Dalton Minimum Returns

Jan Janssen’s presentation on Solar Cycle 24 hints at Dalton or Maunder

From Anthony Watts - WUWT

David Archibald forwarded me this PowerPoint presentation from Jan Janssens which he presented on October 22nd. It has some very interesting slides and is a good summary of the current debate over solar cycle 24.

I’ve [ Anthony} put the entire slide show online in the post below at 50% size, as the PDF download of the PowerPoint document is quite large. For those that want it, you’ll find it at the end of the post mirrored on WUWT’s file system so that better bandwidth can help out.

Looks like a very interesting presentation, wish the words that accompanied the briefing were on an Mp3 file.

Has cycle 23 returned, or cycle 25 giving us a high sign?

Russ Steele

Consider this from SolarCycle24.com

A new sunspot now numbered 1030 has formed high in latitude in the northern hemisphere. The magnetogram shows it has reverse magnetic polarity compared to what Cycle 24 spots normally would have in the northern hemisphere.

Some experts say it is just a rogue cycle 24 spot, pointing out it happens about 1 in 30 times. More investigation is required. What do you think?

James Marusek: The Long Solar Transition.

James writes to Benny Peiser at C/Net:

As of the end of October, the cumulative number of spotless days (days without sunspots) in the transition into solar cycle 24 now stands at 745.  The transitions into Solar Cycles (SC 16-23), referred to as "recent solar cycles" (years 1923 to ~2008), averaged 362 cumulative spotless days (with a range from 227 to 568 spotless days). Since the current transition now exceeds 568 spotless days, it is very clear that the sun has undergone a state change. The solar "Grand Maxima" state that has persisted during most of the 20th century has come to an abrupt end. The "old solar cycles" (SC 10-15, years 1856 to 1923) averaged 797 spotless days, over twice that of the "recent solar cycles". Those solar cycle minimums ranged from 406 - 1028 spotless days. If this solar minimum ends soon then the upcoming solar cycle may be similar to these “old solar cycles”.

So far the sun continues to be fairly quiet. This solar minimum acts like the Energizer bunny. It just keeps going, and going, and going.

The Average Magnetic Planetary Index (Ap index) is a proxy measurement for the intensity of solar magnetic activity as it alters the geomagnetic field on Earth. It has been referred to as the common yardstick for solar magnetic activity. An Ap index of "4" was the lowest recorded monthly value since measurements began in January 1932.

Back in January 2009, David Archibald predicted the Ap index would hit a low in October 2009 with a value of “3”. Analysis from past solar cycles shows that the Ap index generally reaches its lowest value approximately a year after the solar sunspot minimum. So the question is how well did he do.

The Ap Index for last month, October, was "2". That is really close in my book. The Ap index had been hovering near rock bottom for 11 months now. Beginning in November 2008, there have been 8 monthly readings of "4" along with 3 monthly readings of "5". But this month the value broke through the glass ceiling and spawned the lowest AP monthly index value in the past 77 years. So with this transition into solar cycle 24, all the AP monthly records have been broken. The lowest single month value, two consecutive month value, three consecutive month value, etc.  All of those records have fallen, swept away in this solar state change.

So what does this all mean? Well, the sun’s interplanetary magnetic field has fallen to around 4 nT (nano Tesla) from a typical value of 6 to 8 nT. The solar winds pressure is down to 50 year lows. And the heliospheric current sheet is flattening. All these changes allow high-energy galactic cosmic rays to penetrate deeper into our solar system. In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we've seen in the past 50 years, when satellite measurements began. Greater numbers of galactic cosmic rays driving deep into our atmosphere cause greater cloud formation (through ionization) which then results in decreasing surface temperature on Earth.  This is because low level clouds reflect sunlight back into space. This is why Northern and Southern hemispheres have experienced unusually cold winters during the past couple years. The influence of the sun’s magnetic field is a force to be reckoned with in natural climate change.

The sun exhibits great variability in the strength of each solar cycle.  This variability ranges from extremely quiet “Grand Minima” such as the Maunder Minimum to a very active “Grand Maxima” such as the enhanced activity observed during most of the 20th century.  A solar Grand Minima is defined as a period when the (smoothed) sunspot number is less than 15 during at least two consecutive decades.  The sun spends about 17 percent of the time in a Grand Minima state.  In the past, these periods caused great hardship to humanity and significant loss of life.

