BOB HOYE
In the 1990s, solar physicists, Penn and Livingston, called for a long decline in solar activity. This is the case and it is nice to see such work confirmed by events. Solar Cycles # 23 and 24 are the weakest since the early 1900s. The current run of consecutive Spotless Days is out to 33, or 75%, for the year.
The following table shows the record back to the minimum of Solar Cycle # 23 when the count was at 268 days, or 73%, for 2008.
So far this year, the count is out to 33 consecutive days, which is exceptional. So much so, that SILSO keeps a table of such long runs.
Solar Cycle # 24 is expected to reach its minimum by late in this year.
For hundreds of millions of years such changes in solar activity have been associated with changes from warming to cooling. And back again. The long run to the recent peak in activity was the strongest in thousands of years. Despite this, temperatures were not as warm for as long as set during the Medieval Warm Period. The end to that long trend and turn to cooling in the early 1300s was drastic, causing widespread crop failures and famine in Northern Europe and England. A book by William Rosen, “The Third Horseman” covers it thoroughly. The die-off from 1315 to 1320 is estimated at some 10 percent of the population. Deaths of cattle, sheep and horses were severe as well. All due to the turn to cold and unusually wet weather.
The change to what some are calling the Modern Minimum is significant. In geological perspective, it is now a built-in cooling force.
The next chart shows that the satellite record is again approaching the flat-lying trend, which is out to some 20 years. The El Ninos of 1998 and 2016 were distinctive weather- warming events.
NOAA’s Winter Forecast made on October 18th has been wrong on temperature and precipitation. North America has suffered a cold, snowy and lengthy winter, beyond what could be blamed upon the demon “Polar Vortex”.
Over time, diminishing solar activity has been likely to be accompanied by more cosmic rays and more cloud cover. Which would be associated with cooler and snowier winters. And possibly cooler summers, which the Danish Met Institute reported for 2018 and 2017.
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Does lower Solar activity really mean lower temps on earth?
I know the US got that deep freeze up in the more northern states, but here in the UK its been very mild. Last year we got plenty of snow, this year the worst we got was a bit of frost.
Not complaining, its been an easy winter!
I haven’t noticed any association between solar activity as reflected by sunspots and weather. El Niño’s yes, sunspots no.
That’s cool.
“The change to what some are calling the Modern Minimum is significant. In geological perspective, it is now a built-in cooling force.”
The solar activity declined at least since SC21, this was around 1990:
The troposhere warmed since than about 0.4 °C:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah5/from:1990
How stróng is the “cooling force” of the solar forcing? If it would be strong the author needs a much stronger impact of GHG to explain the observed temperatures. If so, the sensititvity vs. GHG must be stronger. Is it this what the author wanted to say?
“The change to what some are calling the Modern Minimum is significant. In geological perspective, it is now a built-in cooling force.”
What is the mechanism for the “Built in cooling force”?
Until we know this then this article seems to be lacking data to support your claims. More like an opinion piece to me.
We had the double pole switch on the sun in 2014 heralding the beginning of the new Gleissberg cycle.
It is what it is. Global cooling has already set in, bringing some contradictory results, like colder winters and warmer and dryer summers at the higher latitudes.
I donot trust the sats too much due to the detoriation of measuring devices by the sun spuwing more of the most energetic particles, due to its lower magnetic fields. The GB cycle runs for ca. 87 years and every 87 years we have serious droughts at the higher latitudes.
Click on my name to read my reports on that.
Remember, the coming droughts will be due to natural climate change, not man made….
to contrast drought in West
They had a 50% chance to be right…..
This explains the Socialist push to get their policies in place, a world dying from cold does not fit their agenda. It was a nice read (Indefensible Fiction: Climate Change as Security Threat https://goo.gl/sMN9W9) findout how some of this got started…
“Solar Cycles # 23 and 24 are the weakest since the early 1900s”
Are you sure about #23? I guess it depends on what you mean by “early 1900s”.
It ended at 33 days.
And remember,
No “once hired, can’t be fired” NOAA employee was inconvenienced by the bogus forecast.
Iv’e been watching oold doco’s one global cooling, the ice age cometh.
Only in the last one [ bbc 1988 ] do all the new buzz words ”greenhouse effect” ”climate change” & ”global warming” rear their heads.
Thats right the greenhouse effect and global warming bring on rapid cooling, and the climate system flips in just 4 yrs into a deep ice age.
From what ive read in the article here, and a vid i randoml watched yesterday, i think the fellas in the 1988 doco may very well be right.
doco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGUMqBBbKqI&t=1912s
Solar vid……this is a goodun.
