of the solar/geo magnetic fields. When in tandem they compliment one another as is the case now both are weakening and that is what drives the climate not the ultra small TSI changes..
“Time will tell but I disagree with your premise that it is overall TSI that drives the climate.
This ‘time will tell’ thing is unneccessary, as time has already told over the past four years of confirmation.
Can you tell me why you disagree with my premise after I”ve presented the evidence that it does?
You expected people for years and years to understand all of your several thresholds without explanation, without evidence, without testing, or any visible validation, all the while you proclaim the sun drives the climate, yet when shown how the real threshold was established, how it was tested and validated, you respond in less than one hour. I doubt you could have read and understood my poster in 45 minutes.
Prove me wrong. What is the exact reason you disagree with my premise? What part?
If you don’t answer me and can’t come back against me later with a very specific reason why you disagree, well I don’t have to tell how stupid that would look.
“What drives the climate are the strength of the solar/geo magnetic fields. When in tandem they compliment one another as is the case now both are weakening and that is what drives the climate not the ultra small TSI changes..”
I’m very sorry Salvatore, but you don’t know what you’re talking about here. This is your style to deny one thing and present another backed with nothing but your opinion. Very typical.
“There will be about a 0.1 to 0.18C drop from the change in TSI at most in HadSST3 in annual numbers before the next cycle”
Is there evidence of an 11 year modulation in the temperature records ?
Serge,
Yes, it has been measured several times and it is generally accepted. For example:
Camp, C. D., & Tung, K. K. (2007). Surface warming by the solar cycle as revealed by the composite mean difference projection. Geophysical Research Letters, 34(14).
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL030207/full
“By projecting surface temperature data (1959 – 2004) onto the spatial structure obtained objectively from the composite mean difference between solar max and solar min years, we obtain a global warming signal of almost 0.2°K attributable to the 11-year solar cycle. The statistical significance of such a globally coherent solar response at the surface is established for the first time.”
and it is generally accepted
That a 0.1% variation of TSI changes the temperature by 0.07 degrees is accepted and expected, but not well determined as the effect is in the noise. Any larger effect is not generally accepted.
A larger effect on local precipitations is generally accepted and also included in the models.
lsvalgaard April 28, 2018 at 5:55 pm
IMO. larger effects are generally accepted, despite the efforts of the CACA Mafia to downplay the influence of solar variations:
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/
larger effects are generally accepted
Nowhere in your link does it say that “larger effects are generally accepted”.
lsvalgaard April 28, 2018 at 6:05 pm
No, but the conclusion has NASA’s good housekeeping seal of approval.
NASA’s good housekeeping seal of approval
So have many things that ain’t true, e.g. AGW.
The conclusion [if any] says:
“However, few, if any, have been quantified to the point that we can definitively assess their impact on climate.”
What other conclusion do you refer to?
“That a 0.1% variation of TSI changes the temperature by 0.07 degrees is accepted and expected, but not well determined as the effect is in the noise.”
?dl=0
I found a nominal solar sensitivity rate of 0.5°C/W/yr, that varied with a multi-month TSI trend.
A 0.1% variation of 1360.5 is 1.36. 0.07°C/1.36W =0.051°C/W, 10X lower than mine, no wonder it’s considered in the noise! Methinks the generally accepted view is off again.
Min to max temperature, SC24 raised HadSST3 by 0.355°C (yearly data), 0.488°C (monthly), and a maximum monthly change of 0.596°C from 1-2008 to 1-2016. Solar energy absorbed by the ocean is incrementally cumulative.
The solar ‘sensitivity’ is given by Stefan-Boltzmann’s law that can be expressed like this: dT/T = dS/S/4 because radiation S is proportional to temperature T to the forth power [hence the division by 4]. So the sensitivity is dT/dS = T/(4*1361) = 0.05 K/(W/m2).
About that S-B.
One would think that in realtime the instantaneous clear-sky solar input should be the full TSI value used, not the daily average.
Think of it this way, Willis’ daily thunderstorm work depends on the instantaneous solar input in the morning, not the daily average value.
should be the full TSI value used
I used 1361. The divisor of 4 is not from the earth being round, etc, but comes from the fact that S = a T^4, so that dS = a (4 T^3 dT) = 4 a T^4 dT/T = 4 S dT/T so that (dS/S)/4 = dT/T or dT/dS = T/(4S). T is 288 K global average, S = 1361 W/m^2, so dT/dS = 288/(4 * 1361) = 0.05 K/(W/m^2).
Javier April 28, 2018 at 5:40 pm
Javier, without reading more than the introduction, I can see problems with the paper.