Solar Grand Minima events correspond to periods of dramatic natural global cooling.  The Maunder Minimum (about 1645-1715 A.D.) and Spörer Minimum (about 1420-1570 A.D.) are two examples of recent “Grand Minima” events and each period has been referred to as a Little Ice Age. During the “Grand Minima” galactic cosmic ray fluxes were at least 200% to 300% higher than anything measured to date.

So each morning I turn on my computer and check to see how the sun is doing. Most days I am still greeted with the message "The sun is blank - no sunspots."

James A. Marusek

The part that I worry about is that we are planning for global warming, when the probability of global cooling, if not prolonged cold spells that will destroy much of our food supplies, especially the grains that much of the world has become dependent on. 

How Small Will Solar Cycle 24 Be?

Russ Steele

The Cosmic Heart has an interesting discussion with David Hathaway, Ph.D., Heliospheric Team Leader, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama:

“In the 50 years or so we’ve been making the (cosmic ray) measurements – yeah! this is by far the highest level of galactic cosmic rays that we’re seeing at Earth and we know exactly what is causing it. It’s the sun’s weakened magnetic fields and weakened solar winds that are all related to this Solar Cycle 24 minimum."

Hathaway finally admits that Leif Svalgaard was right back in 2006 when he predicted a small cycle.

But there also were people back at that time saying otherwise. A group of colleagues led by Leif Svalgaard, Ph.D., were looking at the sun’s polar fields and saying even at that point, the sun’s polar fields were significantly weaker than they had been before and those scientists back then predicted it was going to be a small cycle.

It is going to be a small cycle.

I’ve come around to that view now. I think there is little doubt in my mind now that we’re in for a small cycle. The big question now is how small? I think most of us are predicting small cycles. I think even the techniques I’m using now are suggesting HALF the size of the last three or four solar cycles, but my fear is that even that might be too big just from the fact that it’s taken so long for this Solar Cycle 24 to really get off the ground and start producing sunspots.

I have no doubt at this point that it’s going to be a little cycle. My current prediction is that it’s going to be about half of what we’ve seen in the last four solar cycles or so. But in my gut, I feel it’s going to be smaller than that! (laughs) It’s just so slow in taking off and the indicators that we see – both the polar fields and the geomagnetic indicators are lower than anything we’ve seen before.

The whole article is here. In the past a small cycle has resulted in cooler climate on the earth. The questions is will this be another Grand Minimum? The Cosmic Heart ask if the Hathaway's team discusses another Maunder Minimum. 

It comes up in conversations all the time! (laughs) There is no doubt about it - it’s in the back of our minds!

Certainly the Maunder Minimum comes up. We recently had a meeting of 60 or 70 solar and heliospheric physicists from around the world who met on Mount Desert Island in Maine back in late September.

The title of the meeting was “Understanding the Peculiar Solar Minimum” – meaning this one! (laughs) The interesting thing is that at one point during that meeting, we took a vote amongst ourselves about how many thought that this Solar Cycle 24 is so peculiar that it would have a name attached to it, like Maunder Minimum or Dalton Minimum. It was a small minority that thought that it was that peculiar.

The vast majority felt that this is a significant minimum. It’s smaller than anything we have seen in the 50 years of the Space Age. But it does look like you can go back 100 years or so and find other similar minima.

It looks like we should be preparing for global cooling rather than global warming.

Its Time To Prepare For Another Dalton Minimum

Russ Steele

James William Smith writes his views on the return of the Dalton Minimum. I was thinking of writing about the impacts when I read that Canada's grain production was down 20% this year due to the wet cold weather. Not climate change yet, just weather but we need to keep our eyes open and plan ahead should a long string of winters reduce the Canadian, Russian and US grain production. I have edited Smith for readability.

He was forty-three days and counting since the last place was on the face of the sun to be seen. The elongation cycle is still very similar to solar cycles before the Dalton Minimum in the late 1700s and early 1800s. A period of time often filled in the writings of Charles Dickens, as described in the extreme cold and snow. In fact, the history of observation of the solar system shows a clear link between the length of the solar cycle and global temperatures higher.

