Solar Cycle 23 not ending yet
July 6th, 2007 by Warwick HughesDownload a PowerPoint presentation of David Archibald’s latest edit of his paper, “The Past and Future of Climate” presented at the Lavoisier Conference in Melbourne June 2007.
This is my 4th posting since late 2006 on this subject of contrasting forecasts for solar cycle 24, click below for links to earlier posts.
On December 16 I drew attention to;
Contrasting forecasts for Solar Cycle 24
then a couple of months later I posted
Has anybody seen any recent sunspots ?
February 23rd, 2007
Then on March 27 I posted David Archibald’s new paper predicting global cooling ahead;
The Past and Future of Climate
Posted in Atmospheric science, IPCC, News and Views, Solar | 56 Comments »
July 6th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Warwick, thanks for hosting my paper. I have put the Powerpoint version online so that anyone wanting to use the material I generated might more easily recycle it. One new idea in the paper is that increased atmospheric CO2 ameliorates the inherent suffering of the third world.
July 6th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
That’s a good presentation David – I have been following your improvements to the material with interest for some time now.
Are you are familiar with the work of Dr Theodor Landscheidt who also predicted a severe climate downturn by 2030?
I have started a blog examining some of his stuff that includes a page with links to all the papers by him that I could find.
Perhaps the most relevent posts on my blog are:
Dr Landscheidt’s Solar Cycle 24 Prediction
landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/17
and
New Little Ice Age Instead of Global Warming?
landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/24
I’m a bit slow add adding new material as I have been too busy, but there is much more material worthy of a more detailed look, and I do intend to expand on his work when I can find the time – there are some things that might be able to improve on his his already quite remarkable predictive methods (track record around 80 percent) such as rotating coordinates from the ecliptic plane to the plane with the polar axis along the direction of Sun’s proper motion through the galaxy as used in this rather interesting recent paper:
Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development
nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/alexander2707.pdf
July 8th, 2007 at 10:44 am
I have read the a Power Point presentation, and I have a doubt. In this post at RealClimate, famous accomplishing to Climate Change by Human, I discovered a debunking of chart in page five:
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/the-weirdest-millennium/
How it can be answered to this article?
Moreover, in the paleoclimate chapter of the current IPCC report (at ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_Ch06.pdf) this chart it has been modified and corrected.
Which are the just data?
Thanks from Italy.
July 8th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Thank you Simone, You either believe the IPCC/Mann “Hockey Stick” graph version of temperature change over the last millenium or you believe (as I do) that it has been effectively debunked, mainly by the efforts of Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (against huge opposition) over the last few years as recorded at www.climateaudit.org.
Link at right. You could go to climateaudit and read the extensive material, chapter and verse(see links on left of their front page), which debunks the Hockey Stick and the well financed efforts to resuscitate it.
The IPCC operates like a Stalinist org, a disgrace to science and should be disbanded.
July 8th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
Thanks a lot Hughes!
I have a problem to open that site, but this frase:
> The IPCC operates like a Stalinist org, a disgrace to science and should be disbanded
is the same of prof. F. Battaglia, a climateskeptist scientist in Italy.
In this moment I read many many material, but I’m in confusion for the great size of conflicting data that comes introduced from scientist.
July 9th, 2007 at 4:59 am
David
Some interesting stuff in your paper. There are, though, a few things I’m a bit unclear about. It’s probably due to my poor understanding but, at the risk of appearing foolish, I’d appreciate it if you could clarify one or two points.
1. Figure 13 on Page 9 shows the relationship (a ‘scatterplot’) between sunspot cycle length and the temperature at years of sunspot maximum (and minimum) from the Armagh Observatory record. Do the solar maximum temperatures in the plot refer to the year of solar maximum *within* the solar cycle or does the cycle length actually refer to the number of years between successive solar maxima. For example, you have added the temperature for SC22 on the graph. Is this the temperature for the maximum year for SC22 (presumably around 1990) or is it for the maximum which occurred in 2000, i.e. around 9.6 years (the SC22 length) after the previous maximum.
