Dalton Minimum Returns

What's Happening to the Sun?

Russ Steele

That is the PopScience headline. The writer conclude not much, just like so many cycles before?

"Everything we're seeing now we've seen the Sun do before, and it still went on to produce a normal solar cycle," said Doug Biesecker, physicist at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

Just another typical solar cycle?

Tom Woods, Associate Director for Technical Divisions at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), concurs. "Typically during a solar minimum you will have one or two months with no sunspots, so what we saw in 2008 is typical of most solar cycles," he said.

And then a sop to CO2 science

According to Woods, even a smaller solar cycle could induce some cooling on Earth. "Not enough to offset the greenhouse gas global warming effect," he said, "but enough to potentially slow it down for a few years." The solar cycle's effect on global temperatures is only about 1/10 of a degree, whereas the greenhouse effect over the past 30 years has been about a full one degree change, Woods said.

Back to work everyone, nothing to see according  PopSci.

Give minimums come around about every 200 years plus or minus a few, it seem to me we are due for another minimum. Based on my research of sun cycles it is time for another minimum. 

I am sure that Lewis and Clark would have been glad to know that the Dalton Minimum was only going to reduce the temperature about 1/10 of a degree. What they found were temperatures 3 to 4 degrees C below the modern average. Of course they did not know about those modern averages, they just wrote down in their journals what they observed. The tinkering with historic temperatures became a 20th and 21st Century process.  

Climate history and the next minimum

Russ Steele

Steven Goddard has an interesting post at Watts Up With That comparing the historical January climate trends in Philadelphia with the current trends. Charles Pierce kept a detailed record of the monthly weather from 1790 through 1847, and his record is archived by Google Books.  

From Charles Pierce’s records, the average January temperature in Philadelphia from 1790-1819 was 31.2F.  According to USHCN records from 2000-2006 (the last year available from USHCN) and Weather Underground records from 2007-2009, the average January temperature in Philadelphia for the last ten years has been 29.8 degrees, or 1.4 degrees cooler than the period 1790-1819.  January, 2009 has been colder than any January during the presidencies of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, or Monroe.  January 2003 and 2004 were both considerably colder than any January during the terms of the first five presidents of the US. 

In my paper on the Dalton Minimum Returns I wrote:

We know from the Lewis and Clark weather records the mid west was on average 4 degrees cooler in the winter of 1804 -1805, and the Corp of Discovery spent the winter of 1805-1806 on the coast of Oregon under intense cloud cover. By examining the California Mission documents, and tree ring records from the period, 1795 to 1825, we know that California experienced drought conditions from 1794 - 1795, 1805 - 1813 and 1821 - 1825. There was a strong El Niño in 1815 - 1816 producing very wet conditions.

Look at Cycle 4 in the graphic below.

It appears to me that Cycle 23 is beginning to look more and more like cycle 4, which preceded the Dalton Minimum. Are we going to learn from history?  Minimums come about every 200 years. We are due for one, and it may be on the way.

NASA's STEREO probes to monitor next minimum?

Russ Steele

Click Graphic for larger image.

First data received from the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory, or STEREO for short, consists of two space-based observatories - one ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind. With this new pair of viewpoints, scientists will be able to see the structure and evolution of solar storms as they blast from the Sun and move out through space. STEREO has a webs site here.

More details at Softpedia Science News.

One of the main goals of this mission, launched on October 25th, 2006, is to create a monitoring network that can supply data about solar storms and radiation 24/7. The entire surface of the Sun is visible from Earth at designated times, but researchers have thus far had no effective means of studying all of it at once, even through indirect measurements. Analyzing what goes on behind the star and seeing what happens in front of it could potentially help astronomers develop new estimates of the Sun and better assess its future threats.

At this moment, the star is at its lowest point in the 11-year cycle, but soon it will start getting stronger, which means that more sunspots and solar flares will become visible and the STEREO system will have a lot to do. Coincidentally, around 2011-2012, the probes will have reached their optimum observation positions, after which they will slowly drift apart and will send back irrelevant data until their demise.

This will be a great tool set for monitoring the next minimum.  What will we call it?

More on a lower Average Magnetic Planetary Index (Ap)

Russ Steele

Watt Up With That has an interesting projection by David Archibald. How low can it go?

Ramp up of solar cycle 24

Russ Steele

David Archibald takes a look at what the ramp up of Cycle 24 might look like at Watts Up With That. David give us a milestone to track, a monthly sunspot number of under ten for 2009. A repeat of solar cycle 5, which could return us to a replication of the Dalton Minimum.  Stay Tuned. This is going to be a very interesting year.

Solar Cycle 23 not done yet? Stay tuned

.Russ Steele

Original Graphic

I am reading Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection, and last night I read about how Maunder and his wife developed the butterfly diagram that tracks the progression of a Solar Cycle. New cycle spots appear about 30 degrees in latitude, slowly progressing toward the equator as the cycle continues.  So when a new spot appears near the equator, one would assume it is a Cycle 23 spot. But, Space Weather is not so sure.  

A new sunspot is emerging inside the circle region--and it is a strange one. The low latitude of the spot suggests it is a member of old Solar Cycle 23, yet the magnetic polarity of the spot is ambiguous, identifying it with neither old Solar Cycle 23 nor new Solar Cycle 24. Stay tuned for updates as the sunspot grows.