The solar cycle, on average, eleven years, but shorter cycles of solar warming temperatures generally successful, although longer cycles times means a lot colder to come. There are short solar cycles for much of the twentieth century, but the length of the average cycle has now begun to change. Consequently, a growing number of solar scientists began to predict the weather much colder in the decades immediately prior. The recent study sounds an alarm to the colder climate was published a few months ago, in February 2009. The title of the study was "to predict the parameters of solar cycle 24 and beyond." The research of C. de Jager, and S. Duhau, was published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, and found that solar activity is currently a transition between the current maximum of Greater another plan.

The study provides conditions similar to another Dalton Minimum in the coming decades, and concludes that there will be a low solar activity for 60 to 100 years. Yet some politicians worldwide to prepare drastically the cost of energy in a dubious attempt to save the world from people to increase global warming. There is no political preparations for a colder climate results, although the current lack of activity of the sun may mean that it is colder periods in the years to come.

The result cools considerably avoid costly government regulations on global warming as the climate of not less than five degrees Celsius, will certainly increase the cost of energy. They are expecting much higher prices for heating the house to drive a car, and all means of travel throughout the growing problem of cold. In addition, increased food prices by a short growing season will result in the increasing cold of the minimum Dalton to come. In some years during the last minimum Dalton (1790 – 1820), crops withered in the fields because of the cold and wet.

Lack of planning policy for cold climates, will result in the rationing of food, especially beef. Since beef is to market high energy, be a dramatic increase or failure is the likely outcome. Planned outages are often due to increased energy demand as housing people from the cold and heat at home, trying to keep warm.

Although solar panels and wind farms in operation will increase, other sources that are not compensated for the increasing global demand for energy from the minimum following Dalton. Of course, you will not hear about these problems, which, by the mainstream media or the career politician. Enthusiasm for the human-induced global warming gas CO2 sells magazines, television specials makes highly rated and fills coffers reelection politics. However, having the white sun and increasing the duration of the current solar cycle, a unique, historic relationship with the global climate and temperature. The sun is now as quiet as in over a hundred years. The lesson of history from centuries of observations of solar cycles is unclear. The time to prepare for the cold of another Dalton Minimum.

The Sun Defines the Climate

Russ Steele

Long term global cooling, perhaps another Grand Mimimum?

(Habibullo Abdussamatov, Dr. Sc. - Head of Space research laboratory of the Pulkovo Observatory, Head of the Russian/Ukrainian joint project Astrometria - (translated from Russian by Lucy Hancock)

Key Excerpts: Observations of the Sun show that as for the increase in temperature, carbon dioxide is "not guilty" and as for what lies ahead in the upcoming decades, it is not catastrophic warming, but a global, and very prolonged, temperature drop. [...] Over the past decade, global temperature on the Earth has not increased; global warming has ceased, and already there are signs of the future deep temperature drop. [...] It follows that warming had a natural origin, the contribution of CO2 to it was insignificant, anthropogenic increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide does not serve as an explanation for it, and in the foreseeable future CO2 will not be able to cause catastrophic warming. The so-called greenhouse effect will not avert the onset of the next deep temperature drop, the 19th in the last 7500 years, which without fail follows after natural warming. [...] We should fear a deep temperature drop -- not catastrophic global warming. Humanity must survive the serious economic, social, demographic and political consequences of a global temperature drop, which will directly affect the national interests of almost all countries and more than 80% of the population of the Earth. A deep temperature drop is a considerably greater threat to humanity than warming. However, a reliable forecast of the time of the onset and of the depth of the global temperature drop will make it possible to adjust in advance the economic activity of humanity, to considerably weaken the crisis.

Full Study is here.

Sunspots: End of Cycle 23/24 solar minimum?

The biggest sunspot of 2009 has emerged. Spot 1029 is crackling with Class B and C solar flares.

Dallas Weather Examiner, notes that the sun is becoming more active. 

The 10.7cm radio flux spiked in late September with its highest reading in 18 months; now, and this is very significant compared to the pattern since March 2008, it has spiked again, exceeding the late September number and reaching a Cycle 24 maximum of 76.9.

This is still a very low value compared to the solar maximum flux numbers, which routinely exceed 200. However, it is an upward move from the “basement” numbers of the past 19 months which have typically run between 66 and 70.

The plot included with this report shows an gradual but definite upward slope in the radio flux during the past two months; such a consistent slope more strongly suggests (more than any other time in the past two years) that the sun is merging from its deepest solar minimum since 1913.
A well-defined sunspot group emerged on October 23, ending the 20-day blank streak and also emitting a moderate (class C) solar flare. The greater intensity of the flare is also a clue to heightened magnetism within the sunspot groups.