2. How is the temperature for a given maximum/minimum year determined. I am assuming that the temperature for the 2000 maximum, for example, is the 11 year mean of 1995-2005 temperatures
3. At the end of paragraph 2 also page 9 you write “If it [SC23] is 12 years long, it follows that the temperature at Armagh will be 1.2 degrees lower”
Lower than what? and when?
Using assumptions from 1 and 2 above I’ve interpreted this as follows
The Armagh temperature in 2012 (i.e. the year of the solar max ~12 years after the 2000 solar max) is expected to be 1.2 deg lower than the temperature in 2000 (i.e. the solar max ~9.6 years after 1990-ish ?? solar max), where
the temperature for 2000 is defined to be the 11 year mean of 1995-2005 temperatures
and the temperature for 2012 is defined to be the 11 year mean of 2007-2017 temperatures
Can you confirm whether this is correct.
Sorry if this is a bit basic and thanks for any help.
John Finn
July 9th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Re 6, your interpretations are correct. You can always get the original Butler and Johnson paper off the web and peruse it as well. I had a lot to cover in the alloted time and thus my description of the process wasn’t exhaustive. I hope that others, such as yourself, will be able to use what I have done to go on.
If the Armagh and De Bilt relationships are suddenly no longer valid, then there would have to be an explanation for that. If they remain valid, and there is no reason to suggest that they are not, then we are watching a train wreck in slow motion. It will be like solar minimum without end.
July 13th, 2007 at 8:16 am
www.solarcycle24.com/
Looks like they have a backwards sunspot. This means #24 is starting, yes/no?
July 14th, 2007 at 1:28 am
Matt,
The answer is “we don’t know”. According to the website, a small backwards-oriented sunspot has appeared before.
What I understand is that the first sign of Solar Cycle 24 would be a high latitude spot. So far all of the spots have been very close to the solar equator.
July 17th, 2007 at 5:52 am
No sign of the end of 23 yet. Stay frosty people.
July 17th, 2007 at 7:48 am
That backwards-oriented sunspot disappeared a day later. Still no sign of Solar Cycle 24.
July 17th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Combine that with the fact that global temps have leveled off over the last 7-8 years, and I think you’re on to something…..
July 18th, 2007 at 10:23 am
John A
The backwards sunspot only lasted 3 hours according to Hathaway. It did not even receive a sunspot number and therefore is not considered by the community to be a true indicator of the new solar cycle.
July 18th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Fair enough Dennis. I only looked from one day to the next and saw it gone.
According to the Solar Cycle 24 website, this has happened before and it means diddly squat as far as presaging a new Solar Cycle.
I find myself intrigued that we may be about to have the ultimate test of two competing theories of climate: Greenhouse gases versus solar/magnetic.
I also worry that if a big cooling does happen, a lot of people are going to suffer as deserts start to spread and rains fail. The last time this happened, there was a big upspike of extreme weather as the temperature gradients started to steepen once again.
July 18th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
RE: #14 – Consider all the objectively scary things that happened during the LIA:
1) The Cromwell Years and their immediate aftermath. Self explanatory.
2) The Seven Years’ War. This war (known here in the US as “The French And Indian War”) set the stage for the fall of the House of Bourbon and its violent end at the hands of the enraged mobs, as well as, the revolt of the UK’s colonies on the SE shores of N. America. While the ultimate outcome of this is celebrated here in the US, objectively, it was a blow to the English speaking world. As a result, the UK had to reorient her overseas goals eastward and southward, with all of the good and bad that would ultimately bring.
3) The fall of the Ayudayyan Thai Kingdoms and the onset of Burmese Aggression. This would forever change the geopolitical face of SE Asia and result in extreme poverty there which has yet to be fully overcome.
4) The rise of the Shogun system in Japan.
5) The beginning of the decline of functional nationhood in China and the commencement of severe disfunction, leading ultimately to warlordism, repeated geopolitical disturbances (culminating in the rape of Nanking) and Mao’s putsch.