• The paper uses the totally outdated and discredited Lean 1995 TSI reconstruction, which even Lean has disavowed. She revised it in 2000, and again in 2002, and it still had problems, viz:
• Next, they are only using a small subset of the available temperature and TSI data, from 1959 to 2004. The TSI reconstructions go back to 1700 and the temperature reanalysis “data” goes back to 1948. Whenever someone does that it raises questions.
• Next, they are using what is laughably called “reanalysis data”, which is not data at all. It is the output of the same computer models that have fared so poorly in forecasting the future … except these models are continually “nudged” to keep them from going off of the rails.
These computer models have several huge failings. First, they are NOT founded on “basic physics” as is often claimed. We know this because models with wildly differing inputs (forcings) are nonetheless able to do a reasonable job “hindcasting” the global average temperature. If they were truly physics-based, this would not be possible.
Second, the global temperature outputs of such models are basically lagged and scaled versions of their inputs. This is far, far more linear than the real world.
Third, in general, they are nowhere near as damped as reality is. As a result, you can see echoes of whatever you choose to enter as input coming out in the output … but the world doesn’t work like that. This is crucial in e.g. analyses of the putative effect of the sunspot cycle on climate. Many times you can see echoes of the sunspot cycle in reanalysis model output … but the same is not true when we look at the real world observations for the same variable.
For another view on reanalysis climate models, here’s Pat Frank on the subject:
Couldn’t say it better myself.
One final point. Computers don’t do edges very well. If you have a chunk of the ocean L1 at a temperature T1 and a location L2 some ways away at a temperature T2, in the absence of other information, the computer will assume a steady change in temperature from L1 to L2.
However, nature doesn’t do gradual. Instead, it usually does edges. Either you are in a cumulus cloud or out of it, there is no miles and miles of gradual decrease in cloud.
And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen at sea that the ocean temperature doesn’t vary for dozens of miles, and then it suddenly changes by a couple of degrees. As the poet had it, nature is “dappled”, while computers … well, they’re not.
Which is why analyses using reanalysis “data” are likely to find bogus correlations between solar activity and temperature …
• Then they say ” the observed correlation of the spatially filtered surface temperature with the 11‐year solar cycle is statistically significant at 99.8% confidence level.” … oh, please. There’s far too much noise in the system for two such disparate datasets to correlate with a p-value of 0.002. That’s simply not believable, it indicates that there is something wrong with their methods.
• Finally, Judith Lean’s and all such early TSI reconstructions have been overturned by the realization that the early sunspot data was not treated properly, and the subsequent correction of those errors by SILSO.
So no … that paper is not “generally accepted” except by the solar true believers such as yourself. It has huge problems.
For those interested in the question, there is an overview of the various TSI reconstructions here (Excel spreadsheet).
w.
Leif, thanks, I stand corrected as I was apparently thinking of something else, and don’t use it and haven’t seen it for a while.
I’ll see how S-B and my empirical work can be reconciled; it’ll take some time to work on.
It doesn’t matter. The effect is small and the uncertainty large. However everybody comes to a similar answer and the models agree.
Misios, S., Mitchell, D. M., Gray, L. J., Tourpali, K., Matthes, K., Hood, L., … & Krivolutsky, A. (2016). Solar signals in CMIP‐5 simulations: effects of atmosphere–ocean coupling. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 142(695), 928-941.
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/qj.2695
Whether right or wrong this is not a controversial issue.
Bob Weber
April 28, 2018 at 3:13 pm
“TSI-insolation drives the climate.”
Whilst that may be true on a centuries/millennia timeline, I would think that in geological timeline the shape of the continents and the ocean currents are main drivers.
I don’t know how to say it any other way than the empirical results I got worked out w/o using S-B.
Isn’t the obvious take-away that in month 107? the solar activity was above the long-term average? /sarc
And we are told, repeatedly, by our friendly [population aim – 750 million] neighbourhood watermelons, that the science is settled.
Nothing to see.
Move on.
This thread alone, to me, suggests that not everything that could be known about the Sun is, in fact known, and generally accepted.
My take is that much of atmospheric science is in a similar position – we might ‘know’ the right answers, perhaps, but we may not accept/know that we do.
Auto – enthralled! –
Auto
Great comment. Or as Bumsfield said
We don’t know what we don’t know.
Atmospheric interconnections.
Regards
“Global Climate Change” changed by fearmongers to “Global Climate Disruption.”
Florida public education victims are suing the sun as we speak for causing this tragedy.
Details at eleven.