Given that there will no doubt be more blank days in 2009 between these solar spikes, this year may move upward from its present ranking of 6th place for lack of sunspots to perhaps 2nd or 3rd place. So the Cycle 23/24 solar minimum seems headed towards the history books as of this writing.

Sluggish flow inside the sun may cause late sunspot cycle

Frank Hill and Rachel Howe writing in SPIE.

Sonograms of the solar interior reveal a flow that is taking longer than usual to move from the poles to the equator and may be related to the current long minimum of solar activity.

ooo

The frequencies are analyzed with a technique known as inversion,and the flows as a function of depth and solar latitude can be inferred. The analytical process is very similar to that used for terrestrial earthquakes, and creates a sonogram of the flows. The result,14 presented in Figure 1, shows the torsional oscillation at a depth of 1000km below the solar surface as a pair of red-and-yellow chevron patterns, one for the past cycle, and one for the cycle that is now beginning. Comparison of the two patterns, shown by the blue lines, reveals that the flow for the current cycle is sluggish in its travel from the poles to the equator. To date, compared with the previous cycle, the flow has taken 1.5 years longer to reach the latitude where sunspots typically begin to emerge in large numbers. This delay is equal to the unexpected, extra duration of the current minimum, which suggests that the patterns are related.

(Emphasis Added)

Sunspot update: Still behind activity of a year ago

Steve LaNore, Writes at the Dallas Weather Examiner

Sunspot activity has shown an increase since the long quiet spell of July-September 2009 (51 days in a row with a blank solar surface), but it’s certainly nothing to crow about just yet.

A pronounced sunspot group helped push the solar 10.7cm radio flux to its highest level in 18 months in late September; since then, a 19-day blank streak resumed the march of sunspot-less days which now ranks 6th for any year since 1900.

A weak sunspot briefly formed for only a matter of hours on October 21st ; but there’s an indication of another very minimal one forming.

None of these events signal any type of dramatic uptrend in solar activity; in fact, the sun was far more active as to sunspot counts in October 2008 than observed thus far in October 2009 (thru Oct 21).

Cosmic tree ring growth

Russ Steele

The eleven year cycle in grain prices in the British Isles led to the discovery that the 11 year sunspot cycle influenced the earth's climate, thus grain production. Now the Brits have discovered that the growth the growth of British trees appears to follow a cosmic pattern, with trees growing faster when high levels of cosmic radiation arrive from space during periods of low sunspots.

Researchers made the discovery studying how growth rings of spruce trees have varied over the past half a century. As yet, they cannot explain the pattern, but variation in cosmic rays impacted tree growth more than changes in temperature or precipitation. The study is published in the scientific journal New Phytologist.

The full BBC story is here, but let's explore the sun spot connection in the story.

Here comes the Sun

Cosmic rays are actually energetic particles, mainly protons, as well as electrons and the nuclei of helium atoms, that stream through space before hitting the Earth's atmosphere.
The levels of cosmic rays reaching the Earth go up and down according to the activity of the Sun, which follows an 11-year cycle.

Every 11 years or so, the Sun becomes more active, producing a peak of sunspots. These sunspots carry a magnetic field that blocks and slows the path of energetic particles.
When the researchers looked at their data, they found that tree growth was highest during periods of low sunspot activity, when most cosmic rays reached Earth.

But growth slowed during the four periods of cosmic ray-blocking high sunspot activity, which have occurred between 1965 and 2005.

"We tried to correlate the width of the rings, i.e. the growth rate, to climatological factors like temperature. We also thought it would be interesting to look for patterns related to solar activity, as a few people previously have suggested such a link," explains Ms Dengel.

"We found them. And the relation of the rings to the solar cycle was much stronger than it was to any of the climatological factors we had looked at. We were quite hesitant at first, as solar cycles have been a controversial topic in climatology."

"As for the mechanism, we are puzzled." Sigrid Dengel, University of Edinburgh.

There needs to be more scientific investigation, but these preliminary findings seem to lend credence to Svensmark’s work on GCR to cloud cover correlation by demonstrating yet another tangible effect.  Fewer sunspots, more cosmic ray, more cloud cover, a cooler earth. And the sun remains quiet.