6) The retreat and final collapse of the Lithuanian-Polish Confederation, which had provided a wonderful buffer state at the eastern reaches of Western Civilization. This would set the stage for the 30 Years’ War, the Napoleonic Wars, The Crimean War, WWI, and WWII.
7) The end of functional nation states in Africa.
8) The collapse of the Indian nation state.
9) The US Civil War.
10) Repeated upheavals in France.
11) The initial cracks in mortar of Russian Czardom.
July 19th, 2007 at 5:08 am
I have to say that I’m a bit sceptical about the deep cooling that some seem to be predicting. Going on past records if another Dalton/Maunder minimum were about to take place I would have expected to see a much stronger signal by now than the gentle “levelling off” we are currently seeing. It’s possible that factors such as ‘global brightening’ and more El Nino-type conditions in recent years are mitigating the true effects of the solar decline, but we have to remember that:
EVERY measure of temperature, i.e satellite, surface, Armagh, De Bilt,…whatever is currently recording temperatures well above the long-term average.
July 19th, 2007 at 5:58 am
Well above average yes. But the global temperature has flattened out for the last 7-8 years. (see bottom graph).
www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif
July 19th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
John Finn,
It is true that the temperatures have “plateued” and have not yet taken a significant turn downward, but don’t forget that our oceans have been heated for the past century by record levels of solar insolation and will not cool down quickly. Since around 1995 we have been in a condition where the PDO and the AMO were both in their warm phases, which would keep the temperatures stable during this period. There is some indication that the PDO has now flipped to a cool phase, so that may allow some global cooling to begin. When the AMO also flips, and if solar cycles 24 and 25 are as weak as some are predicting, then we may then see a measurable decrease in global average temperatures.
July 20th, 2007 at 4:46 am
Aaron
Yes you’re right it’s possible that there are internal forcings which are keeping things warmer than they might be otherwise. But even the Landscheidt paper indicates that geomagnetic activity peaked around 1990 (it looks more like 1987) which means there is quite a significant lag.
We’ll just have to wait and see, but De Bilt and Armagh which David refers to in his presentation have just had their warmest 6 month period on record (or close to it).
July 29th, 2007 at 6:35 am
A search for ‘Armagh’ temperature series will bring up pages of the more than 200yr of readings corrected for 2 short gaps with similar Irish stations, which show that present temperatures are not exceptional.
The start and finish times of course influence the trend, and can be used to manipulate it, so it seems to me that the longer the series the more weight it should carry, Armagh has a location of the instruments that would qualify as class 1 for the whole time.
This link gives the whole series www.arm.ac.uk/annrep/annrep2003/node37.html
July 30th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
“but De Bilt and Armagh which David refers to in his presentation have just had their warmest 6 month period on record ”
De Built was certainly above average for March and April, but May, June and July are right at normal, with July being a little below.
Armagh posted a high this July of 29.9C. Very warm indeed. But eclipsed 3 times since 1934.
August 6th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
I asked NOAA Boulder, Communications Department a few days ago (august 2007) following question: When do you expect solar cycle 24 will start?
Answer NOAA: From now on it will take at least 1 year before cycle 23 will reach its minimum; THERE IS SOME OVERLAP IN THE CYCLES.
GREETINGS, H.OLDEBOOM.
August 6th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
That would make it a very long cycle indeed. The longest since the Dalton minimum.
This is it boys. This debate will be over within the next decade.
August 31st, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Any news here?
August 31st, 2007 at 3:15 pm
David Archibald has just said in an email Aug 31.
[If minimum was to be April 2008, then we should have seen the first high latitude sunspot from Solar Cycle 24 by April 2007. No such sunspot, and none as at the date of this missive. My estimate is November 2009 for the month of minimum.]
So it sounds like terrible news for all those big names at their prestigious Institutions bleeding the taxpayer dry, that were predicting a HOT cycle 24 such a short time ago.
September 1st, 2007 at 2:19 pm
I started nosing around the net a while back and came across Archibald’s paper. It’s very well written for the non scientist like me, and I have spread it around. I am also reading the threads at Climate Audit and think the “jester” will soon make mincemeat of Hansen and other “adjusters”
great blog Warwick thank you!
