Hard lesson about solar realities for NOAA / NASA

The real world sunspot data remaining quiet month after month are mocking the curved red predictions of NOAA and about to slide underneath. Time for a rethink I reckon NOAA !!
Here is my clearer chart showing the misfit between NOAA / NASA prediction and real-world data.
Misfit NOAA / NASA prediction
Regular readers might remember that we started posting articles drawing attention to contrasting predictions for Solar Cycle 24, way back on 16 December 2006. Scroll to the start of my solar threads.

Then in March 2007 I posted David Archibald’s pdf article, “The Past and Future of Climate”. Well worth another read now, I would like to see another version of David’s Fig 12 showing where we are now in the transition from Cycle 23 to Cycle 24.
Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Issued April 2007 from NOAA / NASA

Much data and commentary at solarcycle24.com

11 thoughts on “Hard lesson about solar realities for NOAA / NASA”

  1. I would agree with the implication that the sun is quieter than at opening of Dalton minimum. The current spate of activity in terms of cycle 24 specks may dismay purists, but I look for the longest stretch of spotless days of this minimum this winter.

    The coronal holes are still too frequent, even persistent, and not reliably transequatorial. The IMF has only briefly flipped south. That cycle 23 is essentially dead leaves 24 entirely responsible for sunspeck activity.

  2. Gary, dyspeptic relic? You are very well read. One solar physicist has told me that he and others have had to publish to counter the misinformation the relic puts out. Another, distinguished solar physicist has told me that he got an abusive email from the relic because he had pointed out an error the the relic had posted on a blog.

    As an aside, I used to think that AGW alarmism was driven by nature worship. My further work in comparative religion points it to being a revival of puritanism. There is even more self-loathing in puritanism than in nature worship. Back in the mid-17th century, England effectively voted in puritanism, and when they got sick of it, they voted it out. But it was a hard 10 years between. This time around, there are national security implications from a shrunken economy.

    Back on topic, please expound further on why you think we are up for some long stretches of spotless days. Also on your comment on coronal holes and the IMF polarity.

    Your comment on spotless days suggests a line of enquiry. There may be some pattern to the incidence of Solar Cycle 24 spots until the inflection point at which activity ramps up. It is time to try to shape match against the rising cycle in previous minima.

    I am amazed that I have been able to make original contributions to climate science, but I am also aware that I have enormous gaps in my knowledge.

  3. Gary, you’ve sent me off on another line of enquiry. To paraphrase Tolstoy, all solar cycles look similar at the end, the higher amplitude ones are front-loaded. Let’s see if something useful comes of it.

    I have a paper coming out in January, signed off on peer review. But I could still put another graph in it yet.

  4. “Also on your comment on coronal holes and the IMF polarity.”

    I will look for these links: 1.) A panel report from early 2007, possibly as late as April, itemized the reasonings for the pre-emptive strike against the June 2007 date opting for March 2008. 2.) Papers on the IMF at minimum anthropomorphising the sun as ‘thrusting down her uplifted skirt’. A link where one may watch for the behavior is lmsal/latest_events.

    As I commented at Watts’ some weeks back, Jan Meeus’ cycle 24 butterfly diagram (somewhere at Janssens’) seems to be filling sparsely; the early 24 region specks are too low in latitude as compared with diagrams dating back into the 1800s. I’m thinking that 23 will produce spots for no more than a year remaining of a 3-year denoument; that 24 is already 2 year’s begun, i.e., the August and Sept. 2006 specks were as valid as the majority in 2008.

    Livingston, et al., gives me the idea that the toroidal fields of convective cells have a sinusodic curve of ‘buoyancy’. Note (contra the relic) how the IMF at a distance-or geomagmetic-and SS data curves do not map point to point near minimum. I think the cells have slipped beneath the photosphere, not that they are, in fact, non-existent. For this possibility alone the SS reconstruction, on which the TSI argument hangs, is irretrievably flawed and will fall to earth following 24 Rmax, cursed by coincidence.

    The Waldemeier effect, for late developing cycles, may simply manifest the troughs in a buoyancy curve.

    I bet at Carl Smith’s sometime back, the engine of the toroidal fields is relativistic via the Lorentz force (Tsagas 2006 reprising Thorne circa 1965).

    Why is Oz punching above her weight in this fight?

  5. So the Sun’s convection zone is like a big lava lamp. The magnetic flux tubes with lower magnetic flux have higher density, and aren’t bouyant enough to reach the surface, if the convection zone has a pressure gradient that is similar to that of a gas atmosphere, perhaps.

  6. Well NASA must have been listening. They/ Hathaway have published a new cycle 24 prediction.. we will see how long this one lasts. My guess is that thay have correctly called the 23/24 minimum, albeit after the event and its anybodys guess what the 24 peak will be

  7. I must admit when DA, Carl Smith and I issued forecasts
    for the month of smoothed 13-month SSN minimum at John
    A.’s blog a year ago last September, I did not expect
    cycle 24 shouldering the burden alone.

    July/August is falling by the way side because 23 and
    24 are an uneven pair, Jeff & Mutt. Carl’s Dec. 08 is
    looking pretty fine just now, but with a little luck my
    March 09 is responding to the whip.

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