Don’t fret it Buddy, climate normalization will rectify
your assthe situation.Why cant we sue all the education departments for teaching that there are more extreme weather events because of AGW? We may not be able to sue them for teaching the junk science of CAGW but at least we can point to all the databases on extreme weather events.
The 2009 NH spring and summer cooling experience with winter type jet stream strength pattern and position is back for a 3 year run this time. Maybe this time the point will come across.
TSI changes are to small to change the climate by themselves it is that simple Bob.
In addition global temperatures have yet to drop despite what you have been claiming.
It is the magnetic field strengths that determine the climate.
But you are entitled to your opinion.
@Salvatore- said 1. TSI changes are to small to change the climate by themselves it is that simple Bob.
*I believe this reference to Karin Labitzke’s work shows an undeniable solar connection to climate and weather.
Exerpt from Javier …
In a series of seminal articles Karin Labitzke with Harry van Loon (1987; 2006) established that the QBO modulates the effect of solar activity on the stratosphere and the Polar Vortex. With great insight Labitzke, who was aware of the state of the solar 11-year cycle through time, unlocked a problem that had occupied researchers for centuries when she decided to segregate the data on stratospheric polar temperatures according to QBO phase (Kerr, 1987; figure 96). The very low correlation when all the data is considered, becomes very high using the segregated data, and Labitzke became the first to identify a strong sunspot-weather correlation.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/01/21/nature-unbound-vii-climate-change-mechanisms/
And …
2. In addition global temperatures have yet to drop despite what you have been claiming.
*This is an excerpt from an essay allegedly by James delingpole posted on Breitbart …
The 2016-18 Big Chill was composed of two Little Chills, the biggest five month drop ever (February to June 2016) and the fourth biggest (February to June 2017). A similar event from February to June 2018 would bring global average temperatures below the 1980s average. February 2018 was colder than February 1998.
From February 2016 to February 2018 (the latest month available) global average temperatures dropped 0.56°C. You have to go back to 1982-84 for the next biggest two-year drop, 0.47°C—also during the global warming era. All the data in this essay come from GISTEMP Team, 2018: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP). NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (dataset accessed 2018-04-11)
Was this EVER mentioned in MsM?
And …
3. It is the magnetic field strengths that determine the climate.
*Can you please give a published reference for this claim?
Sandy, Minister of Future
That’s what complicates it for me, too. Are we to assume Sol’s “magnetic field strengths”, or the IMF? What then is the mechanism by which whatever magnetic field is responsible controls weather, and in the long run climate?
Are we to assume Sol’s “magnetic field strengths”, or the IMF
Although I don’t believe that the magnetic field per se has any effect, it would be the IMF [the solar field brought out to us by the solar wind] that might be involved as the IMF and the Geomagnetic field are connected, as I showed back in 1968. Particles can then travel from one medium to the other and electric currents can be induced.
“[1]TSI changes are to small to change the climate by themselves it is that simple Bob.
[2]In addition global temperatures have yet to drop despite what you have been claiming.
[3]It is the magnetic field strengths that determine the climate.”
1. False, as I’ve already demonstrated and true to form you simply refute w/o evidence.
2. False. The ONLY temperature metric I use in my TSI method is HadSST3, and it has fallen from 0.613C in 2016 to 0.504 in 2017, and the latest monthly data is at 0.416C. That is a cooling, a reduction in temperature.
Where have you been? The last 2 years had a very significant temperature drop.
3. It is the magnetic field strengths that determine the climate. Yes, the sun’s magnetic field.
The large 2-year TSI drop 2016-17 is responsible for the large temperature drop since then.
Bob says which is false. There has been no large temperature drop as far as the data I use.
“The large 2-year TSI drop 2016-17 is responsible for the large temperature drop since then.
Bob says which is false. There has been no large temperature drop as far as the data I use.”
You just took what I said and completely reversed it then reattributed it to me.
Now I know you’re just trolling me. I doubt you know how to input data into a spreadsheet.
http://euanmearns.com/cosmic-rays-magnetic-fields-and-climate-change/
I in this camp.
Since there is not graph of the x-axis is sunspots and the y-axis is global mean temperature, how do you know sunspots are correlated to temperature? Overlaying a cycle of sunspots and a cycle of temperature means nothing statistically.
One thing which does correlate with sunspots is the ENSO regions as seen on the MEI. More than that, take a look at how the ENSO, sunspots, and a study on growth rate of C4 grasses are all completely correlated with one another. I noticed a study over at Science News on a comparison between C3 and C4 grasses. The C4 portion of the graph caught my eye right off. Here is my explanation of how they all sync. …https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/26/the-60-year-oscillation-revisited/comment-page-1/#comment-2802749