Hathaway/Dikpati etc still seem to be clinging to the theory that 24 will be very strong,I’m hoping they’re wrong.
September 1st, 2007 at 7:23 pm
McIntyre is ripping into the GHCN station data like a rotwieler on meth. The more BE he finds, the more it appears global warming is a regional event limited to the arctic. Because it sure isn’t in the US, Africa, South America or Antarctica….
September 1st, 2007 at 7:25 pm
“The more BS he finds…”
stupid fat fingers….
September 2nd, 2007 at 3:52 am
Matt,
BE= B excrement, full of it at GISS’ head (both senses for head).
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:20 am
That would make this cycle in excess of 13 years, correct?
September 2nd, 2007 at 2:12 pm
researching the end of cycle 23 and beginning of 24 provide for some interesting reading.
Global warmers want 24 to start soon and be very strong, even though they discount the effect of solar on climates, they want it to get hotter so they can raise more CO2 alarms
Solar scientists have egos just like all of us, and strong 24 theorists want it to be strong just to be right.
Ham Radio guys want a strong 24 so they can have more radio fun
“denialists” or coolies likie myself want a weak 24 and 25 so the AGWers will STFU
plus I sell condos in Mexico so some colder winters won’t hurt
September 4th, 2007 at 6:43 am
You would *think* they they would want a long, low amplitude cycle so that f it continued to get warmer, they could throw that in the skeptic’s face. And I have to say if cycle 24 works out like David says, and the temperature does not drop, I will be looking elsewhere for an explaination as well…
September 4th, 2007 at 11:48 am
RE: #27 – Thesis: Arctic “warming” is due to a combination of soot (from Euro diesels), dust and Eastern Hemisphere shipping, fishing, resource extraction, high latitude industry and diversion of rivers. There is a slight AGW component. There is a moderate AO/PDO component.
September 25th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Update?
18 spotless days in a row. No sign what-so-ever of #24 anytime soon….
September 27th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Here is a link to Jan Janssen’s summary of predictions for Solar Cycle 24. Jan is keeping track of no less than 33 different predictions:
users.telenet.be/j.janssens/SC24.html
This page also includes links to original sources and some interesting commentary.
Here is a link to Jan’s Solaemon page. Lots of charts here:
users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Engwelcome.html
October 16th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Still nothing. Spotless day after spotless day…..
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:49 am
#10
Preceding warmth or temperature stasis is not a good indicator regarding sudden temperature change. The 1290s was a very warm decade in England. The LIA began suddenly and viciously 1313 to 1317 according to Lamb.
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:13 pm
26 consecutive days without one single sunspot…..
November 7th, 2007 at 6:30 am
Looking at the historic solar data on the SEC ftp site, we can safely expect 2008 to be a year without sunspots, solar flares, coronal mass ejections or large earth-facing coronal holes. Comparing recent months with the Sept. 1996 minimum is most illustrative. With a decent Indonesian eruption or two AGW is as dead as can be for many lifetimes.
November 7th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
A very small sunspot appeared yesterday but quickly vanished, ending the streak of spotless days at 29.
December 10th, 2007 at 1:04 am
Dec 10 now. I wonder if your single small spot on Nov 7 was the beginning of cycle 24: It looks like there are more (finally!) coming up.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:39 am
They are not high lattitude sunspots. They are near the equator and therefore STILL cycle #23.
#24 is so late, if it were my girlfriend, I’d be buying a stroller, crib, and wedding ring. Still 12-18 months, probably.
December 11th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Disclaimer: I do not condone alarmism, am not an outright catastrophist and think that “The Global Superstorm” was a joke. That having been written …
Consider the following worst case scenario:
Weak cycles 24 and beyond + negative PDO + Asian brown cloud / aerosols + CO2 concentration only a couple or three hundred PPM higher than it was during the early Permian + WW3.
Only the first and last “terms” in the “equation” are what ifs. And the first term looks ever more probable. And the last term? … well, take a look at 5000 years of human history and you be the judge.