Until we can show the mechanism for solar forcing (both warming and cooling) we are left with the null hypothesis of carbon forcing.
Oh wait.
Not by me. I think it has already reached its minimum.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/07/the-approaching-solar-cycle-24-minimum/
“North America has suffered a cold, snowy and lengthy winter, beyond what could be blamed upon the demon “Polar Vortex”.”
No it hasn’t (cold ) ….
UAH v6 TLT data show the contiguous US temps this winter to have been (Dec/Jan/Feb) 0.08, 0.49, 0.38 Celsius above average.
“The next chart shows that the satellite record is again approaching the flat-lying trend, which is out to some 20 years.”
Again.
No it isn’t …
(It shows a linear trend of ~ 0.15 in 20 years or 0.75C/cen)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/uah6/from:1998/to:2019/plot/uah6/from:1998/to:2019/trend
I’m sorry, but I’m simply not buying the claim. I went and got the same SILSO data the head post is using. Here is my analysis of the numbers of consecutive spotless days since 1850:
I’m not seeing the claimed decrease in solar activity … here’s how I calculated the above. The variable “dssnzoo” contains the daily sunspot numbers:
spotlesszoo=dssnzoo spotlesszoo[]=0 for (i in 2:length(dssnzoo)){ if (!is.na(dssnzoo[i])){ if (as.double(dssnzoo[i])==0){ spotlesszoo[i]=spotlesszoo[i-1]+1 } } } plot(window(spotlesszoo,start="1850-01-01"),type="h", ylab="Spotless Days",xlab="Year") title(main=paste0("Consecutive Spotless Days","\n1850 to Feb 28, 2019"),cex.main=.9,line=.8)w.
“Your link to woodfortrees is just a graph which doesn’t cite source or what it is of. North America is having one of it’s coldest winters in a long time. Hell, I’d wager the whole northern hemisphere is having a record cold winter. ”
Nope.
Says so top left.
The woodfortrees is what I said it was – UAH TLT V6 GMST’s in reference to the OP’ers comment “The next chart shows that the satellite record is again approaching the flat-lying trend, which is out to some 20 years.”
Upon which it clearly says “UAH satellite based temperature of the global lower atmosphere version 6.
You could always go there to verify.
Also see Roy Spencer’s current article.
The NH did not have a record cold winter.
Unless you don’t believe the UAH data (it’s by far the coldest of all the global temperature series).
UAH V6 data for the NH: Dec 0.32, Jan 0.32, Feb 0.46.
Whoa. Livingston and Penn were not looking at reduced sunspot activity, they were looking at reduced magnetic fields leading to sunspots fading. It’s a process that made some sunspots invisible, but appears to have leveled out several years ago. The decline they were looking at lasted longer than an 11-year cycle, so it’s not related to the 11 year cycle.
WUWT and Leif Svalgaard have covered the phenomenon well here, you should have checked. See https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/15/livingston-and-penn-in-eos-are-sunspots-different-during-this-solar-minimum/
While that’s a 2009 post, it has plots of magnetic effects up to 2016 that clearly show the umbral intensity and umbral magnetic field strength leveling off in 2010.
You never should have referred to Livingston and Penn in your post.
Geomagnetic activity is still higher than in 2009-2010.
The piece is correct in that there is something weird happening to the sun. Sunspots are disappearing. It is an observational fact that it is now common for a faint tiny weak sunspot group to appear but have a lifetime of a few days rather than a month.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/440/1/012001/pdf/1742-6596_440_1_012001.pdf
…. but as I say below, this is a connected problem. Rather than fight about the sun, relook lat the CO2 and hydrocarbon questions. Attack the CAGW problem where it is weakest.
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years by S. K. Solanki, I. G. Usoskin, B. Kromer, M. Schussler & J. Beer
Here we report a reconstruction of the sunspot number covering the past 11,400 years, based on dendrochronologically dated radiocarbon concentrations. We combine physics-based models for each of the processes connecting the radiocarbon concentration with sunspot number. According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only
of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode. …
It is also a fact that there is evidence of past cyclic climate change which does correlate to C14 changes which of course was not caused by atmospheric CO2 changes.
Greenland ice sheet temperatures last 11,000 years
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
The problem is there are no new observations to support one side or the other or no new ideas concerning observations or new ideas as to how to possibly solve our CAGW problem.
I support the assertion that global warming is over. Big deal. The question why and what is going to happen next?
If it is possible and easy to unequivocally convince everyone that humans did not cause the recent change in atmospheric CO2, the question as to how the sun causes climate change is more interesting.