More at NC Media Watch.

Do we live in unusual times? Looks like it.

Russ Steele

The Digital Diatribes has some interesting sunspot stats that are worth a second thought.  Are we headed for an extended minimum?  Cycle 24 is slow getting started.

. . . there are a number of very interesting observations that we can make that indicate the special nature of our time.  The Sunspot data can be located by clicking the link on the right, under RESOURCES, of the NOAA Sunspot data.

1) Current six-month average = 1.7.  This is the lowest 6-month average since the period ending November 1913.

2) Current 12-month average is 2.8.  This is the lowest such average since the period ending March 1914.

3) Current 24-month average is 5.2.  This is the lowest such average since the period ending November 1914.

4) Current 36-month average is 8.5.  This is the lowest such average since the period ending December 1934.

5) Current 48-month average is 13.8.  This is the lowest such average since the period ending October 1935.

6) Current 60-month average is 19.1.  This is the lowest such average since the period ending March 1936.

7) Current 72-month average is 26.5.  This is the lowest such average since the period ending November 1936.

This is truly remarkable.  All the way up to the 6-year average, we see numbers that have not been witnessed in over 70 years, and in the first few cases, almost 95 years.  Only when we finally get to a 7-year average do we get into our generation:

8 ) The 84-month average is 37.6.  This is the lowest such average since the period ending March 1978.

Sunspot Lapse Exceeds 95% of Normal

Posted by Jeff Id at The Air Vent

Well John Christy gave me a lot to think about in satellite temp trends as far as an improved correction over my last post.  Steve McIntyre pitched in some comments as well.  It is going to take a bit to work out the details of that for me but I think I can produce an improved accuracy slope over my last posts.  In the meantime, I downloaded sunspot numbers from the NASA.
Cycles are interesting things.  There are endless cycles in nature, orbits, ocean temp shifts, solar cycles, magnetic cycles the examples are everywhere.  What makes a cycle unusual is also an interesting topic.  Some solar scientists have claimed that our current solar cycle is not unusual by the record.  They are certainly the experts but recently the experts have been forced to update their predictions for the next solar cycle.

Well, I’m no expert on the sun but I do find the data regarding sunspots interesting, particularly in the fact that we are again in at least a short term cooling at the same time sunspots and solar magnetic level have plunged.
.................

The standard deviation of the cycle start after the dalton minimum 1833 and before 2009 was only 0.79 years. The average Jeff Id solar cycle in the same period is  10.83 years.  This puts the two sigma limits of the solar cycle at 9.26 years on the short side and 12.42 years on the long side.

Alert: A Probable New Dalton

Russ Steele

Timo Niroma, on his web site has some really interesting information on solar cycles and some theories about Jupiter's influence. Too much to post here, but here is his latest probability of a new Dalton. 

Original alert 31.10.2007

Newest update 14.01.2009

According to my theory about Jovian effect on sunspots, based on facts measured since 1700 and estimated since 1500 (Schove)

- The Jupiter perihelion and sunspot minimum never coincide and the nearing perihelion in 2011 will slow the rise of the height of sunspot cycle, as now is happening to the cycle 24.
- The Gleissberg cycle almost reached its lower limit, which is 72 years in 2005.
--- In fact this low it has not been ever after the Maunder minimum.
--- So it must go up, the short cycles of the 20th century has created a debt that must be paid.
--- This means lower cycles and if the past is a good predictor, colder times on Earth.

The last decent sunspots belonging to cycle 23 appeared in July 2008. From August to September 2008 the Sun hibernated. In October and November the cycle 24 showed its first decent spots. In December 2008 the Sun again began to hibernate.

More support for Climate Change GCR Connection

Russ Steele

The correlation in the paper below seems to support Svensmark's mechanism of cosmoclimatology, cosmic rays cause low level clouds. The oscillating geomagnetic field regulates the amount of galactic cosmic rays that reach the lower layers of the atmosphere which subsequently influences the amount of cloudiness and precipitation, and temperature by increasing the energy reflected back into space.

ABSTRACT Some studies indicate that the solar modulation of galactic cosmic ray (GCR) particles has profound consequences for Earth’s climate system. A corollary of the GCR-climate theory involves a link between Earth’s magnetic field and climate, since the geomagnetic field also modulates the GCR flux reaching Earth’s atmosphere. In this study, we explore this potential geomagnetic-climate link by comparing a new reconstruction of the Holocene geomagnetic dipole moment with high-resolution speleothem data from China and Oman. The speleothem δ18O data represent proxy records for past precipitation in low-latitude regions, which is a climate parameter that is likely to have been sensitive to variations in the GCR fl ux modulated by the dipole moment. Intriguingly, we observe a relatively good correlation between the high-resolution speleothem δ18O records and the dipole moment, suggesting that Earth’s magnetic fi eld to some degree infl uenced low-latitude precipitation in the past. In addition to supporting the notion that variations in the geomagnetic fi eld may have infl uenced Earth’s climate in the past, our study also provides some degree of support for the controversial link between GCR particles, cloud formation, and climate.

Mads Faurschou Knudsen and Peter Riisager, Geological Society of America  Download Paper