December 13th, 2007 at 11:23 am
NEWS!!
www.solarcycle24.com is reporting the possibility of a high latitude sunspot beginning to rotate into view. This would be the first sunspot for Cycle 24.
December 27th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
It’s now two weeks after MattN’s “news” and that site now says the sun is quiet with no sunspots.
False non-alarm?
January 2nd, 2008 at 7:44 am
There was “something” at high latitude. It was an area of reverse magnetic polarity at high latitude that never actually developed into a sunspot. So….does that count or not? I have no idea.
Needless to say, this is an extremely interesting cycle. Hasn’t behaved normally at all.
January 2nd, 2008 at 7:45 am
Oh, and there’s a small low-latitude spot this morning. #23 still hanging on…..
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Meanwhile, SH sea ice extent is at or above an record high for early January, at least based on estimated extent figures since 1979. NH is up there pretty high as well, having demonstrated an amazing recovery after the “record low” extent in September. Global sea ice extent is on a steep upward track the likes of which has not been seen since 1979. Related? Hmmmmmm …..
January 4th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
#24 has officially started:
From www.solarcycle24.com:
“A new high latitude sunspot has just emerged and yes this time it is a sunspot. It also has the correct magnetic signature of a Cycle 24 spot.”
January 8th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
So. Now that’s we’ve had one official high latitude sunspot associated with cycle 24, what do the experts have to say?
February 17th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Look at the GISS av temp for Jan 2008 – down about .28 degrees from Dec and .43 from Oct 2007 Brrrrrrrr.
March 31st, 2008 at 12:30 pm
If we are in fact entering a cooling period doesn’t that call for the same action i.e. reduced fossil fuel use. Imagine what this will do to energy costs.
September 10th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Two important trends have truly “greened” the planet over the past several decades. Those two trends are mild planet-wide warming driven by the sun in conjunction with elevated levels of CO2 driven by mankind, both of which enhance plant growth. What’s not to like about that? Environmentalists are not happy though. Maybe they are concerned about maintaining their donation cash flows. Now we are looking at Peak Warming and thus cooler global temperatures over the next several decades in conjunction with declining fuels avalability due to the Peak Oil Crises, which no politician or media wonk dare discuss in public. Welcome to George Orwell’s “1984″. We have arrived, though a little late. I wonder if the political elite really believe people will stand still for carbon offset taxes and “green fees”? Pay a tax, change the weather? Mmmmm, I don’t think so.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
I just returned from visiting Yellowstone and was struck by the devastation of the 1988 fires, which were preceeded by acute drought and record setting dry lightening. I began to wonder what solar activity occured leading up the 1988 fire storms. Solar cycle 22 started just a couple of years before that summer of drought and dry lightening. Check this out. Relative to other cycles, that solar cycle had 1) a very fast rise time – 2.8 years, 2) a very short cycle length – 9.7 years, 3) a high minimum sun spot number – 12.3, and 4) a high maximum sun spot number – 158.5
more:
“Cycle 22 certainly provided us with many highlights. Early in the cycle the smoothed sunspot number (determined by the number of sunspots visible on the sun and used as the traditional measure of the cycle) climbed rapidly; in fact more rapidly than for any previously recorded cycle. This caused many to predict that it would eclipse Cycle 19 (peak sunspot number of 201) as the highest cycle on record. This was not to be as the sunspot number ceased climbing in early 1989 and reached a maximum in July of that year. Whilst not of record amplitude, Cycle 22 still rated as 4th of the recorded cycles and continued the run of recent large solar cycles (Cycles 18, 19 and 21 were all exceptional!). A very notable feature of Cycle 22 was that it had the shortest rise from minimum to maximum of any recorded cycle.”
Material Prepared by Richard Thompson. © Copyright IPS – Radio and Space Services.
September 24th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
A new ice age may be around the corner. See warning of devistating cooling by the Space and Science Research Center. www.spaceandscience.net/id16.html
October 5th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
SSRC is a fraud organization. Junk Science exposed them.