It is easier (as there is new evidence and old evidence that is overwhelming, unequivocally true, something that everyone will get if there are pictures), however, (rather than starting with the sun) to attack the CAGW problem from the standpoint of unexplained earth and atmospheric paradoxes. The answer to these questions changes something fundamental concerning the earth.
Why did atmospheric CO2 changes in the last 30 years track planetary temperature and not anthropogenic CO2 emissions? A dozen peer reviewed papers using independent analysis techniques show this statement to be true. These papers show anthropogenic CO2 emission is only responsible for roughly 5% of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2.
What are the sources of CO2 coming into the atmosphere? Mass balance analysis (anthropogenic CO2 emissions Vs change in atmospheric CO2 shows that must be a large source of CO2 coming into the atmosphere besides volcanic eruptions).
Why are there massive hydrocarbon deposits on the surface of the planet? Why are there heavy metals in liquid hydrocarbons (increasing with increasing viscosity) and in the bituminous coal deposits? Why is there helium in CH4 and liquid petroleum reservoirs? (This observation forces there to uranium and thorium underneath the hydrocarbon deposits. The decay of those elements produces the helium.)
Why are there large highly concentrated deposits of uranium on the surface of the planet? There is a deposit in Canada than requires remote operated mining equipment as the radiation level is too high for humans. There is a deposit of uranium in South Africa that was critical in the past.
What is the source of hydrogen for the oceans covering 70% of the planet’s surface? Why is there three times more water moving into the mantel as ocean plate is pushed under the continents than is coming out from volcanic activity?
The author ends his lead-in paragraph by stating — incorrectly — that ” the current run of consecutive spotless days is out to 33…” Using the daily NOAA/SWPC sunspot reports to reach a 33 day count is a misuse of the reports because SWPC’s observation method almost always misses short duration sunspots that are successfully observed by SIDC’s global observer network. SIDC daily and monthly reports are much more reliable, complete and accurate than NOAA/SWPC’s once-daily report. During February SILSO reported sunspots on the 13th and 21st and started to report the ongoing three day stretch of sunspots during the day of March 5th. http://www.sidc.be/silso/eisnplot
The author states — incorrectly — that the current run of consecutive spotless days is out to 33. SILSO is the internationally accepted authority for longer term sunspot data, and is always strongly preferred as the source sunspot data for longer term analysis such as the 33 day analysis by the author. According to SILSO, there were sunspots on February 13 and 21 and on March 5, 6 and 7. http://www.sidc.be/silso/eisnplot
Thanks to continuing adjustment of historic temperatures downward by up to 1.7 C back to 1881 by the BOM in Australia, the BOM and Warmists have been able to push the propaganda that on paper this has been Australia’s warmest summer on record.
On the ground, people have been complaining about the lack of warm weather and been happy at the few small bushfires this season. There is a battle of perception underway.
It looks like there’s a small spot crossing the center line now.
Oh Wow!
I did not think Anthony would publish my “news report” on declining solar activity.
WUTU has some highly-qualified posters that are not convinced by the cosmic ray and cloud-cover story.
I am.
The Spotless Count did run to 33 days as reported by SpaceWeather.com. I forgot to put the source in.
Independent of this, SILSO in keeping their table for so many years noted that beyond 30 consecutive days is, well, worthy of being included in the table.
To repeat, it’s a news story.
At around 2008 there were news stories about, solar physicists, Penn and Livingston calling for a significant decline in solar activity.
I’ve been in the financial markets for decades, heading up a team that sells research to financial institutions.
It was in 2008 when, fed up with the deliberate corruption of science, I began writing about the real side of climate.
Our subscribers appreciate it.
I completed my degree in geology and physics before UBC had a Department of Geophysics. That was in 1962 and it took a long time to build enough data to confirm Milankovitch. Also taught then was the theory about an open Arctic Ocean and a frozen continent.
And as “M” was being confirmed it was exciting.
Some months ago, I sent some stuff on interest rates to Anthony to send to Monckton. He was doing something on discount rates.
I often write “news” reports and articles about climate.
Because it is so fascinating., and many of our subscribers appreciate them.
I think that the work by Svensmark and his team as well as that by Shaviv is heading towards a renaissance in climate studies.
Explaining it is easier that instructing first-year physics labs.
And each point I work on in science has been reviewed by a Prof. Emeritus, Physics, Princeton.
And a Prof. Emeritus, Earth Sciences, Melbourne University.
My own original work in political and financial history has been calling for this great experiment in authoritarian governments to soon conclude. Recently politics has gone radical suggesting “ending action”.
They have monumentally screwed up in “managing” the economy.
As well as in touting that they can “manage” the temp of the nearest planet.